Letters of Julian/Letter 62
Nay, when did you ever leave me, so that I need to write, or when do I not behold you with the eyes of the soul as though you were here with me? For not only do I seem to be with you continually and to converse with you, but I pay attention to my duties now just as zealously as when you were here to guide me. But if you do wish me to write to you, just as though you were not here, then take care that you do not yourself create the impression of not being with me all the more by your very wish that I should write. However, if you do really find pleasure in it I am willing to obey you in this also. At any rate, by your request, you will, as the proverb says, lead a galloping horse into the plain. Come then, see that you return like for like, and in answer to my counter-summons do not grow weary of the unbroken series of letters exchanged between us. And yet I have no wish to hinder the zeal that you display on behalf of the public welfare, nevertheless, in proportion as I keep you free for the pursuit of noble studies, I shall be thought, far from injuring it, to benefit the whole body of Hellenes at once, that is to say, if I leave you like a young and well-bred dog without interference, free to give all your time to tracking down, with a mind wholly free from all else, the art of writing discourses; but if you possess such swiftness that you need neither neglect your friends nor slacken in those other pursuits, come, take both courses and run at full speed!
Footnotes
[edit]- ↑ Libanius often mentions a certain Eucleides, a native of Constantinople, to whom this letter may be addressed; the reference to public affairs may imply that Julian was already Emperor, but it cannot be dated with certainty. Schwarz rejects the letter on stylistic grounds, and Cumont for the same reason attributed it to the sophist Julian of Caesarea, for whom see Introduction under Iamblichus; but, though it is conventional and sophistic, there is nothing in it that the Emperor Julian might not have written.