Letter 20

20. To Leontius the sophist

Slow in coming are our letters to you, yet not slower than yours from there, and that when many people have come to us continually from your part of the world; if to all of these in turn you had entrusted letters, there would have been nothing to keep you from supposing that we were with you and, as it were, present and together enjoyed your company—so continuous was the throng of those reaching us.

But why do you not write? And yet there is no labour for a sophist except to write; or rather, even if your hand is at leisure, you will not even need to write, for another will serve you. There is need only of the tongue; and even if it does not converse with us, it will at any rate speak to someone of those present, and even if no one is present, it will discourse with itself; but be silent it will by no means, being sophistic and Attic, no more than the nightingales when spring rouses them to song.

For us, indeed, this constant press of business in which we now are might perhaps bring some excuse for our lack of letters; and the fact that we have, as it were, grown soiled by long disuse, sinking toward common speech, naturally makes us reluctant to address you sophists, who, unless you hear something worthy of your own wisdom, will be displeased and will not endure it. But for you, surely, the opposite is likely: to make your voice public on every occasion, being well able to speak, of all the Greeks I myself know. For I know, as I think, the most renowned among you. So there is no excuse for keeping silent. And so much for this.

I have sent also the work against Eunomius; whether one should call it play, or something a little more serious than play, I leave you yourself to judge. For your own purposes I think you no longer have need of it; but against those who turn the readers astray, I expect it will be to you no ignoble weapon—not so much trusting in the power of the composition, but knowing exactly that from few starting-points you are inventive toward many. And if anything in it appears to you weaker than the need requires, do not shrink from correcting it. For in this above all a friend differs from a flatterer: that the one converses to give pleasure, while the other does not abstain even from what is painful.