Letter 399
To Onesimus the Monk.
If the man who is rich for the present truly supposes that he is offering to God the favor of his generosity toward you, then he is the one who is the more bound to entreat you and to beg that you would be willing to receive it; for he ought not, surely, to wait upon a request from you. Therefore, since you now know the man's stupidity, do not even count worth a word one who is in such a frenzy [korybantiao: to rave like the frenzied priests of Cybele].
AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed.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
Εἰ ὅλως τῷ Θεῷ νομίζει ὁ κατά τὸ παρὸν πλού-
σιος, προσκομίζειν τὴν χάριν τῆς εἰς σὲ φιλοτιμίας,
οὗτος μᾶλλον χρεωστεῖ παρακαλεῖν σε, καὶ ἱκε-
τεύειν πρὸς τὸ λαβεῖν θελήσαι, οὐ γὰρ δὴ παρὰ
σοῦ ἀναμένειν δέησιν. Ὅθεν γνοὺς τὴν τοῦ ἀν-
δρὸς βλακείαν, μηδὲ λόγου ἀξιώσεις τὸν κορυβαν-
τιῶντα.
Revision history
- 2026-05-27v2.2.34-import
Initial corpus import from modern nilus ancyra workflow v1.
Fields: letter text, metadata, source links. Source: project source import
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