From: Libanius, rhetorician in Antioch
To: Leontius
Date: ~359 AD
Context: A letter about a missing messenger and the hazards of relying on intermediaries -- told with characteristic Libanius verve.
I received your earlier letter with more pleasure than you can imagine. The most delightful part was this: you had heard I intended to write to you, and without waiting for my letter, you sent your own first. That is the mark of real friendship.
But the man who delivered your letter handed it to me in the marketplace and said he'd come right over to the council chamber where I spend my time -- for the Temple of Fortune, my dear Leontius, has been stripped of its former splendor along with everything else, even the flocks it once maintained, and has become nothing more than an occasion for tears whenever I walk past. Anyway, after promising to come and showing every sign of eagerness, he vanished as if swept away by the wind and never showed his face again.
I assumed he'd been carried off against his will. But it turns out he was here in the city the whole time, simply avoiding me -- I learned this from the man who brought your second letter. He probably fell in with some crowd of flatterers for whom not carrying letters from me is a point of honor. If he'd met them before meeting me, they'd certainly have persuaded him not to deliver yours at all.
I'm surprised that even in your latest letter you gave no indication whether you received mine. The evidence of ill will is everywhere, but I won't dwell on it.
**To Calliopius** (388)
Which of the gods or spirits has made Tatianus — admired everywhere — gracious toward us? You tell me, Calliopius, for you know his affairs well. But if you will not say, I must resort to divination.
The god himself I could not discover — just as Homer knew that Athena came from Hera to Achilles to restrain his anger — but the man through whom the gods accomplished this, him I have found out most excellently.
He is a fellow citizen of mine, a leading man of the city, one who drank from the same bowl as I in the gardens of the Muses. First he pleaded cases in court, and now he writes letters — both in the service of emperors, the father and the son — having perhaps done me a great wrong, or perhaps not even a small one. He takes no small pride in the fact that your reputation was made brilliant by that man's cleverness, and — what is still more formidable — with Themistius lending his support. His rhetorical skill we saw in the charges he brought; his humanity, in what he promised to do on our behalf.
Context:A letter about a missing messenger and the hazards of relying on intermediaries -- told with characteristic Libanius verve.
I received your earlier letter with more pleasure than you can imagine. The most delightful part was this: you had heard I intended to write to you, and without waiting for my letter, you sent your own first. That is the mark of real friendship.
But the man who delivered your letter handed it to me in the marketplace and said he'd come right over to the council chamber where I spend my time -- for the Temple of Fortune, my dear Leontius, has been stripped of its former splendor along with everything else, even the flocks it once maintained, and has become nothing more than an occasion for tears whenever I walk past. Anyway, after promising to come and showing every sign of eagerness, he vanished as if swept away by the wind and never showed his face again.
I assumed he'd been carried off against his will. But it turns out he was here in the city the whole time, simply avoiding me -- I learned this from the man who brought your second letter. He probably fell in with some crowd of flatterers for whom not carrying letters from me is a point of honor. If he'd met them before meeting me, they'd certainly have persuaded him not to deliver yours at all.
I'm surprised that even in your latest letter you gave no indication whether you received mine. The evidence of ill will is everywhere, but I won't dwell on it.
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.