Letter 6: Aeneas shares Pampus's loss and seeks philosophical consolation.

Aeneas of GazaPampus the Grammarian|c. 500 AD|Aeneas of Gaza|From Gaza, Palaestina Prima|AI-assisted
consolationrobberyfriendship
Source label in Hercher: ϛ'. Πάμπῳ γραμματικῷ / VI. Pampo grammatico. First-time modern English translation prepared from the Greek source and checked against Hercher's Latin alignment.

Grief over the robbery has taken away the pleasure of writing this letter. I was no less distressed than if I myself had suffered the loss, and the reason is not hard to see: if friends share what they have, then surely the loss of those things is shared as well. But why am I grieving over this? A person who is greater than gain is also master of loss. That is where our consolation begins. Whether I understand this rightly, I would like to learn from you.

AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed.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

ϛ'. Πάμπῳ γραμματικῷ.
Ἀφείλετό μου τῆς ἐπιστολῆς τὴν ἡδονὴν τῆς ληστείας ἡ λύπη, δι' ἣν οὐχ ἧττον ἠνιάθην ἢ εἴπερ αὐτὸς ἐτύγχανον πεπονθώς. εἰ γὰρ κοινὰ τὰ τῶν φίλων, κοινὴ δήπου καὶ ἡ τούτων ἀφαίρεσις. ἀλλὰ τί ταῦτα συνάχθομαι; πάντως ὁ τοῦ κέρδους κρείττων καὶ ζημίας ἐγκρατής.

Revision history

  1. 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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