After the bustle of his life in Constantinople, Synesius settled down for some years in his native province passing the summer on his country estate.

He could always make himself happy wherever he was and find enjoyment in little things. He could forget the bad harvests and dark tales of what the Goths were doing in Italy, in the lively talk of his friends, in the books he was writing, in the wonders of the desert which bordered Cyrenaica, and in the supreme joy of a short visit to Athens. Then, when he was twenty-eight he went over to Alexandria to be married to a girl whom he had probably met at the time he was living there. We do not know very much about her, not even her name, but she seems to have made Synesius quite happy, and to have looked well after their children. One thing we gather about her, in spite of his silence, and that is, she was a Christian, for the ceremony was performed by the Bishop of Alexandria, though Synesius himself was as yet unbaptised.

There was soon a large nursery of children in the house, for besides his own boys and girls Synesius took charge for some time of his nephew Dioscurius, the son of Euoptius, and also of a daughter of his sister Stratonice, who had married as her first husband a man named Theodosius, an official of the Imperial Court. Synesius may have made the acquaintance of this little niece when he had gone there on his embassy, but at any rate he was so fond of her that one of his letters is full of lamentations, when, at the end of her visit to him, he was obliged to give her up to his brother Euoptius, then living on the seashore a few miles from Cyrene.

"I shall often come to see you," he said, as he put her into her litter with her nurse, and ordered his slaves to watch over her till she reached the end of her journey. Phycus, the home of Euoptius, was only a few miles from Cyrene, and Synesius could easily have walked over there in the afternoon, and would  have done so if he had been alive now. But the only time he spoke of walking, his whole household looked at each other in speechless horror.

"As if any gentleman would dream  of going on foot beyond his own garden!" they whispered to each other in hushed voices, and somehow when Synesius called for his cloak to protect him from the night air, it had mysteriously disappeared. He had known by experience the chills which come on in the south at sunset, and dared not venture without it, and for that day he was obliged to stay at home.

Though he was always ready to join in the children's games, Synesius looked after their education himself and did not entrust it entirely to tutors. Most likely he told them in the evenings the tales of Greece which he had learned as a little boy from his own mother—the beautiful fairy stories as well as the things that really happened; how Leonidas and his three hundred Spartans defeated the Persians in the Pass of Thermopylæ; how the rulers of Carthage, the town which they should some day visit westwards beyond the setting sun, had sent forth Hannibal, one of their bravest generals, to conquer Rome, and how he had failed in consequence of their wicked treatment of him. These and other tales they heard, and listened to them with breathless interest. "If you want to know the saddest story in the whole world," he would say, "you can read it by and bye in this roll containing the book of Thucydides, with his account of the Sicilian expedition, and if you wish to hear how Egypt appeared to a Greek traveller 800 years ago, you will find all sorts of funny things in Herodotus." He also took pains that, young as they were, they should learn the most splendid passages in the Greek and Roman poets, and every morning Dioscurius, who seems older than the rest, came to his room and repeated to him fifty lines of poetry.

In Cyrene, Synesius had many slaves to do the work of the estate. The greater number of these had been born in the service of the family and were quite as much interested in seeing that everything was well done as Synesius himself. "Ah! if that man had always lived here, he would never have dreamed of running away," he said once of a slave who had disappeared, and when another, who had come from a distance proved too drunken to keep, his master merely sent him home with the remark, that vice always brought its own punishment.

Great was the rejoicing among the children—his own and probably some others also—when the time arrived for them all to go into the country. It was not only the change and the freedom that they liked, but the people were an endless amusement to them as well as to their father.

"Just fancy! they have never seen fish before!" they shrieked with delight, on watching the farmers and labourers crowding round a barrel of salt fish which had just arrived from Egypt.

"Come near," whispered one of the band, "and let us listen to what they say."

"Why they seem quite frightened," cried another, "at the idea of anything living in water!"

"Well, of course," answered the eldest, who had read more and travelled more than the rest, "there are no rivers here, and it would never do to have things living in wells. But you are too small to know anything about that," and he moved away with his head in the air, leaving the little boys much subdued behind him.

Although Synesius was always happy in the country, whether he was ostrich-hunting or observing the bees in their hives, or drilling his children or studying some new question of the day, he was not a very successful farmer, and it was lucky for him that the soil was so rich that the crops almost grew of themselves. The slopes were covered with olives which gave them oil for their lamps, grapes grew on trellises or trees, the fields were yellow with barley, figs were everywhere. Goats, from which they got their milk, jumped about and tried to butt the passers-by; while camels, horses and cattle were proudly shown off to Synesius' visitors. He made a collection, too, of the arms used by the various tribes in the district, and spent many hours practising with them. On wet days he shut himself up with his books, and wrote a great many letters and pamphlets which we still have, and at these times he was happiest of all.

During the year after his marriage some of the barbarians that dwelt in the surrounding country flung themselves, as they frequently did, upon the rich Pentapolis, or district of the Five Cities, and laid waste the crops and drove off the cattle. They also besieged some of the towns, in one of which Synesius was for a time shut up. We do not know what became of his wife during this time. Perhaps she had been sent back at the first hint of danger to her relations in Alexandria, and Synesius would certainly have felt more free without her. From the besieged town he managed somehow to get a letter conveyed to a friend in Syria begging for some of the native arrows, which were far better than those of Egypt, and also for a horse called Italus, which had some time before been offered to him, probably as a wedding present. In all ways he did his utmost to spur the citizens to resistance, but does not appear to have been very successful, as they were extremely reluctant to wield the lances, swords, axes, and clubs he provided for them. Happily the enemy melted away this time, though another soon sprang up, and the blades of the weapons were never suffered to grow rusty if he  could help it.

