Letter 97: Procopius praises Macarius's sweet token of goodwill and his study of law.

Procopius of GazaMacarius, correspondent and bearer of Procopius of Gaza|c. 515 AD|Procopius of Gaza|From Gaza, Palaestina Prima|AI-assisted
late antique Greek letters; Macarius; gift; honey; friendship; distance; law; poetry
The gift's honey lets Procopius make sweetness literal and moral at once.

Your token of goodwill toward me has become sweet, and the gift imitates your intention by being joined with honey. Having become a lover of words and having been filled with them, you know what a great thing friendship is when it advances with time and does not admit forgetfulness through distance.

For that reason, though I praised you before, I admire you even more now, because even when absent you have remained the same. Do well, then. Feed yourself on the laws, and soon become, to say something poetic, "a great joy to your father, your city, and all the people."

AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed.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

Μακαρίωι Τῆς περὶ ἡμᾶς εὐνοίας γλυκύ σου καθέστηκε καὶ τὸ σύμβολον, καὶ μιμεῖται τὴν γνώμην τὸ δῶρον τῷ μέλιτι συμπλεκόμενον. λόγων γὰρ γενόμενος ἐραστὴς καὶ τούτων ἐμφορηθεὶς ἔγνως ὡς μέγα δή τι χρῆμα φιλία συμ προϊοῦσα τῷ χρόνῳ καὶ μὴ τῇ διαστάσει δεχομένη τὴν λήθην. ὅθεν σε καὶ πρὶν ἐπαινῶν νῦν ἔτι πλέον τεθαύμακα, ὅτι καὶ μὴ παρὼν καθέστηκας παρα πλήσιος. ἀλλά μοι πρᾶττε καλῶς καὶ τῶν νόμων ἐμφοροῦ καὶ γένοιο δὴ θᾶττον, ἵνα τι καὶ λέξω ποιητικόν "πατρί τε σῷ μέγα χάρμα πόληί τε, παντί τε δήμῳ".

Revision history

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

    Initial corpus import from modern procopius gaza batch6 matia greek v1.

    Fields: letter text, metadata, source links. Source: https://www.matia.gr/pisth/pdf/pg_migne/Procopius_of_Gaza_PG_87a-87c/Epistulae.pdf

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