Letters 1-6 of Aeneas of Gaza

Twenty-five letters of the early sixth century sophist Aeneas of Gaza have been preserved, scattered across a mass of manuscripts. Let’s read the first six in the collection, using the Positano edition and Italian translation of 1961, thanks to the wonders of Google Translate and Deepseek.[ref]Lidia Massa Positano, Enea di Gaza: Epistole, 2nd ed., Naples (1961).[/ref] The notes are abbreviated from Positano. 1. To John. If the book were yours and I desired it, it would rightly have been already in my hands, for some time: that is how friendship is made. But now the owner of the book is me; and yet you do not give it to me. Oh no, by Zeus the protector of friendship, may this not happen to me because it is a book; in reality it is all that I have; and such possession seems to me worthy of greater consideration than the talents of Croesus. Certainly, one man loves the hoe [he is a farmer], and one has a passion for dogs [he is a hunter], another delights in the bow, another takes…

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