Letter 11009: Item ad eandem pro eulogiis transmissis
To Radegund, for Food Gifts Sent
With careful piety you always command to know how I am being fed here by what you send. This was also the first abundance of today's dinner: that you sent me greens drenched with honey. And not once or twice, but three and four times the messenger ran back — with something whose fragrance alone could have fed me.
One bearer was not enough for such a quantity of gifts; the feet of those who kept returning grew tired. Beyond that came other things, piled one on another — so that our table, generously supplied with your care, looked like a festival rather than a meal.
Radegund — you manage, from inside your enclosure, to fill my days with more warmth than most people who are free can manage. The gifts you send are not just food. They are evidence that someone inside those walls is thinking of Fortunatus. And that, more than the greens with honey, is what feeds him.
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.
Latin / Greek Original
IX
Item ad eandem pro eulogiis transmissis
Sollicita pietate iubes cognoscere semper,
qualiter hic epulis te tribuente fover.
haec quoque prima fuit hodiernae copia cenae,
quod mihi perfuso melle dedistis holus;
nec semel aut iterum, sed terque quaterque cucurrit,
cuius me poterat pascere solus odor.
portitor ad tantos missus non sufficit unus;
lassarunt totiens qui rediere pedes.
praeterea venit missus cum collibus altis
undique carnali monte superbus apex,
deliciis cinctus quas terra vel unda ministrat;
conpositis epulis hortulus intus erat.
haec ego nunc avidus superavi cuncta gulosus:
et mons et hortus ventre tenetur iners.
singula nec refero, quia me tua munera vincunt:
ad caelos victrix et super astra voles.
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