Letter 450: I believe both things: that you copied them out, and that you consider my trifles a treasure.

LibaniusBacchius|c. 356 AD|Libanius|AI-assisted
friendship

To Bacchius.

I am persuaded of both points: both that you have made a copy, and that you consider our trifles a possession of yours. You, then, say that you are grateful to me for receiving these things, but I am not very grateful to you for displaying them, for I know that you do display them.

Fortune has given me one good thing, your friendship, but the other thing she has not given, namely to live together with that dear person. The goddess ought not to have begrudged me the second.

AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed.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

Βακχίῳ. (355/56)

Ἄμφω πείθομαι, καὶ ὡς ἐξεγράψω καὶ ὡς οἴει κτῆμα
τοὺς ἡμετέρους εἶναί σοι φληνάφους. σὺ μὲν οὖν χάριν φὴς
ἔχειν ἐμοὶ τοῦ ταῦτα λαβεῖν, ἐγὼ δὲ οὐ λίαν ἔχω σοι χάριν

τοῦ ταῦτα δεικνύειν, οἶδα γὰρ ὅτι δεικνύεις.

ἡ Τύχη δὲ τὸ
μέν τί μοι δέδωκεν ἀγαθόν, τὴν σὴν φιλίαν, θάτερον δὲ οὐ
δέδωκε, τὸ συζῆν τῇ φίλῃ κεφαλῇ. χρῆν δὲ τὴν θεὸν μὴ φθο-
νῆσαι τοῦ δευτέρου.

Revision history

  1. 2026-05-27v2.2.34-import

    Initial corpus import from modern libanius retranslated v1.

    Fields: letter text, metadata, source links. Source: https://github.com/OpenGreekAndLatin/First1KGreek/blob/master/volume_xml/libanius_10.xml

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