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 Letters and
Communities
Studies in the Socio-Political Dimensions
of Ancient Epistolography

Edited by
P A O L A CE C C A R E L L I , LU T Z D O E R I N G ,
T H O R S T E N F Ö G E N , A N D I N G O GI L D E N H A R D

1
 3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
© Oxford University Press 2018
The moral rights of the authors have been asserted
First Edition published in 2018
Impression: 1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics
rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Library of Congress Control Number: 0000000000
ISBN 978–0–19–880420–8
Printed and bound by
CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and
for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials
contained in any third party website referenced in this work.
 Contents

List of Contributors ix

Introduction 1
Paola Ceccarelli, Lutz Doering, Thorsten Fögen, and
Ingo Gildenhard

PART A: THEORY AND PRACTICE OF EPISTOLARY

COMMUNICATION
1. Ancient Approaches to Letter-Writing and the Configuration
of Communities through Epistles 43
Thorsten Fögen
2. Couriers and Conventions in Cicero’s Epistolary Network 81
Bianca-Jeanette Schröder

PART B: CONFIGURATIONS OF POWER AND EPISTOLARY

COMMUNICATION: FROM GREECE TO ROME
3. Tyrants, Letters, and Legitimacy 103
Sian Lewis
4. Powers in Dialogue: The Letters and diagrammata of
Macedonian Kings to Local Communities 121
Manuela Mari
5. Letters and Decrees: Diplomatic Protocols in the Hellenistic
Period 147
Paola Ceccarelli
6. Letters, Diplomacy, and the Roman Conquest of Greece 185
Robin Osborne
7. A Republic in Letters: Epistolary Communities in Cicero’s
Correspondence, 49–44 BCE 205
Ingo Gildenhard

PART C: LETTERS AND COMMUNITIES IN ANCIENT

JUDAISM AND EARLY CHRISTIANITY
8. The Literary and Ideological Character of the Letters in Ezra 4–7 239
Sebastian Grätz
viii Contents

9. ‘From Me, Jerusalem, the Holy City, to You Alexandria in Egypt,

my Sister. . . . ’ (Bavli Sanhedrin 107b): The Role of Letters in
Power Relations between ‘Centre’ and ‘Periphery’ in Judaism
in the Hellenistic, Roman, and Early Islamic Periods 253
Philip Alexander
10. Configuring Addressee Communities in Ancient Jewish
Letters: The Case of the Epistle of Baruch (2 Baruch 78–86) 271
Lutz Doering
11. The Letters of Paul and the Construction of Early Christian
Networks 289
John M. G. Barclay
12. The Communities Configured in the Letter of James 303
Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr

PART D: ENVOI
13. Conversing with the Absent, Corresponding with the Dead:
Friendship and Philosophical Community in Seneca’s Letters 325
Catharine Edwards

General Index 353

Index locorum 000
Index of Authors 000
Acknowledgements

Letters and Communities: Studies in the Socio-

Political Dimensions of Ancient Epistolography
Paola Ceccarelli, Lutz Doering, Thorsten Fögen, and Ingo Gildenhard

Print publication date: 2018

Print ISBN-13: 9780198804208
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2018
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198804208.001.0001

(p.v) Acknowledgements
Paola Ceccarelli, Lutz Doering, Thorsten Fögen, Ingo Gildenhard

The core of the volume has its origins in the conference ‘Configuring
Communities: The Socio-Political Dimensions of Ancient Epistolography’
organized by the editors, in the summer of 2011, under the auspices of the
Durham Centre for the Study of the Ancient Mediterranean and the Near East.
The editors would like to thank the Department of Classics and Ancient History
and the Department of Theology and Religion of Durham University for their
support, financial and otherwise. For Paola Ceccarelli, this venture constitutes
part of a programme of research on the Seleukid Royal Correspondence, which
she has been conducting with the help of the mid-career fellowship scheme of
the British Academy (BARDA), whose support she gratefully acknowledges.

For various reasons, it took longer than initially anticipated for this book to
materialize. We are all the more grateful for the seemingly limitless patience
extended to us along the way by our contributors as well as Oxford University
Press, in particular Georgina Leighton and Charlotte Loveridge. We were
fortunate in having Timothy Beck as our copy-editor for the press, who worked
through a difficult manuscript with exemplary care, and Lisa Eaton as our
project manager, who shepherded our volume through the production process
with great efficiency. Finally, we would like to express our thanks to Yannick
Golchert and Andreas Knöll for their help with the indices.

The Editors (p.vi)

Page 1 of 1
List of Contributors

Letters and Communities: Studies in the Socio-

Political Dimensions of Ancient Epistolography
Paola Ceccarelli, Lutz Doering, Thorsten Fögen, and Ingo Gildenhard

Print publication date: 2018

Print ISBN-13: 9780198804208
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2018
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198804208.001.0001

(p.ix) List of Contributors

Paola Ceccarelli, Lutz Doering, Thorsten Fögen, Ingo Gildenhard

Philip Alexander FBA,

Emeritus Professor of Post-Biblical Jewish Literature, University of
Manchester.
John M. G. Barclay,
Lightfoot Professor of Divinity, Durham University.
Paola Ceccarelli,
Lecturer in Classical Greek History, University College London.
Lutz Doering,
Professor of New Testament and Ancient Judaism, Director of the
Institutum Judaicum Delitzschianum, Westfälische Wilhelms-
Universität Münster.
Catharine Edwards,
Professor of Classics and Ancient History, Birkbeck, University of
London.
Thorsten Fögen,
Associate Professor (Reader) in Classics, Durham University.
Ingo Gildenhard,
Reader in Classics and the Classical Tradition, Faculty of Classics,
University of Cambridge.
Sebastian Grätz,
Professor of Old Testament, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz.
Sian Lewis,
Senior Lecturer in Ancient History, University of St Andrews.
Manuela Mari,
Associate Professor of Greek History, Università di Cassino e del
Lazio Meridionale.
Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr,
Page 1 of 2
List of Contributors

Professor of New Testament, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena.

Robin Osborne FBA,
Professor of Ancient History, Faculty of Classics, University of
Cambridge.
Bianca-Jeanette Schröder,
Senior Lecturer in Latin Literature, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität
Munich.

(p.x)

Page 2 of 2
Introduction

Letters and Communities: Studies in the Socio-

Political Dimensions of Ancient Epistolography
Paola Ceccarelli, Lutz Doering, Thorsten Fögen, and Ingo Gildenhard

Print publication date: 2018

Print ISBN-13: 9780198804208
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2018
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198804208.001.0001

Introduction
Paola Ceccarelli
Lutz Doering
Thorsten Fögen
Ingo Gildenhard

DOI:10.1093/oso/9780198804208.003.0001

Abstract and Keywords

The Introduction surveys scholarly work on letter-writing in the ancient world.
While generally of a high standard and often interdisciplinary in nature, bridging
such fields as Near Eastern and Jewish Studies, Biblical Studies, Patristics, and
Classics, research on ancient epistolography often marginalizes the role of
letters in constituting and sustaining communities of various stripes (political,
social, ethnic, religious, philosophical). The introduction explores various
reasons for this oversight (the overriding importance given to face-to-face
communication in public settings, the apparently ‘private’ nature of
corresponding via letters, its low rank in the hierarchy of genres, and the
marginal status this aspect of letter-writing has in ancient epistolary theory)
before outlining why letters played such a vital role in ancient community-
building, with an emphasis on long-distance communication, permanence, and
the genre’s ideological flexibility and strong pro-social outlook. The second half
offers a narrative of the volume, with summaries of its thirteen case studies.

Keywords: ancient letters, epistolography, communal aspects, communities, history of research

1. Letter-Writing and Communities: General Considerations

Ancient letter-writing has seen a welcome increase in scholarly attention in
recent years. A range of editions, edited collections, and individual case studies
have done much to enhance our understanding of the formal characteristics,
literary qualities, and ideological protocols of the genre.1 A noteworthy feature

Page 1 of 46
Introduction

of this upsurge in interest is its cross-disciplinary contour, which is very much in

line with the multifarious nature of our primary data. In terms of diversity of
evidence, arguably no other literary form practised in antiquity rivals
epistolography. Letters from the ancient Mediterranean have survived in a wide
variety of media across an extraordinarily broad chronological and geographical
span. Virtually any material suited to the preservation of writing—such as clay
(either soft or hard-burnt), hide, lead, wood tablets, papyrus, stone, or
parchment—has been employed as a surface on which to transmit a missive.
Epistolary (p.2) endeavours to which we still have access come in all shapes
and sizes, from the tablets of third millennium Ebla in Syria to the letters of the
Roman garrison at Vindolanda in the North of England (dating to the Roman
imperial period), from the lead letters found across the Mediterranean world
(and beyond), the earliest of which date to the late sixth century BCE, to Jewish
and Greek, Christian and Roman letters and letter collections preserved down
the ages by scribes and scholars in charge of manuscript traditions, from Near
Eastern archives of missives written on clay to letters preserved through their
inscription on stone or the epistolary papyri that have surfaced from the sands of
Egypt.2

