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a place of thorns; and what is above the thorns, a precipice; and the path above this is both perilous and wavering, concentrating and training the mind of those who travel it toward safety. 4.7 A river roars below, this is your Amphipolitan Strymon, and a quiet one at that; and it is not more fish-bearing than stone-bearing, nor does it empty into a lake, but is dragged down into depths, O you who are too high-sounding and a poet of new names. 4.8 For it is great and terrible, and drowns out the psalmodies from above. Compared to this, the Cataracts and the Catadupi are nothing; so loudly does it roar against you night and day. 4.9 While being rough, it is also impassable; and while turbid, it is also undrinkable; of which this alone is kind: that it does not sweep away your monastery, when the ravines and winter storms make it rage. 4.10 What we have then in these Isles of the Blessed, or rather of your blessed ones, is this. 4.11 But you, admire for me the crescent-shaped bends that are strangling rather than walling off the accessible parts of your foothills, and the tendon overhanging the summit, which makes your life Tantalus-like, and the breezes that blow through and the exhalations of the earth, which refresh you when you are fainting, 4.12 and the songbirds, singing, but of famine, and flying over, but over a desert. No one visits, you say, except for hunting; add, and in order to visit you as corpses. 4.13 These things are perhaps longer than a letter should be, but less than a comedy. And you, if you bear the jest with moderation, you will do rightly; but if not, we will add even more. 5.T TO THE SAME 5.1 Since you bear the jest with moderation, we will also add what follows. And the prelude is from Homer: But come now, change your strain, and sing of the established construction, the roofless and doorless shelter, the fireless and smokeless hearth, the walls dried by fire, so that we might not be pelted by drops of mud, like some Tantaluses and condemned men, thirsting in the midst of waters, - 5.2 that pitiful and foodless banquet to which we were summoned from Cappadocia, not as the poverty of the Lotus-eaters but as the table of Alcinous, we, the young castaways and wretched ones. 5.3 For I remember those loaves and broths (for so they were named), and I will also remember my teeth slipping on the morsels, then getting stuck and being pulled out as if from a bog. 5.4 You yourself will dramatize these things in a loftier style, having the loud voice from your own sufferings; from which if the great and truly nurturer of the poor had not quickly rescued us, I mean your mother, appearing like a harbor in season to the storm-tossed, we would long ago have been dead, not so much praised as pitied for our Pontic faith. 