Letter 18: Aeneas praises Theodorus and Syrian Attic eloquence.
Let Homer be Smyrna's. Let Aristides share the honor. My rhetorician is Theodorus. And this too is surely mine, if the good qualities of children are counted as belonging to their father. Bravo for your beautiful voice and style: because of it the sons of Athenians now think they should learn Attic speech not from their fathers but from Syrians. Lovers of the Academy no longer put in at the Piraeus, nor do they go to the Lyceum; they think the Academy and the Lyceum are with us. I have received enough repayment from you if Ionians will sing of me too as their ancestor because of you, and, seeing clearly the images of my soul, will also sketch the form of my body. The robe that came from you gives my appearance more splendor and gives your reputation a finer beauty.
AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed.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
ιη'. Θεοδώρῳ σοφιστῇ.
Ἔστω Σμυρναῖος Ὅμηρος· Ἀριστείδης κοινωνείτω τῆς φιλοτιμίας· ὁ ἐμὸς ῥήτωρ Θεόδωρος. πάντως ἐμὸν καὶ τοῦτο, εἴγε τὰ τῶν παίδων καλὰ τοῦ πατρὸς εἶναι νομίζεται. εὖγε τῆς ὑμετέρας εὐφωνίας, δι' ἣν τῶν Ἀθηναίων οἱ παῖδες οὐ παρὰ τῶν πατέρων, παρὰ δὲ τῶν Σύρων ἀττικίζειν ἀξιοῦσι μανθάνειν.
Revision history
- 2026-05-27v2.2.34-import
Initial corpus import from modern aeneas gaza hercher v1.
Fields: letter text, metadata, source links. Source: https://archive.org/download/epistolographoih00herc/epistolographoih00herc_djvu.txt
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