Letter 144: Absence proves friendship when purpose and zeal still move toward one point.
Experience knows how to test good friends better when they are absent. The proof of goodwill is not honoring what is present; someone might do that on a stage, wearing the mask of good men while acting what he is not by nature. But if someone separated by place moves toward one point by zeal and is joined by purpose, that is the man who knows how to observe friendship's law. Such you have appeared to me, surpassing earlier things by the virtue of later ones. And if children are images of fathers, it is natural that report carries me up through a good child, making a small father seem greater and escorting me, as you said, through every city. But preserve for me that virtue which, when he was with me in words, he showed as zeal and nature toward the laws.
AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed.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
Ὠρίωνι Τοὺς ἀγαθοὺς τῶν φίλων ἀπόντας μᾶλλον ἐλέγχειν οἶδεν ἡ πεῖρα. κρίσις γὰρ εὐνοίας οὐ τὰ παρόντα τιμᾶν· τοῦτο γὰρ ἔσθ' ὅτε ποιήσειεν ἄν τις, καθάπερ ἐπὶ σκηνῆς ὁ τῶν ἀγαθῶν τὸ πρόσωπον περικείμενος ὃ μὴ πέφυκεν ὑποκρίνεται. εἰ δέ τις τῷ τόπῳ διεστὼς εἰς ἓν χωρεῖ τῇ σπουδῇ καὶ τῇ γνώμῃ συνάπτεται, οὗτος ἐκεῖνος ὁ φιλίας νόμον περιστέλλειν εἰδώς. τοιοῦτος ἡμῖν προῆλθες, ἀρετῇ τῶν δευτέρων τὰ φθάσαντα παρελθών. εἰ δὲ καὶ πατέρων εἰκόνες οἱ παῖδες, εἰκότως ἄρα με καὶ φήμη κομίζει μετάρσιον διὰ παιδὸς ἀγαθοῦ σμικρὸν πατέρα μείζω ποιοῦσα δοκεῖν καὶ πανταχοῦ, καθάπερ ἔφης, ταῖς πόλεσι παραπέμπουσα. ἀλλά μοι περιέποις τὴν ἀρετήν, ἣν παρ' ἐμοὶ τῶν λόγων, ταύτην ἔχειν περὶ τοὺς νόμους σπουδὴν καὶ φύσιν ἐπιδεικνύμενος.
Revision history
- 2026-05-27v2.2.34-import
Initial corpus import from modern procopius gaza batch9 matia greek v1.
Fields: letter text, metadata, source links. Source: https://www.matia.gr/pisth/pdf/pg_migne/Procopius_of_Gaza_PG_87a-87c/Epistulae.pdf
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