Letter 41: Procopius personifies a delayed letter and asks Zacharias not to disappoint it.
Receive this present letter. It has been a long time coming, but it comes with confidence, because it has arrived at a friend's door. Do not disappoint its hope by turning away from it and knitting your brows.
People say that lovers who gain what they wanted after a long delay, and only with difficulty, forget their earlier pains because of the pleasure now before them. But if you appear gloomy toward this letter, I will say something painful, though I am sorry to say it: I am afraid no other letter will easily come to you. It will think you an insolent man and will remember what the one before it suffered.
AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed.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
Ζαχαρίᾳ ἀδελφῷ
Δέχου τὴν παροῦσαν ἐπιστολήν, χρονίαν μέν, ἀλλ' ὅμως θαρροῦσαν, ὅτι παρὰ φίλον ἀφῖκται. οὐκοῦν μὴ ψεύσῃς αὐτὴν τῆς ἐλπίδος, ἀποστρεφόμενός τε καὶ τὰς ὀφρῦς συνάγων αὐτῇ, ἐπεὶ καὶ τοὺς ἐρῶντάς φασι χρόνῳ καὶ μόλις ἐπιτυχόντας ὑπὸ τῆς παρούσης ἡδονῆς τῶν προλαβόντων πόνων ἐπιλανθάνεσθαι. εἰ δὲ σκυθρωπὸς πρὸς ταύτην φανείης, λυπηρὸν μὲν εἰπεῖν, λέξω δ' ὅμως. δέδοικα γὰρ μὴ οὐδὲ ἄλλη πρὸς σὲ ῥᾳδίως ἀφίξεται, ὑβριστήν τε νομίζουσα καὶ τὴν προλαβοῦσαν οἷα πέπονθε λογιζομένη.
Revision history
- 2026-05-27v2.2.34-import
Initial corpus import from modern procopius gaza batch4 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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