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 77, written in 411, is offered here in the translation by A. Fitzgerald.

Letter 77: A Quick Note

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.

Online 2007
Revision: 12 August 2007