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 74, written in 402, is offered here in the translation by A. Fitzgerald. Cf. Letter 1.

Letter 74: The "Eulogy of Baldness"

To Pylaemenes

I have just sent you the treatise, written in Attic style and of finished workmanship.[1] If it obtains the approbation of Pylaemenes, the most critical of our audience, this very fact will be quite sufficient to recommend it to posterity. But if my book seems to you a frivolous production, remember that it is always permissible to treat light subjects lightly.

Note 1:
A Eulogy of Baldness.

Online 2007
Revision: 13 August 2007