Letter 148

148. To Trajan

It brings much comfort to those who are hard pressed even to be able to bewail their own misfortunes, and especially when they meet with men able, out of the nobility of their character, to feel sympathy with their pains. For this reason the most reverend brother Maximus, who governed our country, having suffered such things as no other man yet has — stripped of all his possessions, both what was his by inheritance and what had been gathered from former labours, and grievously afflicted in body by his wanderings up and down, and not even keeping unharmed the very right of citizenship for which it is the custom of free men to endure all toils — has greatly lamented to us about what has befallen him, and has asked that through us the whole Iliad of evils that has surrounded him be made plain to you in summary. And I, since I could in no other way take away any of his troubles, readily granted this favour: to report to your Excellency a few of the many things I heard from him, since he himself seemed to blush to recount his own misfortunes plainly.

For even if what happened does not establish the man who wronged him as wicked, yet at least it shows the one who suffered to be of the most pitiable lot, since the very fact of falling into heaven-sent evils seems somehow to be a proof of being delivered over to suffering. But it is enough for him, as comfort for what has happened, that you should look upon him with a kindly eye, and that the all-sufficing grace which all enjoy yet cannot exhaust — I mean the grace of your gentleness — should be extended to him also. And that in the courts too your inclination toward him will be a great means to his victory, we are all firmly persuaded. And most just of all is this very man, who sought our letter as something that would be of use to him; whom, along with the rest, may we see extolling your dignity with such voice as he can command.