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6 So the Paris text: the Vatican has "Origen." The person meant is probably the Eugenius who came from Egypt with 70 disciples to Nisibis, to introduce the ascetic life into that region, and lived there from the time of the consecration of St. Jacob till the surrender in 363. His life is related in the inedited ms. Ad'd. 12174 (Lives of Saints), of the British Museum.
7 This city lay quite out of the region of the Nitrian monasteries. Possibly In the original form of this biography, the "Enaton" (i.e. the Ninth District) of Alexandria was named as the place of Ephraim's sojourn and subsequent transcribers changed the word into Antino.
8 As represented by Gregory Ephraim was a very Democritus among saints:"As with all men to breathe is a natural function unceasing in exercise, so with Ephraim was it to weep. There was no day, no night, no hour, no moment however brief, in which his eyes were not wakeful and filled with tears, while he bewailed the faults and follies, now of his own life, now of mankind. By groans he made a channel for the streams of his eyes or rather, by the outflow of the eyes he looked his groans.... There was no interval of time between them, groans succeeding to tears and they again to groans, as in a sort of circle; so that it was impossible to distinguish which made the beginning and which was the cause of the other. Any one who makes acquaintance with his writings will perceive this characteristic; for he will be found lamenting not only in his treatises on penitence, or morals, or right conduct, but even in his panegyrics, in which it is the habit of most writers to show an aspect of rejoicing. But he was every where the same, and abounded perpetually in this gift of compunction."
10 Casarae, the see of Basil, lay far from the sea, in the heart of the inland province of Cappadocia. The Caesarea of the Acts of the Apostles (Stratonis), the metropolis of Palestine was a seaport.
11 The feast of St. Mamas (a Cappadocian martyr) falls in August, not in January. A sermon of St. Basil for that feast is extant (Hom. XXIII.). Probably the author of this History knew that sermon, and was thus led to mention the commemoration here, carelessly disregarding the time of year.
12 To the pseudo-Amphilochius.
13 Paraenesis xxvi. II (Opera Syr.), Tom. III. p. 467. The word, however, is perhaps not to be taken literally.
14 Opera Syriaca, Tom. I., p. 8.
15 In Syriac, Bardaisan (son of Daisan), so called from his birthplace beside the river above mentioned.
16 See Bickell, Carmina Nisibena, p. 101.
17 Opera Syriaca, Tom. II., p. 554, see also Homily I.
18 The Seven Aeons (or Beings) of Bardesan's heresy; see Opp. Syr. II., p. 550.
19 The heretic Apollinaris seems to have been a younger man than Ephraim, whom he survived by some years. Possibly his father, the elder Apollinaris, is here intended. But he is not recorded as having taught heresy.
20 To this church were translated the bones of St. Thomas the Apostle, from his burial place in India, in the time of Eulogius the successor of Barses (378-387),-as we learn from Barhebr(us, Chronicon Eccles. I. 21 (p.65 of Abbeloos and Lamy's edition). But the above narrative, as confirmed by Socrates (IV. 18), shows that it had been built and was held in special reverence before that. It is the church at which our History places the healing of the paralytic (above). Sozomen's account (VI. 17) in the main agrees; also Theodoret's (lV. 17).
21 Baronius, Annales, IV. p. 308. The Vatican Life reads Julian for Valens in this narrative, thus introducing inexplicable preplexity into the chronology. Julian died before Ephraim became a resident of Edessa.
22 Printed in Overbeck's Ephraemi S. Opera Selecta, p. 137; also in the (Roman) Opera Graeca, at the end of Tom. II., p. 395.