Letter LV¶
A.D. 392
AMBROSE TO EUSEBIUS
1. THE two Faustinuses are herewith restored to you, the two little Ambroses stay with me. You have in the father what is best, in the younger son what is most agreeable; for you have at once the summit of virtue, and shew forth the grace of humility. I have what is intermediate between father and younger son. With you is the head of the whole family, and the continuous succession of a name handed down; with me remains that frugal mean which both depends upon the head, and has a common being with what follows it. You have him who is our common rest, who when he comes to me in my turn, smooths all the cares of my soul. You have him who alike by his life and works, and by his offspring has found favour with our Lord, you have him who in the storms of this world nourished a spiritual dove, to bring him the fruit of peace, anointed with the oil of chastity. You have him who built an altar to the Lord, he whom God blessed together with his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful and multiply; with whom He established the covenant of His peace, that it might be unto him and his sons for perpetual generations.
2. You have then one who is an heir of Divine benediction, a partner in grace, a sharer in righteousness. But take care, I beseech you, that this our husbandman Noah, the good planter of the fruitful vineyard, does not become inebriated with the cup of your love and favour, as one filled with wine, and so indulge too long in rest, and then if haply he fall asleep the longing for our Shem awake him.
3. There also is Japhet the youngest of the brethren, who with pious reverence may cover his father’s nakedness, whom his father may see even in sleep and never dismiss from his remembrance, but keep him ever in his sight and in his bosom, and when he wakes may know what his younger son has done unto him. In Latin his name signifies ‘health,’ in that grace is spread over his lips and over his life, wherefore God hath blessed him, because he, going backward, one may say, to Bologna, covered his father with the pious garment of charity, and shewed honour to piety; of whom also his father said, God shall enlarge Japhet, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem. Wherefore also in the enumeration of this generation he is preferred to his elder brother, he is substituted for him in the blessing: he is preferred in regard of honour to his name, he is substituted in regard of the prerogative of elder birth and the honour due to nature.
4. Now in Latin Shem signifies a ‘name.’ And truly is this Ambrose of ours a good name, in whose tents Japhet may be enlarged, because a good name is rather to be chosen than great riches. Let him therefore also be blessed, let his name be above gold and silver, let the seed of Abraham be in his portion, let all his blessing rest on his posterity, and on the whole family of the just man. But no one is cursed, all are blessed, for blessed is the fruit of Sarah.
5. The Ambroses salute you, the beloved Parthenius salute you, so does Valentinian, disposed to humility, which is in Hebrew ‘Canaan’, being as it were the servant of his brother, to whom he has also given place as regards his name. And therefore he is like Nimrod, mighty in his double name, a great hunter upon the earth, of whom it is said; Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the Lord. For being somewhat rude in intellect, but of great bodily strength, he surpasses in strength those whose genius he cannot equal; so that he would seem to carry with him the Comacine237 rocks, and to resemble them in his outward appearance, being as he is somewhat like a bull, wrathful at being set aside, at being deprived of his paternal name, at being subjected, through an inhabitant of the capital, to one from Bologna, for he knows not the blandishments of infancy, and sprung without suffering injury from his nurse’s bosom.
Farewell: love me for I love you.
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As Lake Larius was sometimes called Lacus Comacinus in the times of the Emperors, (Dict. of Geogr. voc. Comum.) it is probable that the ‘Comacinæ rupes’ were some familiar rocks on its margin. The comparison to a bull is simply an adaptation of Virgil’s ‘Et faciem tauro propior,’ Georg. iii. 58.