Letter 249
To Clearchus. (358/359?)
"They lie who say you are the son of Zeus" -- someone once said this to one of the Heraclidae before Troy [a Homeric allusion]. Likewise, people say you have influence in the city, but the facts prove otherwise. At any rate, you have done nothing to help Olympius, who is being wronged in every way.
If you truly do have influence, then we must acknowledge something worse: that you do not care about your friends. For I do not know what greater harm we could have suffered if you had been absent than what we are suffering with you present.
If you take refuge in ignorance of the situation, you will not seem to be telling the truth, and you will not escape the charge any more easily. For the very failure to look into such things is itself a reproach.
Choose, then, one of three options: either stop those who are doing wrong, or admit to being a bad man, or admit to being powerless. I know you will claim the third, with your usual irony -- but you will not fool anyone with that pretense.
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.