it is now. There are many shining lights, of whom it will be enough to
mention but one. I refer to Euphrates the philosopher. I saw a great
deal of him, even in the privacy of his home life, during my young
soldiering days in Syria, and I did my best to win his affection, though
that was not a hard task, for he is ever easy of access, frank, and full
of the humanities that he teaches. I only wish that I had been as
successful in fulfilling the hopes he then formed of me as he has been
increasing his large stock of virtues, though possibly it is I who now
admire them the more because I can appreciate them the better. Even now
my appreciation is not as complete as it might be. It is only an artist
who can thoroughly judge another painter, sculptor, or image-maker, and
so too it needs a philosopher to estimate another philosopher at his
full merit. But so far as I can judge, Euphrates has many qualities so
conspicuously brilliant that they arrest the eyes and attention even of
those who have but modest pretensions to learning. His reasoning is
acute, weighty, and elegant, often attaining to the breadth and
loftiness that we find in Plato. His conversation flows in a copious
yet varied stream, strikingly pleasant to the ear, and with a charm that
seizes and carries away even the reluctant hearer. Add to this a tall,
commanding presence, a handsome face, long flowing hair, a streaming
white beard--all of which may be thought accidental adjuncts and without
significance, but they do wonderfully increase the veneration he
inspires. There is no studied negligence in his dress, it is severely
plain but not austere; when you meet him you revere him without
shrinking away in awe. His life is purity itself, but he is just as
genial; his lash is not for men but for their vices; for the erring he
has gentle words of correction rather than sharp rebuke. When he gives
advice you cannot help listening in rapt attention, and you hope he will
go on persuading you even when the persuasion is complete. He has three
children, two of them sons, whom he has brought up with the strictest