with a friend" we have unfortunately very few
examples--hardly any at all--from older Greek. The greater
collections--not much used in schools or colleges now but well enough
known to those who really know Greek Literature--of Alciphron,
Aristaenetus, Philostratus and (once most famous of all) Phalaris
are--one must not perhaps say obvious, since men of no little worth were
once taken in by them but--pretty easily discoverable counterfeits. They
are sometimes, more particularly those of Philostratus, interesting and
even beautiful;[2] they have been again sometimes at least supposed,
particularly those of Alciphron, to give us, from the fact that they
were largely based upon lost comedies, etc., information which we should
otherwise lack; and in many instances (Aristaenetus is perhaps here the
chief) they must have helped towards that late Greek creation of the
Romance to which we owe so much. Nor have we here much if anything to do
with such questions as the morality of personating dead authors, or that
of laying traps for historians. It is enough that they do not give us,
except very rarely, good letters: and that even these exceptions are not
in any probability _real_ letters, real written "confabulations of
friends" at all. Almost the first we have deserving such a description
are those of the Emperor Julian in the fourth century of that Christ for
whom he had such an unfortunate hatred; the most copious and thoroughly
genuine perhaps those of Bishop Synesius a little later. Of these
Julian's are a good deal affected by the influence of Rhetoric, of which
he was a great cultivator: and the peculiar later Platonism of Synesius
fills a larger proportion of his than some frivolous persons might
wish. Julian is even thought to have "written for publication," as Latin
epistolers of distinction had undoubtedly done before him. Nevertheless
it is pleasant to read the Apostate when he is not talking Imperial or
anti-Christian "shop," but writing to his tutor, the famous sophist and
rhetorician Libanius, about his travels and his books and what not, in a
fashion by no means very unlike that in which a young Oxford graduate
might write to an undonnish don. It is still pleasanter to find Synesius
telling his friends about the very thin wine and very thick honey of
Cyrenaica; making love ("camouflaged," as they say to-day, under
philosophy) to Hypatia, and condescending to mention dogs, horses and
hunting now and then. But it is