Synesius of Cyrene

Mosaic depicting an angel. Museum of Ptolemais

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 36, written in 402, is offered here in the translation by A. Fitzgerald.

Letter 36: The Death of Castricius

To his Brother

The blessed Castricius has died on the sixteenth day of the month of Athyr,[1] having a terrible vision of which he gave a full account.

Note 1:
16 October 402.

Online 2007
Revision: 14 August 2007