Letter 273: To the same person. (361?

To the same person. (361?) The man who makes my lecture hall a fine theater is the rhetor Megethius. He shouts with the volume of fifty men, and with that voice he has often stopped a speaker in his tracks. A warm listener who interrupts the flow of a speech with cries of wonder is, I think, a great thing for any speaker. At my public lectures I repay his cheering with a smile and a friendly greeting. But now I have found, through you, a grander way to repay him. You disciplined his brother with a fine -- or rather, you disciplined him with the fear of it and then helped arrange for the penalty to be lifted. Your written order and your ruling say the money should be returned, but the money, for reasons unknown, refuses to find its way into their hands. So either persuade it or compel it not to flee its owners -- so that they may have what is theirs, and so that nothing you have ordered may come to nothing.

τῷ αὐτῶ. (361?) Ὁ καλόν μοι τὸ θέατρον ποιῶν Μεγέθιός ἐστιν ὁ ῥή- τωρ· βοᾷ γὰρ τηλικοῦτον ὅσον ἄλλοι πεντήκοντα καὶ τούτῳ γε πολλάκις τὸν λέγοντα ἔστησε μέγα δέ, οἶμαι, τῷ λέγοντι θερμὸς ἀκροατὴς θαύματι διακόπτων τοῦ λόγου τὸν δρόμον. ἐν μὲν οὖν ταῖς ἐπιδείξεσιν ἀμείβομαι τὴν βοὴν τῷ προσγε- λάσαι καὶ προσδραμεῖν· νῦν δὲ εὕρηκά τι διὰ σοῦ καὶ λαμ- πρότερον εἰς ἀμοιβήν. χρήμασιν ἐσωφρόνισας τὸν ἀδελφὸν τὸν τοῦδε, μᾶλλον δέ, τῷ φόβῳ μὲν ἐσωφρόνισας, ὅπως δ έσται λύσις τῆς ζημίας συνέπραξας. καί σου γράμματα καὶ γνῶσις ἀποδίδωσι τὸν ἄργυρον, ἀλλ’ ὅ γε ἄργυρος, οὐκ οἶδ ὅ τι μεμφόμενος, ἐλθεῖν αὐτοῖς εἰς χεῖρας οὐκ ἐθέλει. σὺ οὖν αὐτὸν ἢ πεῖσον ἡ ἀνάγκασον μὴ φεύγειν τοὺς δεσπότας, ὅπως τοῖς μὲν τὰ αὑτῶν ἔχειν ὑπάρχῃ, σοὶ δὲ τὸ μηδὲν ὧν κελεύ- σειας μάταιον εἶναι.