The year 409 was the most important in the life of Synesius, for it found him a country gentleman, a farmer, a student, a philosopher, even a soldier; and left him, as yet unbaptised, the chosen bishop of the city of Ptolemais.

"I would rather die than be a bishop," he writes to a friend at the end of the eight months allowed him by the Patriarch of Alexandria to make up his mind, for he knew that his consecration would mean the giving up of almost everything he cared about, if he was to do his duty. Yet there was a general feeling, not only amidst the bishops and Patriarch of the Egyptian Church, but also among the people of the Pentapolis, whose consent was needed, that he was the only man who could stand between them and the barbarians from the south—every year more daring and troublesome. It was thought, too, and not without reason, that his word would have influence with the men in power at the court of Constantinople, many of whom were his friends. So the result of these considerations was that one day Synesius received a letter saying that he had been appointed bishop by the voice of the clergy and of the people.

It came to him as a great surprise, though, of course, he knew of many instances—as for example, that of Ambrose—when a man who was not even in orders had been compelled to undergo consecration. He turned over the matter from every point of view for some time, and at length wrote an answer to his brother, then in Alexandria, which was also to be shown to his friends in the city and to the Patriarch Theophilus.

"He had all his life been a learner," he says, "and how does he know that he is fitted to become a teacher?" Though he has loved the society of his fellow-men, his happiest hours were those which he passed alone. As a bishop he will have to be at the beck and call of every one, and he will hardly find a single moment in which to examine his own soul. Still, if it is his duty to accept office, he will be ready to set aside his studies, and to relinquish the amusements which have been so great a pleasure to him; he will consent to let his hounds pine in vain for a hunt, and his bow rot upon the wall. But one thing he will never give up, and that is his wife, and more than that, he will suffer no compromise such as others have made with their consciences, and will live openly with her as before. He closes the letter by pointing out certain subjects on which he desires more teaching and explanation, and leaves the decision to the electors.

In reply, the Patriarch bade him take eight months to weigh the matter, and at the end of this period Synesius gave in to their wishes, though holding fast to his own principles. "If he finds that he is unfitted to do the work demanded of him," he says, "he will resign and go to Greece." So with a firm intention to fulfil the duties thrust upon him, he accepted baptism, and immediately after was consecrated Bishop of Ptolemais.

The three years of life remaining to him were spent in labouring for his people and in trying to forget in his work the troubles and sorrows which crowded upon him. To a man who had always felt that others had as much right to their own consciences as he himself, it was painful as well as tiresome to be continually inquiring into the particular religious principles of the dwellers in his diocese; to pass hours deciding their quarrels and in writing to officials either at Alexandria or Constantinople, to complain of the exaction of a tax-gatherer or the corruption of a magistrate. Yet he had to do all these things, besides conducting the services in his own church, watching carefully over the men who were allowed to preach in his diocese and making visitations to every part that he might see with his own eyes how his rules were carried out. If he could sometimes have had a day's hunting or a few hours alone with his books, he would have gone back rested to his work, but there was never a moment he could call his own.

He had counted the cost when he accepted the charge, and he paid the price in full.

Synesius and his family no longer lived in Cyrene or in the country. Those two homes had to be parted with, as well as other things, when he was made a bishop; and Ptolemais, further to the west, and once the port of Carthage, was where they now lived. But no sooner had they settled there than one of Synesius" little boys fell ill. Every instant that his father could spare was, we may be sure, spent with the dying child; but besides the duties demanded of him by the Church, the bishop was engaged in a hard struggle with the newly-appointed Governor of the Pentapolis, Andronicus by name, who was grinding down and oppressing the people. At length a meeting was called, and after Synesius had spoken on the difficulty of his position in having to keep order in the land as well as in the Church, he read out the sentence of excommunication passed by the clergy against "Andronicus of Berenice, born and bred to be the curse of the Pentapolis," whereby he and those that went with him were cut off from God and man.

The tyrant was not strong enough to stand for long against the power of the bishop, and shortly after the resignation which was forced upon him, he died miserably.

Scarcely was this affair settled than another of the children fell ill and died in a few days. But again Synesius was forced to put aside his private grief and take thought for the defence of the country, which was harassed by the raids of some tribes of barbarians, who took delight in kidnapping the children in order that they might be taught to fight against their own countrymen. The skilful young General, Anysius, beat them back for a while; but after he was recalled by order of the Prefect of Constantinople, things became worse than ever, for the new leader was old and useless. In this desperate state of things, Synesius not only used all his influence to obtain a larger army and a better general, but worked hard himself at the defences, and often shared the duties of the common soldiers.

His work and his sorrow together proved too much for him, and a letter to his old friend Hypatia, in the year 413, tells a sad tale of weakness that is fast overpowering him. We do not hear anything of his wife, and it is uncertain if at this moment she is alive or not, but the death of his third son gave him the final blow. He had no strength and no wish to continue his labours as bishop, and there are signs in one of the last letters we possess, that he intended ending his days in a hermitage. Whether he lived long enough to do this we cannot tell, but this much we know, that in the year 413 a severe illness overtook him, and after that his history is a blank. It is better to think that he died then, for he had been taken from the life that suited him and thrust into a place for which he was not fitted, and the effort to live up to what was required of him wore him out.

Note.—I am much indebted in this story to Miss Alice Gardner's book Synesius of Cyrene, published by the S.P.C.K.") ?>