Letter 5072: ...to bite back with retaliation, but I never repay a friend's negligence with equal contempt.
...to bite back with retaliation, but I never repay a friend's negligence with equal contempt. Instead, I write again, hoping that my persistence will shame you into a reply. The pen is my only weapon, and I wield it with more patience than anger. Friendship survives many things, but it cannot survive mutual indifference. So long as one of us keeps writing, the bond endures.
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.
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