Letter 38
I'm doing exhausting work: I keep writing to someone who keeps not answering. But if I don't keep prodding and prying some scrap of a letter out of you, the silence will calcify into habit.
Whether you consider this persistence of mine devoted or annoying, my mind is made up: I intend to keep our friendship alive through conversation. My old love for you hasn't faded one bit. And rightly so — I've never invested my friendship better.
That's why I complain about your silence. A more tender affection makes for readier complaints. The heart that loves deeply is sensitive [Text breaks off in source.]
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.
Related Letters
Without address. Concerning an afflicted woman. I consider it an equal mistake, to let the guilty go unpunished, and to exceed the proper limits of punishment.
After leaving Rome for the East, Jerome writes to Asella to refute the calumnies by which he had been assailed, especially as regards his intimacy with Paula and Eustochium. Written on board ship at Ostia, in August, 385 A.D. 1.