Among the few untranslated letters of St Jerome, Epistle 150 is a very short item which is completely spurious. This is because it is from Procopius of Gaza, the late 5th-early 6th century sophist. Note that this is not the more famous, and slightly later, historian Procopius of Caesarea, who chronicled the wars of Justinian. The letter is indeed written to a “Hieronymus”, but it is to another Jerome, one who lives in Egypt.
It seems that there is no translation of the letters of Procopius in English, nor French. But a complete and rather charming translation exists in Italian, translated beautifully by Federica Ciccolella, and edited by Eugenio Amato, Rose di Gaza: Gli scritti retorico-sofistici e le Epistole di Procopio di Gaza, Edizionei dell’Orso (2010). I was very fortunate to obtain access to a copy.
It turns out that Jerome, Letter 150, is letter 81 of the collected letters of Procopius of Gaza. The simplest way to discover this was to search for letters addressed to Jerome, and run them through DeepSeek AI translation. I’ve not checked the results, but they’re probably good enough for casual use, and I thought that I would share a few with you, and a few excerpts from the wonderful footnotes.
9. To Jerome.
I thought my sister’s wedding was a secret, not that it was known to all who live near my house, let alone to you—I believed you were still by the Nile. But it seems nothing related to luxury escapes you; indeed, as soon as an event occurs, the scent of celebration reaches you from afar. Perhaps you can outdo the Homeric Zeus in your love for libations and the fat that curls in spirals of smoke.
This is what the Nile and the fortunate men who live along that river have instilled in you, and now, residing in Elusa, your senses have grown even sharper whenever smoke rises from the earth. As for your slave, I was almost moved to treat him poorly for not having you write the letter in full. But since he brought gifts from you, the sight of them changed my mind and, somehow, dissolved my anger. I will respond to these matters briefly: for either a little daughter has been born to you, or one is about to be born.
I learn from the excellent notes that Elusa was a city in the northern Negev, about 30 miles from Gaza, and the most important city in the region. Despite the aridity of the area, the city was prosperous thanks to the caravan traffic. Christianity arrived around 400 and the desert setting became the home of monks and hermits. Drought and shifting sands were a constant threat to urban life, and the city was abandoned in the 8th century. Procopius emphasises how poor it was compared to wealthy Alexandria, where many citizens of Elusa migrated: the city was a “hell” (ep. 87) where the water tasted salty, bread was made of barley (ep. 2, 91) and wind and sand interfered with the cultivation of vines (ep. 81).
81. To Jerome.
Egypt and luxury again—we are so poor compared to you, with no thought for those left far behind. But that is nothing—by all means, let it be so, if only you may laugh while seeing the Nile flow like gold! And even if you raise your eyebrow still higher, we will certainly bear being scorned. For a day will come when you will see Elusa once more and weep for the sand borne on the wind, which strips the vines down to their roots. There dwell only a few desert and brackish nymphs, while Zeus the Rain‑giver is nowhere to be found. Then it will be my turn to laugh and write a comedy about fate, while you will deem me happy—the one you now despise. But so long as the Nile allows you such airs, at least write, and go ahead and call us insignificant creatures who walk the earth. Thus we will be happy if you write, and at the same time we will comfort ourselves for your arrogance with hope in the future.
Vines were grown in Elusa, all the same, and the archaeology includes a huge wine-press. Of course in Elusa men had to walk, rather than ride on boats on the Nile.
86. To Jerome
It should have been you, my friend—you who have gone away from us—to begin the correspondence and to inform us, who miss you greatly, whether Poseidon has been favorable to you and made the sea smooth for your ship, whether your situation in the city of Alexander is favorable, whether you have happily sailed up the abundant Nile, whether your school is thriving, and consequently, whether you have heaps of money and your house is overflowing with Egyptian gifts. You ought to have written these things and kept your promises—promises that included frequent letters, but not the forgetting of friends. Yet you do not even care who writes to you, refusing to reply to letters! Indeed, this is already the second one I have sent you, and if you continue to keep silent, we will soon add a third, until at least some shame over your behaviour seizes you and we manage to hear your voice.
Procopius complains that Jerome hasn’t written after his arrival in Alexandria – is this perhaps an earlier letter, chronologically? The comments about how the riches of Egypt and how Jerome must be making a fortune have the feel of a standing joke between the two friends.
91. To Jerome.
What a grave accusation you have brought against us—we, the arrogant, the overly sophistical, those sick with pride behind a modest appearance! I could not even begin to count how many arguments you have piled up against us, as though you have long been waiting for the moment to unleash your tongue upon us. And so, without even giving a just cause, you bring forth what you had long kept hidden. So tell me: what is so terrible if, in writing to you, I began the letter with “Procopius greets Jerome”? I am certain you yourself would agree that this follows ancient usage. “But there is no need,” you say, “to depart from the custom that now prevails.” Well then, go ahead and accuse even one who wishes to restore the pomposity that now reigns to its ancient dignity, and to return to the muse of Terpander the music that has sunk into meaningless songs and popular trifles!
