Letter 347: Every bishop is a thing out of which it is very hard to get anything. The further you have advanced beyond other people in learning, the more you make me afraid that you will refuse what I ask. I want some rafters.
Every bishop is practically impossible to get anything out of. And the further you've surpassed everyone else in learning, the more I worry you'll refuse what I'm asking.
I need some rafters. Any other rhetorician would have called them "stakes" or "poles" — not because that's actually what he needed, but just to show off his precious vocabulary. I'm asking for rafters because I need rafters.
If you don't send them, I'll be spending the winter outdoors.
Human translation - New Advent (NPNF / ANF series)
Latin / Greek Original
[Πρός: Λιβάνιος Βασιλείῳ]
Πᾶς μὲν ἐπίσκοπος πρᾶγμα δυσγρίπιστον, σὺ δὲ ὅσῳ τοὺς ἄλλους παρελήλυθας λογιότητι, τοσούτῳ καὶ φόβον μοι παρέχεις, μή πως ἔξαρνος στῇς πρὸς τὴν αἴτησιν. κἀπειδὴ στρωτήρων δέομαι. κάμακας δʼ ἂν ἢ χάρακας ἄλλος εἶπε σοφιστής, οὐ χρῄζων, ἀλλὰ τοῖς ῥηματίοις ἐγκαλλωπιζόμενος, ἢ τῆς χρείας γινόμενος· ἔγωγε, εἰ μὴ σὺ παράσχοις, ὕπαιθρος διαχειμάσω.
Revision history
- 2026-05-27v2.2.34-import
Initial corpus import from New Advent / NPNF.
Fields: letter text, metadata, source links. Source: https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-greekLit/blob/master/data/tlg2040/tlg004/tlg2040.tlg004.perseus-grc2.xml
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