Letter of Mara bar Serapion (Mara bar Serapion, a Syriac Stoic, MS 6th–7th century; letter probably shortly after AD 73). A father's letter of consolation to his son from Roman captivity, arguing that nations which kill their wise men are punished: Athens starved after Socrates, Samos burned after Pythagoras, and the Jews lost their kingdom after executing their wise king — who, he adds, lived on in the laws he had given. Preserved in a single Syriac manuscript, British Library Add. 14658, acquired from the monastery of St Mary Deipara in the Nitrian Desert in 1843 and published in English by William Cureton in 1855.