Letter 517: I write to you often, and I rather wish you would not write back.
To Anatolius.
I write to you often, and I rather wish you would not write back. That would give me the right to complain about you, which matters enormously to me -- the pleasure of having a grievance to pursue. On the other hand, I would not actually want you to ignore my requests, so do oblige me.
What am I asking? As Demosthenes says: treat the man who delivers this letter as well as you can. You will be doing a kindness to a friend of mine, and you will gain a friend who knows how to express gratitude. That, I imagine, matters more to you than making money from other people.
AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed.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
Ἀνατολίῳ. (356)
Ἐγὼ σοὶ πολλάκις ἐπιστέλλων βουλοίμην ἂν σὲ μὴ γρά-
φειν ἐμοί. τοῦτο γάρ μοι δώσει σοῦ κατηγορεῖν, ὃ περὶ παν-
τὸς ἐμοί, τὸ σὲ διώκειν ἔχειν. οὐ μὴν ἔτ᾿ ἂν βουλοίμην σε μὴ
ποιεῖν ἃ ἂν κελεύω σε ποιεῖν, ἀλλὰ καὶ πάνυ ποιεῖ
τί
οὖν κελεύω; φησὶ Δημοσθένης. παρ’ οἱ, τὰ γράμματα δέχῃ,
τοῦτον ποιεῖν ὅ τι ἔχεις ἀγαθόν. καὶ γὰρ εἰς ἡμέτερον φίλον
εὐεργέτης ἴσῃ καὶ κτήσῃ φίλον ἐπαινεῖν εἰδότα. τοῦτο δὲ σοὶ
δήπου μέλει ἢ τὸ κερδαίνειν ἑτέροις.
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
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