To Italicianus. (361 AD)
If I did not know you as a man who understands friendship — one who has often worried and labored so that some good might come to his companions — I would be quite afraid that the volume of my letters might annoy you. But since you yourself are among those who praise Achilles [for loyalty to friends], I trust you will think me a decent fellow for never ceasing to cry out and plead.
So I say again: Severus was a fellow student of ours, learning lesser subjects with us, and he proved capable of advancing to greater ones. If you look, you will find philosophy in him — Maximus planted that noble thing in his soul.
Honor Maximus in death as you would have honored him in life. And you would honor him more greatly by helping Severus than if you went and laid wreaths on his tomb.
But do not let the military cloak and the absence of a beard make you doubt his possession of the higher learning. This man, in the words of Aeschylus, prefers to be rather than to seem, and so he wears the one instead of the other. Just as wisdom does not necessarily accompany the philosopher's cloak and long hair, so a man can be serious and worthy without them.
If I did not know you as a man who understands friendship — one who has often worried and labored so that some good might come to his companions — I would be quite afraid that the volume of my letters might annoy you. But since you yourself are among those who praise Achilles [for loyalty to friends], I trust you will think me a decent fellow for never ceasing to cry out and plead.
So I say again: Severus was a fellow student of ours, learning lesser subjects with us, and he proved capable of advancing to greater ones. If you look, you will find philosophy in him — Maximus planted that noble thing in his soul.
Honor Maximus in death as you would have honored him in life. And you would honor him more greatly by helping Severus than if you went and laid wreaths on his tomb.
But do not let the military cloak and the absence of a beard make you doubt his possession of the higher learning. This man, in the words of Aeschylus, prefers to be rather than to seem, and so he wears the one instead of the other. Just as wisdom does not necessarily accompany the philosopher's cloak and long hair, so a man can be serious and worthy without them.
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.