Letter 718
To Rufinus, friend. (362)
So why did you sit by the Bosporus if you were only going to do the same thing in Cilicia? You came back to Celsus, but not yet to me.
And yet I was hoping to hear everything from a man who can judge well and does not know how to deceive -- and to recover all that joy I used to have with you, riding horses together, back when my little horse kept trying to kick you, and you were simultaneously dodging him and telling me one of your stories, imitating Odysseus in the telling.
For you too had escaped a kind of Cyclops, I think -- some man who wanted to kill you and whose method was to offer hospitality and then commit murder. The difference is that Odysseus was saved against the Cyclops's will by gouging out his eye, whereas you conquered your bandit's nature with a dance and had the man who had been sharpening his sword against you and your servants escorting you to the border as a guard.
I expected my head would benefit from the same remedies as before. But you keep company with one friend while neglecting another, and you did not divide your time.
I wished my little horse could understand even a small part of what I say --
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.
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