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# Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II/Volume VIII/The Letters/Letter 338

Letter CCCXXXVIII.
Libanius to Basil.
I know you will often write, “Here is another Cappadocian for you!” I expect that you will send me many. I am sure that you are everywhere putting pressure on both fathers and sons by all your complimentary expressions about me. But it would not be kind on my part not to mention what happened about your good letter.  There were sitting with me not a few of our people of distinction, and among them the very excellent Alypius, Hierocles’ cousin.  The messengers gave in the letter. I read it right through without a word; then with a smile, and evidently gratified, I exclaimed, “I am vanquished!” “How?  When? Where?” they asked. “How is it that you are not distressed at being vanquished?” “I am beaten,” I replied, “in beautiful letter writing.  Basil has won. But I love him; and so I am delighted.” On hearing this, they all wanted to hear of the victory from the letter itself. It was read by Alypius, while all listened. It was voted that what I had said was quite true.  Then the reader went out, with the letter still in his hand, to shew it, I suppose, to others. I had some difficulty in getting it back. Go on writing others like it; go on winning. This is for me to win. You are quite right in thinking that my services are not measured by money. Enough for him who has nothing to give, that he is as wishful to receive. If I perceive any one who is poor to be a lover of learning, he takes precedence of the rich. True, I never found such instructors; but nothing shall stand in the way of my being, at least in that respect, an improvement on mine. Let no one, then, hesitate to come hither because he is poor, if only he possesses the one qualification of knowing how to work.
# Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II/Volume VIII/The Letters/Letter 337

Letter CCCXXXVII.
Basil to Libanius.
Lo and behold, yet another Cappadocian has come to you; a son of my own! Yet my present position makes all men my sons. On this ground he may be regarded as a brother of the former one, and worthy of the same attention alike from me his father, and from you his instructor—if really it is possible for these young men, who come from me, to obtain any further favours. I do not mean that it is not possible for your excellency to give anything more to your old comrades, but because your services are so lavishly bestowed upon all. It will be sufficient for the lad before he gets experience if he be numbered among those who are intimately known to you. I trust you may send him back to me worthy of my prayers and of your great reputation in learning and eloquence. He is accompanied by a young man of his own age, and of like zeal for instruction; a youth of good family, and closely associated with myself. I am sure he will be in every way as well treated, though his means are smaller than is the case with the rest.
# Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II/Volume VIII/The Letters/Letter 339

Letter CCCXXXIX.
Basil to Libanius.
What could not a sophist say? And such a sophist! One whose peculiar art is, whenever he likes, to make great things small, and to give greatness to small things! This is what you have shewn in my case. That dirty little letter of mine, as, perhaps, you who live in all luxury of eloquence would call it, a letter in no way more tolerable than the one you hold in your hands now, you have so extolled as, forsooth, to be eaten by it, and to be yielding me the prize for composition! You are acting much as fathers do, when they join in their boys’ games, and let the little fellows be proud of the victories which they have let them win without any loss to themselves, and with much gain to the children’s emulation. Really and truly the delight your speech must have given, when you were joking about me, must have been indescribable! It is as though some Polydamas or Milo were to decline the pancratium or a wrestling bout with me! After carefully examining, I have found no sign of weakness. So those who look for exaggeration are the more astonished at your being able to descend in sport to my level, than if you had led the barbarian in full sail over Athos. I, however, my dear sir, am now spending my time with Moses and Elias, and saints like them, who tell me their stories in a barbarous tongue, and I utter what I learnt from them, true, indeed, in sense, though rude in phrase, as what I am writing testifies. If ever I learned anything from you, I have forgotten it in the course of time. But do you continue to write to me, and so suggest other topics for correspondence. Your letter will exhibit you, and will not convict me. I have already introduced to you the son of Anysius, as a son of my own. If he is my son, he is the child of his father, poor, and a poor man’s son. What I am saying is well known to one who is wise as well as a sophist.

