Letter 700: An affliction has taken up residence in my head.
An affliction has taken up residence in my head. It makes life a burden and death something I pray for. It has defeated the doctors' medicines and would yield to the god alone.
For this reason I have sent my brother to approach the sacred image. Help him along and do all you can.
[To Parthenius:] If I were free to travel, I would have come to you myself in the great city -- for the god permits it to be called that. But since I am held fast by constraints you know about, I stay where I am, trusting that I will receive an oracle, so long as my brother makes the offering on my behalf and you join him in prayer.
AI-assisted translation — This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed.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
Σατορνίνῳ. (362)
Ἐν τῇ κεφαλῇ μοι κατοικεῖ πάθος ποιεῖ τὸ μὶν ζῆν
βαρύ, τὴν δὲ τελευτὴν ἐν εὐχαῖς. τοῦτο τὰ μὲν τῶν ἰατρῶν
ἐξήλεγξε φάρμακα, μόνῳ δ’ ἂν εἴξοι τῷ θεῷ.
κατὰ τοῦτο
δὴ τὸν ἀδελφὸν ἀπεσταλμένον πρόσαγε τῷ ἀγάλματι καὶ τὰ
ἄλλα συμπροθυμοῦ.
Παρθενίῳ. (362)
Εἰ μὲν ἦν κινεῖσθαι κύριος, αὐτὸς ἂν ὑμῖν ἧκον εἰς τὴν
μεγάλην πόλιν, δίδωσι γὰρ αὐτὴν οὕτω καλεῖν ὁ θεός· ἐπεὶ
δὲ ἀνάγκαις, ἃς οἶσθα, κατείλημμαι, μένω μέν, πιστεύω δὲ
τεύξεσθαι μαντείας σπένδοντός τε ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν ἀδελφοῦ καὶ
σοῦ συνευχομένου.
Related Letters
Not only did your being pulled in both directions over the things delivered show the lover at a loss — unable to...
You excuse yourself for your long silence.
"Not without a god," as Homer says — and you did not write this without the hand of Asclepius.
Would that it were possible for me to write to your reverence every day! For ever since I have had experience of your affection I have had great desire to converse with you, or, if this be impossible, at least to communicate with you by letter, that I may tell you my own news and learn in what state you are. Yet we have not what we wish but what...
If this is how things stand, then necessity is stronger even than the gods, as the saying of the wise goes.