Letter 8: You're being unfair when you call my inability "deceit.
To Helladius. (353 or 354?)
By calling weakness deception, you do me wrong. The one belongs among the things that are hated, the other among the things that are pitied. But you mix together things that cannot be mixed: misfortunes and acts of wickedness. For my part, I confess that I have loved Berytus [Beirut] for many reasons, and Athens for every reason, but that I have been unable to come to either of them. And I hear that Hera too was bound, and was not set in motion until the one who had contrived the bond came and loosed it.
AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed.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
Ἑλλαδίῳ. (353 vel 354?)
Ἀπάτην καλῶν τὴν ἀδυναμίαν ἀδικεῖς. ἔστι δὲ ἐκεῖνο μὲν
τῶν μισουμένων, τοῦτο δὲ τῶν ἐλεουμένων. σὺ δὲ μιγνύεις
τὰ ἄμικτα. ἀτυχήματα καὶ πονηρεύματα. ἐγὼ δὲ ἐρασθῆναι
ὁμολογῶ Βηρυτοῦ μὲν διὰ πολλά, Ἀθηνῶν δὲ διὰ πάντα, δυ-
νηθῆναι δὲ εἰς οὐδετέραν ἐλθεῖν. ἀκούω δὲ καὶ τὴν Ἥραν
δεθῆναι καὶ οὐ κινηθῆναι πρότερον πρὶν ὁ τὸν δεσμὸν μη-
χανησάμενος ἐλθὼν ἔλυσεν.
Revision history
- 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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