Letter 2002: I am angry with you; whether I ought to be I am not quite sure, but I am angry all the same.
Pliny the Younger→Paulinus of Nola|c. 100 AD|Pliny the Younger
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To Paulinus.
I am angry with you; whether I ought to be I am not quite sure, but I am angry all the same. You know how affection is often biased, how it is always liable to make a man unreasonable, and how it causes him to flare up on even small provocation. But I have serious grounds for my anger, whether they are just or not, and so I am assuming that they are as just as they are serious, and am downright cross with you because you have not sent me a line for such a long time. There is only one way that you can obtain forgiveness, and that is by your writing me at once a number of long letters. That will be the only excuse I will take as genuine; any others you may send I will regard as false. For I won't listen to such stuff as "I was away from Rome," or "I have been fearfully busy." As for the plea, "I have not been at all well," I hope Providence has been too kind to let you write that. I am at my country house, enjoying study and idleness in turns, and both of these delights are born of leisure-hours. Farewell.
L To Paulinus.
I am angry with you; whether I ought to be I am not quite sure, but I am angry all the same. You know how affection is often biased, how it is always liable to make a man unreasonable, and how it causes him to flare up on even small provocation. But I have serious grounds for my anger, whether they are just or not, and so I am assuming that they are as just as they are serious, and am downright cross with you because you have not sent me a line for such a long time. There is only one way that you can obtain forgiveness, and that is by your writing me at once a number of long letters. That will be the only excuse I shall take as genuine; any others you may send I shall regard as false. For I won't listen to such stuff as "I was away from Rome," or "I have been fearfully busy." As for the plea, "I have not been at all well," I hope Providence has been too kind to let you write that. I am at my country house, enjoying study and idleness in turns, and both of these delights are born of leisure-hours. Farewell.
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To Paulinus.
I am angry with you; whether I ought to be I am not quite sure, but I am angry all the same. You know how affection is often biased, how it is always liable to make a man unreasonable, and how it causes him to flare up on even small provocation. But I have serious grounds for my anger, whether they are just or not, and so I am assuming that they are as just as they are serious, and am downright cross with you because you have not sent me a line for such a long time. There is only one way that you can obtain forgiveness, and that is by your writing me at once a number of long letters. That will be the only excuse I will take as genuine; any others you may send I will regard as false. For I won't listen to such stuff as "I was away from Rome," or "I have been fearfully busy." As for the plea, "I have not been at all well," I hope Providence has been too kind to let you write that. I am at my country house, enjoying study and idleness in turns, and both of these delights are born of leisure-hours. Farewell.
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.