Letter 704: The governor took part in your festival in the same way I did -- he missed nothing I had heard.

LibaniusBacchius|c. 381 AD|Libanius|AI-assisted
education booksimperial politics

To Bacchius. (362)

In the same manner as I did, the governor too took part in your festival; for he remained ignorant of none of the things that I myself knew. But hearing also about the armed displays and the sacrifices and the rest of the expenditure and the splendor that ran through it all, he was so pleased and rejoiced together with both the priest and the city, that he declared he would make mention of what had been done to the Emperor himself.

Most of all it delighted him that you, being but one, sufficed for the theft of the statue. But for Diomedes there was need also of an Odysseus. And he rouses you through me toward making the temple whole again, having long ago proclaimed to all that they should recover their own property, and being ready, in whatever case you make known that the place has been wronged, both to cry out and to come to the rescue.

AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed.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

Βακχίῳ. (362)

Ὅνπερ ἐγὼ τρόπον, τοῦτον ὁ ἄρχων μετέσχε τῆς πὰρ
ὑμῖν ἑορτῆς· οὐδὲν γὰρ ἠγνόησεν ὧν ᾔδειν ἐγώ. ἀλλὰ καὶ
περὶ τῶν ὅπλων καὶ τῶν τεθυμένων καὶ τῆς ἄλλης δαπάνης
καὶ τῆς διὰ πάντων ἀκούων λαμπρότητος οὕτως ἥσθη τε καὶ
συνήσθη τῷ τε ἱερεῖ καὶ τῇ πόλει, ὥστε ἔφησε τῶν πεπραγμέ-
νων πρὸς αὐτὸν μεμνήσεσθαι τὸν βασιλέα.

μάλιστα δὲ αὐτὸν
εὔφρανεν, ὅτι εἷς ὢν ἤρκεσας εἰς τὴν τοῦ ἀγάλματος κλοπήν.
Διομήδει δὲ ἄρα καὶ Ὀδυσσέως ἔδει. καί σε ἐπεγείρει δι’ ἐμοῦ
καὶ πρὸς τὸ τὸν νεὼν ὁμοῦν πάλαι μὲν πᾶσι κηρύξας κομί-
ζεσθαι τὰ αὑτῶν, ἕτοιμος δὲ ὢν ὅ τι ἂν μηνύσῃς ἠδικημένον
τὸν τόπον, καὶ βοήσεσθαι καὶ βοηθήσειν.

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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