Abba Arsenius: The Tutor of the Emperor's Sons

Abba Arsenius, who lived in luxury and pleasure, living the life of kings, who was a scholar in Rome, honored in Constantinople, tutor of Emperors, living in palaces-his food becomes dried bread and a morsel of beans, his drink a little of foul water with a great deal of tears. After being an eloquent rhetorician, he becomes the most renowned model of silence. And he, whom they could not find a better tutor than him in Rome, becomes passionate about learning from others, and with the least nod. And he, who had mastered Latin and Greek, both language and culture, seeks to learn the alphabet on the path of virtue from a simple monk. And after having for a time taken pleasure in fragrant perfumes, he is pleased that water become fetid in his cell, in the vessel in which he soaked the palm leaves, without complaining.