To Modestus. (358/59)
Many are those who announce that you are coming, but we do not yet see the deed. So turn this shadow of pleasure into true joy for us. If the affairs along the Euphrates needed attention, they have been adequately tended to. If it was necessary for people to learn who you are under a blazing sun, you seem to have fallen no short of the endurance of Heracles.
Why, then, do you keep a great and beautiful city in suspense — a city that loves you, to which you owe gratitude for its affection, and against which you have no complaint?
Come, noble friend — prepare your defense and present yourself before men you have wronged. Even if you appear this very moment, the time that has passed demands a rhetorician's skill. But of course you have no need to hire a speaker, since your own voice has already saved many.
Many are those who announce that you are coming, but we do not yet see the deed. So turn this shadow of pleasure into true joy for us. If the affairs along the Euphrates needed attention, they have been adequately tended to. If it was necessary for people to learn who you are under a blazing sun, you seem to have fallen no short of the endurance of Heracles.
Why, then, do you keep a great and beautiful city in suspense — a city that loves you, to which you owe gratitude for its affection, and against which you have no complaint?
Come, noble friend — prepare your defense and present yourself before men you have wronged. Even if you appear this very moment, the time that has passed demands a rhetorician's skill. But of course you have no need to hire a speaker, since your own voice has already saved many.
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.