To Aetius. (362)
Quite a few young men have come from you to us, yet not a single letter from you. Shall we say you are sparing your paper, or your ink? Surely you are not short of words for a letter — you who flow in the courts beyond all fountains.
Perhaps it is that, having revealed the wealth you used to hide by giving your daughter in marriage, you have grown too grand for us. But I would have expected you to be modest now: before, you were rich yourself; now, you are merely a rich man's father-in-law. And that means someone else holds what was yours.
So now you have all the more reason to remember your friends and do what a man who remembers them does — so that you may have allies against your son-in-law, should he behave as most sons-in-law do: holding the property, eyeing still more, and picking fights.
Quite a few young men have come from you to us, yet not a single letter from you. Shall we say you are sparing your paper, or your ink? Surely you are not short of words for a letter — you who flow in the courts beyond all fountains.
Perhaps it is that, having revealed the wealth you used to hide by giving your daughter in marriage, you have grown too grand for us. But I would have expected you to be modest now: before, you were rich yourself; now, you are merely a rich man's father-in-law. And that means someone else holds what was yours.
So now you have all the more reason to remember your friends and do what a man who remembers them does — so that you may have allies against your son-in-law, should he behave as most sons-in-law do: holding the property, eyeing still more, and picking fights.
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.