Letter 766: The moment I received your letter, in which you asked for the restoration of the old honors, I ran to the excellent...

LibaniusDemetrios|c. 387 AD|Libanius|AI-assisted
friendship

To Demetrius. (362)

The moment I received your letter, in which you were demanding the measure of the old honors, I ran to the worthy Salutius [Saturninius Secundus Salutius, praetorian prefect] and went through the list of those who had received them, the very men whom you too had named to me. "Give it, then, as I said, to the man to whom, after many others, it ought to have been given before the rest." What "many" did he mean? And at that point I came to understand that someone had deceived you with words, and you in turn had deceived me. So now I sit on the watch, in case anyone at all is to obtain any share of the former honors, ready to snatch it. And let us be content, until some one of the divine powers undoes the second law.

AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed.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

Εὖθύς ὡς ἔλαβόν σου τὴν ἐπιστολήν, ἐν ᾗ τὸ μέτρον
ἀπῄτεις τῶν παλαιῶν τιμῶν, ἔδραμον πρὸς τὸν χρηστὸν

Σαλούτιον καὶ διεξῆλθον τοὺς εἰληφότας, οὓς καὶ σὺ πρὸς ἐμέ.
δὸς τοίνυν, ὡς ἔφην, μετὰ πολλοὺς ᾧ δεδωκέναι
πρὸ τῶν ἄλλων ἐχρῆν, ποίους ἔφη πολλούς; καὶ τότε
ἄρα ἐμάνθανον ὡς σὲ μὲν λόγοις τις ἐξηπάτηκε, σὺ δὲ ἐμέ.
καὶ νῦν κάθημαι φυλάττων, εἴ τινι τῶν πάντων ἔσται τι τῶν
προτέρων, ὡς ἁρπασόμενος. καὶ στέρξωμεν, ἕως ἄν τις δαιμό-
νων τὸν δεύτερον λύσῃ νόμον.

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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