Two cities, Cæsarea in Cappadocia and Neocæsarea in Pontus, have both been named as his birthplace.  There must be some amount of uncertainty on this point, from the fact that no direct statement exists to clear it up, and that the word πατρίς was loosely employed to mean not only place of birth, but place of residence and occupation. Gregory of Nazianzus calls Basil a Cappadocian in Ep. vi., and speaks of their both belonging to the same πατρίς.  In his Homily In Gordium martyrem, Basil mentions the adornment of Cæsarea as being his own adornment.  In Epp. lxxvi. and xcvi. he calls Cappadocia his πατρίς.  In Ep. lxxiv., Cæsarea.  In Ep. li. it is doubtful whether it is Pontus, whence he writes, which is his πατρίς, or Cæsarea, of which he is writing.  In Ep. lxxxvii. it is apparently Pontus.  Gregory of Nyssa (Orat. I. in xl. Mart.) calls Sebaste the πατρίς of his forefathers, possibly because Sebaste had at one time been under the jurisdiction of Cappadocia.  So in the N.T. πατρίς is the place of the early life and education of our Lord.  Basil’s parents had property and interests both in Pontus and Cappadocia and were as likely to be in the one as in the other.  The early statement of Gregory of Nazianzus has been held to have weight, inasmuch as he speaks of Basil as a Cappadocian like himself before there was any other reason but that of birth for associating him with this province. Maran, Vit. Bas. i.  Assenting, then, to the considerations which have been held to afford reasonable ground for assigning Cæsarea as the birthplace, we may adopt the popular estimation of Basil as one of “The Three Cappadocians,” Böhringer. and congratulate Cappadocia on the Christian associations which have rescued her fair fame from the slur of the epigram which described her as constituting with Crete and Cilicia a trinity of unsatisfactoriness. Καππάδοχες, Κοῆτες, Κίλικες, τρία κάππα κάκιστα.  On Basil’s own estimate of the Cappadocian character, cf. p. 153, n.  cf. also Isidore of Pelusium, i. Epp. 351, 352, 281.  Basil’s birth nearly synchronizes with the transference of the chief seat of empire from Rome to Byzantium.  He is born into a world where the victory already achieved by the Church has been now for sixteen years officially recognized. The edict of Milan was issued in 313.  He is born into a Church in which the first great Council has already given official expression to those cardinal doctrines of the faith, of which the final and formal vindication is not to be assured till after the struggles of the next six score of years.  Rome, reduced, civilly, to the subordinate rank of a provincial city, is pausing before she realises all her loss, and waits for the crowning outrage of the barbarian invasions, ere she begins to make serious efforts to grasp ecclesiastically, something of her lost imperial prestige.  For a time the centre of ecclesiastical and theological interest is to be rather in the East than in the West.