Letter 669: I have heard of your loss, and I grieve with you.

LibaniusMagnos|c. 378 AD|Libanius|AI-assisted
education booksfriendshipgrief death

To Magnus.

That this man Aetius is good and noble, seek no finer witness than the judgment of Anatolius.

Now if that man were still alive, this fellow would be dwelling in Phoenicia and would be prosperous; but since he is gone, do you become the heir of his affection [for Aetius]-not so as to persuade him to change his residence, nor so as to fulfill his great hopes, but so that he may not, having lost what he had, be left to neglect.

AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed.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

Μάγνῳ. (361)

Τοῦ καλὸν κἀγαθὸν Ἀέτιον εἶναι τουτονὶ μὴ ζήτει καλ-
λίω μάρτυρα τῆς Ἀνατολίου γνώμης.

εἰ μὲν οὖν ἐκεῖνος
περιῆν, Φοινίκην τ’ ἂν οὗτος ᾤκει καὶ ἦν εὐδαίμων· οἰχο-
μένου δὲ σὺ γενοῦ τοῦ φίλτρου κληρονόμος οὐκ εἰς τὸ πεῖσαι
μετοικεῖν οὐδ’ ὥστε πληρῶσαι τὰς μεγάλας ἐλπίδας, ἀλλ’ εἰς
τὸ μὴ τὰ αὑτοῦ περιιδεῖν ἀποβαλόντα.

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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