Letter 7023: Your Greatness extends the festivities of the wedding, and the joy that attends them spreads like ripples in water.

23. Ennodius to Maximus. Your greatness prolongs the wedding festivities far beyond their proper season: while you keep pursuing, over a long stretch of time, the very thing to which you were compelled, all at once your necessity has become your desire. Let someone else lean forever upon that business to which he came down unwilling! In this way you have withdrawn from your careful guarding of the blessedness you once kept, as though over long ages you had learned how a man is trained to be a devoted husband. Thirty days have happily slipped away, and you still steal yourself away from the city and from my eyes, wearing me down with long expectation. Truly, do whatever you wish: if I live, I will not keep silent about the things I have woven together to be said to you. Yet, having received the honor of my greeting, accept the little taste from these few drops, as it befits a brother to receive from a brother what is sent. Blush for shame, you, because you neither inquire after a sick man nor send any of those nuptial delicacies which might relieve my distaste.

XXIII. ENNODIVS MAXIMO. Producit magnitudo tua nuptiarum festa temporibus: dum rem, ad quam coactus es, sub diuturnitate prosequeris, subito necessitas tua facta est desiderium. aliquis negotio illi perenniter incumbat, ad quod descendit inuitus P sic recessisti a custoditae beatitudinis diligentia, quasi prolixis temporibus didicisses, qualiter institueretur uxorius. triginta feliciter dies abierunt, et te ciuitati adhuc (et) meis oculis longa me macerans expectatione subducis. uere quicquid uis facias: si uixero, quae tibi dicenda texui, non tacebo. tamen honore salutationis accepto gustum de guttulis, ut fratrem decet a fratre, directa suscipite. erubesce tu, quia nec aegrum requiris nec de nuptialibus deliciis quae possent fastidium releuare transmittis.