Letter 460: "To one the god gave one thing, but denied another," someone said of a man who prayed for two things.
To Hierakios. (355/56)
"To him the god granted one thing, but the other he refused," said someone about a man who had prayed for two things [Homer, Iliad 16.250]. And so to you as well one thing has been given, but the other refused; for Diophantus is concerned both with self-control and with eloquence, and in each respect he is such a man as to gladden a father, whereas the other ought never even to have been born.
Do not, then, let that one's wickedness be any harm to this one's virtue, and do not attribute to both what does not belong to both, but understand that the one is good, while the other is unwilling to be so.
AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed.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
Ἱερακίῳ. (355/56)
Τῷ δ᾿ ἔτερον μὲν ἔδωκε θεός, ἔτερον δ᾿ ἀνένευ-
σεν, ἔφη τις περί τινος εὐξαμένου δύο. καὶ δὴ καὶ σοὶ τὸ
μέν τι δέδοται, τὸ δὲ τῷ τῷ μὲν γὰρ Διοφάντῳ καὶ τοῦ σω-
φρονεῖν μέλει καὶ λόγων καὶ ἔστιν ἐν ἑκατέρῳ τοιοῦτος οἶος
εὐφρᾶναι πατέρα, τὸν δ’ ἕτερον ἔδει μηδὲ γενέσθαι.
μὴ
οὖν ἔστω τι βλάβος ἡ ’κείνου κακία τῇ τοῦδε ἀρετῇ μηδ’ ἀμ-
φοῖν ἡγοῦ τὰ μὴ ἀμφοῖν, ἀλλ’ ἴσθι τὸν μὲν ἀγαθὸν εἶναι,
τὸν δ’ οὐκ ἐθέλειν.
Revision history
- 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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