Letter 5012: If my letters reach you rarely, the fault lies not in my arrogance but in others' tyranny.
To Calminius.
If my letters reach you rarely, the fault lies not in my arrogance but in others' tyranny. Do not press me for a plainer explanation — the fear you share will interpret the necessity of this silence well enough. This much alone I will say freely: I grieve that, torn apart by the storm of warring factions, we are deprived of seeing each other. You are never brought before the anxious eyes of your homeland unless perhaps, at the whim of foreign terror, you are encased in your armor while we man our ramparts. In which case you are brought here only as a captive — forced to empty your quiver of arrows and fill your eyes with tears. And we do not refuse this either, since your prayers aim at something very different from your javelins.
But since from time to time — if not through the reality of a treaty, at least through the illusion of a truce — some window of hope and freedom shines for us, I earnestly ask that you write to me as often as you can, knowing that in the hearts of these besieged citizens your memory endures with a warmth that forgets the hostility of the besiegers. Farewell.
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.
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