Letter 3008: If giving offense results in a doubling of your letters, how I wish the calm tranquility of your serene heart could...
Ennodius to Avienus.
If giving offense results in a doubling of your letters, how I wish the calm tranquility of your serene heart could be disturbed more often! Were it not against my principles, I would deliberately provoke causes for your indignation -- since what love could not earn, I have obtained through faults.
I declare myself, however, innocent in the very matter for which you accuse me of negligence -- yet in accusing me, you have bestowed a reward. I dispatched a messenger in agitation, through whom I revealed nothing beyond what was necessary. A free heart leaves the tongue idle for courtesies; a troubled mind refuses the grace of greeting.
So thanks be to God on both counts: I am not guilty, and you believed I was. Your annoyance has brought me a gift that affection itself could scarcely have produced. I cannot express what I owe you. Love is impoverished in whose telling speech does not fail.
My lord, in offering the greeting that is owed, I pray to God that whatever is in your heart, you will always write.
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.
Related Letters
If you had been concerned about my humble person, the concern would have shown itself in action.
The reports of your illness have reached me, and I write with the urgency that love demands.
It would be only fitting for Your Greatness to display the riches of your talent while following the teachings of...
How well it is that what you modestly decline, you happily emulate; and while you complain that your Greatness is...
I marvel at the splendor of Your Greatness's fame — a fame that grows not through self-promotion but through the...