Letter 127
To his Brother
Beware of the asp and the toad, the snake and the Laodiceans.
Beware of the mad dog too, and again of the Laodiceans.
After the most amiable and cultivated man, Pentadius, it is a
Laodicean, Euthalius, who has obtained and holds the tablets which the state makes the
token of the Egyptian government. You know the youth, for, if I am not mistaken, he
entered service about the same time as we did, and it is impossible that you did not
notice him, on account of his character and his surname. You have heard of a certain
Balantas (Purseman); this dignified appellation did not come to him by inheritance from
his father, but rather was a nickname which he acquired for himself. Having been appointed
governor of Lydia in the days of Rufinus, I think, he so plundered the Lydians that
Rufinus in great wrath condemned him to a fine of fifteen pounds of gold. He furthermore
gave orders to some of his soldiers, the bravest and most faithful, as he believed, of his
servants, to go and collect this sum of money by force from him and to bring it back
faithfully to his bank. What did our Sisyphus then? I shall not be so tactless as to spin
out at great length the story which has been proclaimed bon the house-tops. You have heard
of course how he prepared a pair of purses much more like one another than the horses of
Eumelus. He filled one of these with bronze obols, the other with gold staters. Then he
proceeded to conceal the first one, and to show the second. They counted up the gold,
weighed it, and sealed it up with the public seal. Then he secretly effected an exchange
of the two purses, and sent the obols instead of the starters.
'Daphnis became henceforth the first of the shepherd' (Theocritus,
viii. 92). Iy eas this which raised Euthalius to the height of fortune. Nobody could feel
sorry for the state, because all laughed so much. Rather did all long to see one who had
worked wonders as no other man in history. They were always inviting him. He went in
procession through the cities as though he were a benefactor of the Romans, seated in a
state chariot. The fellow is more talkative, I know, than the idlers who deliberate in the
vestibule of the council-chamber, and this man will at once replace our dear Pentadius.