Letter 1095: I'd been wondering, my dear friend, why you'd let the silence drag on so long.

I'd been wondering, my dear friend, why you'd let the silence drag on so long. It was all the more painful because I hadn't neglected my own duty to write. The moment your letter arrived, joy rushed in and complaint vanished — friendship is quickly healed by attention. And you'd spread your page with such honey-sweet eloquence that any lingering resentment was drowned as if by a cup of Lethe. So — pen now turned to gratitude instead of the reproach I'd been composing — I'll just add one request: please never let the letters lapse again. And if you can't think of anything to report, it will be enough simply to assure me that you're well.

Dudum te, mi frater, silentio indulgere mirabar. ea res inpendio augebat dolo- rem, quod ipse minime scribendi observantiam neglegebam. simul atque accepi litte- ras tuas, animum subiit laetitia, querella desemit. amicitia enim cito sanatur officio. 20 tu quoque ita paginam melle emditissimi oris obleveras, ut quaelibet offensa tamquam Lethaeo poculo mergeretur. verso igitur stilo gratiam fateor, qui expostulare medi- tabar, adiciens postulatum, ne umquam supersedere litteris perseveres. quod si scri- benda defuerint, mihi satis erit, ut tibi gratuler sospitatis. LXXXXII (LXXXVI) ante a. 379.