Roman Letters

Letter 915: Libanius tells Eustathius to abandon lawsuits and return to love.

Libanius→Eustathius, correspondent of Libanius|c. 390 AD|Libanius|From Antioch|AI-assisted
lawsuitsslandererosmythologypersonal advice
The closing invokes Eros through his torch and arrows, with the joke that a small god has enormous power.
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Your old work was love, and your name came from doing it. Now, instead of a lover, you have become a slanderer in our eyes, letting your tongue loose against everyone: human beings, heroes, spirits, and gods. But if you look at the matter correctly, you are eating yourself up more than being harmed by others. So say farewell to the courts and return to your old and beautiful service. Worship the torch and the arrows of the god who holds such great power in so small a body.

AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed.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

Ἔργον ἦν σοι πρότερον ἐρᾶν, καὶ τοὔνομά σοι παρὰ τοῦ τοῦτο ποιεῖν. νῦν δ᾽ ἡμῖν ἀντ᾽ ἐρωτικοῦ γέγονας συκοφάντης ἐπὶ πάντας ἀφιεὶς τὴν γλῶτταν, ἀνθρώπους τε καὶ ἥρωας καὶ δαίμονας καὶ θεούς. ἀλλ᾽, ἐὰν ὀρθῶς σκοπῇς, σαυτὸν ἐσθίεις μᾶλλον ἢ παρ᾽ ἄλλων ἀνιᾷ. τοῖς οὖν δικαστηρίοις ἐρρῶσθαι φράσας ἐπὶ τὴν ἀρχαίαν τε καὶ καλὴν ἐπάνελθε δουλείαν προσκυνῶν τήν τε λαμπάδα τά τε βέλη τοῦ μεγάλην ἐν μικρῷ τῷ σώματι κεκτημένου τὴν δύναμιν θεοῦ.

Text source →View original manuscript →

Revision history

  1. 2026-05-27v2.2.34-import

    Initial corpus import from modern libanius foerster vol11 batch4 managed agents v1.

    Fields: letter text, metadata, source links. Source: https://archive.org/download/foerster-libanii-opera/Foerster%20%281922%29%2C%20Libanii%20opera%2011_djvu.xml

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