Letter 571: Our entire family both gains good things and escapes bad ones through you.
To Barbatio.
Our entire family both gains good things and escapes bad ones through you. Iamblichus is, within our family, a "conspicuous star" in Pindar's phrase: self-controlled, fair-minded, modest, a lover of literature, above the lure of money, and incapable of forgetting a kindness once received. So if you do everything for him, you will be devoting yourself to the best of us.
I write this now not to get you to start helping the young man -- you have been doing that for some time -- but so that you will continue what you began, and so that you may share my satisfaction that I care for this man, whom I would have wronged by not caring for.
AI-assisted translation — This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed.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
Βαρβατίωνι. (357)
Ἅπαν ἡμῶν τὸ γένος διὰ σοῦ καὶ κτᾶταί τι χρηστὸν
καὶ διαφεύγει κακόν. Ἰάμβλιχος δὲ ἡμῶν ἐν τῷ γένει κατὰ
Πίνδαρον ἀστὴρ ἀρίζηλος, σώφρων, ἐπιεικής, εἰδὼς αἰδεῖ-
σθαι, λόγων ἐπιθυμητής, χρημάτων κρείττων, οὐκ εἰδώς, ἢν
εὖ πάθῃ, τῆς μνήμης ἐκβαλεῖν τὴν χάριν· ὥστε, εἰ πάντα
αὐτῷ γένοιο, περὶ τὸν ἄριστον ἡμῶν ἔσῃ πρόθυμος.
καὶ
ταῦτα ἐγὼ γράφω νῦν, οὐχ ὅπως ἄρξῃ τὸν νεανίσκον ὠφελεῖν,
πάλαι γὰρ δὴ τοῦτο ποιεῖς, ἀλλ’ ὅπως ὧν τε ἤρξω πάλαι,
τούτοις ἐμμείνῃς καὶ ἐμοὶ συνησθῇς, ὅτι μοι τούτου φρον-
τίς, οὐ μὴ φροντίζων ἠδίκουν ἄν.
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