But why, by Zeus, protector of friendship, would you yourself appear solemn if you uttered some Attic phrase and won approval for conforming to the ancient rules, when you can fill yourself with common words and carry them to the public assembly? Or why, when you sit in your chair before the young, do you think it right to present them with some mighty phrase of the famous Aristides in order to gain approval by speaking like him? Did not Polemon cleanse ancient rhetoric of Asian charlatanry? If fate had granted you to be born back then, I believe you would perhaps even bring an accusation against him for neglecting custom and daring to be presumptuous by returning to the ancient art.
If only the Spartan table were in fashion again and our diet were like that of the ancient Persians: barley bread, water, and cress! Even now one could see such foods prevailing in your Elusa—not from an excess of temperance, but because those are the few provisions that land laboriously supplies to its inhabitants. And yet, now that you have learned Egyptian luxury, you have cast off your ancestral customs: you, who prescribe maintaining traditions even beyond what is fitting!
Moreover, calling me arrogant for placing your name after mine seems typical of someone unaware that what comes first in order does not at all hold the first place in value, or who pretends not to know the saying of Demosthenes that children are fond of reciting: that action, compared to speaking and voting, though last in order, is first and strongest in effect. But if you simply condemn this as presumption, it is time to include in the vice of insolence, along with me, all those who in ancient times used such forms of address—among whom, leaving others aside, I number Socrates and Plato, who raised philosophy to the heavens.
But as for arrogance, stop it from now on, and do not turn the proverb’s knife against yourself. Or is it not true that your own tales have long been known: that no sooner had you disembarked than the sons of the Egyptians accompanied you in procession with a barbarous shout, and there was a celebration no less solemn than when, in former times, a fortunate generation gave them Apis; and that, having become puffed up in mind for these reasons, you not only called me—living in a small city—a man of little worth, but also neglected your homeland, your wife, and even your own son? And perhaps you considered me, who practice philosophy, of no value because I did not receive abundant applause from a confused roar—oh Zeus!—and a barbarous tongue? What is worse, you called yourself a happy man only because they made your house overflow with food and meat. See how puffed up you have become over trifles, you who now accuse me of arrogance!
And I say this—by the gods!—not because I wish to take revenge for your words (for I do not think that would accord with my philosophy), but because, if possible, I want to make your tongue more moderate. But be careful not to refrain from writing us such things, frightened by the power of my words! For, in the name of your Nile and the Graces who dwell near you, I presented your letter as a public rhetorical exhibition, and it was recited to everyone in the center of Gaza. And I was ashamed to be called arrogant in your letter, and the public laughed at me, while you seemed to succeed with your arguments.
And our final quote.
124. To Jerome.
How proudly you parade along the Nile and attack us, dragging Egypt into it, as though you had reached the point of forgetting our dear Elusa! So not only are your letters sophistical, but I seemed even to see the arrogance of Gorgias in them. For you said that the Nile rains from the earth — if I have not missed some word — and makes navigable what was once passable on foot.(585) But what does that have to do with you, who live in the city of Hermes,(586) a place Zeus the Rain‑giver does not even glance at while the Nile, flowing past it, hastens elsewhere? And then why do you lie about harvesting crops? Unless you call “crops” the snakes and scorpions that swarm there. Reportedly, once, stung by one of them, they say you cried out, “Ah, ah!” Then, catching sight meanwhile of a lavish table, you threw yourself wholeheartedly toward it, greeting the scorpion — perhaps after uttering this comic line: “Even in death may I never be without you!”(588) This is what you should have written, not boasting with the goods of others! Yet you also accuse me of silence when it is you who tells us nothing at all. Of course, you could have found someone more talkative, and then you would not cite to us Cotocides(589), who mocked the sophists for being like flutes. Farewell, with your son and your wife. And do not loom sternly over your son Alexander, imposing too much effort on one so young.
585. A reference to a widely held theory in antiquity that the Nile’s floods were caused by the surge of a river—a sort of second Nile that, on certain days of the year, emerged onto the surface from subterranean caves.
586. Hermopolis Magna, modern Al-Ashmounein, a dry location which has preserved many papyri.
588. Euripedes, Alcestis 367-8, reused in Aristophanes Acharnians 893-4.
598. Aeschines is called “Cotocides” by Demosthenes (13, 29). The allusion could concern Aeschin., 3,229, or some passage of a lost oration.
Obviously this is DeepSeek, and I haven’t gone through it line by line. But it’s all very readable, and I truly wish these letters existed in English, with footnotes at the bottom of the page. This is the sort of thing that Penguin did so well under Betty Radice with Pliny’s Letters. Could someone do this again for Procopius? I see that Federica Ciccolella seems to be at Texas A&M University, so must have good English. Perhaps she could supervise a graduate student to do them for the ACW or FOC series?
