From: Libanius, rhetorician in Antioch
To: Florentius
Date: ~359 AD
Context: A recommendation for Macedonius, a man who left rhetoric for business -- and now needs help.
As long as your goodwill toward us keeps growing, we'll keep needing to write to you about our friends. This Macedonius has long been admired among us for his fairness, his self-control, and his steadiness of character. My one complaint against him is that after frolicking in the gardens of the Muses [i.e., studying rhetoric], he was carried off into the life he leads now. That path may bring wealth, but the other brings distinction.
He has hopes of money but no money yet -- though that could change if you were willing. It would be wrong to stand by and watch a man who abandoned the speaker's platform also lose everything he abandoned it for.
**To Florentius** (359)
So long as your goodwill toward me continues to grow, so too does my obligation to write to you on behalf of my friends. This Macedonius here has long been admired among us for his fairness, his temperance, and the steadfastness of his character. I fault him in one thing only: that after frolicking in the gardens of the Muses, he let himself be carried off into the life he now leads. For though one may grow rich by that path, it is by the other that one wins true distinction.
As things stand, he has hopes of wealth but no wealth yet — though it could come about, should you so wish. It would be unjust, surely, to stand by and watch this man lose even the tribunal, along with the very pursuits for which he abandoned the tribunal in the first place.
Context:A recommendation for Macedonius, a man who left rhetoric for business -- and now needs help.
As long as your goodwill toward us keeps growing, we'll keep needing to write to you about our friends. This Macedonius has long been admired among us for his fairness, his self-control, and his steadiness of character. My one complaint against him is that after frolicking in the gardens of the Muses [i.e., studying rhetoric], he was carried off into the life he leads now. That path may bring wealth, but the other brings distinction.
He has hopes of money but no money yet -- though that could change if you were willing. It would be wrong to stand by and watch a man who abandoned the speaker's platform also lose everything he abandoned it for.
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.