Letter 1013: A short letter on how one student's reputation draws another to Libanius.
Your education, and your victory through it, sent us the first young man and now the second as well; the first helped bring the second here. That is what reputation does, and what it will keep doing: it carries word of these things everywhere, exposes one man's laziness, proclaims another's hard work, and this second report has stirred up another whole group. That is how I think Rhetorius came. He will receive what each of the others receives, the gift you adorned with the image of the sun. Once he has gained it, may he keep it, and not suffer what some do: looking elsewhere, they end with none of what they once had.
AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed.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
Κυρίνῳ. (391)
1. Ἡ σὴ παιδεία καὶ τὸ ταύτῃ νικᾶν ἔχειν ἔπεμψε μὲν τὸν
πρότερον ἡμῖν, ἔπεμψε δὲ τὸν δεύτερον συμβαλλομένου τι καὶ
τὸ τοῦ προτέρου πρὸς τὸ καὶ τὸν δεύτερον ἐλϑεῖν. τοιαῦτα γὰρ
ἡ φήμη καὶ ποιεῖ καὶ ἐργάξεται᾽ φέρει πανταχῆ τὸν περὶ τῶν
πραγμάτων λόγον καὶ ῥᾳϑυμίαν τινὸς ἐμήνυσε καὶ πόνους
ἐκήρυξε, τὸ δεύτερον δὲ τοῦτο φυλὴν ἑτέραν ἐκένησεν. 2. οὕτω
μὲν οὖν ἡγοῦμαι τὸν “ητόιον ἐλϑεῖν᾽ ὃς ἕξει μὲν ἃ καὶ τῶν
15 ἄλλων ἕκαστος -- ὃ δὴ σὺ τῇ τοῦ ἡλίου κατεκόσμησας εἰκόνι ---
κτησάμενος δὲ φυλάξειεν, ἀλλὰ μὴ τό τινων ἀπολέσειε παϑών,
οἱ πρὸς ἕτερα βλέποντες εἶτ᾽ ἔχουσιν ὧν εἶχον οὐδέν.
Revision history
- 2026-05-27v2.2.34-import
Initial corpus import from modern libanius foerster vol11 batch10 t260 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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