10. Who has not known Basil, our
archbishop’s father, a great name to everyone, who attained a
father’s prayer, if anyone, I will not say as no one, ever
did? For he surpassed all in virtue, and was only prevented by
his son from gaining the first prize. Who has not known Emmelia,
whose name was a forecast of what she became, or else whose life was an
exemplification of her name? For she had a right to the name
which implies gracefulness, and occupied, to speak concisely, the same
place among women, as her husband among men. So that, when it was
decided that he, in whose honour we are met, should be given to men to
submit to the bondage of nature, as anyone of old has been given by God
for the common advantage, it was neither fitting that he should be born
of other parents, nor that they should possess another son: and
so the two things suitably concurred. I have now, in obedience to
the Divine law which bids us to pay all honour to parents, bestowed the
firstfruits of my praises upon those whom I have commemorated, and
proceed to treat of Basil himself, premising this, which I think will
seem true to all who knew him, that we only need his own voice to
pronounce his eulogium. For he is at once a brilliant subject for
praise, and the only one whose powers of speech make him worthy of
treating it. Beauty indeed and strength and size, in which I see
that most men rejoice, I concede to anyone who will—not that even
in these points he was inferior to any of those men of small minds who
busy themselves about the body, while he was still young, and had not
yet reduced the flesh by austerity—but that I may avoid the fate
of unskilful athletes, who waste their strength in vain efforts after
minor objects, and so are worsted in the crucial struggle, whose
results are victory and the distinction of the crown. The praise,
then, which I shall claim for him is based upon grounds which no one, I
think, will consider superfluous, or beyond the scope of my
oration.