[99]
This is what you have constantly said to me, O Milo, when these men who hear
me now have been absent; but this is what I say to you when they are present
to listen. I cannot indeed, praise you sufficiently for being of such a
spirit as you are; but the more godlike that virtue of yours is, the greater
is the pain which I feel at being separated from you. Nor, indeed, if you
are taken from me, will the complaints, which are all that is left to me, do
anything to comfort me, or to prevent my being angry with those men from
whom I have received so severe a blow. For it is not my enemies who will
tear you from me, but those who are my greatest friends. It is not men who
have at times deserved ill at my hands, but those who have always deserved
exceedingly well. You never, O judges, will inflict such grief upon me,
(although, what grief can be so great as this?) but you will never inflict
this particular grief upon me, of forcing me to forget how greatly you have
always regarded me. And if you, yourselves, have forgotten it, or if any
part of my conduct has offended you, why do you not make me atone for that
offense rather than Milo? For I shall have lived gloriously enough if I die
before seeing any such great misfortune happen to him.
This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.