Roman Letters

Letter 7: Aeneas replaces quarrel with a festival of friendship and rhetoric.

Aeneas of Gaza→Diodorus the Scholasticus|c. 500 AD|Aeneas of Gaza|From Gaza, Palaestina Prima|AI-assisted
reconciliationrhetoricfriendshipcomedy
Source label in Hercher: ζ'. Διοδώρῳ σχολαστικῷ / VII. Diodoro scholastico. First-time modern English translation prepared from the Greek source and checked against Hercher's Latin alignment.
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Excellent Herodotus has reconciled us, because he is a musician in the truest sense. His music surpasses that of Orpheus and Thamyris. Now at last we have recognized one another, after fighting before as if in a battle by night, and we have abundant peace. So let us set up a mixing bowl and pour out libations as people do in peace: among the gods to Hermes, and among men to Herodotus, who finally dissolved our quarrel. As we celebrate them, let us drive comedy out of our letters, since she runs about shamelessly and exposes the affairs of dearest friends. In her place let us call in the whole retinue of friendship: persuasion, grace, pleasure, applause, and praise. With these let us seat a more dignified theater and forbid comedy to trouble us further.

AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek below for scholarly use.

Latin / Greek Original

ζ'. Διοδώρῳ σχολαστικῷ.
Διήλλαξεν ἡμᾶς ὁ καλὸς Ἡρόδοτος, ἅτε μουσικὸς τυγχάνων. νῦν γοῦν ἐγνώμεν ἀλλήλους ὥσπερ ἐν νυκτομαχίᾳ πρότερον πολεμοῦντες, καὶ εἰρήνη συχνή. κρατῆρα στήσαντες οἷον ἐν εἰρήνῃ σπονδὰς ποιησώμεθα θεῶν μὲν Ἑρμῇ, ἀνθρώπων δὲ Ἡροδότῳ. τὴν δὲ κωμῳδίαν ἐξελάσομεν, εἰσκαλεσάμενοι τὴν πειθώ, τὴν χάριν, τὴν ἡδονήν, τὸν κρότον, τὸν ἔπαινον.

Text source →View original manuscript →

Revision history

  1. 2026-05-27v2.2.34-import

    Initial corpus import from modern aeneas gaza hercher v1.

    Fields: letter text, metadata, source links. Source: https://archive.org/download/epistolographoih00herc/epistolographoih00herc_djvu.txt

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