Libanius→Magnus, on Baptizing Novatians, and Those Who Obtain Grace on a Sick-Bed|libanius
To Magnus, friend. (362)
Your insult did not go unnoticed, my dear Magnus -- though you certainly hoped it would. You thought that being clever, you could pull this on a simpleton. I may be slow in most things, but this one I caught.
You locked up the bathhouse -- a fine thing to do -- and told me to use it, while you yourself, claiming you needed to rush home for food, disappeared. But you did not really need the house or the food. You just could not bear to be present and have to open it for me, or to leave it locked and cause me pain -- so you devised a third option that caused me even more pain: your escape.
It would have been more graceful, I think, to persuade me and lead me away, rather than to send me to the door and subject me to the boorishness of soldiers. For if that arrangement had been in your interest, you would not have guarded it while I tried to change it.
But you wanted, it seems, to commit an insult. Very well: I have bathed, and a small bath sufficed in place of a grander one. If you have an itch to mock someone, leave the others alone -- they are touchy. With me, indulge the urge. I am the sort who would take even a blow with good grace.
Your insult did not go unnoticed, my dear Magnus -- though you certainly hoped it would. You thought that being clever, you could pull this on a simpleton. I may be slow in most things, but this one I caught.
You locked up the bathhouse -- a fine thing to do -- and told me to use it, while you yourself, claiming you needed to rush home for food, disappeared. But you did not really need the house or the food. You just could not bear to be present and have to open it for me, or to leave it locked and cause me pain -- so you devised a third option that caused me even more pain: your escape.
It would have been more graceful, I think, to persuade me and lead me away, rather than to send me to the door and subject me to the boorishness of soldiers. For if that arrangement had been in your interest, you would not have guarded it while I tried to change it.
But you wanted, it seems, to commit an insult. Very well: I have bathed, and a small bath sufficed in place of a grander one. If you have an itch to mock someone, leave the others alone -- they are touchy. With me, indulge the urge. I am the sort who would take even a blow with good grace.
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.