Letter 9009: I quite understand and appreciate how deeply you are upset by the death of Pompeius Quintianus, so much so that your...

To Colonus. I quite understand and appreciate how deeply you are upset by the death of Pompeius Quintianus, so much so that your sense of his loss seems to make the dead man all the dearer to you. You are not like the majority of people, who only love the living, or rather pretend that they love them, and do not even make that pretence, unless they see that their friends are prosperous, for they forget the unfortunate just as they forget the dead. But your loyalty is abiding, and your love is so constant that it can only be ended by your death. Then again, Heaven knows how well Quintianus deserved to be loved just as he loved others. He loved his friends in their prosperity; if they were in trouble, he protected them ; when they died, he missed them sorely. How you could read his honesty in his face ; how carefully he weighed his words in conversation ; how evenly he mingled gaiety and gravity of demeanour! An earnest student, a man of ripe judgment, with what filial affection he lived with a father whose character was the very opposite of his, and yet his excellence as a son did not prevent people acknowledging his excellences as a man. But why do I make your trouble harder to bear? Yet, after all, your love for this young man was such that you would prefer me to write as I have done rather than say nothing about him, me of all people, since you think that a few words of praise from me will be an ornament to his life, will help to perpetuate his memory, and will restore to him the youth from which he has been snatched away. Farewell.

L To Colonus. I quite understand and appreciate how deeply you are upset by the death of Pompeius Quintianus, so much so that your sense of his loss seems to make the dead man all the dearer to you. You are not like the majority of people, who only love the living, or rather pretend that they love them, and do not even make that pretence, unless they see that their friends are prosperous, for they forget the unfortunate just as they forget the dead. But your loyalty is abiding, and your love is so constant that it can only be ended by your death. Then again, Heaven knows how well Quintianus deserved to be loved just as he loved others. He loved his friends in their prosperity; if they were in trouble, he protected them ; when they died, he missed them sorely. How you could read his honesty in his face ; how carefully he weighed his words in conversation ; how evenly he mingled gaiety and gravity of demeanour! An earnest student, a man of ripe judgment, with what filial affection he lived with a father whose character was the very opposite of his, and yet his excellence as a son did not prevent people acknowledging his excellences as a man. But why do I make your trouble harder to bear? Yet, after all, your love for this young man was such that you would prefer me to write as I have done rather than say nothing about him, me of all people, inasmuch as you think that a few words of praise from me will be an ornament to his life, will help to perpetuate his memory, and will restore to him the youth from which he has been snatched away. Farewell.