Letter 104: All The Other favours which I have received I know to be due to your kindness; and may God reward you for them with His own mercies; and may one of these be, that you may discharge your office of prefect with good fame and splendour from beginning to end. In what I now ask I come rather to give than to receive, if it is not arrogant to say so. I...
Gregory of Nazianzus→a prefect|gregory nazianzus
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Military conflict
Gregory to a prefect.
All the other favors I have received from you I know to be the product of your kindness, and may God repay you with His own mercies. May one of those mercies be this: that you discharge your office of prefect with good reputation and splendor from beginning to end.
In what I now ask, I come rather to give than to receive -- if that is not too bold a claim. I bring you an opportunity for generosity, which is the noblest exercise of power. The bearer of this letter needs your help. Grant it, and you add to the treasury of good deeds that will stand to your credit before God, where the only accounting that ultimately matters takes place.
Ep. CIV.
All The Other favours which I have received I know to be due to your kindness; and may God reward you for them with His own mercies; and may one of these be, that you may discharge your office of prefect with good fame and splendour from beginning to end. In what I now ask I come rather to give than to receive, if it is not arrogant to say so. I personally introduce poor Philumena to you, to entreat your justice, and to move you to the tears with which she afflicts my soul. She herself will explain to you in what and by whom she has been wronged, for it would not be right for me to bring accusations against any one. But this much it is necessary for me to say, that widowhood and orphanhood have a right to the assistance of all right-minded men, and especially of those who have wife and children, those great pledges of pity, since we — ourselves only men — are set to judge men. Pardon me that I plead with you for these by letter, since it is by ill health that I am deprived of seeing a ruler so kind and so conspicuous for virtue that even the prelude of your administration is more precious than the good fame of others even at the end of their term.
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Gregory to a prefect.
All the other favors I have received from you I know to be the product of your kindness, and may God repay you with His own mercies. May one of those mercies be this: that you discharge your office of prefect with good reputation and splendor from beginning to end.
In what I now ask, I come rather to give than to receive -- if that is not too bold a claim. I bring you an opportunity for generosity, which is the noblest exercise of power. The bearer of this letter needs your help. Grant it, and you add to the treasury of good deeds that will stand to your credit before God, where the only accounting that ultimately matters takes place.
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.