To Dulcitius. (361?)
You hold a great office. Rumor predicted this and did not lie. But you govern others, not us -- a point on which we might complain to Fortune. Still, there is some consolation even in this: instead of us, our fathers are being looked after, which means we are not entirely without our share of the benefit.
I know, moreover, that you will come here to even greater things. Meanwhile, I present to you this Daricius, a Thracian -- or better to say a Greek, for though he was born there, he was educated in the city of Theseus [Athens]. I give him to you as a gift, for you know how to receive only such gifts: gold, even Colophonian gold [proverbially fine], has never seemed to you worth more than lead.
Receive the young man, trust him, and take heart. And when you admire him as a rhetor, do not think him more skilled as a speaker than he is good as a man. His character has been proved in serious times. May you have the chance to test your friends in calm weather...
You hold a great office. Rumor predicted this and did not lie. But you govern others, not us -- a point on which we might complain to Fortune. Still, there is some consolation even in this: instead of us, our fathers are being looked after, which means we are not entirely without our share of the benefit.
I know, moreover, that you will come here to even greater things. Meanwhile, I present to you this Daricius, a Thracian -- or better to say a Greek, for though he was born there, he was educated in the city of Theseus [Athens]. I give him to you as a gift, for you know how to receive only such gifts: gold, even Colophonian gold [proverbially fine], has never seemed to you worth more than lead.
Receive the young man, trust him, and take heart. And when you admire him as a rhetor, do not think him more skilled as a speaker than he is good as a man. His character has been proved in serious times. May you have the chance to test your friends in calm weather...
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.