Rufinus' Preface to the Translation of Origen's Commentary on Romans
Tyrannius Rufinus (344–411)
Rufinus' Preface to the Translation of Origen's Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans
Addressed to Heraclius at Aquileia About a.d. 407
My intention was to press the shore of the quiet land in the little bark in which I was sailing, and to draw oat a few little fishes from the pools of Greece: but you have compelled me, brother Heraclius, to give my sails to the wind and go forth into the deep sea; you persuade me to leave the work which lay before me in the translation of the homilies written by the Man of Adamant in his old age, and to open to you the fifteen volumes in which he discussed the Epistle of Paul to the Romans. In these books. while he aims at representing the Apostle's thoughts, he is carried away into a sea of such depth that one who follows him into it may well be afraid of being drowned in the greatness of his thoughts as in the vastness of the waves. Then also you do not consider this, that my breath is but scanty for filling a grand trumpet of eloquence like his. And beyond all these difficulties is this, that the books themselves have been interpolated. In almost all the libraries (I grant that no one can tell how it happened) some of the volumes are absent…
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