Letter 701: I am amazed that even this much was collected.

LibaniusDemetrius, friend|c. 380 AD|Libanius|AI-assisted
property economics

To Demetrius.

But I have marveled that even these sums were collected; for I knew of the other difficulties as well, and of the bad luck with the wine, which has come upon all the jars. Indeed, the wine of the evening is spoiled in our house by daybreak, so that whatever money may come from you, we shall be content with it, and we shall reckon that you are not so much repaying us as making us a gift. And we shall persuade the purchaser too not to come to the aid of the farmers, should they wish to defraud him.

AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed.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

Δημητρίῳ. (362)

Ἀλλ’ ὅτι καὶ ταῦτα εἰσεπράχθη τεθαύμακα τάς τε γὰρ
ἄλλας ἠπιστάμην δυσχερείας καὶ τὴν περὶ τὸν οἶνον τύχην,
ἣ πάντας ἐπῆλθε πίθους.

ὅ γέ τοι τῆς ἐσπέρας οἶνος ἅμα
ἡμέρᾳ διέφθαρται παρ’ ἡμῖν, ὥσθ’ ὅσον ἂν ἀργύριον γένηται
παρ’ ὑμῶν, στέρξομεν καὶ οὐκ ἀποδιδόναι μᾶλλον ἢ δωρεῖσθαί
σε νομιοῦμεν. πείσομεν δὲ καὶ τὸν ἐωνημένον μὴ βοηθεῖν
τοῖς γεωργοῖς, ἢν ἐθέλωσιν ἀποστερεῖν.

Revision history

  1. 2026-05-27v2.2.34-import

    Initial corpus import from modern libanius retranslated v1.

    Fields: letter text, metadata, source links. Source: https://github.com/OpenGreekAndLatin/First1KGreek/blob/master/volume_xml/libanius_10.xml

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