Search a Bible verse · Source library · Sources and text rights
Chapter uncertain; original source section: Letter 96
Complete historical editorial footnotes. These notes retain the original edition’s wording; individual note authors are unspecified.
English translation and editorial credits: Blomfield Jackson.
Read the original source · Text reuse terms
cf. Letters LVIII and LXXXI. Nomus the consul and Nomus the patrician are distinguished in Schulze’s Index to the Letters, but there seems no reason to doubt their identity. Nomus the powerful minister of Theodosius II. was consul in 445 and patrician in 449, to which year this third letter may be referred.
Editorial footnote · Letters, Chapter uncertain; original source section: Letter 96, editorial note cite_note-1 · Original source
XCVI. To Nomus the Patrician.
Il. ix. 256. cf. pp. 104 and 255.
Editorial footnote · Letters, Chapter uncertain; original source section: Letter 96, editorial note cite_note-4 · Original source
I have written to you two letters, indeed I think three, but without getting any answer. I had wished to say no more, but to know my own place and the greatness of dignities, and to beg you to inform me of the cause of your silence. Really I do not know what offence I can have given to your excellency. We err unwillingly as well as willingly, and sometimes are quite ignorant in what way we are transgressing. I therefore beg your greatness, remembering the divine laws which plainly charge us “If thy brother shall trespass against thee go and tell him his fault between him and thee alone” to deign to make plain to me the origin of the annoyance, that I may either prove myself innocent, or, made aware of where I was wrong, may beg your pardon. In my confidence in the evidence of my conscience I hope for the former. All men are adorned by magnanimity, and not least those who, following the example of your excellency, trained in outside education as well as instructed in divine principles, both hear the apostolic laws loudly exclaiming “Let not the sun go down upon your wrath” and remember the words of Homer