Letter 272

272. To Sophronius the Master

Actiacus the deacon reported to me that certain men grieved you against us, slandering us as not being well disposed toward your dignity. For my part, I did not wonder if there are flatterers attending upon so great a man. For somehow these servile attentions are wont to grow up alongside great powers — men who, because they lack any good of their own by which they might be known, commend themselves out of the evils of others. And almost as rust is a corruption of the grain arising in the grain itself, so flattery, creeping in under the guise of friendship, is a ruin of friendship. I did not wonder, then, as I said, if some, like drones about the hives, so buzz about your brilliant and admirable household.

But this seemed to me astonishing and altogether contrary to reason: that you, a man most conspicuous for the weight of your character, should bear to lend them both your ears and to admit a slander against me — me who, having loved many from my earliest age to this old age, know that I have preferred none to the friendship of your perfection. For even if reason had not persuaded me to love you, being such as you are, the familiarity from boyhood would have sufficed to bind me to your soul. And you know how much custom avails toward friendship. But if I show nothing worthy of this purpose, forgive my weakness. For neither will you yourself seek from me a deed for the proof of goodwill, but plainly a purpose that joins in praying the best things for you. For may your affairs never come to this, that you should need the benefit of men so small as I am.

How then was I likely to say or do anything contrary to you in the affairs concerning Memnonius? For these things the deacon reported to me. And how did I set the wealth of Hymetius as more to be preferred than your friendship — the friendship of a man who so squanders his substance? But none of these things is true: neither has anything been said by me, nor done, in opposition. But perhaps this gave occasion to those who tell falsehoods, the thing said by me to certain of those making the disturbance: that "If the man has resolved beforehand to bring his own purpose to action, then whether you make a disturbance or not, the things sought will assuredly come to pass no less, whether you speak or are silent; but if he changes his mind, do not drag down the most revered name of our friend, nor, under the pretext, forsooth, of zeal for your patron, procure for yourselves some gain from this, out of the fear and threat you hold over men." But to that very man who was drawing up the will, neither through myself nor through another did I utter anything, small or great, about this matter.

And you ought not to disbelieve these things, unless you consider me altogether desperate, and to despise the great sin of lying. But do you yourself altogether lay aside even the suspicion in this matter, and henceforth make my disposition toward you higher than all slander, imitating Alexander, who, having received a letter against his physician as plotting against him, since it happened that at that very time he had taken a medicine to drink, was so far from believing the slanderer that at one and the same moment he read the letter and drank the medicine. For I do not deign to set myself as less honoured than any of those known to me in friendship, in that I have never been caught offending in friendship, and have besides received from my God the commandment of love, of which I am a debtor not only according to the common nature of men, but because I also recognize you in particular as a benefactor of myself and of my country.