Letter 392: Our city is more in love with you than you are with me — and while your affection for me may be undeserved, theirs...

To Aristaenetus. The people of our city are more in love with your soul than you are with mine; and you with mine perhaps not with good reason, but they with yours and with very good reason indeed. So that, were there not the hope that you will come to them [...] they themselves would long since have been at your side. The magistracy of Apellion, that fine man, grants both that you should see good things before [coming to] our city, and that he should enjoy his beloved boy before the other lovers do. You will marvel at his gentleness, his guilelessness, his knowing how to love, his not knowing how to gain what is not honorable. To these things Egypt already bears witness, and you too will affirm them once you have made trial of him.

Ἀρισταινέτῳ. (355) Ἡ πόλις ἡμῶν πλέον ἐρῶσι τῆς σῆς ψυχῆς ἢ σὺ τῆς ἐμῆς· καὶ σὺ μὲν τῆς ἐμῆς ἴσως οὐκ εἰκότως, οἱ δέ γε τῆς σῆς καὶ μάλα εἰκότως. ὥστ’ εἰ μὴ ἦν ἐλπὶς ὅτι αὐτοῖς ἀφίξῃ- πάλαι ἂν ἦσαν αὐτοὶ παρὰ σοί. ἡ όὲ Ἀπελλίωνος ἀρχὴ τοῦ καλοῦ σοί τε δίδωσι πρὸ τῆς ἡμετέρας ὁρᾶν ἀγαθὰ τούτῳ τε πρὸ τῶν ἄλλων ἐραστῶν ἀπολαύειν τῶν παιδικῶν. θαυ- μάσῃ δὲ αὐτοῦ τὸ πρᾷον, τὸ ἄδολον, τὸ φιλεῖν εἰδέναι, τὸ μὴ εἰδέναι κερδαίνειν ἃ μὴ καλόν. ἃ μαρτυρεῖ μὲν Αἴγυπτος ἤδη, 5 φήσετε δὲ καὶ ὑμεῖς πειρώμενοι.