Letter 2043: Thank you for the delicacies you sent.
43. Ruricius to the Lord Constantius.
I give thanks for the delicacies you have sent, and I indicate that I have received exactly as many of both kinds of birds as you specified; and at the same time I make known to your Affection that, by the very same servants who brought these things to us, I have sent across a boar's hide [tergus aprunum], so that, while we delight ourselves in the winged creatures which you have sent, you may be satisfied with a biped made out of a quadruped. Yet I would rather you be caught by its flesh than by its life, since the man who always thinks about worldly things and continually meditates upon earthly matters is in divine Scripture deservedly compared to this animal; for of all the animals man alone was created and made lofty, so that, ever intent upon heaven, he may gaze upon his Author, and not, fixed unceasingly upon the ground alone, occupy himself with worldly works.
AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed.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
XXXXIII. RURICII AD DOMNUM CONSTANTIUM.
De deliciis transmissis gratias ago et, quantum indicastis, tantum
me utrarumque auium suscepisse significo simulque etiam
per pueros ipsos, qui nobis haec detulerunt, tergus aprunum
me pietati tuae indico transmisisse, ut, dum nos uolatilia, quae
transmisisti, deliciamur, tu bipede de quadrupede facto satieris.
cuius tamen malo carne quam uita capiaris, quia, qui semper
de saecularibus cogitat et iugiter terrena meditatur, huic animanti
e scriptura diuina merito conparatur, quia de omnibus
animalibus solus homo sublimis creatus est et effectus, ut
auctorem suum semper caelo intentus aspiciat, non mundialia
opera solo incessabiliter defixus exerceat.
Revision history
- 2026-05-27v2.2.34-import
Initial corpus import from modern ruricius limoges retranslated v1.
Fields: letter text, metadata, source links. Source: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OpenGreekAndLatin/csel-dev/master/data/stoa0245a/stoa001/stoa0245a.stoa001.opp-lat1.xml
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