## Footnotes

* ↑ A famous athlete of Scotussa. Paus. vi. 5.
* ↑ The athlete of Crotona, who was crowned again and again at the Pythian and Olympian games.
* ↑ ὁ θλίβειν καὶ κατέχειν δυνάμενος, παλαιστικός· ὁ δὲ ὦσαι τῇ πληγῇ, πυστικός· ὁ δὲ ἀμφοτέροις τούτοις, παγκρατιαστικός. Arist., Rhet. i. v. 14.
* ↑ The story that Xerxes had made a canal through the isthmus of Athos was supposed to be an instance of gross exaggeration. cf. Juv. x. 174: Creditur olim Velificatus Athos et quidquid Græcia mendax Audet in historia,” and Claudian iii. 336: “Remige Medo solicitatus Athos.” But traces of the canal are said to be still visible.
* ↑ This might lead to the idea that Basil knew some Hebrew, but the close of the sentence indicates that he means the Greek of the LXX., in which he always quotes Scripture.
* ↑ σοφῷ τε καὶ σοφιστῇ.
# Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II/Volume VIII/The Letters/Letter 34

Letter XXXIV.
To Eusebius, bishop of Samosata.
How could I be silent at the present juncture? And if I cannot be silent, how am I to find utterance adequate to the circumstances, so as to make my voice not like a mere groan but rather a lamentation intelligibly indicating the greatness of the misfortune? Ah me! Tarsus is undone. This is a trouble grievous to be borne, but it does not come alone. It is still harder to think that a city so placed as to be united with Cilicia, Cappadocia, and Assyria, should be lightly thrown away by the madness of two or three individuals, while you are all the while hesitating, settling what to do, and looking at one another’s faces. It would have been far better to do like the doctors. (I have been so long an invalid that I have no lack of illustrations of this kind.) When their patients’ pain becomes excessive they produce insensibility; so should we pray that our souls may be made insensible to the pain of our troubles, that we be not put under unendurable agony. In these hard straits I do not fail to use one means of consolation. I look to your kindness; I try to make my troubles milder by my thought and recollection of you. When the eyes have looked intently on any brilliant objects it relieves them to turn again to what is blue and green; the recollection of your kindness and attention has just the same effect on my soul; it is a mild treatment that takes away my pain. I feel this the more when I reflect that you individually have done all that man could do. You have satisfactorily shewn us, men, if we judge things fairly, that the catastrophe is in no way due to you personally. The reward which you have won at God’s hand for your zeal for right is no small one. May the Lord grant you to me and to His churches to the improvement of life and the guidance of souls, and may He once more allow me the privilege of meeting you.

## Footnotes

* ↑ Placed in 369.
* ↑ Silvanus, Metropolitan of Tarsus, one of the best of the Semi-Arians (Ath., De synod. 41), died, according to Tillemont, in 373, according to Maran four years earlier, and was succeeded by an Arian; but events did not turn out so disastrously as Basil had anticipated. The majority of the presbyters were true to the Catholic cause, and Basil maintained friendship and intercourse with them. cf. Letters lxvii., cxiii., cxiv.
* ↑ Basil is supposed to have in the meanwhile carried out his previously-expressed intention of paying Eusebius a visit.
# Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II/Volume VIII/The Letters/Letter 340

