Letter 435
To Palladius, official. (355)
We ask everyone who comes from your region how your health is. About your soul we need not ask -- we know it is good. That much I would say even to strangers.
But when we hear you are well, we both rejoice and are puzzled: how is it that a man who knows what a terrible thing illness is -- and how much it requires rest -- is trying to deprive me of that very rest, surrounded as I am by ailments? For the man who has the power to stop these summons being written against me but allows them -- he is the one imposing the pressure.
Please, gentlest of men, do not stand by while I am dragged from my sickbed, and do the generous emperor the favor of ensuring that nothing unworthy of his own judgment is done to a man who has sung his praises many times.
As for our fellow citizen Antiochus, who brings a crown from the contest sacred to Zeus -- be everything to him, knowing that in supporting him you honor both the city and delight the mind of Zeus more than the Greeks at Troy pleased Apollo with their songs.
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.
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