To Hyperechius. (362)
I commend your decision to stay at home for now. The journey had no favorable moment, and an old saying counsels that everything must be said and done in season.
The famine advised you — since traveling meant wrestling with hunger — to master your desire rather than entangle yourself in such misery just to see me. For my part, if I were considering only my own interests, I would have reproached you for not choosing to run even through fire. But as it is — since I put your welfare no lower than my own — I count your staying home a fine thing, and it gives me a pleasure no less than the sight of you would have, because it spared you a thousand hardships.
When spring begins to gleam, if you see the earth reconciled to us and the season before summer giving hopeful signs about the summer, put your desire into action. For you will find one who longs for you as you long for him.
You have become especially dear to me since your victory in court, where you honored your father doubly: by prevailing over those who tried to bring you down, and by doing so not through friends but with your own tongue.
Many brought news of your triumph, but dearest to me were those who reported it with pleasure — Sulpicius and the brothers you sent — who were rewarded for their tidings by finding me all the more eager in my literary work. So it is not you alone I think I should treat well, but also anyone in whom I see some affection for you.
But here is what surprises me: what possessed you, my good fellow, not to give a letter to young men so dear to you? You cannot claim ignorance of the art of letter-writing, nor that your letter would not have delighted me, nor that you were not asked, nor that it would not have been fine to give one even before being asked.
Shall I come to your defense and have the accuser dissolve his own accusation? You thought it would be shameful if, being worthy of first place, you appeared to have chosen the second-best voyage [i.e., a letter instead of a visit]. And so you withheld it, intending to deliver the better thing in person.
I commend your decision to stay at home for now. The journey had no favorable moment, and an old saying counsels that everything must be said and done in season.
The famine advised you — since traveling meant wrestling with hunger — to master your desire rather than entangle yourself in such misery just to see me. For my part, if I were considering only my own interests, I would have reproached you for not choosing to run even through fire. But as it is — since I put your welfare no lower than my own — I count your staying home a fine thing, and it gives me a pleasure no less than the sight of you would have, because it spared you a thousand hardships.
When spring begins to gleam, if you see the earth reconciled to us and the season before summer giving hopeful signs about the summer, put your desire into action. For you will find one who longs for you as you long for him.
You have become especially dear to me since your victory in court, where you honored your father doubly: by prevailing over those who tried to bring you down, and by doing so not through friends but with your own tongue.
Many brought news of your triumph, but dearest to me were those who reported it with pleasure — Sulpicius and the brothers you sent — who were rewarded for their tidings by finding me all the more eager in my literary work. So it is not you alone I think I should treat well, but also anyone in whom I see some affection for you.
But here is what surprises me: what possessed you, my good fellow, not to give a letter to young men so dear to you? You cannot claim ignorance of the art of letter-writing, nor that your letter would not have delighted me, nor that you were not asked, nor that it would not have been fine to give one even before being asked.
Shall I come to your defense and have the accuser dissolve his own accusation? You thought it would be shameful if, being worthy of first place, you appeared to have chosen the second-best voyage [i.e., a letter instead of a visit]. And so you withheld it, intending to deliver the better thing in person.
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.