Letter CCCXLIX.

Libanius to Basil.

Will you not give over, Basil, packing this sacred haunt of the Muses with Cappadocians, and these redolent of the frost^32853285    γριτή, an unknown word.  Perhaps akin to κρίοτη.  cf. Duncange s.v. and snow and all Cappadocia’s good things?  They have almost made me a Cappadocian too, always chanting their “I salute you.”

I must endure, since it is Basil who commands.  Know, however, that I am making a careful study of the manners and customs of the country, and that I mean to metamorphose the men into the nobility and the harmony of my Calliope, that they may seem to you to be turned from pigeons into doves.