Letter 1125: Alas! alas! how insatiable is your desire of further attainments!

Alas! alas! how insatiable is your desire of further attainments! You possess the palm of eloquence, snatched from others, at once "A matchless prince and a most potent sage" Other princes have acted and we applauded, but you excell in both those capacities. For how can we speak so highly in commendation of your actions as you do of that short letter? Hence I conjecture what you will do, when you have subdued Phoenicia , as already you administer justice to your subjects, wage war with the barbarians, and in the composition of orations far exceed the common rank. Though I am not solicitous as to the future, I shall be as much pleased with this slaughter as with a victory. For when the vanquished and the victor are friends, the vanquished has a share in the triumph; as friends, it is said, have all things in common. An allusion to Iliad III.178. As his letters witness, Julian also commended highly other orations of Libanius. I would understand this of the orators of Phoenicia. The proverb is quoted by Euripides in his Orestes, in the same words. See Gregory Nazianzen, Letter 64.