|
HOME | GREEK LANGUAGE |
LIBRARIES |
BLOG | HELP | SEARCH | BOOKSTORE | FREEWARE |
|
|
Translated by Bl. Jackson.
St Basil the Great Resources Online and in Print
|
This Part: 128 Pages
Page 107
3. Now we have no more meetings, no more debates, no more gatherings of wise men in the Forum, nothing more of all that made our city famous. In our Forum nowadays it would be stranger for a learned or eloquent man to put in an appearance, than it would for men, shewing a brand of iniquity or unclean hands, to have presented themselves in Athens of old. Instead of them we have the imported boorishness of Massagetae and Scythians. And only one noise is heard of drivers of bargains, and losers of bargains, and of fellows under the lash. On either hand the porticoes resound with doleful echoes, as though they were uttering a natural and proper sound in groaning at what is going on. Our distress prevents our paying any attention to locked gymnasia and nights when no torch is lighted. There is no small danger lest, our magistrates being removed, everything crash down together as with fallen props. What words can adequately describe our calamities? Some have fled into exile, a considerable portion of our senate, and that not the least valuable, prefering perpetual banishment to Podandus. [2263] When I mention Podandus, suppose me to mean the Spartan Ceadas [2264] or any natural pit that you may have seen, spots breathing a noxious vapour, to which some have involuntarily given the name Charonian. Picture to yourself that the evils of Podandus are a match for such a place. So, of three parts, some have left their homes and are in exile, wives and hearth and all; some are being led away like captives, the majority of the best men in the city, a piteous spectacle to their friends, fulfilling their enemies' prayers; if, that is, any one has ever been found to call down so dire a curse upon our heads. A third division yet remains: these, unable to endure abandonment by their old companions, and at the same time unable to provide for themselves, have to hate their very lives.
This is what I implore you to make known everywhere with an eloquence all your own, and that righteous boldness of speech which your manner of life gives you. One thing distinctly state; that, unless the authorities soon change their counsels, they will find none left on whom to exercise their clemency. You will either prove some help to the state, or at least you will have done as Solon did, who, when he was unable to defend his abandoned fellow citizens on the capture of the Acropolis, put on his armour, and sat down before the gates, thus making it plain by this guise that he was no party to what was going on. [2265] Of one thing I am assured, even though at the present moment there may be some who do not approve of your advice, the day is not far distant when they will give you the greatest credit for benevolence and sagacity, because they see events corresponding with your prediction.
[2263] Now Podando, in Southern Cappadocia, made by Valens the chief town of the new division of the province.
[2264] So the Spartans named the pit into which condemned criminals were thrown. Pausanias, Book IV. 18, 4. Thucyd., i. 134. Strabo, viii. 367.
[2265] i.e. on the seizure of the Acropolis by Pisistratus, Solon, resisting the instance of his friends that he should flee, returned them for answer, when they asked him on what he relied for protection, "on my old age." Plutarch, Solon 30. The senate being of the faction of Pisistratus, said that he was mad. Solon replied: Deixei de manien men emen Baios chronos astois, Deixei aletheies es meson erchomenes. Diog. Laert. 1-49
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/basil/letters.asp?pg=107
