To Modestus. (360)
Here is another matter that needs correction. No one in our city is like Asterius -- nor anywhere else, I suspect. The man has devoted extraordinary care to virtue, not because old age quenched his unruly passions, but because his nature led him toward self-control from childhood. He is therefore held in reverence by his fellow citizens -- no more by those older than him than by those who were younger.
When I meet the old man and we fall into conversation, I feel as though my uncle [Libanius's beloved uncle Phasganius] were still alive.
So when you thrust him into the smoke and clanging of metalworkers -- tasks as far removed from his life as swans are from furnaces -- I was deeply pained and ready to write at once. But I asked him to endure a little while and to do you the favor of accepting labors he was unaccustomed to, assuring him that relief would come soon.
Since the work drags on, however, and there is disorder among the laborers, and the man loves quiet -- he has turned away offices that came to his very doorstep -- and since good men should have cause to rejoice in your power, and since Asterius flees what others pursue and would gladly leave his own house if he could not live there in his own way, I beg you: praise him for wanting to mind his own business and for the service he has already given, and transfer the assignment to someone else. You govern many people.
Asterius, even freed from this labor, will not sit idle. Admiring your achievements will be work enough for him.
Here is another matter that needs correction. No one in our city is like Asterius -- nor anywhere else, I suspect. The man has devoted extraordinary care to virtue, not because old age quenched his unruly passions, but because his nature led him toward self-control from childhood. He is therefore held in reverence by his fellow citizens -- no more by those older than him than by those who were younger.
When I meet the old man and we fall into conversation, I feel as though my uncle [Libanius's beloved uncle Phasganius] were still alive.
So when you thrust him into the smoke and clanging of metalworkers -- tasks as far removed from his life as swans are from furnaces -- I was deeply pained and ready to write at once. But I asked him to endure a little while and to do you the favor of accepting labors he was unaccustomed to, assuring him that relief would come soon.
Since the work drags on, however, and there is disorder among the laborers, and the man loves quiet -- he has turned away offices that came to his very doorstep -- and since good men should have cause to rejoice in your power, and since Asterius flees what others pursue and would gladly leave his own house if he could not live there in his own way, I beg you: praise him for wanting to mind his own business and for the service he has already given, and transfer the assignment to someone else. You govern many people.
Asterius, even freed from this labor, will not sit idle. Admiring your achievements will be work enough for him.
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.