Letter 76: Your habit of mocking the sophists is old and well-established, and apparently the Pythia [the oracle at Delphi]...
**To Anatolius** (359 AD)
Mocking sophists has long been your habit, and now the Pythia too must suffer the same treatment — all so that you may act in a manner befitting your new rank. Well then, both the sophists and the Pythia say to you: may you never cease mocking what deserves to be honored.
For my part, believing that you held me in affection, I used to write to you and promised myself some kindness in return, asking nothing beyond your power — only the sort of favors you scattered daily upon the worthy and unworthy alike. But when, instead of acting on my behalf, you sent me a letter full of jesting, I judged the time had come to write no more, whether for a favor or for any other reason.
When you escaped your illness, I rejoiced no less than you who escaped it. But surely one could rejoice without writing, and it does not follow that whoever did not write did not rejoice. Just as among those who did write that they were glad, one might perhaps find someone who was not truly glad, so too it was possible to rejoice in silence.
What you wanted was a flatterer, not someone who rejoiced out of genuine friendship. And when you claim not to know why I stopped writing, you surpass the first insult with a second — for at the time you did not think me worthy of your attention, and now you do not even realize that you neglected me.
You have suffered from something not uncommon among those in power. For you men of brilliant fortune do not even consider yourselves to be wronging those you wrong, believing it your right to treat others with contempt while they must everywhere grovel before you.
You see, it would have been better for you not to stir the anagyrus bush? But now, having wished to break my silence, you have broken it upon your own head, and you have learned a thing done — and this though you are no child, but a man who yields not even to Odysseus in cunning.
As for Optatus: for sending him gold you earn our praise. But that you sent a hundred staters, hoping to make him a rhetorician with gold, when you could have sent a thousand — for that you earn no praise. For if the amount you sent can do no small good, you would have helped him still more with a larger sum. Still, even this small gift is greatly valued by us, and the expenditure is being put to proper use.
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