Letter 471
To Themistius. (356 AD)
I admit I don't write often. The fault is yours. I'm amazed I've written even now. So what did you do to force my silence? Every letter you receive is immediately known to people here. By betraying Philios, you think it is the Carian who is endangered.
You display my letters in the agora, and a wind rising from there and striking here stirs up waves against me — the kind of trouble Macedonius knows about and will explain if anyone asks.
That first blow cannot be healed. I beg you not to add a second. And when you urge me not to forget my friends in my good fortune, you yourself appear to have forgotten your friend.
You knew long ago that none of those things the crowd considers blessings ever impressed me, but now you refuse to remember — though you often reproached me for declining to court the powers of governors, a habit I guard even more carefully now that my homeland gives me greater confidence.
Besides, even if I were so disposed as to consider that a blessing, the power now belongs to others — the very people who have stripped us of power. Find someone else, then, to broker your reconciliation. I'm afraid that if I touch the matter I'll become an Akesias [a proverbially incompetent healer].
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.