To Barbation. (356 AD)
I wrote to you at the start of winter. Clematius was the one who took the letter — a man who spent the entire summer here and passed all his time singing your praises. Not that he was teaching us anything we didn't already know, unless the Cretan needs lessons about the sea. But there was something charming in the way he celebrated your virtues — with shouting, with all his heart, and practically leaping in the air.
Seeing this, I thought it fitting that my first letter should reach you through a man who is fond of me and both fond of and full of admiration for you. But it seems you never received it. For when you wrote to your uncle about us, you sent no letter to me — the one you've kept stationed here.
Well, your uncle will either deliver a greeting eventually or bear a complaint from me. As for you, in return for your devotion to us, may you have trophies over the barbarians and the emperor's unfailing favor. From us your reward is praise — for our currency is words — and beyond that, may your sons be enrolled in the schools ahead of all others.
I wrote to you at the start of winter. Clematius was the one who took the letter — a man who spent the entire summer here and passed all his time singing your praises. Not that he was teaching us anything we didn't already know, unless the Cretan needs lessons about the sea. But there was something charming in the way he celebrated your virtues — with shouting, with all his heart, and practically leaping in the air.
Seeing this, I thought it fitting that my first letter should reach you through a man who is fond of me and both fond of and full of admiration for you. But it seems you never received it. For when you wrote to your uncle about us, you sent no letter to me — the one you've kept stationed here.
Well, your uncle will either deliver a greeting eventually or bear a complaint from me. As for you, in return for your devotion to us, may you have trophies over the barbarians and the emperor's unfailing favor. From us your reward is praise — for our currency is words — and beyond that, may your sons be enrolled in the schools ahead of all others.
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.