Letter 25: The power of love's spell only grows stronger in me as I age.
To Heliodorus.
The power of love's spell only grows stronger in me as I age. The same is true for you — but if your countless responsibilities are such an obstacle that you can never spare a moment to honor with a letter those who deserve one, if you cannot snatch even a brief interval from affairs of state to write — at the very least, greet me through someone else's pen. Any word from you is better than silence.
Human translation - Livius.org
Latin / Greek Original
Original text not yet available in this corpus.
This letter still needs a Latin or Greek source-text backfill. The source link, when available, is preserved so the text can be checked and added later.
View sourceRevision history
- 2026-05-27v2.2.34-import
Initial corpus import from Livius.org.
Fields: letter text, metadata, source links. Source: project source import
Related Letters
Rumor says you have great influence with the present Prefect of Egypt — and in this case, rumor tells the truth.
Heliodorus, originally a soldier, but now a presbyter of the Church, had accompanied Jerome to the East, but, not feeling called to the solitary life of the desert, had returned to Aquileia. Here he resumed his clerical duties, and in course of time was raised to the episcopate as bishop of Altinum. The letter was written in the first bitterness...
One of Jerome's finest letters, written to console his old friend, Heliodorus, now Bp. of Altinum, for the loss of his nephew Nepotian who had died of fever a short time previously. Jerome tries to soothe his friend's grief (1) by contrasting pagan despair or resignation with Christian hope, (2) by an eulogy of the departed both as man and presb...