Letter 28: Procopius turns thanks for Victor's book into a meditation on memory and gratitude.

I have received the book I longed for more before experience than after it. Its title promises something very wonderful; in substance it brings nothing strange, but the sort of thing many writers, in many ways, have labored over. Out of thanks to you, I will keep silent about anything better I might say. Still, gratitude to you will lie inscribed in my memory, though not in the manner of Pausanias the Persian, who did not remain self-controlled to the end. He showed no respect for Plataea or for trophies dear to Greece, but handed over to outsiders the Greece that had been saved through him, as if he could not bear to remain fortunate to the end. You, by contrast, will do everything by caring for your own. So gratitude to you will be set down, not as the first, by Zeus, but as another first among many firsts. For good men, one gratitude from those who have benefited is enough: simply to remember what they have received. May I never forget even those who wanted to do good only in intention, even if what they planned never reached completion.

Βίκτορι ἀδελφῶι Δέδεγμαι τὸ βιβλίον τὸ πρὸ τῆς πείρας μᾶλλον ποθούμενον. ἥκει γὰρ τῇ μὲν ἐπιγραφῇ θαυμαστὸν ἡλίκον, τῷ δὲ πράγματι ξένον φέρον οὐδέν, ἀλλ' ὃ καὶ πολλοῖς καὶ ποικίλοις ἐσπούδασται. σοῦ δὲ χάριν καὶ ὅ τι βέλτιον εἰπεῖν σεσιγήσθω. ἀλλ' ὅμως κείσεταί σοι χάρις εἰς ἐμὴν μνήμην ἀνάγραπτος, πλὴν οὐχ οἵα παρὰ τῷ Πέρσῃ τῷ Παυσανίᾳ τῷ μὴ μέχρι παντὸς σωφρονοῦντι. ὁ μὲν γὰρ οὐδὲ Πλαταιὰς αἰδεσθεὶς οὐδὲ τρόπαια φίλα προεδίδου βαρβάροις τὴν δι' αὐτοῦ σωθεῖσαν Ἑλλάδα, ὥσπερ οὐκ ἀνεχόμενος εἰς τέλος εὐτυχὴς ἐπιμεῖναι· σὺ δὲ τὰ οἰκεῖα περιέπων οὐδὲν ὅ τι μὴ δράσεις. κείσεταί σοι τοίνυν ἡ χάρις οὐ πρώτη, μὰ Δία, πρὸς πολλαῖς δὲ πρώταις ἑτέρα. μία δὲ χάρις παρὰ τῶν εὖ παθόντων ἀρκέσει τοῖς ἀγαθοῖς μεμνῆσθαι μόνον ὅτι πεπόνθασιν. ἐμοὶ δὲ γένοιτο τὸ μηδὲ τῶν μέχρι βουλῆς εὖ ποιεῖν ἐθελόντων ἀμνημονεῖν, εἰ καὶ μὴ πέρας ἔσται τοῖς δόξασιν.