Letter 8015: You used to be a prolix writer, matching the strength of your talent.
You used to be a prolix writer, matching the strength of your talent. But ever since the honor of court life called you to active service, you too have taken to clipping your words -- like a light-armed skirmisher who sheds his baggage for the march [Text breaks off in source.]
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.
Related Letters
You cannot avoid helping the Galatians, whom you once governed, wherever they turn, and I am bound by many reasons...
You yourself have seen with your own eyes the distressing condition of Maximus, once a man of high reputation, but now most of all to be pitied, formerly prefect of my country. Would that he had never been so! Many, I think, would be likely to shun provincial governorships, if their dignities are likely to issue in such an end.
In reply to a request from Marcella for information concerning two phrases in Ps. cxxvii. (bread of sorrow, Psalm 126:2, and children of the shaken off, A.V.
We should be silent about fortune's blows, lest a belated consolation tear open the scar of past grief.
This is a letter where the social gap between us actually shapes what we write.