Letter 448: I have seen the arrows in your speeches, and I would not say "keep shooting like that.

LibaniusHeraclianus|c. 356 AD|Libanius|AI-assisted
illness

To Heraclianus.

I saw the arrows in your discourses, and I would not say "Strike on like that!" but rather "Cease your striking." For you know what sort of thing you may say.

But if anyone speaks ill of me, let this not stir up a war on your part over something that does not even grieve us.

AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed.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

Ἡρακλειανῷ. (355)

Εἶδον ἐν τοῖς λόγοις σου τὰ βέλη καὶ οὐκ ἂν φαίην·
βάλλ᾿ οὕτως, ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον· πέπαυσο βάλλων. οἶσθα γὰρ
ὁπποῖόν εἴπῃσθα.

ἐμὲ δὲ εἴ τις λέγοι κακῶς, μὴ
τοῦτό σοι ποιείτω πόλεμον, ὃ μηδὲ ἡμᾶς ἀλγύνει.

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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