Letter 5027: You do well to console my leisure with your steady stream of letters.
You do well to console my leisure with your steady stream of letters. You've guessed, rightly, from the depth of your affection, that what comes from your most holy and brilliant pen is a gift I treasure.
I return the favor more as testimony of my gratitude than in any hope of matching your effort — an effort I know I can never equal. But this very inequality, I think, makes me all the more deserving of more frequent conversation: by conceding the palm to you, I acknowledge myself the debtor in our literary exchange.
AI-assisted translation — This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek below for scholarly use.
Latin / Greek Original
Facis, ut decet, quod otium meum scriptorum assiduitate solaris. siquidem ex tno
amore coniectas, iucundum mihi esse munus, quod ex tuo sanctissimo ac luculento ore
profieiscitur. refero igitur vicem magis ad testimonium gratiae quam ad aequiparan-
dum officium, quo me agnosco devinctum. sed hoc ipso arbitror digniorem me esse i»
conloquio crebriore, quod hanc palmam tibi reddo quasi victus fenore litterarum.
XXXXVI (XXXXim) a. 393.
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