Fathers of the Church
Letter CCCXLVIII: Basil to Libanius
by Basil the Great in 357-370 | translated by Blomfield Jackson, M.A
If gripi'zein 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 impaled 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 Iris 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 who make such a fuss about your declamations, I have ordered as many rafters to be supplied as there were fighters at Thermopylae, all of goodly length, and, as Homer has it, "long-shadowing," which the sacred Alphaeus has promised to restore.
Taken from "The Early Church Fathers and Other Works" originally published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co. in English in Edinburgh, Scotland, beginning in 1867. (PNPF II/VIII, Schaff and Wace). The digital version is by The Electronic Bible Society, P.O. Box 701356, Dallas, TX 75370, 214-407-WORD.
