144 THE DECLINE AND FALL covered to the Avorld, and perhaps to himself, the pride of his character ; and the first favour which he condescended to bestow on his friend was received, and perhaps was intended, as a cruel insult.^^ Instead of employing the superior talents of Gregory in some useful and conspicuous station, the haughty prelate selected, among the fifty bislioprics of his extensive province, the wretched village of Sasima,^ without water, without verdure, without society, situate at the junction of [HassaKeui?] three highways, and frequented only by the incessant passage of rude and clamorous waggoners. Gregory submitted with reluctance to this humiliating exile ; he was ordained bishop of Sasima ; but he solemnly protests that he never consum- mated his spiritual marriage with this disgusting bride. He [Henizi] afterwards consented to undertake the government of his native church of Nazianzus,^^ of which his father had been bishop above five-and-forty years. But, as he was still conscious that he deserved another audience and another theatre, he Aoceptsthe accepted, with no unworthy ambition, the honourable invitation Constantino- which was addrcsscd to him from the orthodox party of Con- November [or stantinople. On his arrival in the capital, Gregory was enter- tained in the house of a pious and charitable kinsman ; the most spacious room was consecrated to the uses of religious worship ; and the name of Aiiastasia was chosen to express the resurrection of the Nicene faith. This private conventicle was 29Gregory's Poem on his own Life contains some beautiful lines (torn. ii. p. 8), which burst from the heart, and speak the pangs of injured and lost friendship : , . TTOVOL KOivo Aoyajp, '0/i.doT€yd? re koI (ruviinio^ /3co;, NoCs eis iv aii.(^olv . , , Aie(TKe&a(TTai nivTa, eppiirrai afLaX, Avpat (Je'povcroi Tas TioAatos eXn-iSos [477-483]. in the Midsummer Night's Dream, Helena addresses the same pathetic complaint to her friend Hermia : Is all the counsel that we two have shared, The sister's vows, &c. Shakespeare had never read the poems of Gregory Nazianzen , he was ignorant of the Greek language ; but his mother-tongue, the language of Nature, is the same in Cappadocia and in Britain. 3*^ This unfavourable portrait of Sasima is drawn by Gregory Nazianzen (tom. ii. de Vita sua, p. 7, 8[Migne, 3, p. 1059]). Its precise situation, forty-nine miles from Archelais [Ak Serai] , and thirty-two from Tyana, is fixed in the Itinerary of Antoninus (p. 144, edit. W'esseling). 31 The name of Nazianzus has been immortalized by Gregory; but his native town, under the Greek or Roman title of Diocassarea (Tillemont, M^m. Eccl^s. tom. ix. p. 692), is mentioned by Pliny (vi. 3), Ptolemy, and Hierocles (Itinerar. Wesseling, p. 709). It appears to have been situate on the edge of Isauria. [i; Aioicaio-ape'iov oXCyr) iroKi^, as Gregory calls Nazianzus, is more northerly than Gibbon supposed, lying on the road from Iconium to Tyana ; about six hours due east of Archelais; Ramsay, Asia Minor, 285.]
