Letter 174: If we did not trust you completely, we would not have sent a servant and a ship to Sinope.
To Eusebius and Faustus. (360)
If we did not trust you completely, we would not have sent a servant and a ship to Sinope. We are well aware that you are the city -- that if you lend your support, everything runs before a fair wind, and if you oppose... but I will write nothing ominous in a letter.
Noble friends, now is the time to repay us. Our gifts to you may have been modest, but they were everything we had.
AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek below for scholarly use.
Latin / Greek Original
Εὐσεβίῳ καὶ Φαύστῳ. (360)
Εἰ μὴ σφόδρα ὑμῖν ἐπιστεύομεν, οὐκ ἂν οἰκέτην καὶ 10
πλοῖον εἰς Σινώπην ἐξεπέμπομεν. οὐ γὰρ ἀγνοοῦμεν ὡς
ὑμεῖς ἡ πόλις, κἂν συλλαμβάνητε, πάντα ἐξ οὐρίων θεῖ, κἂν
ἀντικρούσητε, — βλάσφημον δὲ οὐδὲν <ἐν> ἐπιστολῇ
γράφω. ἀλλ᾿ ὦ γενναῖα θρέμματα, νῦν κομι-
δήν. καὶ γὰρ εἰ μικρὰ τὰ παρ’ ἡμῶν εἰς ὁμᾶς, ἀλλ’ ἅ γε εἴ-
χομεν.
Revision history
- 2026-03-20v2.1.0-import
Initial corpus import from AI-assisted translation from original text.
Fields: letter text, metadata, source links. Source: https://github.com/OpenGreekAndLatin/First1KGreek/blob/master/volume_xml/libanius_10.xml
Related Letters
Both your eloquence and your devotion hold to their accustomed standard, and for this reason I admire your speech...
I knew you would do the things you are now doing, and that you would write well.
Even before the letter-bearer arrived, word had reached us of the honor you enjoy from a man who himself deserves...
Let me borrow something from Demosthenes to talk to you about this man Bassus.
I showed my affection not by accepting the gifts so much as by the pain I felt earlier over what pained me.