Letter 7009: Item ad Lupum ducem
IX. Item ad Lupum ducem
More to Duke Lupus
Attentive to holy duties, rememberer of one who loves you, prompt in your warm concern for your friend — you who have had such abundant pity for an absent friend, seeking signs of love even when I am hidden away:
What do I deserve, that the kind care of Lupus [Duke Lupus, a prominent Frankish magnate] should be my immediate hope? I am an exile from Italy, rolling through what I think is now my ninth year near the shore of the Ocean. So many seasons fly by, and still no letter has come from my parents across the sea — no news of whether they live or lie in rest.
But your care has found me in my hiding. You ask about me through messengers; your letters have crossed whatever distance lies between us. In you I have found a father when I could not hear from mine.
Tell me, dear Lupus — do you think I will ever see Italy again? Will I ever walk those roads I know, see those faces I grew up among? The years pass and the Ocean stays between me and everything familiar.
But even here, so far from home, your friendship is a kind of homeland. For the man who has one true friend has not entirely lost his way.
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.
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