To Strategius. (356 AD)
We grieved as never before and rejoiced as never before — grieved because your wife was ill, a woman who surpasses even those celebrated in song for virtue, and rejoiced because the illness yielded to the doctors. But rest assured: even without doctors she would have been saved, since the gods owe you a debt of gratitude for your justice in all things.
Our city is given over to dancing just now. The pretext is weddings, but the truth is that people have been moved to celebration because the fear has passed. And if — as we most desire — you would come yourself and appear leading your children along with their mother, you will make it a double festival.
I know I should be there in person, to have shared in the anxious hopes and now enjoy the outcome, and to say all this face to face rather than write it. But, my dear friend, though I hear the proverb urging one to go to friends far away, the affliction pressing upon my body prevents me from obeying it. My one salvation is to spend most of my time in bed; even going to the agora is now a risk, and many times I have been struck by an attack and had to be carried away.
But you can see with what eagerness many people rush to you, among them Clematius — to whom you are and always will be everything. He has been with us just long enough to ask and learn how your affairs stand. And having learned that things go well, he himself no longer considers his own troubles so bad.
Though he is a man beset by storms, your good fortune lightens his own burdens — so true it is that everyone finds a single refuge in the household of the good Strategius being safe.
We grieved as never before and rejoiced as never before — grieved because your wife was ill, a woman who surpasses even those celebrated in song for virtue, and rejoiced because the illness yielded to the doctors. But rest assured: even without doctors she would have been saved, since the gods owe you a debt of gratitude for your justice in all things.
Our city is given over to dancing just now. The pretext is weddings, but the truth is that people have been moved to celebration because the fear has passed. And if — as we most desire — you would come yourself and appear leading your children along with their mother, you will make it a double festival.
I know I should be there in person, to have shared in the anxious hopes and now enjoy the outcome, and to say all this face to face rather than write it. But, my dear friend, though I hear the proverb urging one to go to friends far away, the affliction pressing upon my body prevents me from obeying it. My one salvation is to spend most of my time in bed; even going to the agora is now a risk, and many times I have been struck by an attack and had to be carried away.
But you can see with what eagerness many people rush to you, among them Clematius — to whom you are and always will be everything. He has been with us just long enough to ask and learn how your affairs stand. And having learned that things go well, he himself no longer considers his own troubles so bad.
Though he is a man beset by storms, your good fortune lightens his own burdens — so true it is that everyone finds a single refuge in the household of the good Strategius being safe.
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.