To Philippus, poet. (355)
A man who receives a great gift from the gods and then thinks he has received only a small one wrongs those who gave it. You are more truly a child of the Muses than the man to whom they gave the laurel -- and yet you rank yourself among those who have received nothing great.
But every man and every nation speaks in your favor. Whenever someone mentions a poet, it is you they have heard of, and no one disputes it. We rhetoricians, on the other hand, have more rivals than flies around a sheepfold in springtime.
As for the man I call a sophist -- you pretend not to know him, though you yourself long ago voted him the foremost among sophists.
A man who receives a great gift from the gods and then thinks he has received only a small one wrongs those who gave it. You are more truly a child of the Muses than the man to whom they gave the laurel -- and yet you rank yourself among those who have received nothing great.
But every man and every nation speaks in your favor. Whenever someone mentions a poet, it is you they have heard of, and no one disputes it. We rhetoricians, on the other hand, have more rivals than flies around a sheepfold in springtime.
As for the man I call a sophist -- you pretend not to know him, though you yourself long ago voted him the foremost among sophists.
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.