Letter 938: Libanius teases Proclus for not writing since taking office and asks him to explain the sudden letter.

You accuse me of having stopped writing; I accuse you of never having written to me since you took up that great office. So I know better what gratitude I owe to Phoenicia than to Thrace. My friends also found it astonishing that no letter had come to me from there. They kept coming up and asking why this had happened. I blushed and still tried to say something, but whatever I said seemed to amount to nothing; every explanation looked weak. At last I thought of something and told them, My friends, the cause of this is the many speeches made and displayed for excellent Proclus by many people. They have all the strength one expects from children whose fathers are in their prime, while I am in deep old age and can barely move. When I said this, I seemed not to have spoken badly. But when this present letter of yours arrived, a new question arose: what produced this letter? No god has scraped old age from me and made me young and blooming. So once again I turned over every possibility, always thinking I would find something, and found nothing. Finally, because I was at a loss, I saw that the solution must be sent for from you.