Letter 19: Procopius welcomes Epiphanius's return to speech as the arrival of spring.
Procopius of Gaza→Epiphanius, correspondent of Procopius of Gaza|c. 515 AD|Procopius of Gaza|From Gaza, Palaestina Prima|AI-assisted
late antique Greek letters; Epiphanius; law; Roman affairs; friendship; silence; spring
The letter jokes that legal authority and formal voting made Epiphanius too lofty for friendship.
You are truly formidable at moving whomever you wish toward speech and silence. You seem to do something like a man who owns a lyre and has learned to use it: now he weaves a melody, now he holds back from the strings. If anything else seems better, he turns at once to that, and neither he nor the lyre would be called musical.
So when you were silent and had changed over to newer ways, we too, once dearest friends and now perhaps only friends, immediately became gloomy and silent. But I know where the matter came from. The laws forced you to prepare yourself, to draw your brows up solemnly; then, taking on the mind of a lawgiver and thinking that you now direct Roman affairs by your vote, you lifted yourself so high above me.
At last some thought and memory of our old intimacy have slipped in. Would that this had happened long ago. Still, when I heard your tongue, together with the swallows, sounding something sweet, I rose up in soul, the sun seemed to strike me more brightly, and now it is truly spring for me. Be kindly to me from now on, and do not again let old loves fall into forgetfulness.
You are truly formidable at moving whomever you wish toward speech and silence. You seem to do something like a man who owns a lyre and has learned to use it: now he weaves a melody, now he holds back from the strings. If anything else seems better, he turns at once to that, and neither he nor the lyre would be called musical.
So when you were silent and had changed over to newer ways, we too, once dearest friends and now perhaps only friends, immediately became gloomy and silent. But I know where the matter came from. The laws forced you to prepare yourself, to draw your brows up solemnly; then, taking on the mind of a lawgiver and thinking that you now direct Roman affairs by your vote, you lifted yourself so high above me.
At last some thought and memory of our old intimacy have slipped in. Would that this had happened long ago. Still, when I heard your tongue, together with the swallows, sounding something sweet, I rose up in soul, the sun seemed to strike me more brightly, and now it is truly spring for me. Be kindly to me from now on, and do not again let old loves fall into forgetfulness.
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.