Page:The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages.djvu/97

 v] SYNE8IU8 OF C3YRENE 79 Alaric. Synesius was made bishop in the year of that catastrophe (a.d. 410), and died four years after- wards. When Synesius has something important to com- municate, he can say it bravely and directly, whether in a speech ^ or in letters. Otherwise, his letters show the affectations of fourth-century pagan epistolary literature. He can also amuse himself by composing elaborate rhetorical trifles, like his Eulogy on Bald- ness, in which he sought to rival Dio^s discourse upon Long Hair. He mentions a curious habit of his, when reading, of closing the book, and then devising an end- ing for the work, in order to compare his ending with the writer's. Just as he wrote poems in imitation of any author that struck his fancy, so he was utterly eclectic in his thinking. Naturally, like all antiquity, S3Tiesius believed in divination and dreams. But it was characteristic of the academically superstitious age in which he lived, that he wrote a work on Dreams, and advised keeping a systematic record of them, that their significance and warnings might be compared. Synesius* Neo-platonism shows Christian influence. For instance, the so-called Neo-platonic trinity of the One, the Nous — perfected universal Mind — and the Soul, has become in his hymns Father, Spirit, Son. These hymns also draw near to Christian feeling. Christianity was in the air, and Synesius breathed it. His gentle conversion suggests no spiritual con- 1 As in bis famous address to Arcadius, on the dalles of kings, when he had been sent to plead his city's cause before tbe court at Constantinople.