To Strategios. (~358 AD)
May you always send such reports about your health, for it would be fitting that a man of such good judgment should also be well in body. I, however, have been carried back again into my head ailment, so that even Marcellus [his physician] was alarmed that the affliction might prove greater than his skill. It has neither defeated the doctor nor been entirely conquered, but at present a fierce battle rages between art and suffering.
Dianios will tell you about this and about how the Syrians feel toward you. He is a man one may rightly call good, but no longer fortunate. For having acquired his rhetorical training through hard work and hoping to reap the benefit of that ability in your court, he no sooner laid hold of the thing than he was rebuffed from it.
Having missed the favorable wind, then, let him at least enjoy the second-best voyage. And that is this: that a place be made for him at the tribunal among you, and that if anyone drags away one of the citizens, that man learn he will not be doing something that pleases you.
The man deserves our care — mine, because he is a kinsman of Aristainetos and my student; yours, for the same reasons. For you taught me long ago that you consider what is mine your own.
May you always send such reports about your health, for it would be fitting that a man of such good judgment should also be well in body. I, however, have been carried back again into my head ailment, so that even Marcellus [his physician] was alarmed that the affliction might prove greater than his skill. It has neither defeated the doctor nor been entirely conquered, but at present a fierce battle rages between art and suffering.
Dianios will tell you about this and about how the Syrians feel toward you. He is a man one may rightly call good, but no longer fortunate. For having acquired his rhetorical training through hard work and hoping to reap the benefit of that ability in your court, he no sooner laid hold of the thing than he was rebuffed from it.
Having missed the favorable wind, then, let him at least enjoy the second-best voyage. And that is this: that a place be made for him at the tribunal among you, and that if anyone drags away one of the citizens, that man learn he will not be doing something that pleases you.
The man deserves our care — mine, because he is a kinsman of Aristainetos and my student; yours, for the same reasons. For you taught me long ago that you consider what is mine your own.
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.