Letter 9028: The duty I am charged with grows harder in harsh conditions.

Ennodius to Agapius. Harshly has the mind, stirred by recollection, called back to memory the dutiful service of a grieving spirit toward the remembrance of sorrowful things. For forgetfulness is always the remedy of grief, since what we cannot bury by reason we bury through the long passage of time. It is well, because affliction grows old with the length of days, and the consolation of a great sorrow is sooner brought about through silence. For in matters of this kind more is accomplished by doing nothing. But what am I doing, since the reading of your letter tears open the inner depths of a scar already drawn over, and revives, with bitter fate, the buried recollection of an untimely death? Could I then have given consolation to our common brother, when, if any humanity is believed to be in me, I would so grieve myself? Or has a consoler in tears ever given pleasure? Is medicine then to be expected from those who are themselves diseased? No; of me, lord Agapius, you judge rightly, if both in the griefs of your own brother and in the death of your spiritual son I come forward, as it were, as a debater against your opinion. Sound breasts find a path of healing: no one frees another from that by which he himself labors. But of this elsewhere: God is mighty, who alone has power to meet such things and to lift the burden of our common ill. Yet, bestowing upon you the homage of an honorable greeting, we ask that you frequently confer upon us the gifts of an epistolary exchange. To such pursuits it befits one neither loving nor eloquent to be slothful.

XXVIII. ENNODIVS AGAPIO. Duriter officium gestientis animi ad memoriam tristium mens recordatione stimulanda reuocauit. nam semper remedium doloris obliuio est, quia quod ratione non possumus temporum prolixitate sepelimus. bene est, quia diuturnitate senescit adflictio et magni doloris consolatio citius per silentium procuratur. nam in huiusmodi negotiis plus agitur nil agendo. sed quid facio, quia epistolae uestrae lectio iam obductae cicatricis penetralia rescindit et sepultam inmaturi funeris recordationem amara sorte uiuificat? ergo ego communi fratri consolationem dare poteram, cum, si quid humanitatis in me esse creditur, sic dolerem? aut umquam flens placuit consolator? ergo expectatur medicina de morbidis? non; de me, domne Agapi, 1 adcessione B ,8 instabili PТ2b, inatabilem BLTlV 6 obsecuritate L 7 uel] et P et Sirm . aecclesiastici B 9 eue- neret B XXVIII. 13 agapito L, agapito in agapio V corr. m. 1, faosto T 16 obliuio doloris TVb, obliui∗∗oloris L 17 sepeli∗m\' (e ? eras.) L, septimas in sepelimus V corr. m. 1 seniscet B 18 consnlatio B, ∗∗∗solatio L citius] ciiius b, om. sirm . 18 negociis B 20 nostrae b ei Sirm . obducta Sirm. 21 rescindit PT2b, rescindet Tl, rescindent LV, rescendent B . 22. sortae B consulationem B 24 nunquam T placauit fort . 25 domni B bene iudicas, si et in germani tui maeroribus et in obitu spiritualis filii ego quasi opinioni tuae disputator occurro. sana pectora iter curationis inueniunt: nemo alterum unde ipse laborat absoluit. sed hinc alias: potens est deus, qui solus ad ista ualet occurrere et communis mali subleuare pressuram. uos tamen honorificae cultu salutationis inpertiens rogo, ut crebro mihi epistolaris commercii munera conferatis. ad quae studia pigrum esse nec amantem conuenit nec facundum.