Letter 985: Libanius praises Asclepius' report and the promise he sees in Olympius' brother.
Asclepius has come back and done me good again. He has made us happier by his presence, happier again by bringing your letter, and happier a third time by what he said about Olympius' brothers. He himself also became happier through his words about Olympius. He did not fail to know him before, but now he has found a finer beauty and rejoiced in it as if it were his own; that is how far he has come in knowing how to love. The young man seemed to him to possess some of our qualities. Admire him for this too: he has them though many things stood in the way of having them.
AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed.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. Καὶ ἐπανῆλθεν ἡμῖν εὖ ποιῶν Ἀσκληπιός, ᾧ πεποίηκεν ἡμᾶς ἡδίους, καὶ τῷ μετὰ τῶν σῶν γραμμάτων πάλιν εὔφρανεν ἡμᾶς, καὶ τρίτῳ γε τοῖς λόγοις τοῖς περὶ τῶν ἀδελφῶν Ὀλυμπίου. 2. γέγονε δὲ καὶ αὐτὸς ἡδίων τοῖς Ὀλυμπίου λόγοις, οὓς ἠγνόει μὲν οὐδὲ πρόσθεν, νῦν δ᾽ εὑρὼν καλλίους αὑτοῦ κάλλος τοῦτο νομίσας ἤσθη· πρὸς τοσοῦτον ἥκει τοῦ φιλεῖν εἰδέναι. 3. ὁ μὲν οὖν νέος ἔδοξεν αὐτῷ τῶν ἡμετέρων ἔχειν· δεῖ δὲ καὶ ταύτῃ θαυμάζειν αὐτόν, ὅτι τούτων ἔχει πολλῶν ὄντων τῶν κωλυόντων ἔχειν.
Revision history
- 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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