Letter 7040: We haven't yet reached the coast at Naples to see the crown jewel of your estate, but everything the Tyrrhenian Sea...
We haven't yet reached the coast at Naples to see the crown jewel of your estate, but everything the Tyrrhenian Sea touches is full of your name. To put it simply: you've inherited the fame of Lucullus [the famously extravagant Roman general whose Neapolitan villas were legendary]. Which makes me all the more surprised you can ever bring yourself to leave.
Unless you flee abundance out of fastidiousness, curing satiation with variety. But you've been away too long this time. By now the long spell of austerity must have rekindled your appetite. So why not come our way? Or if you prefer to linger and share our frugality, rest assured [Text breaks off in source.]
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.
Related Letters
I knew well that you would hold to the agreement about the parchment; and what you ask to be arranged for you—we...
St. Ambrose excuses himself for not having gone to the consistory when summoned, on the ground that in matters of faith no one but bishops could rightly judge, and that he was not contumacious because he would not suffer wrong to be done to his own order. And he adds that Auxentius would perhaps choose as judges either Jews or unbelievers, that ...
To the most merciful Emperor Theodosius — from the Council assembled at Aquileia.
In this his second letter to Paulinus of Nola Jerome dissuades him from making a pilgrimage to the Holy Places, and describes Jerusalem not as it ought to be but as it is. He then gives his friend counsels for his life similar to those which he has previously addressed to Nepotian, praises Paulinus for his Panegyric (now no longer extant) on the...
Generously, as is your way, you sent an attendant to assist our return journey.