Given the scope of this material, it is hardly surprising that scholars of diverse
disciplinary stripes have been invested in exploring ancient epistolary writing
and, equally important, its practitioners. In fact, if dialogue between the
disciplines of Theology (broadly speaking) and Classics has had its undeniable
ups and downs over the centuries, ‘the letter’ has always constituted a shared
common ground of investigation—unsurprisingly (again), given its prominent
status not least in the Christian Bible. New Testament scholars, for instance,
have routinely employed information about epistolary practices gathered from
classical sources, in particular Cicero’s correspondence, to advance arguments
about the factors involved in the emergence of the significant parts of Christian
Scripture comprised of letters.3 And Patristic scholars share an interest with
Classicists in studying Christian letters in the context of late antique
epistolography—a period that has bequeathed a particularly rich set of
epistolary dossiers.4

(p.3) The strong interest by biblical scholars in Graeco-Roman epistolary

practice in part accounts for the fact that letter-writing has been one of the
fields where the flow of information between the disciplines (at least in one
direction) has been most intense in the past, and the present volume wishes to
continue and advance this tradition. It offers a range of case studies on letter-
writing in biblical and classical settings, covering Judaism and Christianity,
ancient Greece and Rome—though the approach we advocate here is of course
equally valid for other cultural configurations of the Near Eastern and ancient
Mediterranean worlds. Aiming to build on the available body of cross-
disciplinary work, and joining in with other recent developments in the area, it
foregrounds an aspect of epistolary communication that arguably has yet to
Page 2 of 46
Introduction

receive the sustained and systematic attention it deserves, in particular within

Classics: the fact that correspondence via letters frequently presupposes—and is
designed to reinforce or reshape—the outlook and identity of a specific group or
community. There are various reasons why the ‘socio-political dimensions of
ancient epistolography’ have not registered more powerfully on the scholarly
radar screen so far.

To begin with, scholarship on the political cultures of pre-modern societies likes

to insist, emphatically, on the overriding importance of face-to-face
communication in public settings.5 This is understandable. Modes of interaction
facilitated by the joint presence of participants in a shared topography appeal
through a high degree of immediacy, urgency, and vividness—and not just from
our point of view. In Republican Rome, it would have been considered rude to
rely on letters for important matters unless absolutely necessary: ‘when two
powerful men were in the same city, there remained a strong expectation that
they would conduct their business face-to-face.’6 Encounters, more or less
fraught, between members of ruling elites and the larger populace, the wide
range of public rituals and ceremonies practised by pre-modern (p.4)
communities to rehearse their collective identities, complemented by
unpredictable, but equally important clashes and bust-ups, or the different types
of performances bringing together—or opposing—different cultural groups (and
outsiders) in a joint experience fascinate not just as sites of community-building
(or destruction) but also as vibrant feasts for the senses. Public oratory, for
instance, involves sweaty, shoving crowds, speakers holding forth at the top of
their lungs in eye contact with their (packed) audience, and a wide range of
visual stimuli that support the aural soundtrack—gestures, facial expressions, or
body language more generally.7 Against the synaesthetic intensity of touch,
smell, sound, and sight, as well as the various forms of verbal and non-verbal
interactions that unfold in the crammed civic spaces of an ancient city-state, the
writing and perusal of letters for those who are unable to be present cannot
help, it seems, but pale in significance and appeal. From this point of view, the
exchange of written missives might well look like an anaemic mode of discourse,
a deracinated surrogate to the sensory thrills that constitute the drama of life.8
It is, at any rate, a deferred and deferring medium of communication that
struggles to compensate for the benefits of modes of interaction in which all
participants are co-present.9

Secondly, precisely because epistolary communication tends to unfold outside

the public limelight, already in antiquity it acquired, in certain quarters, a shady
reputation as an anti-popular mode of discourse. Its seemingly secretive nature
makes it the perfect medium for crooked power brokers such as tyrants, keen to
wield influence by backstage operations, inaccessible to prying eyes and the
wider public. If some formats, like the city-decree, can be said to embody a
communal will and, in their collective authorship, to enact democratic values
and procedures, the letter is either issued by a single author or, if corporate, by
Page 3 of 46
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Introduction

a group of people whose precise power relations often remain obscure. Similarly,
the modes of transmission of a letter enable—even though they by no means
require—exchanges that bypass the scrutiny of the citizen body or other forms of
community from which it claims to have arisen. Unsurprisingly, letters, early on
in their history, attracted disagreeable connotations as ‘the tyrant’s writ’.10

Thirdly, compared with other forms of literary expression, letters seem a rather
unpromising medium for the constitution and celebration of communal identities
—in comparison and contrast to epic or tragedy in verse or various forms of
historiography in prose (including, in the case of Christianity, (p.5) biography,
or, in the case of Rome’s Republican aristocracy, autobiography), which have
long been recognized as important media for the ways in which civic or religious
communities (or distinct individuals within them) defined themselves, negotiated
their place in the world, and moulded or manufactured memories of their past.11
In addition to the social dynamics that inform canon formation or, more
generally, transmission, the commemorative power and longevity of these forms
of historical writing resided not just in their (imaginary) documentary value but
also to a significant degree in the artistic quality of the verbal artefacts,
including the prestige of the genre and the talent of the authors. Within the
hierarchies of discursive forms, letters, in their quotidian preoccupations and
apparent occasionality, tend to rank rather low in terms of aesthetic value and
factual import, even when they aspire to literary distinction and treat matters of
public significance: witness, for instance, Pliny the Younger’s self-derogatory—if
notoriously disingenuous—advertisement of his edited epistolary output as
seemingly requiring less diligence and effort than the composition of
historiography.12

And finally, ‘community-building’ is a function of letters that barely registers in

ancient epistolary theory. Ancient definitions of letter-writing tend to conceive of
the activity as a dialogue between a (single) author and a (single) addressee,
who are often imagined as sharing in the exchange of intimate sentiments across
distances of space and time.13 Letters are perceived to be for individuals
corresponding with one another, for pairs rather than groups, even if a wider
audience is of course often part of the picture. This model underwrites iconic
notions evoked in discussions of epistolography, such as the letter representing
an ‘image of the soul of the author’ in intimate long-distance conversation with a
close friend or acquaintance and as such constituting ‘one half of a dialogue’.
Many of the ‘contextual and formal characteristics’ that make ‘the letter’ a
recognizable genre thus also ensure that, from certain perspectives, its cultural
rank and standing tends to be relatively modest—both among ancient
practitioners and modern scholars of various disciplinary backgrounds.14

(p.6) Yet however justified such views on letter-writing may be in particular

instances, they tend to marginalize a range of issues that were central to
epistolary communication in the ancient world. Letters frequently presuppose or

Page 4 of 46
Introduction

were explicitly designed to reinforce communal identities—or, indeed, to

constitute them in the first place. Three characteristics in particular made it
possible for the genre to make distinctive contributions to the mechanisms that
held specific groups or entire cultures together. Most obviously, letters benefit
from the inbuilt permanence of written discourse (in contrast to the ephemeral
nature of the spoken word). This permanence in turn enabled letters to help
facilitate the extension of communities beyond those who are present—both in
terms of space, via long-distance communication, and time, by rendering the
community constituted in a historical moment accessible to future generations—
or, indeed, enabling retrospective ‘dialogue’ with the dead.15 A third, perhaps
less obvious, factor is the letter’s flexible ‘generic ideology’. All three of these
features are worth a more detailed look.

(i) Permanence
To begin with, compared with written communication, face-to-face encounters
tend to be ephemeral. Shrewd operators knew how to tap into the potential of
the written word for greater permanence, which also ensured continuous
resonance—even in a genre often concerned with matters of merely quotidian
significance such as letters.16 Late Republican Rome (as well as the current
state of debate over the nature of its political system) illustrates the point at
issue very well. In line with the preference for the immediate and the oral
outlined above, recent scholarship has tended to privilege interactive scenarios
and institutions in discussing the degree of popular participation in Republican
politics, such as the constitutional place and function of different types of
citizen-assemblies, public oratory as a medium of communication between the
(ruling) elite and the (sovereign) people, voting rights, and election platforms.17
But the ‘written word’ seems poised for a comeback, even where the contio is
concerned—a type of non-voting assembly during which speakers canvassed the
opinion of the populace on matters of concern to the wider community, which
Cicero hailed as the (p.7) maxima scaena (‘the greatest stage’) of the orator,
and hence the quintessential form of face-to-face politics.18 As Henrik Mouritsen
has now suggested, the dissemination of speeches delivered at contiones in
written form after the actual performance made a significant contribution to the
backstage operations of power—over and above the occasion of the actual
speech, albeit of course to a smaller circle of recipients.19 A similar case can be
made for letters, especially if one considers the semi-public status of what are
prima facie ‘private’ pieces of correspondence. While the letter of course often is
‘a personal medium that might become an accidentally public one’, it is
frequently advisable to invert the emphasis—treating the letters as a personal
medium that could be knowingly used as a public one.20 Cicero, for instance,
blasts Marc Antony for broadcasting a sensitive piece of correspondence meant
for private consumption (such nefarious disrespect for civilized values, he
argues, cannot help but destroy long-distance conversation among friends and
thereby entail a lapse back into barbarism); but he would presumably have been

