To Olympios. (357)
By telling me that many sorrows have befallen you since your governorship, yet not saying what they are, you have forced me to imagine every kind of misfortune. There is no calamity to which I have not led my mind in dread. I pray that none of these has happened, but I fear that some have.
If I knew the specific point on which you blame fortune, I would address my words to that. But since I have only heard in general terms that you are in difficulties, I advise you to be braver than any misfortune, holding fast to the universal saying: grief is no cure for calamity.
You seem to me to have decided well in this too — to take refuge in Nicaea. For there is no consolation like living with Aristainetos: to see that face, to hear those words, to delight in his playfulness, and to profit from his seriousness.
Use this remedy you have rightly found. And if my letters too are a remedy, you will have a second one on top of the first.
By telling me that many sorrows have befallen you since your governorship, yet not saying what they are, you have forced me to imagine every kind of misfortune. There is no calamity to which I have not led my mind in dread. I pray that none of these has happened, but I fear that some have.
If I knew the specific point on which you blame fortune, I would address my words to that. But since I have only heard in general terms that you are in difficulties, I advise you to be braver than any misfortune, holding fast to the universal saying: grief is no cure for calamity.
You seem to me to have decided well in this too — to take refuge in Nicaea. For there is no consolation like living with Aristainetos: to see that face, to hear those words, to delight in his playfulness, and to profit from his seriousness.
Use this remedy you have rightly found. And if my letters too are a remedy, you will have a second one on top of the first.
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.