Letter 348: If γριπίζειν is the same thing as to gain, and this is the meaning of the phrase which your sophistic ingenuity has got from the depths of Plato, consider, my dear sir, who is the more hard to be got from, I who am thus impaled by your epistolary skill, or the tribe of Sophists, whose craft is to make money out of their words. What bishop ever ...
If "to fish" means the same thing as "to gain" -- and this is the meaning your sophistic ingenuity has fished out from the depths of Plato -- then consider, my dear sir, who is the harder catch: me, impaled as I am on your epistolary skill, or the tribe of sophists, whose whole craft is to make money from their words?
What bishop ever levied tribute through his letters? What bishop ever taxed his students? It is you who make your words a marketable commodity, like a confectioner selling honey-cakes. Look how you have made the old man leap and dance!
However, to you who make such a fuss about your lecture hall, I have ordered as many rafters to be supplied as there were fighters at Thermopylae [300] -- all of good length and, as Homer would say, "long-shadowed." The sacred Alphaeus has promised to provide them.
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.
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