Letter 61: The joy is doubled when you can address friends through a mutual intimate — because then it is not only your written...
To Sopater 5
It is an occasion to rejoice the more when one has the chance to address friends through an intimate friend. For then it is not only by what
you write that you unite the image of your own soul with your readers. And this is what I myself am doing. For when I despatched the custodian of my children,1 Antiochus, to you, I could not bear to leave you without a word of greeting. So that if you want to have news of me, you can have from him information of a more intimate sort. And if you care at all for your admirers, as I believe you do care, you will prove it by never missing an opportunity while you are able to write.
5 This letter is rejected by Schwarz, Cumont and
Geffcken; Schwarz on the slender evidence of style classes it with the apocryphal letters to
Iamblichus; Cumont also places it in that series, and thinks that this Sopater is the friend of the elder Iamblichus executed by Constantine.
1 No forger would have referred to children of Julian's body; but the phrase may refer to his writings.
Libanius, Epitaphius, says of Julian's letters .... See also To
Iamblichus, p. 255.
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.
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