Page 5 of 46
Introduction

rather aggrieved if his lengthy apologia for his political conduct after his return
from exile, when he got his arm twisted into supporting Caesar and various of
his (more loathsome) creatures, sent in the form of a letter to Lentulus, had
reached no one else beside the explicit addressee.21 The letter advocates
Cicero’s past, present, and future vision of Rome’s civic community, holding not
least those to account who self-identify as ‘the good’ (boni), many of whom (he
feels) shamelessly betrayed him in the wake of his consulship over his ill-advised
execution of the Catilinarian conspirators—and thus providing a commentary, in
equal measures auto-apologetic and accusatory, on his pro-Caesarian oratory
during this period. In this particular case, the benefits of outlining his position in
a letter turned out to be twofold. We may assume wider dissemination of copies
close to the time of writing; and the archived version then also found its ways
into the post mortem publication of Cicero’s correspondence, where the smart
choices of the (unknown) editor enhance its impact within the first volume of the
Ad familiares (or indeed the collection as a whole).22 (p.8) Likewise, the
practice of monumentalizing official letters in stone endowed specific instances
of long-distance communication relevant for communal life with a special
permanence: they became public sites of memory, for the purpose of symbolic
display and future reference. A ready example from the Hellenistic period is the
epigraphical recording and publication of royal pieces of correspondence that
granted special privileges to a given city-state, broadcasting the dynamics of
civic life and international diplomacy to both members of the community and
visitors from abroad.23

In all this, it is furthermore important to stress the fluidity between ‘spoken’ and
‘written’. Just as speeches intended initially for oral delivery could end up
circulating in written form, so a letter could easily form the basis for an oral
performance by means of a public reading—with the letter-writer almost
‘speaking’ vicariously to a specific group or community across distances of time
and space. Ancient authors record many telling instances of public readings of
letters as communal events. Thucydides, for instance, speculates that the
general Nicias, off on his ill-fated campaign in Sicily that helped doom the
Athenians in their war against Sparta, hoped to be able to speak directly to his
fellow-citizens via a letter, to be read out in a public assembly.24 The political
culture of Republican Rome (with pro-magistrates sending detailed accounts of
their provincial administration to the capital in the form of official letters to be
read out in the senate) offers further examples of this phenomenon—as does
ancient Judaism and especially early Christianity, where letters initially
dispatched to communities for communal reading and sharing with other
communities eventually turned into major parts of Christian Scripture. Indeed,
one of the reasons for the success of the Christian (and perhaps already Jewish)
letter was that it was read in front of the community gathered, which allowed for
some of the sensory aspects mentioned above, a predominantly ‘aural’ mode of
reception, and interaction among members of the community.25 The holy kiss,

Page 6 of 46
Introduction

for instance, seems to have been extended during such meetings, and the letters
of Paul and others encourage the recipients to perform it.26 Generally speaking,
the public rendition of a letter, especially, but not only, if it was addressed not to
a specific individual but a wider community, could provide the focal point of a
collective experience. All this is not to diminish in any way the importance of
non-literary (and hence non-epistolary) modes of interaction or the power of
conversation, gossip, (p.9) hearsay, and rumour for communal experiences and
the formation of group identities.27 Rather, we would like to suggest that it is
attention to the symbiotic relation of spoken—whether formal (oratory) or
informal (conversation)—and written modes of communication (such as letters)
and their inbuilt potential for both oral activation (including the possibility that
those writing letters may well have composed them with their eventual
performance in mind) and longevity that best captures the rhetorical dynamics
underwriting socio-political or communal life in the ancient world.

(ii) Long-Distance Communication

Secondly, the apparent primacy of the ‘face-to-face’ should not obfuscate the
crucial role played by long-distance communication in the far-flung cultures of
the ancient Mediterranean, quite irrespective of what kind of regime was in
charge. The writing of letters was not just the preserve of autocrats;
aristocracies and democracies, too, had to avail themselves of missives in the
exercise of power. More generally, in any scenario in which a group or
community relied on the flow of information between a centre and a periphery
the genre takes on a special importance. Ancient Rome again offers a case in
point. Once the Roman res publica started to assert itself as an imperial
presence in Italy and beyond, (pro-)magistrates entertained a busy dialogue with
the capital by means of official and personal correspondence, addressed to the
magistrates and the senate as well as networks of friends and acquaintances.
Dispatches from the margins constituted a crucial (if frequently neglected)
dimension of the political culture of Republican Rome, helping absent power
brokers to retain a foothold—or, as was the case with Caesar, a stranglehold—on
political proceedings in the capital. As John Henderson and Josiah Osgood have
shown, the exercise of power in the capital during the 50s BCE happened to a
significant degree through the exchange of letters that travelled between Gaul
and Rome.28 As we have just had occasion to note, scholars debating the nature
of the political system of the Roman Republic focus primarily (at times even
exclusively) on public oratory in live performance, in particular the contio. Yet
during the years of the first triumvirate, Caesar’s penmanship, and the
(utilitarian) alliances and (coercive) loyalties it helped to sustain, arguably held
as much importance for the future of the commonwealth as the figures
delivering public speeches from Cicero’s maxima scaena. Letters (p.10) were
an important part and indispensable medium for the flow of goods, services, and
oral and written speech-acts (instructions and orders, promises, and threats)
that enabled Caesar to dominate political proceedings from afar. Mutatis

Page 7 of 46
Introduction

mutandis, the letter retained its vital importance in imperial times. Fergus Millar
portrayed the emperor in the Roman world as a keen correspondent, who
supplemented the holding of audience in the capital with strategic travel and the
busy exchange of letters that helped to ensure that all parts of the empire were
able to acquire a sense of participation in the whole.29

What is the case in large-scale territorial configurations of power is equally true

of communities that lived, moved, and proliferated within the ancient empires.
Jews from Jerusalem reached out to various areas of the Jewish Diaspora by
means of letters.30 And the explosion of geopolitical horizons in the wake of
Alexander the Great opened up much-increased opportunities for community-
building beyond the confines of the individual city-state—just as much as the
ecumenical reach of Roman power in the imperial period and its complex
infrastructure aided in the cultivation of supra-regional networks held together
by long-distance communication. Two communities, one philosophical, the other
religious, that thrived in these conditions not least by relying on the letter as a
privileged mode of communication, were Epicurus (and his school) and
Christianity.

While earlier philosophers, including Plato and Aristotle, wrote letters,

Epicurus’ (surviving?) letters ‘are more numerous than the letters of any other
ancient philosopher save Seneca’.31 Indeed, the Epicureans can be thought of as
being, in a special sense, ‘epistolary’.32 In part, of course, the prominence of
letters in Epicureanism owes itself to accidents of transmission. While Epicurus’
large number of treatises have all but vanished, three of his doctrinal letters,
addressed to, respectively, Herodotus (covering physics), Pythocles (dealing with
astronomy and meteorology), and Menoeceus (discussing ethics), have come
down to us as part of Diogenes Laertius’ Lives of Eminent Philosophers.33 But, as
Klauck notes, we are here only dealing with the (p.11) tip of the iceberg: ‘The
three main doctrinal letters of Epicurus preserved by Diogenes Laertius are part
of a larger correspondence with individuals and groups…. After the death of
their master, Epicurus’s pupils continued this practice of lively
correspondence.’34 Indeed, further passages in Diogenes and other sources,
such as the inscription set up by Diogenes’ namesake in Oenoanda, portray an
Epicurus merrily corresponding with all and sundry, including the odd
(particularly obedient) child, about matters ranging from the personal and
autobiographical to the philosophical.35 Other members of his school followed
suit.36 In antiquity, reactions to Epicurus’ correspondence took on different
forms: some, like Diogenes of Oenoanda, immortalized bits and pieces thereof in
stone; others cited supposedly incriminating passages as evidence for Epicurus’
depraved character.37 The significant amount of correspondence, both mundane
and philosophical, that underwrote the daily operations of Epicurean
communities across the Mediterranean resembles the role of letters in early
Christianity: the apostle Paul in particular initiated a network with and between
communities, in which long-distance communication between Asia, Greece, and
Page 8 of 46
Introduction

finally Rome helped to foster a shared identity, and which subsequent

generations of Christian writers extended and made use of for their purposes.38
The epistolary aspects of Epicurus’ philosophy and his fellowship constitute an
intriguing precedent and parallel from the classical world for the status and
function of letter-writing in early Christian communities, and scholars have
increasingly started to explore the ‘medial’ aspects of Epicureanism as part of
the religious context of early Christianity.39

(p.12) Generally speaking, then, religious, philosophical, and other

communities that flourished across the ancient Mediterranean relied on
epistolary writing as a medium of communication in addition to the
‘simultaneous interactions’ among co-present individuals and groups. There is of
course no need to play off written missives against face-to-face encounters: the
two modes of interactions clearly complemented one another, not least in the
fashioning and cultivation of shared identities. The challenge rather consists in
calibrating their relative (and varying) importance, giving each its due.

