To Modestus. (358/359)
The poets, I think, were right about Eros when they called him invincible [a reference to the famous Sophocles chorus in Antigone]. Just look at Strategius: a man deeply rooted here has now left behind wife, children, and everything else he loves, and is racing off to see you. He tries to conceal his motive, claiming he is running on a tax matter, but he does not fool me -- you are his real errand, and the tax business is merely a pleasant bonus.
It is clear, then, that you will look on him with kind eyes, not least because you have in him an exact informant about the stoa [colonnade/portico building project]. He endured great heat and heavy dust on that project, and gladly, because in his own labors he was giving you the chance to build a reputation. What at the outset offered no brilliant prospect has turned into something that no generation can pass by in silence -- it draws every eye, and whoever sees it marvels.
The whole city, then, owes you gratitude, and you owe gratitude to this man. For it was you who conceived the design, but he who carried it out. And gratitude enough would be this: praise him, and think of him as we do.
Our own verdict is that Strategius is a man of true nobility, whom no one has ever surpassed in doing good. He is always looking for ways to return kindness on a grander scale, and in that search he has never once come up empty.
The poets, I think, were right about Eros when they called him invincible [a reference to the famous Sophocles chorus in Antigone]. Just look at Strategius: a man deeply rooted here has now left behind wife, children, and everything else he loves, and is racing off to see you. He tries to conceal his motive, claiming he is running on a tax matter, but he does not fool me -- you are his real errand, and the tax business is merely a pleasant bonus.
It is clear, then, that you will look on him with kind eyes, not least because you have in him an exact informant about the stoa [colonnade/portico building project]. He endured great heat and heavy dust on that project, and gladly, because in his own labors he was giving you the chance to build a reputation. What at the outset offered no brilliant prospect has turned into something that no generation can pass by in silence -- it draws every eye, and whoever sees it marvels.
The whole city, then, owes you gratitude, and you owe gratitude to this man. For it was you who conceived the design, but he who carried it out. And gratitude enough would be this: praise him, and think of him as we do.
Our own verdict is that Strategius is a man of true nobility, whom no one has ever surpassed in doing good. He is always looking for ways to return kindness on a grander scale, and in that search he has never once come up empty.
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.