Letter CCCXL.
Libanius to Basil.
Had you been for a long time considering how best you could reply to my letter about yours, you could not in my judgment have acquitted yourself better than by writing as you have written now. You call me a sophist, and you allege that it is a sophist’s business to make small things great and great things small. And you maintain that the object of my letter was to prove yours a good one, when it was not a good one, and that it was no better than the one which you have sent last, and, in a word that you have no power of expression, the books which you have now in hand producing no such effect, and the eloquence which you once possessed having all disappeared. Now, in the endeavour to prove this, you have made this epistle too, which you are reviling, so admirable, that my visitors could not refrain from leaping with admiration as it was being read. I was astonished that after your trying to run down the former one by this, by saying that the former one was like it, you have really complimented the former by it.  To carry out your object, you ought to have made this one worse, that you might slander the former. But it is not like you, I think, to do despite to the truth. It would have been done despite to, if you had purposely written badly, and not put out the powers you have. It would be characteristic of you not to find fault with what is worthy of praise, lest in your attempt to make great things insignificant, your proceedings reduce you to the rank of the sophists. Keep to the books which you say are inferior in style, though better in sense. No one hinders you. But of the principles which are ever mine, and once were yours, the roots both remain and will remain, as long as you exist. Though you water them ever so little, no length of time will ever completely destroy them.
# Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II/Volume VIII/The Letters/Letter 342

Letter CCCXLII.
Basil to Libanius.
All who are attached to the rose, as might be expected in the case of lovers of the beautiful, are not displeased even at the thorns from out of which the flower blows. I have even heard it said about roses by some one, perhaps in jest, or, it may be, even in earnest, that nature has furnished the bloom with those delicate thorns, like stings of love to lovers, to excite those who pluck them to intenser longing by these ingeniously adapted pricks. But what do I mean by this introduction of the rose into my letter? You do not need telling, when you remember your own letter. It had indeed the bloom of the rose, and, by its fair speech, opened out all spring to me; but it was bethorned with certain fault findings and charges against me. But even the thorn of your words is delightful to me, for it enkindles in me a greater longing for your friendship.

## Footnotes

* ↑ ms. vary between ἐνπλήκτοις, ἐνπλέκτοις, ἀπλήκτοις, &ἀπράκτοις.
# Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II/Volume VIII/The Letters/Letter 335

Letter CCCXXXV.
Basil to Libanius.
I am really ashamed of sending you the Cappadocians one by one. I should prefer to induce all our youths to devote themselves to letters and learning, and to avail themselves of your instruction in their training. But it is impracticable to get hold of them all at once, while they choose what suits themselves. I therefore send you those who from time to time are won over; and this I do with the assurance that I am conferring on them a boon as great as that which is given by those who bring thirsty men to the fountain. The lad, whom I am now sending, will be highly valued for his own sake when he has been in your society. He is already well known on account of his father, who has won a name among us both for rectitude of life and for authority in our community. He is, moreover, a close friend of my own. To requite him for his friendship to me, I am conferring on his son the benefit of an introduction to you—a boon well worthy of being earnestly prayed for by all who are competent to judge of a man’s high character.

## Footnotes

* ↑ “Basilii et Libanii epistolæ mutuæ, quas magni facit Tillemontius, probatque ut genuinas, maxime dubiæ videntur Garnier, in Vit. Bas. cap. 39, p. 172, seqq., is tamen illas spartim edidit.…Schroeckh Garn. dubitationi deomnium illarum epist. mutuarum νοθεί& 139· quædam opponit.” Fabricius. Harles., Tom. ix. Maran (Vit. Bas. xxxix. 2) thinks that the Libanian correspondence, assuming it to be genuine, is to be assigned partly to the period of the retreat, partly to that of the presbyterate, while two only, the one a complaint on the part of Libanius that bishops are avaricious, and Basil’s retort, may perhaps have been written during the episcopate. He would see no reason for rejecting them on the ground merely of the unlikelihood of Basil’s corresponding with a heathen philosopher, but he is of opinion that the style of most of them is unworthy both of the sophist and of the archbishop. Yet there seems no reason why they should have been invented. It is intelligible enough that they should have been preserved, considering the reputation of the writers; but they suggest no motive for forgery. The life of Libanius extended from 314 to nearly the end of the fourth century. J. R. Mozley, in D.C.B. (iv. 712) refers to G. R. Siever (Das Leben des Libanius, Berlin, 1868) as the fullest biographer.
# Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II/Volume VIII/The Letters/Letter 343

