To Constantius. (363)
You were good to write, but I was unlucky not to receive the letters — and the scoundrels who mishandled the gift betrayed us both. Still, it is no small comfort to know how many letters were written, even if they never reached my hands.
You do nothing surprising in writing to the one whose company you enjoyed in person. Remember how your evenings grew more pleasant when I arrived, and you would extend our conversations into the middle of the night — conversations in which I admired your eloquence no less than your intelligence, faulting only one thing: that you had thrust a nature suited to Hermes into a soldier's life.
Fine as those moments were, finer still was your concern when the question arose of how Hyperechius might escape the net. Greater still was this: finding me being carried unknowingly toward a most dangerous pit, you all but placed your hand on my chest to hold me back.
The pit was this: the man who considered the gods to be nonsense also considered those in philosophers' cloaks to be charlatans. You saw that if he caught sight of me he would instantly turn hostile, and you feared some act of anger might follow.
That you foresaw this, knowing the man as you did, is not surprising. But that you ordered me to leave and entrusted me with something confidential — this I remember always, and I count you as my savior, telling everyone how I was benefited, and not letting even the emperor go without hearing of this favor.
You were good to write, but I was unlucky not to receive the letters — and the scoundrels who mishandled the gift betrayed us both. Still, it is no small comfort to know how many letters were written, even if they never reached my hands.
You do nothing surprising in writing to the one whose company you enjoyed in person. Remember how your evenings grew more pleasant when I arrived, and you would extend our conversations into the middle of the night — conversations in which I admired your eloquence no less than your intelligence, faulting only one thing: that you had thrust a nature suited to Hermes into a soldier's life.
Fine as those moments were, finer still was your concern when the question arose of how Hyperechius might escape the net. Greater still was this: finding me being carried unknowingly toward a most dangerous pit, you all but placed your hand on my chest to hold me back.
The pit was this: the man who considered the gods to be nonsense also considered those in philosophers' cloaks to be charlatans. You saw that if he caught sight of me he would instantly turn hostile, and you feared some act of anger might follow.
That you foresaw this, knowing the man as you did, is not surprising. But that you ordered me to leave and entrusted me with something confidential — this I remember always, and I count you as my savior, telling everyone how I was benefited, and not letting even the emperor go without hearing of this favor.
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.