64. Answers to exercises Copy

a

Your letter which came to me about Celsus who has been snatched off

was immediately made wet with my tears;

and – what is shocking to say, and I thought could not happen –

your letter was read with unwilling eyes.

Nothing more bitter has reached my ears

while I have been in Pontus, and I pray that nothing may.

His image lingers in front of my eyes as if he were present,

and love imagines the dead man to be alive.

Often my mind recalls amusements lacking seriousness,

and often serious tasks done with transparent fidelity.

No times however come to me more thick and fast than those

– which I could wish had been the last of my life –

when my house suddenly collapsing in great ruin

fell and crashed down onto its master’s head.

He was there for me when the majority left me,

Maximus – and he was not himself a sharer in my fate.

I saw him weeping at my death

just as if his brother had to be placed on the pyre.