Letter 81: As long as your goodwill toward us keeps growing, we'll keep needing to write to you about our friends.

To Florentius. (359) So long as your goodwill toward us keeps increasing, so too does our necessity of writing to you on behalf of our friends. This Macedonius here has long been admired among us for his fairness and his temperance and the steadfastness of his character; but I find fault with him on one point alone, namely that, after frisking about in the gardens of the Muses, he was carried off to the manner of life in which he now is. For if it is possible to grow rich from that life, it is nevertheless from the other [the life of letters] that one gains good repute. For him there are hopes of money, but money as yet there is not; yet it might come to be, if you so wished. And it is only just that you should not overlook the man, both because he has fallen from the speaker's platform and because of the very things for which he held the platform in disdain.

**To Florentius** (359) So long as your goodwill toward me continues to grow, so too does my obligation to write to you on behalf of my friends. This Macedonius here has long been admired among us for his fairness, his temperance, and the steadfastness of his character. I fault him in one thing only: that after frolicking in the gardens of the Muses, he let himself be carried off into the life he now leads. For though one may grow rich by that path, it is by the other that one wins true distinction. As things stand, he has hopes of wealth but no wealth yet — though it could come about, should you so wish. It would be unjust, surely, to stand by and watch this man lose even the tribunal, along with the very pursuits for which he abandoned the tribunal in the first place.

Φλωρεντίῳ. (359) ἕως ἂν ἡ σὴ περὶ ἡμᾶς εὔνοια λαμβάνῃ προσθήκην, καὶ ἡμὶν ἡ τοῦ γράφειν σοι περὶ τῶν φίλων ἀνάγκη. Μακε- δόνιος δὲ οὑτοσὶ καὶ δι’ ἐπιείκειαν καἰ σωφροσύνην καὶ βε- βαιότητα τρόπων πάλαι θαυμάζεται παρ’ ἡμῖν, ‘ὲν δὲ αὐτὸν μέμφομαι μόνον, ὅτι δὴ σκιρτήσας έν Μουσῶν κήποις ἐξη- 10 νέχθη πρὸς βίον ἐν ᾧπέρ ἐστι νῦν. εἰ γὰρ πλουτεῖν ἐντεῦθεν ἔστιν, ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖθέν γ’ εὐδοκιμεῖν. τῷ δὲ ἐλπίδες μέν εἰσι χρημάτων, χρήματα δέ οὔπω, γένοιτο δ’ ἂν σοῦ βουλομένου. δίκαιον δὲ μήτοι τὸν ἄνδρα περιιδεῖν καὶ τοῦ βήματος ἐκπε- σόντα καὶ δι’ ἃ τοῦ βήματος ὑπερεῖδεν.