Letter 40: I have just sent you a present: a horse that is perfect in every quality a horse should have.
Letter 40: A gift of a horse
[1] To Uranius
I have just sent you a present, a horse most perfect in every quality that befits a horse. You will find him useful for racing as well as for hunting, and when you lead a triumphant procession in honor of the Libyan victory. I do not know for which purpose he is most valuable, whether for hunting or for contests in the hippodrome, or again, whether for parade or for actual warfare. [2] If he is less beautiful than the horses of Nesaea , if he is heavy about the head and too thin about the flanks, perhaps God does not give all points together to horses any more than to men. After all perhaps it is an additional good quality in his case that the soft parts of the body are less developed by nature than the hard. Bones, I know, are more equal to toil than flesh is. Your horses are heavier in flesh, ours in bone.
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.
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