Letter 1021: A polished thank-you for gifts that Libanius says he had already predicted.

I have received the honor, both in the bowl and in the double-leaved writing tablet: one is of ivory, the other of silver. To everyone else, who does not know your nature, this seemed astonishing and unexpected when it arrived. To me it fulfilled both an expectation and a prophecy, for I said before they came that the things now here would come. When they arrived, appeared, and were handed over, there was a rush of my friends to my house, rejoicing and congratulating me. I envied myself for the honor, and they admired me because I had foretold how I would be honored. It is also an honor to me that the honor was brought by such a man, whose father is an ornament and who is himself an ornament to himself by virtue, character, and the beauty of his speeches. Your gifts too benefited from that beauty when they found a fitting voice. Something has also been composed for you by my old age, the sort of thing one would expect old age to produce: showing not power, but affection. Who would not fall in love with a governor who finds such things and adds completion to what he finds? Through these things I again become a prophet and say that you will once more send equal gifts for equal gifts, and that I will both receive them and write back.