To Priscianus. (361 AD)
While others asked those arriving from there all manner of questions — "What of the Arcadians? What of the Amphictyonians? Where has Philip gone?" — I, who always have your affairs at heart, had only one thing I wanted to know: whether the magnitude of the moment put your virtue to the test.
While many were playing tragedians, and those who sought things from you were like the Bacchants from whose rocks everything flows, and while they invoked Ajax and the labors he endured — no one was saying "Ajax stood firm no longer." They were saying only that Priscianus carried everything forward at a run: urging, obeying, supplying, persuading, arguing back, satisfying the desires of those in command while not driving those under command to extremes.
And they say two things came to you from all this: poverty and glory — so that our hopes for good things bloom fair, that the emperor will repay the debt when, having done well and conquered the Persian, he returns. May god bring that to pass.
This Seleucus here is a kinsman of Calliopius — who was raised on the teachings of Zenobius and lightens for me the burden of managing the young men. He comes at Elpidius's urging to contribute something to the work. Knowing that if you are not kindly disposed toward him it would be better for him to leave than to stay, he arranges through this letter to ensure a warm reception from you.
I myself would like to place both Calliopius and his father in my debt — a debt I expect to recoup in the exertions I'm making on behalf of my illegitimate son; for both of them are shaping Arrabius.
While others asked those arriving from there all manner of questions — "What of the Arcadians? What of the Amphictyonians? Where has Philip gone?" — I, who always have your affairs at heart, had only one thing I wanted to know: whether the magnitude of the moment put your virtue to the test.
While many were playing tragedians, and those who sought things from you were like the Bacchants from whose rocks everything flows, and while they invoked Ajax and the labors he endured — no one was saying "Ajax stood firm no longer." They were saying only that Priscianus carried everything forward at a run: urging, obeying, supplying, persuading, arguing back, satisfying the desires of those in command while not driving those under command to extremes.
And they say two things came to you from all this: poverty and glory — so that our hopes for good things bloom fair, that the emperor will repay the debt when, having done well and conquered the Persian, he returns. May god bring that to pass.
This Seleucus here is a kinsman of Calliopius — who was raised on the teachings of Zenobius and lightens for me the burden of managing the young men. He comes at Elpidius's urging to contribute something to the work. Knowing that if you are not kindly disposed toward him it would be better for him to leave than to stay, he arranges through this letter to ensure a warm reception from you.
I myself would like to place both Calliopius and his father in my debt — a debt I expect to recoup in the exertions I'm making on behalf of my illegitimate son; for both of them are shaping Arrabius.
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.