(iii) Generic Ideology

A third—and related—point is the extraordinary ideological flexibility of the
genre, which derives at least in part from its rather undemanding formal
requirements. In the most basic sense, a letter is a written message from an
author (singular or collective) to an addressee (again singular or collective),
marked by opening and closing greeting formulae. Indeed, whether the letter
constitutes a genre in the narrow sense of (German) ‘Gattung’ or ‘Textsorte’ is a
matter of debate. In German textual linguistics, for instance, an influential
position holds that it should be thought of as something further up the
classificatory scale: not a ‘Gattung’ but a ‘form of
communication’ (Kommunikationsform) or a ‘basic text type’ (Grundtextsorte),
akin, for example, to the (face-to-face) dialogue or the (oral or written)
monologue.40 Conversely, according to Jacques Derrida, the letter ‘is not a genre
but all genres, literature itself’.41 For our purposes, it makes sense to continue
to think of the letter as a ‘genre’ in the suitably wide sense this term has in
English, with due recognition of ambiguous cases or a ‘spectrum’ with grey
zones.42 Arguably, it is precisely the absence of demanding formal requirements,
combined with a potentially attractive set of ideological connotations, that has
turned the genre into such (p.13) an appealing matrix for literary
experimentation and community-building: the absence of strong formal
prerequisites makes it easy to package pretty much anything in the form of a
letter through the simple convenience of adding formulaic greetings and sign-
offs, enabling imaginative authors to claim epistolary affiliations for works that
otherwise do not look like epistles at all. The Apocalypse of John, for instance,
which styles itself as a ‘revelation of Jesus Christ’ and as containing ‘words of
prophecy’ (Rev 1:1–3), nevertheless presents itself as a letter due to its
epistolary frame at Rev 1:4–5; 22:21.43 The same is true of a number of early
martyrdom texts, such as the Martyrdom of Polycarp and the Martyrium
Page 9 of 46
Introduction

Lugdunense, which are cast in the form of letters.44 Indeed, one could argue
that there is more generally a close connection between epistolary writing and
narrative, whether fictional or historical.45 And Cicero’s De officiis is, in generic
terms, a massive ‘philosophical-treatise-turned-letter-to-his-son’ on account of
the epistolary formulae at the beginning and the end. Instead of rejecting such
works from the epistolary fold, it rather behoves us to enquire into the benefits
that the respective authors thought would accrue from opting for these
particular generic affiliations.46 In the case of Cicero’s De officiis, the epistolary
format helps to endow the treatise with a venerable pedigree, invoking Cato the
Elder’s practice of instructing his senatorial peers in matters of public morality
in the guise of letters addressed to his son and thereby producing a fitting
generic matrix for Cicero’s rhetorical agenda in the work, namely to induct the
next generation of Rome’s political elite into his unorthodox approach to civic
ethics.47 The inherently pro-social nature of epistolary discourse expects author
and addressee to find common ground and hence arguably softens the didactic
strictures that make other genres employed in pedagogic settings, such as
straightforward lecturing or probing cross-examination, less socially palatable;
letters thus form an ideal medium for teaching and preaching, while reaching
out to a wider community.

Other features further enhance the letter’s remarkable ideological fluidity. As a

substitute for oral discourse, it tends towards the informal and ephemeral; but
as written discourse, it benefits from the archival potential inherent in all
writing, offering one form of what Niklas Luhmann has called ‘compact
communication’: unlike an oral statement, a visual or verbal artefact can (p.14)
undergo repeated (in principle countless) instances of engagement.48 This
tension (or coincidence) between the accidental and the permanent, or, put
slightly differently, the informal and the formal, opens up a spectrum of
possibilities that authors could exploit for their rhetorical and wider socio-
political agendas. Epistolary postures range from studied casualness to a tactical
investment in the (seemingly accidental) permanence of the ephemeral to the
deliberate monumentalization of letters as literature—and many more besides,
including diverse variants of strategic disingenuity, such as emphasizing the
reputation of epistolary discourse as easy-going and uninhibited to articulate
issues of monumental import. The conceit that a letter offers a (more or less
authentic) record of the sender’s thoughts and actions also generates significant
affinities with other genres focused on (historical) lives, such as biography and
autobiography.49 And, as Robin Osborne argues in this volume (Chapter 6),
letters tend to contain discursive explanations of, or background to, the requests
or decisions that they convey and, in doing so, make an effort to persuade—
rather than simply state what is the case or issue a command to be obeyed and
not to be questioned. They are therefore, in Philip Alexander’s formulation, a
‘soft medium’ when compared to a ‘blunt decree’ or a ‘curt order’. Any
instructions, requests, or pieces of advice sent through a letter thus tend to be

Page 10 of 46
Introduction

embedded within a rhetorical-persuasive matrix, which renders the letter a

mode of discourse well suited for exercising influence in a winning way, either
because the sender does not have any coercive force or because he wishes to
project civic or diplomatic virtues. Given the emphasis on interactivity, the letter
also proves to be an ideal medium for engaging pedagogy, even—or especially—
in those contexts where the contents of the instruction consisted of dogma, not
to be questioned.

The status of epistolary writing in Epicureanism is again a case in point of how

the features that distinguish epistolary communication more generally can be
employed to advance a specific agenda, in this case sectarian community-
building. Beyond the utilitarian value of the letter as a means of keeping in touch
with fellow practitioners and proselytizing among the non-initiate, there are a
number of suggestive affinities between the doctrinal content of Epicureanism
and epistolary ideology that make the letter a genre seemingly tailor-made for
Epicurus’ philosophy, such as the emphasis on the social interaction between the
like-minded, the cultivation of friendship grounded in shared intellectual
commitments (both through communal (p.15) living and philosophical dialogue
by means of conversation and the exchange of letters), and membership in a
wider community of ‘initiates’, also across spatial and temporal distances.50 The
ability to combine exclusivity (the letter as a privileged mode of correspondence
between select individuals) with demotic appeal (in terms of stylistic registers
both epistolary and Epicurean discourse show frequent affinities with everyday
speech) and intimacy with doctrinal rigour made letters an ideal tool for
teaching, long before the Open University perfected flexible distance learning:
‘En effet, parmi les types d’écrits les mieux adaptés aux besoins philosophiques
d’Épicure, la lettre apparaît comme un lieu privilégié, sans doute en vertu de ses
extraordinaires pouvoirs de communiquer à distance, tant parce qu’elle favorise
l’intimité des échanges que parce qu’elle permet de rappeler les exigences
doctrinales rigoureuses propres à l’enseignement d’Épicure.’51 These features
(again) render the comparison between Epicurean and early Christian epistolary
practices an illuminating exercise, both because of telling differences and
striking similarities—not least the fact that pieces of seemingly quotidian
correspondence over time acquired the status of ‘scripture’.52

Another complex and arresting illustration of how a gifted correspondent could

employ epistolography and its various ideological registers to define and
immortalize both himself and the political community of which he was a part
comes in the form of the letters of Pliny the Younger. No one today succumbs
anymore to the ‘temptation to treat the Letters as the more or less artless
reportage of a plain man, an ordinary senator’s lightly polished testimony to the
social and moral, literary and political preoccupations of his age’.53 His high
degree of literary sophistication is nowadays a given—from intratextual
architectures to allusive dialogue not just with epistolary predecessors (Cicero,
Horace, Seneca) but a wide range of other authors as (p.16) well (Catullus,
Page 11 of 46
Introduction

Quintilian, Tacitus), from thematic patterns that criss-cross the collection and
endow it with unity and coherence to ‘the whole apparatus of self-commentary
that impels’ the letters.54 But Pliny put his literary artistry also at the service of
a socio-political agenda tailor-made for the Rome of Nerva and Trajan.55
Appearances to the contrary, he turned the letter into a rival of such grand
public genres as epic, oratory, and historiography.56 The choice of
epistolography as his preferred medium of literary (and socio-political) self-
promotion has everything to do with the wider socio-political context. In Roy
Gibson’s words:

Pliny, in his own eyes above all, is operating in an ethical world ‘in which
the most legitimate measure of his worth is whether he fills an appropriate
place in the order of the community’. Unlike some of his forerunners and
contemporaries, Pliny displays a decided preference for cultivating his
standing over the cultivation of his inner self. Rather than ‘turning
inwards’ to interrogate and improve his character, Pliny adheres to a more
old-fashioned community-based system of ethics, where all actions, even
‘private’ ones, are given value by their public reception.57

More specifically, his epistolary habit allowed him to refashion the senatorial
elite (and his own place within it) under changed political circumstances. As
Johannes Geisthardt has shown, Pliny uses the informality of the genre and its
setting in the sphere of otium (frequently conceived by writers of the Trajanic
age as a site for the articulation of honest feelings and (literary) truth-telling,
removed as it was from the exigencies of ritual occasions such as public thanks-
giving) to chronicle his revisions of the Panegyricus delivered in praise of Trajan
—thereby endowing the edited, written version of the speech with an epistolary
commentary that enhances the oration’s authenticity as well as the author’s
personal integrity, an effect not unlike the one Cicero was trying to achieve with
his letter to Lentulus (Fam. 1.9), which we discussed above.58 In turn, the
deceptive contingency of epistolary conversation facilitates moments (p.17) of
striking self-promotion. In one reading of the opening letter of Book 2, which is
devoted to an appreciation of the recently deceased Verginius Rufus, Pliny
broadcasts his support for the current regime of Nerva and Trajan, grounded as
it is in the meritocratic succession principle of ‘adoption of the best’—while
subtly implying that, in such a world, he too would qualify for the top job. He
does so very subtly, by self-identifying as the quasi-adoptive son of Verginius
Rufus, whose greatest distinctions included refusal to pursue the emperorship
back in 68 (he remained loyal to Galba after putting down the insurrection of
Vindex).59 This kind of counterfactual megalomania (if Rufus had accepted the
emperorship, his ‘adoptive’ son Pliny would now be on the throne…) seems to
require epistolary modesty for its oblique articulation. Pliny also dedicates many
letters in his collection to commentary on recent political events, including trials
that targeted senators supportive of Domitian’s regime, thereby using his
medium for the ethical vetting of the aristocratic elite after a regime change that
Page 12 of 46
Introduction

required painful shifts and reconfigurations in senatorial loyalties and

alliances.60 The example of Pliny shows a correspondent playing with the—often
contrapuntal—ideological registers of the genre, using its potential as a
privileged site of personal truths to authenticate sentiments designed for
consumption by a wider public seemingly invited to ‘eavesdrop’ on privileged or
exclusive information and thereby intervening into and helping to shape the
moral discourse of Rome’s ruling elite that we need to imagine as part of the
wider audience.61

