Letter 2020: Forgive me for replying so quickly — I still owe something to my age: an unruly haste.
Ennodius to Constantius.
Forgive me for replying so quickly — I still owe something to my age: an unruly haste. Gravity and deliberation suit you better. So indulge a man who trusts you, and shield my trifles from the severity of public scrutiny. If my writing is a shaky and uncertain affair, it takes shelter under the patronage of your command — on the principle that no one disdains what has been ordered. And so, with a farewell, I commend what I have written for your reading: for in the future, having been well received, I will be spurred to obedience by the gentle goads of compliance.
AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed.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
XX. ENNODIVS CONSTANTIO.
Dabis ueniam quod celer rescripsi, quia aetati adhuc debeo
indocilem festinationem. uos maturitas et pondus decet. proinde
credentem fouete et nugas meas a publico rigore subducite,
quia si pagina nostra res crepera atque anceps est,
iussionis uestrae se tuetur patrocinio, ab hoc quod nemo imperata
fastidit. uale ergo dicens legenda commendo: fiet etenim
ut posthac bene accepti ad parendum delenificae oboedientiae
stimulis incitemur.
Revision history
- 2026-03-20v2.1.0-import
Initial corpus import from Unspecified import source.
Fields: letter text, metadata, source links. Source: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OpenGreekAndLatin/csel-dev/master/data/stoa0114a/stoa008/stoa0114a.stoa008.opp-lat1.xml
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