§9. To
Olympius.
(Olympius was Prefect of Cappadocia Secunda in
382. One letter to him against the Apollinarians, has already
been given; the rest, which are to follow are mainly recommendations of
various persons to his patronage.)
Ep. CIV.
All The Other favours which I have received I know to be
due to your kindness; and may God reward you for them with His own
mercies; and may one of these be, that you may discharge your office of
prefect with good fame and splendour from beginning to end. In
what I now ask I come rather to give than to receive, if it is not
arrogant to say so. I personally introduce poor Philumena to you,
to entreat your justice, and to move you to the tears with which she
afflicts my soul. She herself will explain to you in what and by
whom she has been wronged, for it would not be right for me to bring
accusations against any one. But this much it is necessary for me
to say, that widowhood and orphanhood have a right to the assistance of
all right-minded men, and especially of those who have wife and
children, those great pledges of pity, since we—ourselves only
men—are set to judge men. Pardon me that I plead with you
for these by letter, since it is by ill health that I am deprived of
seeing a ruler so kind and so conspicuous for virtue that even the
prelude of your administration is more precious than the good fame of
others even at the end of their term.