5.5 How can I pass over those un-gardened and vegetable-less gardens, and the Augean dung being cleared out from the house, with which we filled them up, when we were dragging the earth-carrying cart, I the curly-haired and you the gluttonous, with these necks and these hands, which still bear the marks of the labors, —O earth and sun and air and virtue, for I will speak a little tragically,— not so that we might bridge the Hellespont, but so that we might level the precipice. 5.6 If you are not at all vexed by these things being said, then neither are we at all; but if you are vexed, how much more were we by their happening; and we will omit the greater part, out of respect for the other things, of which we enjoyed many. 6.T TO THE SAME 6.1 The things we wrote before about the Pontic 6.1 way of life were from people joking, not being serious; but what I write now is from people being very serious. 6.2 20Who will set me in the month of those former days20, in which I shared with you the rich life of hardship? since voluntary pain is more honorable than involuntary pleasure. 6.3 Who will give me those psalmodies and vigils and sojourns to God through prayer, and the, as it were, immaterial and bodiless life? Who will give me the harmony and unanimity of the brothers being deified and exalted by you? 6.4 Who will give me the contest and incitement of virtue, which we secured with written rules and canons? Who will give me the love of labor on the divine oracles and the light found in them with the guidance of the

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ἀκανθεών· ὅσον δὲ ὑπὲρ τὰς ἀκάνθας, κρημνός· καὶ ἡ ὑπὲρ τοῦτον ὁδὸς ἐπίκρημνός τε καὶ ἀμφιτάλαντος τῶν ὁδευόντων τὸν νοῦν συνάγουσα καὶ γυμνάζουσα πρὸς ἀσφάλειαν. 4.7 Ποταμὸς δὲ κάτω ῥοχθεῖ, οὗτος ὁ Ἀμφιπολίτης σοι Στρυμὼν καὶ ἡσύχιος· καὶ οὐκ ἰχθυοφόρος μᾶλλον ἢ λιθοφόρος, οὐδὲ εἰς λιμνὴν ἀναχεόμενος, ἀλλ' εἰς βάθη κατασυρόμενος, ὦ λίαν ὑψήγορε σὺ καὶ ποιητὰ καινῶν ὀνομάτων. 4.8 Ἔστι γὰρ μέγας καὶ φοβερὸς καὶ ὑπερηχῶν τῶν ἄνω τὰς ψαλμῳδίας. Οὐδὲν πρὸς τοῦτον οἱ Καταράκται καὶ οἱ Κατάδουποι· τοσοῦτον ὑμῶν καταβοᾷ νυκτὸς καὶ ἡμέρας. 4.9 Τραχὺς μὲν ὤν, ἄπορος δέ· καὶ θολερὸς μέν, ἄποτος δέ· οὗ τοῦτο μόνον φιλάνθρωπον ὅτι μὴ παρασυρεῖ τὴν μονὴν ὑμῶν, ὅταν αὐτὸν αἱ χαράδραι καὶ οἱ χειμῶνες ἐκμαίνωσιν. 