Letter 26: What a very small quantity of vegetables you have sent me! They must surely be golden vegetables! And yet your whole wealth consists of orchards and rivers and groves and gardens, and your country is productive of vegetables as other lands are of gold, and You dwell among meadowy leafage.
Gregory to Amphilochius.
What a pitiful little quantity of vegetables you have sent me! They must surely be made of gold! And yet your whole wealth consists of orchards and rivers and groves and gardens, and your countryside produces vegetables the way other lands produce precious metals. You "dwell among meadowy leafage," as the poet says.
But grain for you is a fabulous luxury, and your bread is the bread of angels -- so welcome is it, and so little can you count on it. Either send me your vegetables at a lower price, or I am done with your garden and your gardening. We have plenty of meadow grass here, as you know, and can feed ourselves like grasshoppers.
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.
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