To Olympius.
I owe my homeland to you, and I may soon add that I owe my health to you as well. That terrible affliction [his chronic headaches] has launched another attack on me, shaking my head again. I have swallowed a great deal of medicine, but the results have not been impressive -- the prospect of each dose cheered me with hope, but the actual effect was small.
So unless you come quickly and drive out this illness with your skill, the illness will drive me from my homeland. You know how it is with the sick: when nothing helps, they blame the place and in desperation leap to another.
It is up to you, then, not only to have given me back my city, but also to give me back a head that works.
I owe my homeland to you, and I may soon add that I owe my health to you as well. That terrible affliction [his chronic headaches] has launched another attack on me, shaking my head again. I have swallowed a great deal of medicine, but the results have not been impressive -- the prospect of each dose cheered me with hope, but the actual effect was small.
So unless you come quickly and drive out this illness with your skill, the illness will drive me from my homeland. You know how it is with the sick: when nothing helps, they blame the place and in desperation leap to another.
It is up to you, then, not only to have given me back my city, but also to give me back a head that works.
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.