Letter 127: Letters become the human remedy for Fortune's habit of joining and separating friends.
Reading your letter brought me back to the memory of old happiness. I pictured in my mind that Nile and the pleasure of seeing you beside it, and I felt like weeping over Fortune's swing, how it turns things up and down.
Now she brings people together beyond expectation; now she separates again those whom she unexpectedly joined. But people have contrived a wise remedy against her: they share longing through letters and in some way create presence by writing.
AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed.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
Διοδώρωι Τοῖς ὑμετέροις γράμμασιν ἐντυχὼν παλαιᾶς εὐδαιμονίας ἀφικόμην εἰς μνήμην, τὸν Νεῖλον ἐκεῖνον καὶ τὴν παρ' αὐτῷ τῆς ὑμετέρας θέας ἀπόλαυσιν τῇ διανοίᾳ τυπούμενος, καί μοι δακρύειν ἐπῆλθε τὴν τῆς τύχης ῥοπὴν ὡς ἄνω καὶ κάτω στρεφομένην. νῦν μὲν συνάγει τοὺς ἀνθρώπους ὡς οὐκ ἄν τις ἐλπίσειε, νῦν δὲ πάλιν διίστησιν οὓς παρ' ἐλπίδα συνήγαγεν. ἀλλὰ σοφόν τι πρὸς αὐτὴν ἐμηχανήσαντο φάρμακον, ἐπιστολαῖς ἀνακοινοῦντες τὸν πόθον καὶ τὴν παρουσίαν τρόπον τινα τοῖς γράμμασι μηχανώμενοι.
Revision history
- 2026-05-27v2.2.34-import
Initial corpus import from modern procopius gaza batch8 matia greek v1.
Fields: letter text, metadata, source links. Source: https://www.matia.gr/pisth/pdf/pg_migne/Procopius_of_Gaza_PG_87a-87c/Epistulae.pdf
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