4.10 Ἃ μὲν οὖν ἡμεῖς ταῖς τῶν Μακάρων νήσοις ταύταις εἴτ' οὖν τῶν μακαρίων ὑμῶν, ταῦτά ἐστι. 4.11 Σὺ δέ μοι θαύμαζε τοὺς μηνοειδεῖς ἀγκῶνας τὰ βάσιμα τῆς ὑπωρείας ὑμῶν ἀπαγχονίζοντας μᾶλλον ἢ ἀποτειχίζοντας, καὶ τὸν κορυφῆς ὑπερτέλλοντα τένοντα, ὃς Ταντάλειον ὑμῖν ποιεῖ τὴν ζωήν, τάς τε διαρρεούσας αὔρας καὶ τῆς γῆς ἀναπνοάς, αἳ λιποθυμοῦντας ὑμᾶς ἀναψύχουσι, 4.12 τούς τε ᾠδικοὺς ὄρνιθας, ᾄδοντας μέν, ἀλλὰ τὸν λιμόν, καὶ ὑπεριπταμένους μέν, ἀλλὰ τὴν ἐρημίαν. Ἐπι δημεῖ δὲ οὐδεὶς ὅτι μὴ κατὰ θήραν, λέγεις· πρόσθες, καὶ ὥστε νεκροὺς ὑμᾶς ἐπισκέπτεσθαι. 4.13 Ταῦτα μακρότερα μὲν ἴσως ἣ κατ' ἐπιστολήν, ἐλάττω δὲ κωμῳδίας. Σὺ δὲ εἰ μὲν οἴσεις μετρίως τὴν παιδιάν, ὀρθῶς ποιήσεις· εἰ δὲ μή, καὶ πλείω προσθήσομεν. 5.Τ ΤΩΙ ΑΥΤΩΙ 5.1 Ἐπειδὴ φέρεις μετρίως τὴν παιδιάν, καὶ τὰ ἑξῆς προσθήσομεν. Ἐξ Ὁμήρου δὲ τὸ προοίμιον· Ἀλλ' ἄγε δὴ μετάβηθι καὶ τὸν ἕσο κόσμον ἄεισον, τὴν ἄστεγον σκέπην καὶ ἄθυρον, τὴν ἄπυρον ἑστίαν καὶ ἄκαπνον, τοὺς πυρὶ ξηραινομένους τοίχους, ἵνα μὴ ταῖς τοῦ πηλοῦ ῥανίσι βαλλώμεθα, Ταντάλειοί τινες καὶ κατάκριτοι, διψῶντες ἐν ὕδασι, - 5.2 τὴν ἐλεεινὴν ἐκείνην καὶ ἄτροφον πανδαισίαν ἐφ' ἣν ἀπὸ Καππαδοκίας ἐκλήθημεν, οὐχ ὡς Λωτοφάγων πενίαν ἀλλ' ὡς Ἀλκινόου τράπεζαν, ἡμεῖς οἱ νέοι ναυαγοί τε καὶ τλήμονες. 5.3 Μέμνημαι γὰρ τῶν ἄρτων ἐκείνων καὶ τῶν ζωμῶν (οὕτω γὰρ ὠνομάζοντο), ἀλλὰ καὶ μεμνήσομαι καὶ τῶν περιολισθαινόντων τοῖς βλωμοῖς ὀδόντων, εἶτα ἐνισχο μένων καὶ ἀνελκομένων ὥσπερ ἐκ τέλματος. 5.4 Αὐτὸς ταῦτα τραγῳδήσεις ὑψηλότερον, ἐκ τῶν οἰκείων παθῶν ἔχων τὸ μεγαλόφωνον· ὧν εἰ μὴ ταχέως ἡμᾶς ἡ μεγάλη καὶ πτωχοτρόφος ὄντως ἐρρύσατο, τὴν σὴν λέγω μητέρα, ὥσπερ λιμὴν ἐν καιρῷ φανεῖσα χειμαζομένοις, πάλαι ἂν ἦμεν νεκροί, πίστεως ποντικῆς οὐκ ἐπαινούμενοι μᾶλλον ἢ ἐλεούμενοι. 5.5 Πῶς παρέλθω τοὺς ἀκήπους κήπους ἐκείνους καὶ ἀλαχάνους, καὶ τὴν Αὐγείου κόπρον ἐκ τῆς οἰκίας ἐκκαθαιρομένην, ᾗ τούτους ἀνεπληρώσαμεν, ἡνίκα τὴν γεωφόρον ἅμαξαν εἵλκομεν, ἐγώ τε ὁ βοτρύων καὶ ὁ λαμυρὸς σύ, τοῖς αὐχέσι τούτοις καὶ ταῖς χερσὶ ταύταις, αἳ τῶν πόνων ἔτι τὰ ἴχνη φέρουσιν, -ὦ γῆ καὶ ἥλιε καὶ ἀὴρ καὶ ἀρετή, τραγωδήσω γάρ τι μικρόν, -οὐχ ἵνα τὸν Ἑλλήσποντον ζεύξωμεν, ἀλλ' ἵνα τὸν κρημνὸν ὁμαλίσωμεν. 5.6 Τούτοις εἰ μὲν οὐδὲν ἀχθεσθήσῃ λεγομένοις, πάντως οὐδ' ἡμεῖς· εἰ δὲ ἀχθεσθήσῃ, πόσον γενομένοις ἡμεῖς· καὶ τὰ πλείω παρήσομεν, αἰδοῖ τῶν ἄλλων, ὧν πολλῶν ἀπελαύομεν. 6.Τ ΤΩΙ ΑΥΤΩΙ 6.1 Ἃ μὲν πρότερον ἐπεστέλλομεν περὶ τῆς ποντικῆς 6.1 διατριβῆς παιζόντων ἦν, οὐ σπουδαζόντων· ἃ δὲ νῦν γράφω, καὶ λίαν σπουδαζόντων. 6.2 20Τίς ἄν με θείη κατὰ μῆνα ἡμερῶν τῶν ἔμπροσθεν ἐκείνων20, ἐν αἷς συνετρύφων σοι τῷ κακοπαθεῖν; ἐπειδὴ τὸ ἑκούσιον λυπηρὸν τοῦ ἀκουσίου τερπνοῦ τιμιώτερον. 6.3 Τίς δώσει τὰς ψαλμῳδίας ἐκείνας καὶ τὰς ἀγρυπνίας καὶ τὰς δι' εὐχῆς πρὸς Θεὸν ἐκδημίας καὶ τὴν οἱονεὶ ἄϋλον ζωὴν καὶ ἀσώματον; Τίς ἀδελφῶν συμφυΐαν καὶ συμψυχίαν τῶν ὑπὸ σοῦ θεουμένων καὶ ὑψουμένων; 6.4 Τίς ἅμιλλαν ἀρετῆς καὶ παράθηξιν, ἣν ὅροις γραπτοῖς καὶ κανόσιν ἠσφαλισάμεθα; Τίς θείων λογίων φιλοπονίαν καὶ τὸ ἐν αὐτοῖς φῶς εὑρισκόμενον σὺν ὁδηγίᾳ τοῦ