Letter 518: You are a harbor for Syrians, even those who lack education.

LibaniusOlympius|c. 363 AD|Libanius|AI-assisted
friendship

To Olympius. (356)

You are a harbor to the Syrians, even if they have no share in education, and again a harbor to those who have partaken of education, even if it happens that they are not Syrians. You take pleasure too, I suppose, in our friends as well, even if they come from elsewhere, even if they have no acquaintance with eloquence.

Now I find everything in the man who carries this letter; for Heliodorus is a fellow citizen of ours and an intimate, and a powerful speaker. So treat the man in your own accustomed manner.

AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed.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

Ὀλυμπίῳ. (356)

Σὺ τοῖς Σύροις λιμήν, κἂν ἀμοιρῶσι παιδείας, καὶ τοῖς
γε παιδείας μετειληφόσι πάλιν λιμήν, κἂν μὴ Σύρους εἶναι
συμβαίνῃ. χαίρεις δέ που καὶ τοῖς ἡμετέροις φίλοις, κἂν ἑτέ-
ρωθεν ὦσι, κἂν μὴ λόγους εἰδῶσιν.

εὑρίσκω δὴ πάντα
παρὰ τῷ τὰ γράμματα φέροντι· καὶ γὰρ πολίτης ἡμῖν καὶ
συνήθης Ἡλιόδωρος καὶ δεινὸς εἰπεῖν. χρῶ δὴ τῷ σαυτοῦ
περὶ τὸν ἄνδρα τρόπῳ.

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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