Letter CCCXLIII.
Libanius to Basil.
IF these are the words of an untrained tongue, what would you be if you would polish them? On your lips live fountains of words better than the flowing of springs. I, on the contrary, if I am not daily watered, am silent.
# North Dakota Law Review/Volume 1/Number 3/Legislative

LEGISLATIVE
By the time this issue of Bar Briefs is distributed all legislative proposals sponsored by the State Bar Association of North Dakota will have been presented to the Legislative Assembly in the form of printed bills.
The Legislative Committee has confined its efforts to the presentation of the proposals of the Probate Code Revision Committee. Following the meeting of the Legislative Committee at Bismarck on the 2nd of February, Hon. J. F. T. O’Connor of Grand Forks presented and explained these proposals to the Committee of the State Legislature having them in charge.
The matters presented to the Annual Meeting by the Criminal Law Section were up for further consideration at the conference of State’s Attorneys called by the Attorney General, and were subsequently presented to the Legislature.
​Hon. A. G. Burr, Judge of the District Court in the Second District, has in hand the matter of presenting the proposal for the establishment of a Judicial Council, and Hon. Sveinbjorn Johnson, Judge of the Supreme Court, is handling the Re-Compilation Bill.
Individual attorneys have introduced measures of various kinds, seeking to amend the Attorneys’ License and Bar Board Acts, none of which, however, had the endorsement of the Annual Meeting of the Association.
The members of the Association will be interested in knowing that the House of Representatives passed a bill transferring $10,000 from the State Bar Fund to the General Fund of the State; and that the appropriation bill, calling for an appropriation for the Supreme Court Library, of $6,000 was amended so as to provide that this sum, also, should be taken from the State Bar Fund.
# North Dakota Law Review/Volume 1/Number 3/Printing and Supplies

PRINTING AND SUPPLIES
One of the most active committees of the Association is that headed by J. P. Conmy of Fargo and which has in charge the matter of legal printing and supplies. By this time, doubtless, every attorney in the State has received from this committee the circular letter, samples and order forms.
​Just kindly remember that the committee has already put in considerable time and effort for you, but in order to reap the full benefit of the work of that committee it will be necessary for you to exhibit some degree of promptness, in return.
Expressions from some members of the Association indicate that there are a number who do not favor such “pooled” purchases. It is suggested to those of that opinion that they return the order blank to the Chairman of the Committee, with the notation that they will require no such supplies during the year.
# North Dakota Law Review/Volume 1/Number 4/American Law Institute

AMERICAN LAW INSTITUTE
Hon. Geo. M. McKenna, Chairman of the Committee on the American Law Institute, reports progress in the work of that organization as follows:
“The Judiciary and Bar of the U. S. are looking forward with keen anticipation and interest to the annual meeting of the American Law Institute, which will be held in Washington, D. C., the first week in May.
“In a recent address by Dr. William Draper Lewis, Director of the Institute work, he intimates that it is possible that some of the work on the re-statement of the law may be submitted to the membership for examination, discussion and approval at this, the third annual meeting of the Institute.
“The reporters and their advisors and assistants have been busily engaged for approximately a year and a half on the re-statement of the law of Torts, Conflict of Laws, Contracts and Agency. To date a portion of the re-statement of the law of Contracts, namely, that covering the Promotion of Contracts, has been sent to the Council for its consideration, as has also the subject of Domicil in the topic Conflict of Laws, and that portion of the law of Torts which deals with Battery, Assaults and False Imprisonment. The first part of Agency will very likely be ready for the consideration of the Council in a short time.
“The Council is the executive body of the Institute and is composed of thirty-three members. If the Council is satisfied that the draft presented to it on any of the above topics is sufficiently well done, it will order such portion of the work submitted to the entire membership in May, or the work may be referred back to the reporter in charge for further change.
“It would seem to be immaterial whether the re-statement of any topic be done in four, or eight, or twelve years, but it is essential, in the highest degree, that, if the re-statement is to carry weight, if it is to secure the approval of the Courts of last resort, and the Bar of the several States, that the work must be pre-eminently well done. It is hoped, therefore, that no time or labor or expense will be spared in the preparation of the work.
“It is sufficient for the present to report that definite progress has been made in the re-statement, and that the interest of the right type of men at the Bar in all parts of the country has been secured, and that the reporters in charge are men who have devoted years of study to their particular subjects and are the outstanding authorities in the United States in the topics which they have been assigned.”
Judge McKenna, as Chairman for North Dakota, plans on attending the Washington meeting in May.
# North Dakota Law Review/Volume 1/Number 4/Facts Worth Noting

