Letter 638: Even if your office and the demands pulling you from every direction have driven Plato from your hands, Plato still...

LibaniusPriscianus|c. 374 AD|Libanius|AI-assisted
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To Priscianus. (361)

But even if your office and the things that drag at you from every side have cast Plato out of your hands, still Plato dwells within your soul, and from there you bring to us such tales and discourses.

But see, once again both you and Miccalus have become one and the same, since Hephaestus [fire] has wrought this upon you. And these things will close in around you, as is natural, so that, being such men as you are, the pluckers will come for you. Yet this is your own fear; as for Miccalus, with us he has no great abundance of hair.

AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed.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

Πρισκιανῷ. (361)

Ἀλλ’ εἰ καὶ τῶν χειρῶν σου τὸν Πλάτωνα ἐξέβαλεν ἥ
τε ἀρχὴ καὶ τὰ πανταχόθεν ἕλκοντα, τήν γε ψυχὴν ὁ Πλατῶν
οἰκεῖ τὴν σήν, ὅθεν ἡμῖν μύθους καὶ λόγους τοιούτους φέ-
ρεις.

ἀλλ’ ἰδού, πάλιν σύ τε καὶ Μίκκαλος εἰς γεγένησθον
τοῦ Ἡφαίστου τοῦθ’ ὑμᾶς ἐργασαμένου. καὶ περιστήσεταί γε
ὑμᾶς ταῦτα, ὥσπερ εἰκός, ἴνα ὄντας· ἥξουσιν οἱ τίλλοντες.
ἀλλὰ σοὶ μὲν οὗτος ὁ φόβος, ὁ Μίκκαλος δὲ ἡμῖν οὐκ ἐν
περιουσίᾳ τριχῶν.

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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