Letter 999: A gratitude letter praising Severianus' memory, action, and practical civic restoration.
What has now come from you is exactly what I told my friends would happen. I knew that the most just Severianus, excellent in every way, would neither forget what I had said nor remember it and neglect it. You had already made me important through your own actions, praising fathers who send their sons here and blaming those who do not, and by what you did at the displays and then added after leaving them. Now you have made me still greater by what you have done for my students. They have reported it in letters, and so have many others before them. From these people we have learned not only this but also the first things, the second things, and what followed: how you raised up fallen cities by seeing quickly what needed to be done and immediately turning what you found into action.
AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed.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
1. Ἃ δὲ νῦν γέγονε παρὰ σοῦ, τοῖς ἑταίροις ἔλεγον ὅτι γενήσεται· τὸν γὰρ δὴ δικαιότατον Σευηριανὸν καὶ πάντα ἄκρον οὔτ' ἀμνημονήσειν τῶν εἰρημένων παρ' ἡμῶν οὔτε μεμνημένον ἀμελήσειν. 2. ἀεὶ δέ με σὺ πεποιηκὼς τοῖς παρὰ σαυτοῦ μέγαν, ἔν τε οἷς ἐπήνεις πατέρας δεῦρο πέμποντας τοὺς ἑαυτῶν, ἔν τε οἷς οὐ πέμποντας ἐμέμφου, τοῖς τε ἐν ταῖς ἐπιδείξεσι δρωμένοις ὅσα τε τούτοις ἀπελθὼν προσετίθεις, μείζοσί με τοῖς νῦν ηὐξηκὼς τοῖς περὶ τοὺς παρ' ἐμὲ πεφοιτηκότας πεπραγμένοις. 3. ἃ αὐτοί τε μεμηνύκασιν ἐν ἐπιστολαῖς καὶ πρὸ ἐκείνων δὲ οὐκ ὀλίγοι, παρ' ὧν δὴ καὶ τἄλλα μανθάνειν ἡμῖν ὑπῆρχε, τὰ πρῶτα, τὰ δεύτερα, τἀπὶ τούτοις, δι' ὧν τὰς πόλεις κειμένας ἀνέστησας ὁρῶν τε ὀξέως ἃ προσήκει γενέσθαι καὶ τὸ εὑρημένον εὐθὺς ἐπ' ἔργον ἄγων.
Revision history
- 2026-05-27v2.2.34-import
Initial corpus import from modern libanius foerster vol11 batch9 t259 reviewed v1.
Fields: letter text, metadata, source links. Source: https://archive.org/download/foerster-libanii-opera/Foerster%20%281922%29%2C%20Libanii%20opera%2011_djvu.xml
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