Libanius to Basil.
Will you not give over, Basil, packing this sacred haunt of the Muses with Cappadocians, and these redolent of the frost 3285 and snow and all Cappadocia’s good things? They have almost made me a Cappadocian too, always chanting their “I salute you.”
I must endure, since it is Basil who commands. Know, however, that I am making a careful study of the manners and customs of the country, and that I mean to metamorphose the men into the nobility and the harmony of my Calliope, that they may seem to you to be turned from pigeons into doves.