Letter 7018: Ad Flavum

XVIII To Flavus So often my letter makes its way to dear Flavus: thus the diligent care of duty urges me to speak. Now too in prose, and just now sending songs in verse, love discharges its debt with coaxing address. Indeed, whoever wishes to travel the road, a wayfarer, let him carry you a few lines; no one departs to be passed over by me in silence, so that, cherished by friendship, my page may often seek you out; and if a man is lacking, the breeze pleases as carrier. With anxious mind I hang amid the wandering clouds, and I receive no tokens brought back by your hand. Or is your sheet of paper, scant in foreign merchandise, turned away? Love does not extort what it has not even the time to do, by which you might be able to write; let a strip of bark unbind the beech: it becomes sweet to me to read your words on bark. Or does your tongue disdain the Romulean whisper [Latin]? I beg you, render your words even in Hebrew characters. Learned as you are, write out whatever you wish in Achaemenian [Persian] signs, or rather compose your melodies in Argive [Greek] wisdom. Let barbarian runes be painted on tablets of ash-wood, and the smooth twig avails for what the papyrus does. Or let the page return inscribed on the polished sheet of bark: that I may read it again will be the fruit of one who loves.

XVIII Ad Flavum Ad carum totiens mea pergit epistula Flavum: sic monet officii sedula cura loqui. nunc quoque prosaico, modo mittens carmina versu blandior affatu debita solvit amor. quin tibi pauca ferat, qui vult iter ire viator nemo mihi tacite praetereundus abit, fotus amicitiae te ut pagina saepe requirat; et si vir desit, portitor aura placet. attonitis animis ego per vaga nubila pendo nullaque suscipio signa relata manu, an tibi Charta parum peregrina merce rotatur? non amor extorquet quod neque tempus habet, scribere quo possis, discingat fascia fagum : cortice dicta legi fit mihi dulce tui. an tua Romuleum fastidit lingua susurrum? quaeso vel Hebraicis reddito verba notis. doctus Achaemeniis quae vis perscribito signis , aut magis Argolico pange canora sopho. barbara fraxineis pingatur rhuna tabellis, . quodque papyrus agit virgula plana valet. pagina vel redeat perscripta dolatile Charta: quod relegi potent, fructus amantis erit.