Letter 572: I did not have to ask Iamblichus to carry this letter to you -- he asked me to send it.

LibaniusOlympius and Jovinus|c. 368 AD|Libanius|AI-assisted
friendship

To Olympius and Jovinus.

This letter I myself did not ask Iamblichus to carry to you; rather, he himself asked me to send it to you. For, as he was about to depart, having bidden me to write to my friends, he found me ready to comply.

Now of the others he made mention to me of none by name, but when he had spoken of Olympius and his brother as the lovers of the Muses, he said that if I were to bring letters to these men, all would be well with me.

So I had three grounds for delight: that you are held in such repute in this matter, that you who are good men are my friends, and that this man, who is no stranger to the good, is both my kinsman and my friend.

AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed.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

Ὀλυμπίῳ καὶ Ἰοβίνῳ. (357)

Ταύτην τὴν ἐπιστολὴν οὐκ αὐτὸς ἐδεήθην Ἰαμβλίχου
κομίζειν ὑμῖν, ἀλλ’ αὐτὸς ἐδεήθη μου πέμπειν ὑμῖν. ὡς γὰρ
ἀπαίρειν μέλλων κελεύσας ἐπιστεῖλαι τοῖς φίλοις εἶχε πειθό-
μενον.

τῶν μὲν <οὖν> ἄλλων οὐδενὸς ὀνομαστὶ πρὸς
ἐμνήσθη, τὸν Ὀλύμπιον δὲ καὶ τὸν ἀδελφὸν εἰπὼν τοὺς φιλο-
μούσους, εἰ τούτοις ἔφη φέροιμι γράμματα, πάντα
ἕξει μοι καλῶς.

τρεῖς οὖν εἶχον ἡδονὴν ἀφορμάς, τὸ
ὑμᾶς ἐν τούτῳ δόξης εἶναι τό τε ἐμοὶ φίλους μὲν ὑμᾶς εἶναι
τοὺς ἀγαθούς, συγγενῆ δὲ τοῦτον καὶ φίλον τὸν οὐκ ἀγνοοῦντα
τοὺς ἀγαθούς.

Revision history

  1. 2026-05-27v2.2.34-import

    Initial corpus import from modern libanius retranslated v1.

    Fields: letter text, metadata, source links. Source: https://github.com/OpenGreekAndLatin/First1KGreek/blob/master/volume_xml/libanius_10.xml

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