To Celsus. (362)
You should have been receiving such letters from others on such matters, but you fled the rank of teachers and entered that of governors. And yet you perform that role with such skill as we never could, even if someone led us there; and had you been here, you would have prevailed here too. So versatile a thing did god fashion your nature. And you alone among those we know are blamed not for being lazy, but for not biting.
Let nothing change you, and let not a drunken man grieve you more than Homer's praise delights you — and with the poet, all the Cilicians, and before the other Cilicians, Anticles the rhetor, whose vote should be considered stronger than both continents.
That is how you should think. As for the young man, he will receive no less than you did before.
You should have been receiving such letters from others on such matters, but you fled the rank of teachers and entered that of governors. And yet you perform that role with such skill as we never could, even if someone led us there; and had you been here, you would have prevailed here too. So versatile a thing did god fashion your nature. And you alone among those we know are blamed not for being lazy, but for not biting.
Let nothing change you, and let not a drunken man grieve you more than Homer's praise delights you — and with the poet, all the Cilicians, and before the other Cilicians, Anticles the rhetor, whose vote should be considered stronger than both continents.
That is how you should think. As for the young man, he will receive no less than you did before.
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.