The inbuilt permanence, the ability to bridge spatial and temporal distance, and
the pro-social outlook of its generic ideology ensured that epistolary discourse
thrived within the cultures of the ancient Mediterranean world. To unlock the
‘communal’ dimension of letter-writing in antiquity, the following heuristic
angles call out for investigation (and will receive discussion in one or more of
our case studies):

The identity-politics of ethopoeia and prosopopoeia: how does the authorial self-
fashioning of letter-writers interact with their communities of readers, which
may be real or imagined, and situated in the past, present, or future? This
question flags up the complex socio-political dimensions that are implied by such
categories as ‘real’, ‘explicit’, or ‘implied’ author and (especially) (p.18)
addressee—in other words, the ways in which the formal aspects of the genre
interlock with processes of group formation and identity construction, to which
the letter contributes by imagining and connecting communities, above and
beyond its function as a medium of communication between alter and ego.

Corporate authorship and collective addressees: as a rule of thumb, in classical

and Hellenistic Greece, individuals (such as kings or tyrants) write letters,
whereas communities opt for a different type of genre to articulate their
collective view (such as the decree), even when responding to a letter. But there
are notable exceptions, especially in the Jewish and Christian traditions.
Likewise, letters often have one explicit addressee, but he or she is often just
singled out for strategic reasons against the background of a larger community
of (frequently more important) implied recipients. And the paradox of the ‘offene
Brief’, a letter addressed to all and sundry, is a phenomenon with a history from
antiquity to the present.62

Letters as means of connecting members of a community that are geographically

dispersed or separated in time: how are (circular) letters used to exercise
territorial control by imperial powers? What is their role in sustaining lines of
communication between a centre and a periphery (such as the land of Israel and
Jews in the Diaspora)? How do philosophical treatises in epistolary form engage
future generations as part of a trans-historical community of (like-minded)
readers?

Page 13 of 46
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Title: Harhama I

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HARHAMA I
Kirj.

Irmari Rantamala [Algot Untola]

Helsingissä, Suomalainen Kustannus Oy Kansa, 1909.

"Syntikin on ase Jumalan kädessä."

SISÄLLYS:

l. HAIHTUVA AJATUS AVARUUDESSA.

Osota minulle. Jumala, mihin voisin Sinua paeta.

2. MUNKKI.
Ihmiselämä on kulkua Jumalan kädessä.

3. KIERIVÄ KULMAKIVI.
Ihmiselämä on pirunpaulassa rimpuilemista.

4. NOIDAN LAULU.
Elämä on ihana orjantappura… täynnä tuliokaita.

5. HIIDEN MYLLY.
Elämä on kaunista tarantellaa… se on tulikuumilla
neulankärillä tanssimista.

6. KULLANTEMPPELISSÄ.
Elämä on tulikuuma kultavuode.

7. HÄÄPÄIVÄ.
Elämä on kaunis morsiusvuode, jossa on lika luteena.
 8. SYNTYMÄPÄIVILLÄ.
Elämä on Jumalan kiirastuli.

9. HORNAN LUOLA.
Elämä on työtä ja vaivaa.

10. KUN TYTTÖ TULI LEIVÄN HAUSTA.

Elämän on katkeraa savua.

11. KUN SEPPÄ VIRITTI VIULUT PAJASSA.

Elämä on ihmistä nakerteleva nälkäinen rotta.

12. VÄKI TANSSI, KUN VIULUT OLIVAT VIRITETYT.

Elämä on tulikuuma kukka.

13. KUN POMMI PANTIIN PERUSKIVEKSI.

Elämä on sappikatkeraa viinaa.

14. SAARNA VIIDESTÄKYMMENESTÄ YHDESTÄ JA

PERUSKIVESTÄ.
Elämä on suuri musta käärme.

15. TSAARIEN HAUDOILLA.

Elämä on rakkaatta, joka polttaa ihmisen poroksi.

16. MUTTA KOTIPORTILTA KÄÄNTYI POLKU.

Mihin voisin minä paeta elämän hampaita?…

17. PÄIVÄLLÄ NIIDENPÄÄSSÄ, ILLALLA VALKEASSA TALOSSA.

Elämä on purppurapukuinen kolera.

18. RIITOJA, SYKSYISIÄ HARPUNSÄVELIÄ JA TALVISIA

AISTIPUNAKUKKIA.
Elämä on tulinen synninhiillos.

19. KAKSI AATELIA.

Elämä on Jumalan jauhinkivi.

20. KUN SUORTUVA KATKESI ORJIEN KAHLEISTA.

Elämä on pettävää sumua… se on ainaista suurta humua.

21. TYÖN AATELIA OPPIMASSA.

Elämä on kova koulu.

22. VIPUSEN VALKELLA KURJUUTTA KUMARTAMASSA.

Elämä on kovaa kivimäkeä.

23. ELÄMÄN UUDEN AATTOILLAN UNELMA.

Elämä on petollinen unelma.

24. ELÄMÄN VIRVATULIA.

Elämä on Jumalan antamaa kuritusta.

25. HISTORIAN LANKOJA JA NYKYISYYTTÄ.

Elämä on tuskaa ja vaivaa.

26. KUN MIES KUMARSI JALKAPUUTA.

Elämä on ainaista turhasta taistelemista, josta
on haavat ainoana voittona.

27. MUSTIA KUKKIA JA UKKOSILMOJA.

Elämä on ainaista päivänpaistetta, joka polttaa
kuin tulitutkain.

28. RITVAN LAULU.

Elämä on kaunis synninkukka, johon on käärme kätkettynä.
 29. SYYSÖISIÄ ELÄMÄNVALOJA. Elämä on kaunis portto, joka
tarjoaa huuliltansa kiehtovaa Juudaksensuudelmaa.

30. LAULU, JOKA LAULETTIIN RUNON LOMASSA.

Elämä on poroksi polttavaa vihaa.

31. KYMMENEN RUPLAA.

Elämä on häpeän kultaraha.

32. HYVÄN JA PAHANTIEDONPUUN JUURELLA.

Elämä on tuliomenoista hohtava hyvän ja pahan tiedonpuu.

33. ELÄMÄNKUKKIA.
Elämä on suuri erehdys.

34. VARJOA JA KOTI-IKÄVÄÄ.

Elämä on harhama, joka oikaisee itse itsensä…
Elämä on Jumalan ijankaikkisen rakkauden tulinen käärme.

Haihtuva ajatus avaruudessa.

Osota minulle, Jumala,

mihin voisin Sinua paeta!

Jumalan henki liikkuu rannattomassa avaruudessa, ikuinen valo

ainaisessa synkeässä pimeydessä.

Pohjattoman syvyyden varaan luo Hän maailmoita, eikä Hänen

peruskivensä petä. Kun Hän käskee, niin tyhjyys on vankka, kuin
harmaa vuori. Se kestää maailmoiden painon ja Hänen tahtoansa
totellen pitää pohjattomuus vetten paljouden, eikä koskaan vuoda.

Käsittämättömät ja lujat ovat Jumalan peruskivet.

*****

Olematonkin Hänen edessänsä vapisee; kaikki Häntä tottelee.

Hänen vihjauksestansa synnyttää tyhjä aineen ja sumupaljoudet
alkavat kieriä maailmoiden synnytystuskissa. Kuut ja tähdet
syöksyvät niiden kierinnöistä tuhansina tulikerinä. Kuin hirmun
käsistä päässeinä suoriutuvat ne radoillensa hurjaan sfeerilentoon.

Ihmeen suuri on Hänen luomistyönsä. Tyhjästä Hän luo aineen.

Tuli synnyttää veden, kun Hän vihjaa, pimeys valon, kun Hän niin
säätää, ja maa nostaa Hänen käskyänsä totellen vuoret povestansa.

*****

Halki rannattoman avaruuden karkaavat Hänen kättensä työt

teitänsä etsien. Vinhoina kuin kauhun lyömät pauhaavat ne toistensa
lomitse pimeässä tyhjyydessä. Yhtäällä kirmaavat ne rataansa
tulikerinä, toisaalla kohisevat vetten paljouksina. Eikä yksikään tunne
matkansa määrää, eikä tiedä tarkotustansa ja syntynsä syitä.

