Libanius→Hyperechius, former student and landowner|libanius
To Hyperechius, former student and landowner. (362)
Oh, how many times you must have shaken your head and said to yourself in some solitary moment or in the dead of night: "I have been forgotten, I have been scorned, everything has changed." And your proof? That a great many people traveled through your region on their way to Thrace, yet not a single letter from me, large or small, reached you.
But many asked me for one, and I gave to none. I will tell you why. I knew that every last one of them would want to lodge with you and live well at your expense. If you refused them, you would seem rude; but if you sat there entertaining more guests than there are leaves on the trees, it would have been a nuisance -- not so much for the cost, but because your farms would have suffered from the neglect.
And I know people: they eat happily enough, but they have no idea how to remember hospitality. They think it brave to badmouth their hosts.
So I was not silent because I had detached my heart from you. I held off so that I would not become the cause of anything unpleasant or harmful to you. Now that I have gotten hold of Miccalus -- and that is the same as getting hold of myself -- I write both to clear myself of blame and to remind you of my old predictions, in which I foretold --
To Hyperechius, former student and landowner. (362)
Oh, how many times you must have shaken your head and said to yourself in some solitary moment or in the dead of night: "I have been forgotten, I have been scorned, everything has changed." And your proof? That a great many people traveled through your region on their way to Thrace, yet not a single letter from me, large or small, reached you.
But many asked me for one, and I gave to none. I will tell you why. I knew that every last one of them would want to lodge with you and live well at your expense. If you refused them, you would seem rude; but if you sat there entertaining more guests than there are leaves on the trees, it would have been a nuisance -- not so much for the cost, but because your farms would have suffered from the neglect.
And I know people: they eat happily enough, but they have no idea how to remember hospitality. They think it brave to badmouth their hosts.
So I was not silent because I had detached my heart from you. I held off so that I would not become the cause of anything unpleasant or harmful to you. Now that I have gotten hold of Miccalus -- and that is the same as getting hold of myself -- I write both to clear myself of blame and to remind you of my old predictions, in which I foretold --
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.