Oration VIII. Funeral Oration on his Sister Gorgonia.

 1.  In praising my sister, I shall pay honour to one of my own family yet my praise will not be false, because it is given to a relation, but, becaus

 2.  Yet it would be most unreasonable of all, if, while we refuse to regard it as a righteous thing to defraud, insult, accuse, or treat unjustly in a

 3.  Having now made a sufficient defence on these points, and shown how necessary it is for me to be the speaker, come, let me proceed with my eulogy,

 4.  Who is there who knows not the Abraham and Sarah of these our latter days, Gregory and Nonna his wife?  For it is not well to omit the incitement

 5.  This good shepherd was the result of his wife’s prayers and guidance, and it was from her that he learned his ideal of a good shepherd’s life.  He

 6.  From them Gorgonia derived both her existence and her reputation they sowed in her the seeds of piety, they were the source of her fair life, and

 7.  This is what I know upon these points:  and therefore it is that I both am aware and assert that her soul was more noble than those of the East, a

 8.  In modesty she so greatly excelled, and so far surpassed, those of her own day, to say nothing of those of old time who have been illustrious for

 9.  The divine Solomon, in his instructive wisdom, I mean his Proverbs, praises the woman who looks to her household and loves her husband, contrastin

 10.  Here, if you will, is another point of her excellence:  one of which neither she nor any truly modest and decorous woman thinks anything:  but wh

 11.  Enough of such topics.  Of her prudence and piety no adequate account can be given, nor many examples found besides those of her natural and spir

 12.  Who opened her house to those who live according to God with a more graceful and bountiful welcome?  And, which is greater than this, who bade th

 13.  But amid these tokens of incredible magnanimity, she did not surrender her body to luxury, and unrestrained pleasures of the appetite, that ragin

 14.  O untended body, and squalid garments, whose only flower is virtue!  O soul, clinging to the body, when reduced almost to an immaterial state thr

 15.  Oh! how am I to count up all her traits, or pass over most of them without injury to those who know them not?  Here however it is right to subjoi

 16.  O remarkable and wonderful disaster!  O injury more noble than security!  O prophecy, “He hath smitten, and He will bind us up, and revive us, an

 17.  She was sick in body, and dangerously ill of an extraordinary and malignant disease, her whole frame was incessantly fevered, her blood at one ti

 18.  What then did this great soul, worthy offspring of the greatest, and what was the medicine for her disorder, for we have now come to the great se

 19.  Such was her life.  Most of its details I have left untold, lest my speech should grow to undue proportions, and lest I should seem to be too gre

 20.  She had recently obtained the blessing of cleansing and perfection, which we have all received from God as a common gift and foundation of our ne

 21.  And now when she had all things to her mind, and nothing was lacking of her desires, and the appointed time drew nigh, being thus prepared for de

 22.  Yet what was I on the point of omitting?  But perhaps thou, who art her spiritual father, wouldst not have allowed me, and hast carefully conceal

 23.  Better, I know well, and far more precious than eye can see, is thy present lot, the song of them that keep holy-day, the throng of angels, the h

4.  Who is there who knows not the Abraham and Sarah of these our latter days, Gregory and Nonna his wife?  For it is not well to omit the incitement to virtue of mentioning their names.  He has been justified by faith, she has dwelt with him who is faithful; he beyond all hope has been the father of many nations,1    Rom. iv. 18. she has spiritually travailed in their birth; he escaped from the bondage of his father’s gods,2    His father’s gods.  These words, together with the reference to idols and idolators in § 5 and the lines (Poem, Hist. I. i. 123–4, tome 2. p. 636) ὑπ᾽ εἰδώλοις πάρος ἦεν ζώων have led some writers (esp. Ullmann and Clericus) to attribute the worship of idols to the Hypsistarii, and Clémencet points out that ζώων is only the Ep. and Ion. partic. of ζάω, and does not mean “of animals.”  The weakness of a reliance on a poetical expression is shown in Dict. Christ. Biog.  Here the words are the mystical application of the actual experience of Abraham, and ἐίδωλον does not necessarily connote material idols.  It is applied by S. Greg. Nyssen, Orat. funebr. de Placilla, p. 965. B (ed. 1615) to the worship of Jesus Christ by the Arians.  Cf. Introd. to Orat. xviii. she is the daughter as well as the mother of the free; he went out from kindred and home for the sake of the land of promise,3    Gen. xii. 1; Heb. xi. 8. she was the occasion of his exile; for on this head alone I venture to claim for her an honour higher than that of Sarah; he set forth on so noble a pilgrimage, she readily shared with him in its toils; he gave himself to the Lord, she both called her husband lord and regarded him as such, and in part was thereby justified; whose was the promise, from whom, as far as in them lay, was born Isaac, and whose was the gift.

Δʹ. Τίς οὖν οὐκ οἶδε τὸν νέον ἡμῶν Ἀβραὰμ, καὶ τὴν ἐφ' ἡμῶν Σάῤῥαν; Γρηγόριον λέγω καὶ Νόνναν, τὴν τοῦδε σύζυγον (καλὸν γὰρ μηδὲ τὰ ὀνόματα παρελθεῖν, ὡς ἀρετῆς παράκλησιν), τὸν πίστει δικαιωθέντα, καὶ τὴν τῷ πιστῷ συνοικήσασαν: τὸν πατέρα πολλῶν ἐθνῶν παρ' ἐλπίδα, καὶ τὴν πνευματικῶς ὠδίνουσαν: τὸν φυγόντα πατρῴων θεῶν δουλείαν, καὶ τὴν θυγατέρα καὶ μητέρα τῶν ἐλευθέρων: τὸν ἐξελθόντα συγγενείας καὶ οἴκου διὰ τὴν γῆν τῆς ἐπαγγελίας, καὶ τὴν αἰτίαν τῆς ἐκδημίας (τοῦτο γὰρ ἐκείνῃ μόνον, ἵνα τι τολμήσω, καὶ ὑπὲρ τὴν Σάῤῥαν): τὸν παροικήσαντα καλῶς, καὶ τὴν προθύμως συμπαροικήσασαν: τὸν τῷ Κυρίῳ προσθέμενον, καὶ τὴν κύριον τὸν ἑαυτῆς ἄνδρα καὶ προσαγορεύουσαν καὶ νομίζουσαν, καὶ μέρος τι διὰ τοῦτο δικαιωθεῖσαν: ὧν ἡ ἐπαγγελία, καὶ ὧν ὁ Ἰσαὰκ, ὅσον τὸ ἐπ' αὐτοῖς, καὶ ὧν τὸ δώρημα.