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Updated: June 7, 2025
Majoricus, in his blunt, soldierlike way, set Raphael and Augustine at each other without circumlocution; and Raphael, after trying to smile and pooh-pooh away the subject, was tempted to make a jest on a seeming fallacious conceit of Augustine's found it more difficult than he thought to trip up the serious and wary logician, lost his temper a little a sign, perhaps, of returning health in a sceptic and soon found himself fighting desperately, with Synesius backing him, apparently for the mere pleasure of seeing a battle, and Majoricus making him more and more cross by the implicit dogmatic faith with which he hewed at one Gordian knot after another, till Augustine had to save himself from his friends by tripping the good Prefect gently up, and leaving him miles behind the disputants, who argued on and on, till broad daylight shone in, and the sight of the desolation below recalled all parties to more material weapons, and a sterner warfare.
But all ended well. "As for us," says Synesius further on, "as soon as we reached the land we longed for, we embraced it as if it had been a living mother. Offering, as usual, a hymn of gratitude to God, I added to it the recent misadventure from which we had unexpectedly been saved." To return to our travelling Bachur of later centuries than Synesius's Rabbi-steersman.
Oh! make her a grave where the sunbeams rest, When they promise a glorious morrow; They'll shine o'er her sleep, like a smile from the west, From her own loved island of sorrow! If that severe doom of Synesius be true, "It is a greater offence to steal dead men's labor, than their clothes," what shall become of most writers?
My plans are scattered to the winds, my pupils worthless, my fair name tarnished, my conscience heavy with the thought of my own cruelty.... If you do not know all, you will know it but too soon .... My last hope, Synesius, implores for himself the hope which I need from him....And, over and above it all.... You!.... Et tu, Brute! Why not fold my mantle round me, like Julius of old, and die!
And after supper you shall tell me what brings you hither. And the good bishop, calling his servant, set to work to show his guest such hospitality as the invaders had left in his power. Raphael's usual insight had not deserted him when, in his utter perplexity, he went, almost instinctively, straight to Synesius.
We have in Greek absolutely no such letters from the flourishing time of the literature as those of Cicero, of Pliny and even of Seneca while as we approach the "Dark" Ages Julian and Synesius in the older language cannot touch Sidonius Apollinaris or perhaps Cassiodorus in the younger.
The blunt soldier little guessed the meaning of his own words. But Raphael, as he heard, felt a pang shoot through his heart, too keen for him to discern whether it sprang from joy or from despair. 'Come, cried the cheerful voice of Synesius, 'come, Aben-Ezra; you have knelt for Augustine's blessing already, and now you must enter into the fruition of it.
What better is there for a man, than to follow the example of his people, and to turn usurer, and money-getter, and cajoler of fools in his turn, even as his father was before him?" Synesius remained a while in deep thought, and at last 'And yet you came to me?
'Or if, answered Synesius, 'they believed with us, that the emperor's chamberlain is a clever old man, with a bald head like my own, Ulysses by name, who was rewarded with the prefecture of all lands north of the Mediterranean, for putting out the Cyclop's eye two years ago. However, enough of this.
Afterwards we will study together the MSS. of Synesius, Bishop of Ptolemy, of Olympiodorus and Stephanus, which I discovered at Ravenna, in a vault where they have been locked up since the reign of that ignoramus Theodosius who has been surnamed the Great."
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