Letter CCCXLVIII.

Basil to Libanius.

If γριπίζειν is the same thing as to gain, and this is the meaning of the phrase which your sophistic ingenuity has got from the depths of Plato, consider, my dear sir, who is the more hard to be got from, I who am thus impaled1545    With a play on χάραξ, the word used for stakes. by your epistolary skill, or the tribe of Sophists, whose craft is to make money out of their words.  What bishop ever imposed tribute by his words?  What bishop ever made his disciples pay taxes?  It is you who make your words marketable, as confectioners make honey-cakes.  See how you have made the old man leap and bound!  However, to you who make such a fuss about your declamations, I have ordered as many rafters to be supplied as there were fighters at Thermopylæ,1546    i.e. three hundred. all of goodly length, and, as Homer has it, “long-shadowing,”1547    Hom. iii. 346. which the sacred Alphæus has promised to restore.1548    Non illepide auctor epistolæ fluvium obstringit restituendi promisso, ut gratuito a se dari ostendat.”  Ben. note.

ΒΑΣΙΛΕΙΟΣ ΛΙΒΑΝΙῼ

[1] Εἰ τὸ κερδαίνειν τοῦτο γριπίζειν λέγεται καὶ ταύτην ἔχει τὴν σημασίαν ἡ λέξις ἣν ἐκ τῶν Πλάτωνος ἀδύτων ἡ σοφιστική σου ἡμῖν προεχειρίσατο, σκόπησον, ὦ θαυμάσιε, τίς μᾶλλόν ἐστι δυσγρίπιστος: ἡμεῖς οἱ οὕτω δι' ἐπιστολιμαίας δυνάμεως ἀποχαρακούμενοι, ἢ τὸ τῶν σοφιστῶν γένος οἷς τέχνη τὸ τελωνεῖν τοὺς λόγους ἐστί. Τίς τῶν ἐπισκόπων τοὺς λόγους ἐφοροθέτησε; Τίς τοὺς μαθητευομένους μισθοφόρους κατέστησεν; Ὑμεῖς οἱ προτιθέντες τοὺς λόγους ὤνια ὥσπερ οἱ τοῦ μέλιτος ἑψηταὶ τὰ μελίπηκτα. Ὁρᾷς ὡς καὶ τὸν γέροντα ὑποσκιρτᾶν παρεκίνησας; Ἐγὼ δέ σοι τῷ ταῖς μελέταις ἐμπομπεύοντι ἰσαρίθμους τοῖς ἐν Θερμοπύλαις ἀγωνιζομένοις στρατιώταις στρωτῆρας χρησθῆναι προσέταξα ἅπαντας εὐμήκεις, κατὰ τὸν σὸν Ὅμηρον δολιχοσκίους, οὐχ Ὅμηρος δ' ἀποκαταστήσειν κατεπηγγείλατο.