Letters of Julian/Letter 77

by Julian

77. To the Same

"Thou hast come! well hast thou done!" You have indeed come, even though absent, by means of your letter — "And I was yearning for thee, and thou didst set ablaze my heart, already aflame with longing for thee."^[1] Nay, I neither refuse the love-philtre nor do I ever leave you at all, but with my soul I behold you as though you were present, and am with you when absent, and nothing is enough to quench my insatiate desire. Moreover, you also never slacken, but without ceasing you benefit those who are present with you and by your letters not only cheer but even heal those who are absent. At any rate, when someone not long ago gave me the news that a friend had come and brought letters from you, it happened that for three days I had been suffering from a disorder of the stomach, and in fact I was in acute physical pain, so that I was not even free from fever. But, as I said, when I was told that the person who had the letters was at my door I jumped up like one possessed, who has lost control of himself, and rushed out before what I wanted could arrive. And the moment that I merely took the letter in my hands, I swear by the very gods and by the love that burns in me for you, that instant my pains forsook me and at once the fever let me go, as though it were abashed by some manifest saving presence. But when I broke the seal and read the letter, can you imagine what feelings took possession of my soul at that moment or with what delight I was filled, or how I praised to the skies that dearest of winds,^[2] to quote your words, the lover's wind in very truth, the messenger of glad tidings — and loved it with good reason, since it had done me this service of bringing a letter from you, and like a winged thing had guided straight to me, with a fair and hurrying blast, that letter which brought me not only the pleasure of hearing good news of you but also salvation at your hands in my own illness? But how could I describe my other sensations when first I read the letter, or how could I find adequate words to betray my own passion? How often did I hark back from the middle to the beginning? How often did I fear that I should finish it before I was aware? How often, as though I were going round in a circle in the evolutions of a strophe,^[3] did I try to connect the contents of the last paragraph with the first, just as though in a song set to music I were making the leading note of the beginning the same as the closing bars of the measure? Or how describe what I did next — how often I held the letter to my lips, as mothers embrace their children, how often I kissed it with those lips as though I were embracing my dearest sweetheart, how often I invoked and kissed and held to my eyes even the superscription which had been signed by your own hand as though by a clear cut seal, and how I clung to the imprint of the letters as I should to the fingers of that sacred right hand of yours! I too "wish thee joy in full measure,"^[4] as fair Sappho says, and not only "for just so long as we have been parted from one another," but may you rejoice evermore, and write to me and remember me with kindly thoughts. For no time shall ever pass by me in which I shall forget you, in any place, at any hour, in any word I speak. "But if ever Zeus permits me to return to my native land,"^[5] and once more I humbly approach that sacred hearth of yours, do not spare me hereafter as you would a runaway, but fetter me, if you will, to your own beloved dwelling, making me captive like a deserter from the Muses, and then discipline me with such penalties as suffice for my punishment. Assuredly I shall submit to your jurisdiction not unwillingly, but with a good will and gladly, as to a kind father's provident and salutary correction. Moreover, if you would consent to trust me to sentence myself and allow me to suffer the penalty that I prefer, I would gladly fasten myself to your tunic, my noble friend, so that I might never for a moment leave your side but be with you always and closely attached to you wherever you are, like those two-bodied beings invented in the myths. Unless, indeed, in this case also the myths, though they tell us the story in jest, are describing in enigmatical words an extraordinary sort of friendship and by that close tie of a common being express the kinship of soul in both beings.^[6]

Footnotes

1. The quotations are from an ode of Sappho and perhaps run through the whole letter.
2. An echo of Sophocles, Philoctetes 237 τίς προσήγαγεν; . . . . τίς ἀνέμον ὁ φίλτατος;
3. e.g. in the chorus of the drama.
4. Frag. 85, Bergk.
5. Odyssey 4. 475.
6. For Julian's allegorising interpretation of myths see Oration, 5. 170; 7. 216c, 222c; and for the illustration here Lucian, Toxaris 62.