Letter 7029: If you had answered my letter, you would have lightened your own conscience.
If you had answered my letter, you would have lightened your own conscience. Instead, your silence only helped mine. When courtesies are returned, they bring me joy; when they're withheld, I claim the victory.
I know you could produce effortlessly what I wring out with great labor. But since you begrudge your readers your fine words, I'll swallow my loss rather than seem to be forcing your hand against your stinginess. Farewell.
AI-assisted translation — This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed.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
Si respondisses epistulae meae, levasses onere conscientiam tnam: nunc nostram
tacitumitate iuvisti. repensa f nim officia laetitiam mibi praestant, negata victoriam.
^et scio ex abundanti posse te facere, quod nos multo sudore destringimus. sed quia
invides bona verba lectoribus, ne vim facere existimer avaritiae tuae, dispendium
meum devoro. vale. lo
AD MACEDONIVM.
XXVI a. 397?
Related Letters
1. You have done quite right in sending me a letter, and in sending it by the hands of one who, even if you had not written, would have been perfectly competent to give me considerable comfort in all my anxieties, and an authentic report as to the position of affairs. Many vague rumours were continually reaching me, and therefore I was desirous ...
The news from the East has been, to put it gently, unsettling.
I should have held off writing, since my distinguished son Decius is heading your way and will tell you far more...
You described the famine and the cold so vividly in your letter that I shivered and felt hungry just reading it.
When I departed, you entrusted me with a responsibility befitting our friendship: not to keep silent about matters...