FACTS WORTH NOTING
A gift of $15,000,000, recently made by George Eastman, makes a total of $40,000,000 contributed by him towards education, charity and institutions established for some sort of public service. His comment, at the time of the last gift, was: “I am now upward of seventy years old and I feel that I would like to see results from this money, within my remaining years.”
Mr. Eastman’s life is representative of many in this country. He began work as an office boy, at the age of fourteen, (please note), to assist in supporting his widowed mother. His first wages were $3 a week. At twenty he secured a position in a bank, and at twenty-five he started in business for himself as a manufacturer of dry plates for cameras. Today his business is worth $90,000,000 to $100,000,000, and is known as the Eastman Kodak Company.
For years the world knew little or nothing of his benefactions, which included donations to Tuskegee and Hampton for the education of negroes, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Rochester University, Stevens Institute and Mechanics’ Institute for Industrial Education, the General Hospital, Homeopathic and Hanehann Hospitals of Rochester, New York, the Friendly Home for Children and the Shelter of Children Society, the New York State and Municipal Bureau of Research, the Red Cross, War Relief, War Chest and many other organizations. In the meantime, Mr. Eastman also made possible the owning of about one-half of the Eastman Company stock by the employees, the plans for that being his own. Following the plan of Lincoln, quoted last month, he gradually accumulated, through his initiative, industry and thrift, a considerable fortune, part of which he again contributed in the furtherance of the public interest, supplying educational and other advantages to thousands who might not, otherwise, been able to obtain them.
# North Dakota Law Review/Volume 1/Number 3/Washington

WASHINGTON
Modest to the point of diffidence, and pleasingly sincere in his humility, he was nevertheless quick to recognize that among the objects of civil government that of promoting the happiness of the race stood out as one of the greatest. He was, therefore, never hesitant about laying aside personal considerations in order to accept appointments of responsibility, and, in that way, becoming the humble instrument for promoting that welfare and happiness.
Truth, the Divine attribute, was, to him, the foundation of every virtue. It dictated his every endeavor and regulated his conduct through life. Endowed with intellect and power, he used both to the advancement of the interests of the country he loved. Fervency and zeal ever distinguished him from the common run of men. Assailed by misfortune, disease, and some of the greatest trials and temptations, his fortitude was supreme, enabling him ever to “carry on.” And his fidelity to the principles of liberty, justice and equality was as firm and steadfast as the foundations upon which this, Our America, was erected.
“When Freedom first her glorious day had won, She smiled on Washington, her darling son, Mild Justice claims him as his virtues rise, And Love and Honor still attend the prize.”
—Seck.
# North Dakota Law Review/Volume 1/Number 4

BAR BRIEFS
PUBLISHED MONTHLY AT BISMARCK
——By——
STATE BAR ASSOCIATION OF NORTH DAKOTA
Application for entry as Second Class Matter at the Postoffice at Bismarck, N. D., Pending
1925 ANNUAL MEETING Fargo, September 9th
* Legislative Deliberation
* Review of Important Decisions
* Items Here and There
* Our Need
* Suggested Service
* Child Labor
* Notice re Fee Schedule
* Uniform State Laws
* Law Enforcement
* American Law Institute
* Facts Worth Noting
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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