Essays and Hymns

Volume II of Augustine FitzGerald's English translation of the essays and hymns of Synesius of Cyrene (c. 370–c. 413), the Neoplatonist philosopher who became bishop of Ptolemais. It contains A Eulogy of Baldness, The Egyptian Tale (On Providence), Concerning Dreams, the political speeches Constitutio and Catastasis, two Homilies and the ten Hymns, with FitzGerald's notes given as footnotes. Text from the Oxford University Press edition (London: Humphrey Milford, 1930). Public domain in the United States.

A BOOK was written in praise of hair by Dio of the tongue of gold, so brilliant a work that the bald man, in the face of its arguments, must be covered with shame. The argument, indeed, uses nature to its own advantage, for by nature we all desire to be beautiful, — to which end, in large measure, the tresses with which Nature has rendered us familiar since our childhood, contribute. For my own part, I was wounded to the heart when the terrible thing began, and my hair began to fall off. When it proceeded further, and one hair went after another, — then two at a time, and finally several, — and the war became keenly contested, my head being plundered, then indeed I esteemed myself to suffer more harshly than did the Athenians at the hands of Archidamus when their groves at Acharnae were destroyed, and soon I appeared as one of those benighted Euboeans who, according to the poem, made the expedition to Troy with hair hanging from the back of their heads. Which one of the gods, which of the demons did I pass over without accusation in this matter? I was even inclined to write something eulogistic of Epicurus, not as one holding the same opinions as he concerning the gods, but as one prepared to get my teeth into them in turn as far as I could. And so I said, ‘Where is the action of Providence to be found in that which is contrary to each man’s deserts? What wrongdoing have I committed that I should appear more unsightly to the fair sex?’ No great matter this, in the case of the women of the neighbourhood, for in what concerns Aphrodite I am the most righteous of men, and I could dispute the palm with Bellerophon in continence. But even a mother, even sisters, they say, set some store on the beauty of the men of their household. And Parysatis made this clear, for she lost her love for Artaxerxes the King, all on account of the handsome Cyrus.