Letter 117: You lied, but the lie made your son better -- and there's room for that kind of lie even in Plato's ideal city [a...
To Acacius (359/60)
You deceived me, it is true — but your son has been made the better by that deception, and for such a deception we see there is a place even in Plato's city.
For my part, I have always longed to see Titianus, but I was never persuaded that he was in any worse condition while with his father and his father's teaching — nor would I have been, even if Machaon himself had been at his father's side.
If I were to say that this young man's soul has become golden, having received so many beauties, I would be honoring gold itself — and, if you like, the gold of Colophon at that.
I find myself wondering what the harvest would have been for you in summer, when you had favorable breezes, given that in such stifling heat so much has been gathered. What you described to me I did not doubt, and I found it surpassed still more in the offspring of his speeches — speeches that Titianus brings forth nobly, though there will be no few who call them poor out of ignorance, and more still, I suspect, out of envy.
Related Letters
Even before your letter arrived, I knew both that you had fallen into terrible illness and that you had recovered...
News has reached me of the severe persecution carried on against you, and how directly after Easter the men who fast for strife and debate Isaiah 58:4 attacked your homes, and gave your labours to the flames, preparing for you indeed a house in the heavens, not made with hands, 2 Corinthians 5:1 but for themselves laying up in store the fire whi...
The promise of David's psalm is true indeed, for through him the Spirit of truth gave this assurance to believers:...
Titianus should have been stirred to action by a letter from you, but it seems the rumor is true -- you are unwell.
Every possible pressure and strategy has been brought against Daphnus -- Clematius has done everything, Apodemius no...