Synesius, Letter 077

Synesius of Cyrene (c.370-c.413) was a Neo-Platonic philosopher who became bishop of Ptolemais in the Cyrenaica. He left behind a small corpus of texts that offer much information about daily life in Late Antiquity, and about the christianization of the Roman world.

Letter 77, written in 411, is offered here in the translation by A. Fitzgerald. It is the third of seven letters to Anysius, a Roman general, active in the Cyrenaica in 411-412, for whom Synesius felt great admiration, especially after the soldier had defeated the Libyan nomads. The bishop praised Anysius in the Constitutio and sent him several letters to him: 37, 94, 77 (this one), 78, 6, 14, and 59.

Letter 77: A Quick Note

[1] To Anysius

Light and darkness are not wont to await each other. By a natural law, they avoid one another. Returning from escorting you we fell in with Andronicus.^note