Letter 571: Our entire family both gains good things and escapes bad ones through you.

To Barbatio. (357) Our whole family, through you, both acquires something good and escapes something bad. And Iamblichus, within our family, is, as Pindar says, a conspicuous star: temperate, reasonable, one who knows how to feel shame, a lover of eloquence, superior to money, incapable, if he is treated well, of casting the gratitude out of his memory; so that, if you become everything to him, you will be showing zeal on behalf of the best of us. And I write this now not so that you may begin to benefit the young man—for you have in fact long been doing this—but so that you may persist in those things which you began long ago, and may share my joy, because I have a care for this man, since by not caring I would be doing wrong.

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.