Letter 81: As long as your goodwill toward us keeps growing, we'll keep needing to write to you about our friends.
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.
AI-assisted translation — This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed.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
Φλωρεντίῳ. (359)
ἕως ἂν ἡ σὴ περὶ ἡμᾶς εὔνοια λαμβάνῃ προσθήκην,
καὶ ἡμὶν ἡ τοῦ γράφειν σοι περὶ τῶν φίλων ἀνάγκη. Μακε-
δόνιος δὲ οὑτοσὶ καὶ δι’ ἐπιείκειαν καἰ σωφροσύνην καὶ βε-
βαιότητα τρόπων πάλαι θαυμάζεται παρ’ ἡμῖν, ‘ὲν δὲ αὐτὸν
μέμφομαι μόνον, ὅτι δὴ σκιρτήσας έν Μουσῶν κήποις ἐξη- 10
νέχθη πρὸς βίον ἐν ᾧπέρ ἐστι νῦν. εἰ γὰρ πλουτεῖν ἐντεῦθεν
ἔστιν, ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖθέν γ’ εὐδοκιμεῖν.
τῷ δὲ ἐλπίδες μέν εἰσι
χρημάτων, χρήματα δέ οὔπω, γένοιτο δ’ ἂν σοῦ βουλομένου.
δίκαιον δὲ μήτοι τὸν ἄνδρα περιιδεῖν καὶ τοῦ βήματος ἐκπε-
σόντα καὶ δι’ ἃ τοῦ βήματος ὑπερεῖδεν.
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Sent to Florentius along with the preceding letter, which Jerome requests him to deliver to Rufinus. This Florentius was a rich Italian who had retired to Jerusalem to pursue the monastic life. Jerome subsequently speaks of him as a distinguished monk so pitiful to the needy that he was generally known as the father of the poor.