Salatut ovat Hänen ihmeensä syyt ja synnyt, tutkimattomat Hänen

aivoituksensa.

*****

Tuolla lyövät tähdet yhteen ja syttyvät kuin taula iskun

kuumuudesta. Pian sammuva lieska valaisee ijäistä pimeyttä. Sen
ainaisessa äänettömyydessä kuuluu pauhu. Pimeys vapisee, tyhjyys
on tulena. Hetken kauhu kiertelee sanansaattajana sisarmaailmoissa.
Se on ainoa, haihtuva muisto murskautuneista… Uutena
tulipaljoutena alkavat ne uudelleen raivota vinhaa lentoansa.
Vavisten etsivät ne rataansa avaruuden ihmeiden lomitse.

Suuri ja voimallinen on Hän, jonka edessä tähdet tanssivat

tomuhituina ja auringot säkeninä sinkoavat. Kuolema ja syntyminen
tottelevat Häntä, kuin orja ruoskaa. Joka hetki Hän luo ja murskaa
maailmoita. Hänen voimallansa ei ole rajoja, Hänen viisaudellansa ei
mittaa.

*****

Mykkänä tottelee Häntä kaikki: tähdet rientävät ratojansa.

Vinhemmin kuin aatos kiertävät ne toistensa ympäri. Eikä yksikään
väsy, ei yksikään kysy: miksi? Kaikki syöksyy suoraan eteenpäin, eikä
mikään saavuta tienpäätä, ei mikään kysy: mihin? Ei ole tienviittaa,
mutta ei yksikään eksy; ei ole ajan ilmottajaa, mutta ei yksikään
myöhästy. Ei mikään pysähdy, ei mikään häviä, ei mikään joudu
hukkaan.

Suuri on Hän, suuri ja rajaton. Kaikki putoaa Hänestä, kaikki

putoaa
Häneen. Ijankaikkisuus on Hänen päivänsä aamu ja avaruus on
kupla
Hänen kädessänsä.

*****

Mutta tomuhituna kulkee maassa mullanlapsi avaruuden ihmeiden

keskellä. Haihtuva ajatus on ihminen Jumalan edessä. Hänen
elämänsä on tuskan tuikahdus, hänen tarunsa vihlova hätähuuto.
 Hänen rauhansa on kuluttavaa tulta, hänen onnensa polttavaa
syöpää ja hänen ilonsa on katkeraa savua.

Hän on luoduista kurjin, sillä hän on vapaa: hänen vapautensa

saartaa häntä, kuin terävä tutkain ja piirittää kuin tulikuuma rauta.
Hänen valittavanansa on hauta, tai — hauta.

Hän on olevista ainoa onneton, sillä hän yksin voi tuskansa tajuta
ja onnettomuuden onnesta erottaa. Povessansa hän kantaa
maailmantuskan. Hän on kärsimyksien ahjo ja kipujen liesi.

Hän on viheliäisistä viheliäisin, sillä hän on suurin. Taistelu käy

siksi hänen hengestänsä. Miekka tunkee alati hänen sydämensä läpi
ja hänen sieluansa raatelee tulinen säilä.

Hehkuva rauta on hän Jumalan pihdeissä, pian palava kuin

virvatuli.
Armotta luo hänestä suurta luomustansa Jumala. Avaruus on Hänen
työpajansa, sen ihmeet ja elämä Hänen moukarinsa, turma ja
kuolema
Hänen pihtinsä ja kärsimykset Hänen ahjonsa tuli.

Suuret ovat Jumalan työaseet. Haiven tulessa on ihminen Hänen

pitimissänsä.

Ihmispolonen! Astu nöyränä Hänen pihteihinsä takeeksi Hänen

alasimellensa!

Munkki.
 Ihmiselämä on kulkua Jumalan kädessä.

Munkki istui kammiossansa tutkien hartaasti Pyhää Kirjaa.

Jumalankuvan edessä paloi pienoinen lamppu. Munkki luki
raamatusta kohtaa:

"Muuta perustusta ei voi kukaan panna, kuin sen, joka on pantu:

Jeesuksen Kristuksen."

Pau—uu—uu! kumahti tornissa luostarin kirkon kello rukoukseen

kutsuen. Munkki keskeytti työnsä, laskeusi polvillensa Jumalankuvan
eteen ja rukoili hartaasti:

— "Taivasten ja maailmoiden ainoa Jumala! Anna minun, halvan

munkkisi, aina olla Sinussa, kuin lampun sydän öljyssä, että minä
itse kokonansa palaisin ihmisten valkeudeksi. Suo öljysi palaa
minussa niin kirkkaasti, että voisin valollasi johtaa luoksesi edes
yhden ainoan täällä pimeässä harhanmaassa eksyksissä harhaelevan
vaeltajan! Suo minulle voimaa rukoilla tätä armoa Sinulta joka
kerran, kun kellosi kutsuu rukoukseen! Ja kun kellosi tornissa
ilmottaa kuoleman tulon, suo minun loppuun palaneena lampun
sydämenä sammua Sinuun!"

Pau—uu—uu! Pau—uu—uu! kumahti taas pitkä kirkonkellon ääni

tornista. Munkki nousi polviltansa, nosti syrjään Pyhän Kirjan ja alkoi
jatkaa kirjoitettavana olevaa teostansa, sanellen ääneensä:

— "Kuinka voi minun halpa kynäni kuvailla Sinun kunniaasi ja

suuruuttasi, joita julistavat lukemattoman lukemattomat maailmat!
Sinun käskystäsi syntyivät aikojen alussa auringot ja kuut ja tähdet
alku-usvista, ja valo pimeydestä. Sinun käskyäsi totellen maa
synnytti tuskalla vuoret ja nurmi kukkaset."
 Luostarin kirkosta kuului mahtavan köörin ihana laulu, tulvaten
kammioon avonaisen akkunan kautta. Tomunlapset tunnustivat
Jumalan suuruutta:

"Suuri olet Sinä, Jumala.

Sinun käskyjäsi kaikki tottelee.
Ja kaikki suuruuttasi tunnustaa."

Munkki jatkoi teostansa:

— "Sinun käskystäsi asettuivat luodut maailmat säätämillesi

radoille. Sinun käskystäsi lähtivät ne kuin orjat ijankaikkiseen
hurjaan sfeerilentoonsa. Eikä yksikään niistä voi säätämältäsi radalta
poiketa."

Kammioon virtasi taas laulu, kauniina kuin aamurusko, joka valuu

erakon asunnolle:

"Ei kenkään, ei kenkään voi Sua vastustaa.

Taivaat ja maat voimaasi tunnustavat.
Sun edessäsi kaikki vapisee.
Herra armahda! armahda, armahda!"

Munkki jatkoi:

— "Sinä kannat ratojansa karkaavat maailmat yli pohjattomien

kuilujen, halki pimeän avaruuden; Sinä hoidat varvulla istuvan
linnunpojan. Sinä tulitat yöksi taivaan laen ja päivin Sinä kasvatat ja
kastelet nurmen kukkaa."

Taas valui laulu kammioon, lohdullisena, kuin armas uni:

 "Suuri on Sinun armosi.
Sinä korjaat kurjat,
Sinä hoidat rammat,
Sinä kuivaat kyyneleet.
Et hylkää Sinä ketään,
et ketään.
Ei kuivu Sinun armosi.
Herra armahda!
Herra armahda! armahda!"

Munkki:

— "Ei kukaan voi luotasi paeta. Jokainen Sinua pakeneva kivi kierii
paetessansakin Sinun luoksesi. Jokainen lankeemuskin on askel
Sinun syliisi. Sillä Sinä et jätä ketään kuolemaan. Sinä yksin pysyt.
Kaikki muu pettää. Sinä olet ihmis-elämän selitys. Sinä olet sen
tarkotus; kaikki muu on virvaa. Sinä olet ainoa oikea johtotähti;
kaikki muu vie harhaan."

Rukoilijoiden huokaukset tulvasivat sisälle lumoavan kauniina

lauluna, tuskallisena kuin palava rukous:

"Me tunnustamme Sinun voimasi,

Sinun viisautesi ja armosi.
Jos sammuisi päivä, valaiset Sinä,
Jos tähti ei tuikkisi, johdat Sinä.

Et päästä Sinä harhaan ketään,

et ketään, et ketään.
Herra armahda! Herra armahda!"
 Ja kymmenien kirkonkellojen soitto yhtyi ihanaan lauluun, jolla
maahan langenneet mullanlapset tunnustivat Jumalan suuruutta ja
rukoilivat Häneltä armoa:

"Herra armahda! Herra armahda meitä synninlapsia!"

*****

Miehuutensa kypsyneimmässä ikä-ajassa oleva mies astui silloin

munkki Pietarin kammioon iloisena ja reippaana. Korkea otsa,
kulmikkaat, luisevat kasvot ja tukeva, voimakas leuka antoivat hänen
ulkomuodollensa omituisen, raskaan ja oudon ilmeen. Niissä oli
rumuus jollain henkisellä hämärällä hieman peitetty. Samalla ne
ilmaisivat henkisten voimien ainaista työtä. Käytöksessä oli jotain
vaatimatonta, samalla miettivää, jopa synkkää, iloisuudella
verhottuna. Ulkonaisessakin olemuksessa oli jotain hänelle itsellensä
epäselvää ja ruskeissa silmissä häämötti miettimisen levoton sumu.

