Table of Contents ||| Clement of Rome ||| Epistle to Diognetus ||| St Polycarp ||| St Ignatius ||| Justin the Martyr ||| St. Irenaeus ||| Hermas ||| Clement of Alexandria ||| Tertullian ||| St. Basil the Great ||| Links
Page 10
Letter 14, To Gregory his friend
MY BROTHER Gregory writes me word that he has long been wishing to be with me, and adds that you are of the same mind; however, I could not wait, partly as being hard of belief, considering I have been so often disappointed, and partly because I find myself pulled all ways by business. I must at once make for Pontus, where, perhaps, God willing, I may make an end of wandering. After renouncing, with trouble, the idle hopes which I once had, [about you] or rather the dreams, (for it is well said that hopes are waking dreams), I departed into Pontus in quest of a place to live in. There God has opened on me a spot exactly answering to my taste, so that I actually see before my eyes what I have often pictured to my mind in idle fancy. There is a lofty mountain covered with thick woods, watered towards the north with cool and transparent streams. A plain lies beneath, enriched by the waters which are ever draining off from it; and skirted by a spontaneous profusion of trees almost thick enough to be a fence; so as even to surpass Calypso's Island, which Homer seems to have considered the most beautiful spot on the earth. Indeed it is like an island, enclosed as it is on all sides; for deep hollows cut off two sides of it; the river, which has lately fallen down a precipice, runs all along the front and is impassable as a wall; while the mountain extending itself behind, and meeting the hollows in a crescent, stops up the path at its roots.
Roots of Asceticism : Home ||| St Basil Home Page and Works
Cf. CONSTANTINOPLE ||| BYZANTINE HISTORY ||| NEW TESTAMENT ||| MEISTER ECKHART SITE ||| GREEK LANGUAGE ||| PLATO PAGE ||| LIBRARIES ||| FORUM
