An Argument over Teachers

Illud autem minimum quidem est, et responsione vix dignum, quod enumerans doctores suos, quos se de synagoga dicit esse mercatum, stimulans nos, subjungit: Neque enim, inquit, ipse me docui, sicut quidam; nos sine dubio intuens, in quos omne ab initio lacertionis suae pondus invexit. Et miror hoc eum dicere voluisse, cum majorem in me et veriorem haberet obtrecrandi materiam, quod magis inter multos et praeclaros magistros diu moratus, nihil dignum eorum, vel magistero, vel institutionibus habeam. Caeterum iste qui in tota vita sua non totos triginta dies Alexandriae, ubi erat, Didymus commoratus est, per totos pene libellos suos longe lateque se jactat. Didymi videntis esse dicipulum, et katheghten, id est praeceptorem, in scripturis sanctis habuisse Didymum. Et omnis ista jactantia in uno mense quaesita est. Ego qui sex annis Dei causa commoratus sum, et iterum post intervallum aliquod, aliis duobus, ubi Didymus, de quo tu solo te jactas, et ubi alii nihilominus illo non inferiores, quos tu ne facie tenus quidem nosti, Serapion et Menites, viri natura et moribus et eruditione germani: ubi Paulus senex Petri Martyris discipulus: et ut ad eremi magistros veniam, quibus et attentius et frequentius vacabamus, ubi Macarius Antonii discipulus et alter Macarius et Isidorus et Pambas, omnes amici Dei, qui nos haec docebant, quae ipsi a Deo discebant: quantum ego, si hoc ita deceret, aut expediret, de his omnibus habere jactantiae materiam possem? Sed erubesco, haec etiam retexens, dum volo tibi ostendere, non, ut tu dicis, nostro ingenio magistros, sed quod plus doleo, magistris defuisse magis ingenium nostrum. Rufinus Aquileiensis, Apologiae In Hieronimum

It is a trivial thing and scarcely worthy of response, that, relating the various teachers whom he hired from the synagogue, he concludes, thus to needle me, 'Indeed I have not been my own teacher, like some,' without doubt meaning me, for he brings the whole weight of his assault against me from beginning to end. But I am amazed that he should have chosen to speak of this when he had available a more grave and more fearful matter to disparage me, that though I tarried for so long among many eminent teachers I possess nothing worthy of their teaching or their training. He indeed has not in his whole life stayed more than thirty days at Alexandria, when he dwelt with Didymus, yet through almost all his books he boasts, at length and at large, of it, that he was seen to be the pupil of Didymus the blind and that for his preceptor in the Holy Scriptures he had Didymus. And the material for all this boasting was acquired in a single month. But I, for the cause of God, stayed six years, and again, after a certain interval, for two more, where Didymus lived, of whom alone you boast, and where others also lived who were in no way inferior to him, but whom you did not know even the faces of, Serapion and Menites, men like twins in nature and conduct and learning, and there was Paul the Old, pupil of Peter the Martyr, and, to come to the teachers of the desert, to whom I listened frequently and attentively, Macarius the disciple of Anthony, and the other Macarius, and Isidore and Pambas, all friends of God, who taught me those things which they had learned from God. How much material, if I thought it decent or expedient to boast, would I have from all these men? But I blush even while I weave these things together, which I do wishing to show you, not, as you say, my masters' talents, but, what I grieve over, that my talents fell short of my masters. Rufinus of Aquileia, Apology against Jerome