Letter 1001: A calming letter urging silence, restraint, and return to ordinary rural life.
Some people came from you to me, and from them I heard how deeply you were wounded in spirit when we were insulted: what you said, what you cried out, and what you did. It is no surprise that your house avoids no labor that might improve our situation. But it would be noble for you to stop this zeal, make it stop, keep silence, and allow those who long for this victory to win it. Send our man back to us, persuading him not to consider such things unbearable. Let him desire neither office nor anything else unlawful, but fields, trees, and bees doing their own work. If he had listened to what I said, he would not have been insulted; since he ignored that, let him now be persuaded by you not to deprive himself any longer of what is his.
AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed.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
1. Ἦλθόν τινες παρ' ὑμῶν ὡς ἡμᾶς, ὧν ἦν ἡμῖν ἀκούειν, ὅπως μὲν ἐπλήγης τὴν ψυχὴν ὑβριζομένων ἡμῶν, οἷα δὲ ἐφθέγξω, οἷα δὲ ἐβόησας, οἷα δὲ ἐποίησας. 2. τὸ μὲν οὖν τὴν οἰκίαν ὑμῶν μηδένα πόνον φεύγειν ᾧ γένοιτ' ἂν τὰ ἡμέτερα βελτίω, θαυμαστὸν οὐδέν· καλὸν δέ σε παύσασθαί τε καὶ παῦσαι τὴν σπουδὴν ταύτην καὶ σιωπῆσαι καὶ ἐᾶσαι νικᾶν τοὺς τῆς νίκης ταύτης ἐπιθυμοῦντας. 3. σὺ δ' ἡμῖν τὸν ἡμέτερον ἀπόπεμψον πείσας μηδὲν τῶν τοιούτων νομίζειν ἀφόρητον. καὶ μήτε ἀρχῆς ἐπιθυμείτω μήτε ἄλλου τινὸς ὧν οὐ θέμις, ἀλλ' ἀγρῶν καὶ δένδρων καὶ μελιττῶν τὸ αὑτῶν ἐργαζομένων. εἰ μὲν γὰρ προσεῖχεν οἷς ἔλεγον, οὐδ' ἂν ὕβριστο· παριδὼν δὲ ἐκεῖνα παρὰ σοῦ πεισθήτω μὴ πλείω χρόνον ἀποστερεῖν ἑαυτὸν τῶν ἑαυτοῦ.
Revision history
- 2026-05-27v2.2.34-import
Initial corpus import from modern libanius foerster vol11 batch9 t259 reviewed v1.
Fields: letter text, metadata, source links. Source: https://archive.org/download/foerster-libanii-opera/Foerster%20%281922%29%2C%20Libanii%20opera%2011_djvu.xml
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