To Hygieinus. (355)
It seems that my speech about my head — which I had been composing as a rhetorical exercise — was destined to come true, the god teaching me, I suppose, not to be clever about such things. For on the tenth day after I began, dizziness struck me and Damalius advised me to take medicine.
But unwilling to let the illness grow worse through the summer, I drank in autumn a potion given by Marcellus — the one you call hiera ["sacred remedy"], I believe. And I drank it, though I used to be disturbed when others merely tasted it. Having received such great relief, I got through the winter with remarkable anxiety, while Olympius praised me for having drunk it and ordered me to drink again in spring.
But just as spring was dawning, a violent pain struck my kidneys, making me search for a noose. Then, after a month's interval, it struck again more bitterly and forced me to submit to a procedure I had been endlessly postponing. For while the other doctors thought the pain should be soothed with oil, Panolbius opened a vein. I felt better immediately, but I have no confidence about the long term.
So tell me: for a man in such a state of misery, how might he escape these troubles? Send for sophists from elsewhere, and just as I want you to be at the emperor's side, so may you wish for me to be sick at home among my own people — since sick I must be.
It seems that my speech about my head — which I had been composing as a rhetorical exercise — was destined to come true, the god teaching me, I suppose, not to be clever about such things. For on the tenth day after I began, dizziness struck me and Damalius advised me to take medicine.
But unwilling to let the illness grow worse through the summer, I drank in autumn a potion given by Marcellus — the one you call hiera ["sacred remedy"], I believe. And I drank it, though I used to be disturbed when others merely tasted it. Having received such great relief, I got through the winter with remarkable anxiety, while Olympius praised me for having drunk it and ordered me to drink again in spring.
But just as spring was dawning, a violent pain struck my kidneys, making me search for a noose. Then, after a month's interval, it struck again more bitterly and forced me to submit to a procedure I had been endlessly postponing. For while the other doctors thought the pain should be soothed with oil, Panolbius opened a vein. I felt better immediately, but I have no confidence about the long term.
So tell me: for a man in such a state of misery, how might he escape these troubles? Send for sophists from elsewhere, and just as I want you to be at the emperor's side, so may you wish for me to be sick at home among my own people — since sick I must be.
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.