Letter 400: We are faring as you would pray — and as some people here would not.
To Rhetorius. (355)
We are faring as you would pray, and as some among us would not pray. But for you the pleasure would be greater to see us present than to hear of us in our absence. Why then, knowing this, do you not reap the greater gladness? And why do you not come here, when we are here, as you often did when we were not here? You think that by sitting still you will get me back, and somewhere you even fix a time beforehand and laugh, as one who holds the upper hand. But know that it is open to us too to draft a decree and to make our petition, and the emperor is ready to grant the favor, and he brings forward [...] he does not know.
AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed.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
Ῥητορίῳ. (355)
Πράττομεν, ὡς ἂν εὔξαιο καὶ ὡς οὐκ ἂν ἔνιοι τῶν παρ’
ἡμῖν εὔξαιντο. σοὶ δὲ μείζων ἂν ἦν ἡδονὴ παρόντι ὁρᾶν 20
ἢ ἀπόντι ἀκούειν.
τί δὴ μαθὼν οὐ καρποῖ τὴν μείζονα
εὐφροσύνην; τί δὲ οὐ δεῦρο βαδίζεις ἡμῶν ὄντων ἐνθάδε; ὅ
πολλάκις ἔδρασας ἡμῶν οὐκ ὄντων ἐνθάδε· οἴει καθήμενος
ἀπολήψεσθαί με καί που καὶ χρόνον προλέγεις καὶ γελᾷς ὃς
ἔχων. 3, ἀλλ’ ἴσθι καὶ ἡμῖν ὑπάρχον ψήφισμα γράψαι καὶ
δεηθῆναι, δοῦναι δὲ χάριν ἕτοιμος βασιλεὺς καὶ προσάγει
ἀωάγλην οὐκ οἶδεν.
Revision history
- 2026-05-27v2.2.34-import
Initial corpus import from modern libanius retranslated v1.
Fields: letter text, metadata, source links. Source: https://github.com/OpenGreekAndLatin/First1KGreek/blob/master/volume_xml/libanius_10.xml
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I send you a young man who was once my student and who now practices law.
The brevity of this letter should not be taken as a measure of the favor being asked.
(Perhaps about a.d. 357 or 358; in answer to a letter which is not now extant.) I have failed, I confess, to keep my promise. I had engaged even at Athens, at the time of our friendship and intimate connection there (for I can find no better word for it), to join you in a life of philosophy.
It is time for you to call the Nile a small river, since you also call yourself small in eloquence.
1. The heroic deeds of your present splendour are small, and your grand attack against me, or rather against yourself, is paltry. When I think of you robed in purple, a crown on your dishonoured head, which, so long as true religion is absent, rather disgraces than graces your empire, I tremble.