Letter 13: Aeneas asks aid for a teacher brought low by fortune.
Yesterday the man was a tutor; today he is led about by a child. The man who once seemed imposing to the young now appears pitiable. Such is fortune. What then? Shall we feel pity and give no help? Not you. If fortune suddenly took away the right hand of a soldier, the hand by which he had shown his courage, do you not think his fellow soldiers would contribute a share from the spoils for him? Then let us, whose life comes from words, not appear worse in friendship than those who live by arms.
AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek below for scholarly use.
Latin / Greek Original
ιγ'. Ἐγκρατίῳ.
Χθὲς παιδαγωγὸς ἦν ὁ σήμερον ὑπὸ παιδὸς ἀγόμενος, καὶ σεμνὸς ἐδόκει τοῖς νέοις ὁ νῦν ἐλεεινὸς οὕτω φαινόμενος. τοιοῦτον ἡ τύχη. τί οὖν; ἡμεῖς συναχθόμεθα μὲν, οὐ βοηθοῦμεν δέ; μὴ σύ γε. εἰ στρατιώτου τὴν δεξιὰν ἡ τύχη παρείλετο, οὐκ ἂν οἱ μαχόμενοι τῶν λαφύρων αὐτῷ μέρος ἔφερον; μὴ τοίνυν ἡμεῖς οἷς ἀπὸ τῶν λόγων ὁ βίος φαυλότεροι πρὸς φιλίαν ὀφθείημεν.
Revision history
- 2026-05-27v2.2.34-import
Initial corpus import from modern aeneas gaza hercher v1.
Fields: letter text, metadata, source links. Source: https://archive.org/download/epistolographoih00herc/epistolographoih00herc_djvu.txt
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