Letter 71: Even a short letter from you is enough to make me very happy.
To Commander Gregory 2
Even a short letter from you is enough to provide me with grounds for feeling greatly pleased.
Accordingly, since I was exceedingly pleased with what you wrote to me, I in turn send you a letter of the same length, because in my judgement the friendly greetings of comrades ought to be rewarded not by length of letter so much as by magnitude of goodwill.
2 A Gregorius Dux was pretorian prefect in 336, according to
Codex Theodosianus 3. 1. 2, but this purely formal letter of the type that survived in epistolary handbooks
and is probably addressed to a younger man.
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.
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