Letter 402: Once again the wise Olympios is among you — once again those gatherings, dialogues, and banquets worthy of a written...

LibaniusThemistokles|c. 352 AD|Libanius|AI-assisted
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Once again the learned Olympius is among you, once again come those gatherings and dialogues and banquets worthy of being written down: a sophist saying something about rhetoric, a grammarian speaking about the poets, you and Themistius drawing upon philosophy, and Olympius, holding forth abundantly about everything, flowing both copiously and limpidly, and by the beauty of his words drawing the guests away from the feast and making the hearing of him sweeter than the table.

But you, perhaps, will remember me too, and perhaps remember me even more favorably. For you will praise me when I am absent, and you will not give pain to those who are present.

AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed.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

Θεμιστοκλεῖ (355)

Πάλιν ὁ σοφὸς παρ’ ὑμῖν Ὀλύμπιος, πάλιν ἐκεῖνοι σύλ-
λογοι καὶ διάλογοι καὶ συμπόσια συγγραφῆς ἄξια, σοφιστὴς
ὑπὲρ ῥητορικῆς τι λέγων, γραμματιστὴς ὑπὲρ τῶν ποιητῶν,
σὺ καὶ Θεμίστιος ἐκ φιλοσοφίας, Ὀλύμπιος περὶ πάντων πο-
λύς τε ῥέων καὶ καθαρὸς καὶ τῷ κάλλει τῶν ὀνομάτων ἀφέλ—
κῶν τοὺς δαιτυμόνας τῆς θοίνης καὶ ποιῶν ἡδίω τῆς τρα-
πέζης τὴν ἀκρόασιν.

ἐμοῦ δὲ ἴσως μεμνήσεσθε καὶ τάχ
ἴσως ἐπ’ ἀμείνοσιν. ἀπόντα γὰρ ἐπαινέσεσθε καὶ τοὺς παρόν-
τας ουκ ἀνιάσετε.

Revision history

  1. 2026-05-27v2.2.34-import

    Initial corpus import from modern libanius retranslated v1.

    Fields: letter text, metadata, source links. Source: https://github.com/OpenGreekAndLatin/First1KGreek/blob/master/volume_xml/libanius_10.xml

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