To Seleucus, friend and official. (362)
You seem to have forgotten the state of both my mind and my body if you actually expected to see me among the embassy's delegation. I am not the sort to rush off on such missions, and even if I desperately wanted to, I could not -- a man for whom simply getting from home to the marketplace is a labor.
As for the things you say I told my closest associates, none of that was said with an eye to reward. I was simply grieving for land and sea alike. But if some reward for my hatred was owed, it has been paid: the man who was destroying everything is gone, and we did not need to lift a blade against him.
There has been another reward too, and there are fresh ones every day. Whatever the emperor does for the common good, I receive my share of that. If he offers me something personal, I will gladly accept it; if he does not, I will not complain. For what more could anyone seek than to have the sacred harbors opened to mankind?
You seem to have forgotten the state of both my mind and my body if you actually expected to see me among the embassy's delegation. I am not the sort to rush off on such missions, and even if I desperately wanted to, I could not -- a man for whom simply getting from home to the marketplace is a labor.
As for the things you say I told my closest associates, none of that was said with an eye to reward. I was simply grieving for land and sea alike. But if some reward for my hatred was owed, it has been paid: the man who was destroying everything is gone, and we did not need to lift a blade against him.
There has been another reward too, and there are fresh ones every day. Whatever the emperor does for the common good, I receive my share of that. If he offers me something personal, I will gladly accept it; if he does not, I will not complain. For what more could anyone seek than to have the sacred harbors opened to mankind?
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.