To Italicianus. (361 AD)
We remain the same in both our affection and our admiration. But you seem — well, I will not say it yet, though the facts press me to say something rather harsh. Let that wait for now. As proof that we have not changed, take the fact that we are asking favors, just as before — favors that will make your existing reputation still greater.
Severus the Lycian — a scoundrel, as the envious would say, but a fine man, as I maintain, and I am perhaps no worse a judge than his habitual slanderers — this Severus, even if he was persecuted before, ought now reasonably to live in security since you hold the governorship, which is to say the laws are in force.
But as things stand, the situation is so reversed that he risks losing the very security he enjoyed under less worthy governors, now that the most just of men administers affairs there.
And yet if Severus suffers injustice, wrong is done to the city of Athens, which raised him; wrong is done to Maximus [of Ephesus], thanks to whom the art of rhetoric did not wither, and who regarded Severus as a son.
We too share in these wrongs, as fellow students who have championed his cause all along — not because we have power, but because we have standing with those who do. I could not desert my post, and it would be shameful if, having hoped to wield greater influence now that you are in charge, I should prove powerless.
The man I am trying to rescue is no Midas, no Rhampsinitus, no one whom vast estates keep confined at home — but one who will find his necessary sustenance anywhere, yet clings to Lycia still out of reverence for his ancestral tombs.
We remain the same in both our affection and our admiration. But you seem — well, I will not say it yet, though the facts press me to say something rather harsh. Let that wait for now. As proof that we have not changed, take the fact that we are asking favors, just as before — favors that will make your existing reputation still greater.
Severus the Lycian — a scoundrel, as the envious would say, but a fine man, as I maintain, and I am perhaps no worse a judge than his habitual slanderers — this Severus, even if he was persecuted before, ought now reasonably to live in security since you hold the governorship, which is to say the laws are in force.
But as things stand, the situation is so reversed that he risks losing the very security he enjoyed under less worthy governors, now that the most just of men administers affairs there.
And yet if Severus suffers injustice, wrong is done to the city of Athens, which raised him; wrong is done to Maximus [of Ephesus], thanks to whom the art of rhetoric did not wither, and who regarded Severus as a son.
We too share in these wrongs, as fellow students who have championed his cause all along — not because we have power, but because we have standing with those who do. I could not desert my post, and it would be shameful if, having hoped to wield greater influence now that you are in charge, I should prove powerless.
The man I am trying to rescue is no Midas, no Rhampsinitus, no one whom vast estates keep confined at home — but one who will find his necessary sustenance anywhere, yet clings to Lycia still out of reverence for his ancestral tombs.
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.