How the Translation Came About

Some time ago Macarius, a man distinguished for his faith, his learning, his noble birth and his personal life, had in hand a work against fatalism, or Mathesis, as it is called. He was spending much needed and fruitful labor on writing it, but he could not settle many points, especially how to speak of the arrangements of divine Providence. He found the matter very difficult. But in the visions of the night, he said, the Lord had shown him what looked like a ship far off at sea, coming toward him; and when that ship came into port, it was to solve all the knotty points that had puzzled him. When he got up, he began to think anxiously about the vision, and he found, as he said, that it was the very moment of my arrival. So he at once told me the scope of his work and his difficulties, and also the vision he had seen. He went on to ask what the opinions of Origen were, since he understood him to be the most renowned of the Greeks on the points in question, and he begged me to explain his views on each of them briefly and in order. At first I could only say that the task was a very difficult one. But I told him that that holy man, the martyr Pamphilus, had dealt with the question to some extent in a work of the kind he wanted, that is, in his Apology for Origen. At once he begged me to translate this work into Latin. I told him several times that I had no practice in this kind of writing, and that my ability to write Latin had grown dull through the neglect of nearly thirty years. He, however, kept on with his request, begging earnestly that, in whatever words might be possible, the things he longed to know should be put within his reach. I did what he wished in the best language I could manage. But this only set him on fire with a greater desire to know in full the work itself from which, as he saw, the few passages I had translated had been taken. I tried to excuse myself, but he pressed me hard, calling God to witness his earnest plea that I not refuse him the means that might help him do a good work. It was only because he insisted so earnestly, and it seemed clear that his desire was according to the will of God, that I at last agreed and made the translation. [a]