To Obodianus, friend and official. (362)
I have not suffered anything like what happened to your shoulder, but my soul is no less disturbed than yours when I think about it -- how you left the place where you were staying, switched from carriage to horseback thinking it would be safer, and were injured by that very choice.
But in everything it becomes clear how much better it is to have received an education than not. Another man would have wailed like a foolish woman, gaining nothing from his laments to ease the pain. You, however, turned to the scholar's remedy -- words -- and you are bearing what happened with the greatest composure.
As for friends, so long as you remain the kind of man you are, you will never lack them wherever you go. You are a formidable hunter of friendship, using your character in place of nets.
So once your arm can do what it did before the injury -- and it will, if the gods are willing and the doctors are eager -- hurry home and do not be stubborn about it. You have honored the city by choosing to go there; but fortune has rebuffed you at the finish.
I have not suffered anything like what happened to your shoulder, but my soul is no less disturbed than yours when I think about it -- how you left the place where you were staying, switched from carriage to horseback thinking it would be safer, and were injured by that very choice.
But in everything it becomes clear how much better it is to have received an education than not. Another man would have wailed like a foolish woman, gaining nothing from his laments to ease the pain. You, however, turned to the scholar's remedy -- words -- and you are bearing what happened with the greatest composure.
As for friends, so long as you remain the kind of man you are, you will never lack them wherever you go. You are a formidable hunter of friendship, using your character in place of nets.
So once your arm can do what it did before the injury -- and it will, if the gods are willing and the doctors are eager -- hurry home and do not be stubborn about it. You have honored the city by choosing to go there; but fortune has rebuffed you at the finish.
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.