Letter 34: Many people mock you as a grudge-bearer — and rightly so, since you use anger as a weapon of revenge.

To Chrysanthos. Forgetfulness does not lie outside human suffering; yet it does befall us all the same, just like the other diseases. For it pursues those souls from which memory has been separated. But it flees and is gone whenever one overcomes it with the weapons of memory. Since, then, while you were with us you kept an unforgetting remembrance of virtue, but, on departing, you have surrendered yourself to forgetfulness, as we have learned, we thought it necessary to shoot this forgetfulness down with a letter, so that we might recover the memory that has been blotted out. Let forgetfulness, therefore, be hurled down the precipices, so that the grace of memory may shine forth again.

Οὐκ ἐκτὸς ἀνθρωπίνου πάθους ἡ λήθη [συμβαί- νει]· συμβαίνει δὲ ὅμως· καθάπερ τὰ ἄλλα νοσή- ματα. Ἕπει γὰρ τὰς ψυχὰς ὧν ἡ μνήμη κεχώρι- σται. Ἀλλὰ τότε φεύγει καὶ οἴχεται, ὅταν τις αὐτὴν τοῖς τῆς μνήμης ὅπλοις καταγωνίσηται. Ἐπεὶ γοῦν ὅτε μὲν μεθ᾽ ἡμῶν ἦσθα, μνήμην ἄληστον εἶχες, τῆς ἀρετῆς· ἀποφοιτήσας, δὲ λήθῃ, ὡς ἐπύθόμεθα, ἐκδέ- δωκας σαυτόν· ἀναγκαῖον ᾠήθημεν ταύτην κατατο- ξοῦσι γράμμασιν, ἵνα τὴν ἀφανισθεῖσαν μνήμην ἐπανάξωμεν. Οἰχέσθω τοίνυν ἡ λήθη κατὰ κρημνῶν, ἵν’ ἐκλάμψῃ πάλιν τῆς μνήμης ἡ χάρις.