Letter 5013: I'm tired and annoyed with writing — how long are we going to keep imitating the pleasure of real conversation with...
I'm tired and annoyed with writing — how long are we going to keep imitating the pleasure of real conversation with the mere image of a pen? Besides, public happiness and the peace of the world now urge you to come home.
On this point, our friend Ponticianus will be a timely nudge. By good fortune he's been given the task of convincing you — delayed as you are by your wife's business — to start wanting to see Rome again.
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.
Related Letters
I could have refuted you for writing that way -- not for complaining about the frequency of my letters, but for...
You are distressed by your travels, and think yourself unsteady, like a stick carried along by a stream. But, my dear friend, you must not let yourself feel so at all. For the travels of the stick are involuntary, but your course is ordained by God, and your stability is in doing good to others, even though you are not fixed to a place; unless i...
It is some time since I received your letter, but I waited to be able to reply by some fit person; that so the bearer of my answer might supply whatever might be wanting in it. Now there has arrived our much beloved and very reverend brother Strategius, and I have judged it well to make use of his services, both as knowing my mind and able to co...
You have been long silent, though you have very great power of speech, and are well trained in the art of conversation and of exhibiting yourself by your eloquence. Possibly it is Neocæsarea which is the cause of your not writing to me. I suppose I must take it as a kindness if those who are there do not remember me, for, as I am informed by tho...
May this custom endure, and may the mutual assurance of well-being be renewed between us year after year.