Tämä tulija oli suomalainen Harhama. Tuttavallisesti, mutta

kohteliaasti, milteipä jonkunlaisella nöyryydellä tervehti hän munkki
Pietaria. Tämä keskeytti työnsä ja vastasi tervehdykseen lempeällä
äänellä:

— "Terve tuloa, veli Harhama! Kuinka voit"?

— "Kiitos, isä Pietari!" vastasi tulija. — "Tulin itse ilmottamaan

Teille kihlauksestani Magdan kanssa."

— "Olen siitä jo kuullut Anna Pavlownalta. Jumala siunatkoon

kihlaustasi!"

— "Kiitos, isä! Siunauksenne on minulle kultaa kalliimpi. Sen

saatuani on minulla nyt kaikki, mitä voin toivoa. Omaisuuteni
muodostaa Magdan tuoman perinnön kanssa tulevaisuuden turvan.
Kohta on minulla vaimo, joka minua rakastaa, perhe, joka antaa
elämälle tarkotuksen ja sisällön, jota juuri olen etsinyt ja kaivannut.
Minä olen nyt, monien harha-askelien jälkeen, löytänyt sen, jota
varten maksaa vaivan elää", puhui Harhama reippaasti. Munkki
Pietari kuunteli häntä rauhallisena ja kysyi, kun Harhama oli
lopettanut:

— "Eikö sinulla ole vielä mitään muuta, kuin omaisuus ja perhe?"

Se oli elämänjuonen langanpää… Kohtalonrihma alkoi purkautua

kerältä…

— "Mitä kaipaisin minä enää muuta?" — vastasi Harhama

huolettomasti naurahtaen.

— "Silloin ei sinulla ole vielä mitään — elämälläsi ei ole vielä

mitään tarkotusta", — lausui munkki Pietari lempeästi, mutta
vakuuttavasti.

— "Kuinka niin?" — kysyi Harhama oudostuen tätä odottamatonta

sanomaa…

— "Siksi", — vastasi Pietari entistä jyrkemmin, — "että kulta-

arkussasi on multaa. Se houkuttelee kotiisi varkaita ja vääriä ystäviä.
Tai on se juoksevaa erämaan hietaa. Tänään voi nousta tuuli, joka
vie sen pois ja silloin seisot sinä yksin erämaassa. Jos kulta oli
elämäsi tarkotus, niin eikö elämäsi menisi hiedan mukana? Etkö olisi
silloin ahava, joka ajelee meren tietämättömillä selillä?"

Harhama katsahti hämmästyneenä munkki Pietariin, jota hän

rakasti ja kunnioitti milt'ei Jumalalle tulevalla kunnioituksella. Hän oli
huomannut, että munkki puolestansa rakasti häntä kaikista hänen
vioistansa ja jumalankieltämyksistänsä huolimatta. Lisäksi oli Pietari
hänen isänmaansa lämmin ystävä. Se tieto sitoi Harhamaa häneen
katkeamattomilla siteillä. Ei uskontojen erilaisuuskaan ollut sitä
sidettä heikentänyt. Harhama ihaili olemuksensa kaikilla voimilla
munkki Pietarin jaloutta, hänen lempeyttänsä ja puhtauttansa.
Monesti oli hänen hienoissa kasvojenpiirteissään vilahtanut
Harhamalle Jeesuksen jumalalliset kasvon-ilmeet, äänessä Jeesuksen
lempeän äänen väre. Mutta nyt oli hänen äänessänsä jotain vakavaa,
kivikovaa; hänen katseessansa oli jotain surullista, voimakasta,
läpitunkevaa. Harhama säpsähti hiukan sitä kaikkea, kuin puukon
terää. Hän kysyi taas hämillänsä:

— "Minä en ymmärrä… miten tuuli veisi hiedan, joka on minun

käsissäni?"

— "Mutta myrskyn ja sinun kätesi ohjat eivät ole sinun käsissäsi",

— keskeytti munkki Pietari entistä vakavammalla äänellä. — "Myrsky
nousee Jumalan käskystä. Se painaa kohotetun käsivartesi alas ja vie
kullan tomuna luotasi."

Harhama oli aina leikkinyt kohtalonsa kanssa. Asema ja ura olivat

hänelle vesikelloja. Hän nautti, kun oli soittanut ne hajalle.
Kohtalollansa hän ajeli, kuin valkoisilla hevosilla, meren vaahdolla,
mistään välittämättä, ohjat valtoimina. Onnettomuuden sattuessa
nousi hänessä aina uhman musta pilvi. Silloin oli hänellä tienviittana
aukea ulappa, ohjaksina: "antaa mennä!" Synnynnäisen ulkonaisen
tyyneyden alla leimahti hänessä taas uhkapelaajan
välinpitämättömyys. Kuullessaan munkki Pietarin ennustelevan nousi
hänen henkensä kohtalon ratsuille. Se ajeli taas vaahtona vyöryvällä
merenselällä, valkeat hevoset hurjina, vaahto varana, edessä sumu,
takana vinkuva rajutuuli. Tyynenä, mutta päättävästi vastasi hän:

— "Mitä sitten, jos tuuli vie hiekan, kun jää se meren selkä!
Jäähän minulle vaimo elämän tarkotukseksi. Minä vien hänet
korpeen ja teen majan kuusen juurelle. Kuusen latvassa kukkuu
huoleton käki. Kohta kukkii peruna majan akkunan alla… kaskesta
nousee leipä ja kaivolta lehmisavu."

— "Mutta oletko varma, että vaimo lähtee mukanasi korpeen, jos

se päivä tulisi, jona onni ei paista?" — kysyi munkki Pietari
rauhallisesti.

Harhama vaikeni. Kysymys oli sattunut häneen kuin putoava kivi.

Hänessä helähti ennen kuulumaton kieli. Taru nousi tulevaisuuden
raosta. Hän alkoi lappaa sen rihmoja… ensin leikillä, sitten tosissa…
Munkki Pietaria hän oli katsellut kaksilla silmillä: oli pukenut hänet
taika-uskon sumuihin. Sen sumun takaa oli hän taas katsellut
hänessä Jumalan himmeää ilmestystä. Hän oli Harhamalle Jumala
noidan vaipassa — noita Jumalan haahmossa…

Siksi koski hänen kysymyksensä. Salamana välähti hänelle kuva

siitä tulevaisuuden illasta, jolloin onnen päivä ehkä sammuisi. Se
kuva oli kaamea: Tuuli on vienyt hiedan. Erämaan tiet on se
peittänyt… On yö… ei tuikahda tähti… Mutta kuutamo kisailee
ulapalla… Siellä vyöryy vaahto valkeana… ja kohtalon vallattomat
hevoset odottavat…

Mutta hän ei ole enää yksin… Hänellä on vaimo… Se näkee unta

tyttöaikansa kukista… pehmeistä vuoteista, soitosta, laulusta… Se
muistaa isän kotia… Siellä on elämä häntä hemmotellut, kuin äiti
lasta… Se on häntä lellitellyt, kuin päivänpaiste kissanpoikaa. Häntä
ei miellytä kuutamon kisakenttä, missä on vesi varana, myrsky
lauluna, yökylmä unena…

Jo hirnuvat kohtalon hevoset… Elämä levittelee ulapoitansa…

kuutamo kiehtoo sieltä… mutta hänellä on vaimo taakkana…

Harhaman sielussa värähti jokin. Hän mietti: Minun vallassani on

kaataa kaski, rakentaa maja. Mutta minä en voine määrätä onko
vaimo tyytyvä perunankukkiin, kaskensavuun ja käenkukuntaan. Sitä
miettiessä alkoi levottomuuden aave kummitella hänen sielussansa.
Mistä se tuli ja miksi, sitä ei hän täysin tajunnut. Kun Harhaman
vastaus viipyi, jatkoi munkki Pietari:

— "Ja vielä lisäksi: Kun sinä poltat kaskea, onko varma että vaimo
vartioi kotilieden puhtautta, että illan tultua rauha ja siunaus
odottaisivat siellä väsyksissä palaavaa kasken polttajaa? Oletko
varma että vaimo ei ole musta käärme, jonka kotiisi kuletat?"

Harhama vaikeni edelleen… "Todellakin" — mietti hän — "jos

tapaisin kodin häväistynä, vaimon petturina"… Se ajatuskin jo loihti
mustasukkaisia peikkoja hänen sielunsa iltahämäriin… Munkki jatkoi:

— "Vaimokin on ihminen, himonperhonen. Sinä tulena, jonka

ympärillä hän kieppuu, voi kyllä olla Jumala, ja silloin hän seuraa
sinua tuulen noustessa sataman rauhaan ja onneen kuusen juurelle.
Mutta hänen himonsa kiehtovana perhostulena saattaa olla myös
liha. Jos siis olet vaimon korottanut elämäsi tarkotukseksi, olet
perustanut elämäsi sumun varaan, majasi olet rakentanut lihasta
lihaan ajelehtivalle ihmishimolle. Himo saa sinusta kyllänsä: Se
polttaa lopulta siipensä sinussa… etsii toista… Vaimo heittää sinut
silloin, kuin revityn liinan märälle iljanteelle. Jumala yksin on ikuinen
satama myrskyssä, tuki iljanteella."
 Munkki Pietarin sanoissa oli tuomion jylinää. Levottomuuden
kummitus irvisteli entistä rohkeammin Harhaman sielussa. Eikä hän
jaksanut sitä alas painaa. Hän nojasi kyynäspäänsä pöytään, ja
varjosti silmänsä käsillänsä. Mietteiden rihmat juoksivat nopeina,
keräytyen pieniksi keriksi. Viimein kysyi hän jyrkästi:

— "Ketä varten minun on sitten elettävä, joll'ei vaimoani varten?"

