Letter 857: Libanius commends Diognetus to Saturninus, asking for counsel and help for a rhetor silenced by law.

This Diognetus is an excellent rhetor. He has saved many people, both their lives and their property. But now, compelled to silence by the law concerning the time, he regards it as a disaster not to be doing his own work, and he never stops calling himself a burden on the earth. So he takes refuge in your good judgment, believing that he will have chosen well if he follows whatever seems best to you. Kings themselves have praised their own good sense for doing the same thing, as the Lapiths did when they accepted Nestor's advice. Diognetus often told me that his household had received no small benefit from your generous spirit, and that if they now obtained some good thing, it would be nothing new. I shared, then, in those earlier occasions when you improved their affairs; and if something similar, or even greater, happens now, I will benefit from it no less than they do. As for your concern for what is mine, a man could cite many proofs, old and new.

1. Ῥήτωρ ὢν ἀγαθὸς οὑτοσὶ Διόγνητος καὶ πολλοῖς σεσωκὼς καὶ ψυχὰς καὶ τὰ ὄντα, ἔπειτα νόμῳ τῷ περὶ τοῦ χρόνου σιγᾶν ἠναγκασμένος συμφοράν τε ἡγεῖται τὸ μὴ τὰ αὑτοῦ ποιεῖν ἄχθος τε τῆς γῆς αὑτὸν καλῶν οὐ παύεται. 2. καταφεύγει τοίνυν ἐπὶ τὴν σὴν φρόνησιν οὕτως εὖ βεβουλεύσεσθαι νομίζων, εἰ τοῖς σοὶ δόξουσιν ἀκολουθήσειεν· ὃ καὶ βασιλεῖς ποιήσαντες ἑαυτοὺς ἐπήνεσαν, ὥσπερ οἱ Λαπίθαι τὰς τοῦ Νέστορος γνώμας δεχόμενοι. 3. ἔλεγε δὲ πρὸς ἐμὲ πολλάκις ὁ Διόγνητος οὐκ ὀλίγα τὸν οἶκον αὐτοῖς ὑπὸ τῆς σῆς εὖ πεπονθέναι ψυχῆς καὶ νῦν οὐδὲν ἔσεσθαι καινόν, εἴ τινος ἀγαθοῦ τύχοιεν. 4. τῶν τε οὖν ἄλλων ἐκοινώνουν οἷς τὰ τούτων ἐποίεις βελτίω καὶ νῦν ἄν τι γένηται παραπλήσιον ἢ καὶ μεῖζον, ἐγὼ τούτων οὐχ ἧττον ὠφέλημαι. τοῦ δὲ σοὶ τῶν ἐμῶν μέλειν πολλὰς ἂν ἔχοι τις ἀποδείξεις λέγειν παλαιάς τε καὶ νέας.