Letter 496: Oh, for those times when we were everything to each other!
Βασιλείῳ. (356)
Ὢ χρόνων νίνων, ἐν οἷς πάντα ἦμεν ἀλλήλοις. νῦν
δὲ διῳκίσμεθα πικρῶς, ὑμεῖς μὲν ἔχοντες ἀλλήλους, ἐγὼ δὲ
ἀνθ᾿ ὑμῶν οἶοί περ ὑμεῖς οὐδένα.
τὸν Ἄλκιμον ἀκούω
τὰ νέων ἐν γήρᾳ τολμᾶν καὶ πρὸς τὴν 'Pώμην πέτεσθαι περι-
θέντα σοι τὸν τοῦ συνεῖναι τοῖς παιδαρίοις πόνοι
σὺ δὲ
τί τε ἄλλα πρᾷός τις καὶ τοῦτο οἴσεις οὐ χαλεπῶς, ἐπεὶ καὶ
ἡμῖν τοῦ μὴ γράψαι πρότερον οὐκ ἔσχες χαλεπῶς.
Related Letters
To Βασιλείῳ. (361?)
We often ill advisedly hate our superiors and love our inferiors. So I, for my part, hold my tongue, and keep silence about the disgrace of the insults offered me. I wait for the Judge above, Who knows how to punish all wickedness in the end, even though a man pour out gold like sand; let him trample on the right, he does but hurt his own soul.
It is sometimes said that slaves to the passion of love, when by some inevitable necessity they are separated from the object of their desire, are able to stay the violence of their passion by indulging the sense of sight, if haply they can look at the picture of the beloved object. Whether this be true or not I cannot say; but what has befallen...
I have always admired your goodwill toward me, and I could never convince myself that you did this without some god...
To a Priest.