Letter 183: This was the reward of our homecoming: to meet old classmates, to exchange stories from the old days, and through...

To Stratonianus. (359/60) This was for us the fruit of our return home: to meet with our former fellow-students, to say something of old times to them and to hear something from them in turn, and to seem, in the very midst of the deeds themselves, to be present through the memory of the things that had taken place. This indeed has happened to me also with respect to the most excellent Theodotus, and during these days I have enrolled myself among the festivities; and I have added, to my loving the man, the further reason that he loves your house. At any rate, the preface of his words to us was his questions about your son, and he did not depart before he had sounded out the young man, bidding him grapple with certain verses of Homer. And the boy, wasting no time, came forward; but the rest he will tell himself. In any case he will deceive [you] neither willingly nor unwillingly, since he honors the truth and is full of rhetoric.

Στρατωνιανῷ. (359/60) Οὗτος ἡμῖν τῆς οἴκαδε ἐπανόδου καρπὸς ἐντυχεῖν λαιοῖς συμφοιτηταῖς καί τι τῶν ἀρχαίων εἰπεῖν τε πρὸς αὐ- τοὺς καὶ παρ’ ἐκείνων ἀκοῦσαι δόξαι τε ἐπ’ αὐτῶν εἶναι τῶν ἔργων τῇ μνήμῃ τῶν γεγενημένων. γέγονε δή μοι τοῦτο Λαὶ πρὸς τὸν ἄριστον Θεόδοτον καὶ τὰς ἡμέρας ταύτας ἐν ταῖς ἑορταῖς γέγραμμαι, καὶ προσέθηκά γε τῷ τὸν ἄνδρα φι- λεῖν, ὅτι τὴν σὴν οὗτος οἰκίαν φιλεῖ. τῶν γοῦν πρὸς ἡμᾶς αὐτῷ προοίμιον τὰ περὶ τοῦ σοῦ παιδὸς ἐρωτήματα καὶ οὐ πρότερόν γε ἀπῆρε πρὶν διεκωδώνισε τὸν νέον κελεύσας ἔπε- σιν Ὁμήρου προσπαλαῖσαί τισιν. ὁ δὲ οὐδὲν διατρίψας ἧκε, τὰ λοιπὰ δὲ αὐτὸς ἐρεῖ, πάντως δὲ οὔθ’ ἑκὼν οὔτε ἄκων ἐζ- απατήσει τιμῶν τε τἀληθὲς καὶ γέμων ῥητορικῆς.