Letter 41

Nilus of AncyraFaustianus|c. 415 AD|nilus ancyra|From Ancyra|AI-assisted

To Faustianus.

Your soul has been estranged from God; and how, then, did you urge me to send you some profitable word, to a man accustomed to make sport of divine things as though they were profane? For how shall I speak to those who have been put to death, and to an ear that will not listen? "How shall I sing the Lord's song in a foreign land" [Psalm 137:4], where there are hedgehogs, and vipers, and night-ravens, [...] of the evil spirits, according to what is written? where onocentaurs [donkey-centaurs, among the desolate creatures of Isaiah 34:14] and demons dance without ceasing, and ravens croak.

AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek below for scholarly use.

Latin / Greek Original

Ἠλλοτρίωται τοῦ Θεοῦ ἡ ψυχή σου, καὶ πῶς με προέτρεψας πέμψαι σοι λόγον τινὰ ὠφέλιμον, ἀνθρώπῳ εἰωθότι παίζειν τὰ θεῖα, καθάπερ τὰ βέβηλα; Πῶς γὰρ ἂν λαλήσω εἰς νεκρωμένους, καὶ ἀνήκοον οὖς; « Πῶς ᾄσομαι τὴν ᾠδὴν Κυρίου ἐπὶ γῆς ἀλλοτρίας, » ἔνθα ἐχῖνοι, καὶ ἴδειες, καὶ νυκτικόρακες.
τῶν πονηρῶν πνευμάτων ἐννοσεῦσου, κατὰ τὸ γεγραμμένον; ἔνθα ὀνοκένταυροι καὶ δαίμονες ὀρχοῦνται διὰ παντὸς, καὶ κόρακες κράζουσι.

Revision history

  1. 2026-05-27v2.2.34-import

    Initial corpus import from modern nilus ancyra workflow v1.

    Fields: letter text, metadata, source links. Source: project source import

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