To Anatolius. (358)
Spectatus — who loves you above all others (whether he is right to do so I cannot say, but that he loves you intensely I know perfectly well) — has returned to us in triumph from the embassy. And thanks to his tongue, we Greeks were not bested by barbarians.
Shall I describe the eloquence with which he wrestled down the Persian in that king's own palace? But I am afraid of upsetting you. You insist that while you live no one else should be praised. Even now you are choking with envy that you did not go there as ambassador yourself, on top of your administrative duties, and turn the man to stone with your voice.
But precisely for that reason I must tell you, so you can toss and turn all night. When the Persian king summoned our delegation, he spoke at length in praise of justice and those who act justly, then declared: "I am being wronged, and you are the wrongdoers." He raised the matter of a tract of land — once theirs, now in our possession — which those who desire peace must surrender.
The other delegates spoke well enough, and you yourself will judge their words fine once you hear what they were. But our soldier — as you would call him — or rather our orator, as I would say, demonstrated that the king was seeking redress not from those he accuses but from others entirely. For those who seized the land were one party, and the one being attacked was another. It would be outrageous, he argued, if one side claims as ancestral what was never given by any ancestor, while forcing the other to surrender what is part of a legitimate inheritance.
By the gods, would you not rather have said these things yourself than rule twice as many subjects as you do? So answer my letter, and write something comparable — you who leave so very few private citizens alone. For your deluge of dispatches herds many a man toward the imperial feeding-trough.
Spectatus — who loves you above all others (whether he is right to do so I cannot say, but that he loves you intensely I know perfectly well) — has returned to us in triumph from the embassy. And thanks to his tongue, we Greeks were not bested by barbarians.
Shall I describe the eloquence with which he wrestled down the Persian in that king's own palace? But I am afraid of upsetting you. You insist that while you live no one else should be praised. Even now you are choking with envy that you did not go there as ambassador yourself, on top of your administrative duties, and turn the man to stone with your voice.
But precisely for that reason I must tell you, so you can toss and turn all night. When the Persian king summoned our delegation, he spoke at length in praise of justice and those who act justly, then declared: "I am being wronged, and you are the wrongdoers." He raised the matter of a tract of land — once theirs, now in our possession — which those who desire peace must surrender.
The other delegates spoke well enough, and you yourself will judge their words fine once you hear what they were. But our soldier — as you would call him — or rather our orator, as I would say, demonstrated that the king was seeking redress not from those he accuses but from others entirely. For those who seized the land were one party, and the one being attacked was another. It would be outrageous, he argued, if one side claims as ancestral what was never given by any ancestor, while forcing the other to surrender what is part of a legitimate inheritance.
By the gods, would you not rather have said these things yourself than rule twice as many subjects as you do? So answer my letter, and write something comparable — you who leave so very few private citizens alone. For your deluge of dispatches herds many a man toward the imperial feeding-trough.
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.