Letter 973: Libanius asks the patriarch to receive Philippianus as a friend.

LibaniusPatriarch, correspondent of Libanius|c. 390 AD|Libanius|From Antioch|AI-assisted
RecommendationFriendshipPatronageSiburiusCities
The recommendation is framed as a request for friendship before visible favors have been performed.

Philippianus is made important for us by his region, important also by a character that longs for virtue, and important again because the man who will give good things to your cities loves him. He becomes important for another reason too: he has fallen in love with your friendship and has wanted it to become his through a letter of mine. Let him enjoy the fruits of his eagerness. Let him be enrolled as a friend, and let him be made glad by what you will say about the future before the deeds themselves arrive. I myself can also gladden you with what Siburius, who shows his father so well, has said to me about you. The praises I used of you he reinforced with still more of his own.

AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed.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

1. Μέγαν μὲν ἡμῖν Φιλιππιανὸν καὶ ἡ ζώνη ποιεῖ, μέγαν δὲ καὶ ὁ τρόπος ἀρετῆς ἐπιθυμῶν, μέγαν δὲ καὶ ὁ δώσων ἀγαθὰ ταῖς ὑμετέραις πόλεσι Φιλιππιανὸν φιλῶν. 2. γίγνεται δὲ καὶ τούτῳ μέγας, τῷ τῆς σῆς ἐρασθῆναι φιλίας καὶ ταύτην αὑτῷ βουληθῆναι γενέσθαι δι᾽ ἐμῆς ἐπιστολῆς. ἀπολαυσάτω τοίνυν τῶν παιδικῶν καὶ γεγράφθω φίλος καὶ οἷς ἐρεῖ περὶ τῶν ἐσομένων πρὸ τῶν ἔργων εὐφραινέτω. 3. δύναμαι δέ σε καὶ αὐτὸς εὐφραίνειν τοῖς εἰρημένοις περὶ σοῦ πρὸς ἐμὲ παρὰ τοῦ τὸν πατέρα καλῶς δεικνύντος Σιβουρίου. τοὺς γὰρ ἐπαίνους οἷς ἐχρώμην κατὰ σοῦ πλείοσιν ἔστησε τοῖς παρ᾽ ἑαυτοῦ.

Revision history

  1. 2026-05-27v2.2.34-import

    Initial corpus import from modern libanius foerster vol11 batch8 t258 reviewed v1.

    Fields: letter text, metadata, source links. Source: https://archive.org/download/foerster-libanii-opera/Foerster%20%281922%29%2C%20Libanii%20opera%2011_djvu.xml

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