Letter 5016: I had every intention of making the journey, but the late summons left too little time to arrive.
I had every intention of making the journey, but the late summons left too little time to arrive. It seemed more decent to beg your pardon than to appear after the consul's ceremony was already finished. I have already sent the fullest explanations to our most merciful emperor and to all who wished me present — letters that even now the agent Festus delays by his slowness in departing.
Since I fear my letters may either be suppressed or tampered with by rivals, I decided to write to you directly as well. Farewell.
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.
Related Letters
What people on shore feel when they watch others sailing through a storm — imagining the waves crashing against...
You were praising my speeches, and everyone else was praising your appetite for rhetoric.
You had written that my daughter's health was fully restored.
Our friendship is on everyone's lips, and the fame of your horses has reached distant places.
In this letter, addressed to one who seems to have had some pre-eminence among the monks of the Chalcidian desert, Jerome complains of the hard treatment meted out to him because of his refusal to take any part in the great theological dispute then raging in Syria. He protests his own orthodoxy, and begs permission to remain where he is until th...