Letter 379
To Modestus. (358/59 AD)
I was right to do both things: to write and to stop writing. The writing came from my desire to receive a letter; the stopping came from my reluctance, having received none, to try again. But now that I have at last received one, you will plainly see an archer, and the letters will fly thick and fast.
You ask to learn how I am, but you seem to be asking for grief. From that time until this day my head has been unable to find peace.
And to this was added a greater affliction: the inability to visit you — which, for anyone who can, is better than any medicine. Know this well: even if I were healthier than Croton [the proverbially healthy athlete], being separated from you I would count myself among the sick.
As for Daphne, beloved of Apollo — I do not mean the nymph, but the place into which the maiden was transformed — I thought it beautiful before, and now I think it more beautiful still, knowing that you too find it so. Yet I have no share in the place, for I am a prisoner of my profession. What governing is to you, teaching is to me.
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.