To Severus. (362)
If you had written to Olympius what you wrote to me about my letters, and if he had known your passion for them, you would have had more of them than I was sending. For I am no sluggard in such matters, and Olympius is the heir to Maximus's friendship with me — not to say his madness — which I was not unaware of before and have now come to know even better, since the change of times has brought us many messengers.
But Olympius, I think, knows how to deliver letters, yet will not demand them. And when your ship puts in, I am aware of it, but when it sails out, I no longer am. So now I have given this letter after your ships had already departed, to lie in Olympius's keeping — because I wanted to clear myself of the charge of not writing.
Now more than ever I wished to take hold of you, with whom I once trembled in fear and now yearned for in freedom, so that I might see the man who shared the terror sharing the liberation as well.
If you had written to Olympius what you wrote to me about my letters, and if he had known your passion for them, you would have had more of them than I was sending. For I am no sluggard in such matters, and Olympius is the heir to Maximus's friendship with me — not to say his madness — which I was not unaware of before and have now come to know even better, since the change of times has brought us many messengers.
But Olympius, I think, knows how to deliver letters, yet will not demand them. And when your ship puts in, I am aware of it, but when it sails out, I no longer am. So now I have given this letter after your ships had already departed, to lie in Olympius's keeping — because I wanted to clear myself of the charge of not writing.
Now more than ever I wished to take hold of you, with whom I once trembled in fear and now yearned for in freedom, so that I might see the man who shared the terror sharing the liberation as well.
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.