— "Jumalaa varten vaimossasi, lähimäisessäsi ja kaikessa", —

vastasi munkki Pietari. Hän rakasti Harhamaa. Jumalan silmin oli hän
nähnyt sen savun läpi, joka peitti Harhaman sielua. Hän oli
vilahdukselta nähnyt sen savun takaa ne rauhaset, joista vuoti
Harhaman epäilyksen visva. Oitis oli hän käsittänyt, että Jumalan
kieltämys oli ainoastansa valevaippa, jolla Harhama salasi maailmalta
sielunsa alativuotavan henkisen pahantaudin: epäilyn…

Säälin hento oras oli aina silloin noussut munkki Pietarin sielussa.
Hän ei raskinut sanallakaan koskea ystävänsä sielun kipeisiin
rauhasiin. Mutta hän oli rukoillut. Hän odotti, että Jumala antaa
elämän terävän puikon puhkaista ne rauhaset. Mutta nyt, kun hän
kirjoitti teostansa, oli Jumalan suuruus temmannut hänet, kuin virta
vesikuplan. Hän tunsi saaneensa käskyn todistaa sitä suuruutta
Harhamalle.

Mietteiden säikeet keriytyivät Harhaman sielussa yhä nopeammin.

Joku levottomuuden himmeä hämähäkki kutoi niistä sotkuista
verkkoa. Hän ajatteli jotain niin hajanaista, ettei itsekään sitä
tajunnut. Mieli täynnä ajatuksien repaleita kysyi hän taas:

— "Isä Pietari! Eikö vaimon ja miehen rakkaus mielestänne ole

sitten kylliksi? Eikö se kestä kaikkia koetuksia? Eikö se jaksa kaataa
korpea kaskeksi, vartioida kotiliettä? Eikö se riitä muuttamaan majaa
linnaksi, erämaata yrttitarhaksi?"

— "Vaimon ja miehen rakkaus semmoisenansa on eläimen

rakkautta", — vastasi munkki Pietari, jatkaen: "Rakastavathan
eläimetkin sillä rakkaudella aikanansa toisiaan. Se rakkaus riittää
eläimelle vaan ei ihmiselle. Se on porton, vaan ei vaimon rakkautta.
Ainoastaan se rakkaus on oikea, joka vuotaa rakkauden ainoasta
alkulähteestä. Se polttaa miehessä huonon; se puhdistaa naisen
vaimoksi. Kaikki muu on virvatulta ja öistä himoa, joka ei siedä
päivän valoa, eikä kestä myrskyssä ja kiusauksissa. Se riittää
porttolassa, vaan ei kodissa."

Munkki Pietarin äänessä oli jotain yli-inhimillistä ja jyrkkää.

Harhama ei ollut koskaan ennen kuullut hänen puhuvan niin
tuomitsevasti, eikä niin vakuuttavasti. Levottomuuden kummitus
hiiviskeli hänen sielunsa salaisissa sopissa. Ajatukset keriytyivät ja
purkautuivat. Katseensa harhaili kammion seinällä kuin varjo. Hän
tunsi mielensä käyvän surulliseksi. Ajatuksiensa rihmoihin
sotkeutuneena, ikäänkuin itseksensä, kysyi hän taas:

— "Isä Pietari! Jos miehen ja naisen rakkaus ei riitä, onhan jälellä

vielä ihmisen siveellinen voima. Eikö mielestänne se riitä silloin, kun
täytyisi lähteä korpeen, tai pitää koetuksien keskellä kotiliesi
puhtaana?"

— "Mitä tarkotat ihmisen omalla siveellisyydellä? Jokaisen

vapauttako saada oman mielensä mukaan määritellä siveellisyyden
vaatimukset?" — kysyi munkki Pietari.

— "Ei! Vaan sitä siveellisyyttä, mikä ilmenee yhteiskunnan laissa ja

sen mielipiteessä. Ihmisen yleistä tietämystä siveellisyydestä", —
vastasi Harhama, tuntien samalla jonkunlaista epävarmuutta asiansa
oikeudesta. Munkki Pietarin vakuuttava ääni ja varmuus olivat
alkaneet lannistaa hänessä sitä voimaa, jolla hän piti yllä ja puolusti
oman itsensäkin edessä inhimillisen siveellisyyden aatteita, jotka hän
tahtoi saada vallitseviksi olemuksessaan.

— "Eikö sekään mielestänne riitä?" — kysyi hän hitaasti munkki

Pietarilta.

Munkki huokasi raskaasti ja lausui surullisena:

— "Katso ympärillesi! Mitä on ihmissiveellisyys? Eläimetkin

suojelevat pienokaisiansa, mutta miten moni ihminen hylkää
lapsensa tienviereen! Kuinka usein koirat nuolevat isäntiensä
vammoja, silloin kun nämä nälkäisinä ja haavoitettuina makaavat
lähimäistensä tai puolisonsa oven edessä! Kun sen näet, vastaa,
riittääkö yhteiskunnan siveys ihmis-elämän perustukseksi."

Yhä miettivämmäksi kävi Harhama, entistä epäselvemmäksi hänen

tajuntansa. Hänen katseensa kiintyi liikkumattomana Jumalan
kuvaan. Kasvoille levisi katkera ilme. Hän jatkoi kyselyään:

— "Eikö sitten mielestänne omaisuus, vaimon rakkaus, hyve ja

inhimillinen siveellisyys merkitse elämässä mitään?" — Munkki Pietari
vastasi Jumalan palvelijan vakuutuksella ja varmuudella:

— "Ennen kun päivä on puolessa, voi tuuli nousta ja puhaltaa pois

omaisuutesi. Ennen kun häävieraat lähtevät häistäsi, voidaan vaimosi
ottaa pois. Jumala koskettaa sinua sauvallansa huomenna ja
rikkauden viehätys varisee sinusta, kuin pöly. Kulta muuttuu tuliseksi
raudaksi, joka polttaa sormiasi, niin pian kuin Jumala on lyönyt
sinussa arvottomaksi tuhaksi sen, jota himotessasi kultaa kokoot.
Kotilietesi puhtauden vartija voi muuttua sen häpäisijäksi, sillä kaikki
pahe on ihmisessä mahdollinen. Kaikki, mikä ei ole Jumalasta, pettää
sinut, vie sinut harhateille. Kaikki muut elämän tarkotusperät ovat
hautausmaan öisiä virvavalkeita" — Ja osottaen Raamattua, lisäsi
hän: "Mutta tässä arkussa on aarre, jota ei tuuli eikä varas vie. Jos
ijankaikkisuus loppuisi ja avaruuden pohjat pettäisivät, pysyy
Jumala. Hän on ihmiselämän ainoa oikea tarkotus."

Pienestä pojasta asti oli Harhama miettinyt Jumalan olemassaoloa.

Sen tulen oli hänessä virittänyt isänsä jumalankieltämys.
Hämähäkkinä oli hän kutonut sen kysymyksen verkkoa. Itse oli hän
kietoutunut sen verkon rihmoihin. Sisälliset taistelut olivat alkaneet.
Hänen sielunsa muuttui tuskien ainaiseksi temmellyspaikaksi.

Aika oli kulunut… Tuskat yltyivät… Turhaan pyrki hän pois

verkostansa… Se kietoi häntä entistä lujemmin… sen verkon paulat
tavottelivat äärettömyyden rantoja… Ja hän itse paloi siinä
verkossa… Hänessä oli virinnyt epäilyn kuluttava tuli…

Mutta ääneti oli hän kiemurrellut tuskiensa pitimissä… vaiennut,

kuin hämähäkki… Ulkomuotoansakin hän vartioi, kuin kavaltajaa.
Tuskansa hän peitti teeskennellyllä iloisuudella… epäilynsä Jumalan
kieltämyksellä. Katseensa oli ainoa, jonka herraksi hän ei voinut
koskaan kohota… Hän tiesi sen… Suuret, ruskeat silmänsä olivat
hänen ainaiset ilmiantajansa… Niissä kuvastui se sielun hämähäkki…
harhaileva, epäselvä, kärsivä. Hän luuli niiden ilmi antamana
seisovansa alati maailman pilkkanaurun edessä… kuuli ivan kellojen
soivan… Kerran oli hän ne lukenut kipeiksi — kostaaksensa niille…

Pienestä pojasta oli hän niin kulkenut, povessa mietinnän tulihiili.

Kuoleman pelko oli hänen sielunsa syöpänä… Se oli ajattelun
tulivirike, epäilyn kipinä. Sen parantajaksi mietiskeli hän jo silloin sitä
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