madness under foot in much cheerfulness, and you would be ready to suffer many more things than they could prepare against you. Blessed and thrice-blessed are you by reason of the crowns to come, or rather by those very wrestlings. For these struggles, even before the reward, and in the oppression of the fight, have their present rewards, and compensations, and sweetness; they have contentedness, and fortitude, and steadfastness, and patience in making you invincible, unconquerable, far above all; they so exercise you that you can suffer no evil from anyone, and make you stand upon the rock in spite of angry waves, and bear a furious ocean with great peacefulness. These are the rewards of tribulation, even before the kingdom of heaven. I know that, already, you account yourself divested of the body, on the wings of sweetness, but that if called upon you would put it off more easily than others do the clothes which they wear. Rejoice, then, and be glad both over yourself and over those who die the blessed death, who die not in their bed, not in their houses, but in prisons, and chains, and torments. Grieve only for the doers of these things, and weep for them: this is worthy of your virtue. Since you wish to hear about my bodily health, I have so far got rid of the illness which troubled me and am better now, if only winter when it comes does not affect my weakness of stomach. We are also in perfect security from Isaurian invasions. To Olympias. (_From Arabissus_, A.D. 406. Ὀλυµπίαδι, xv., t. iii., p. 601.)