An Old Friend Attacks Me in Secret

I have learned, not only from your letter but from the letters of many others, that objections are being raised against me in the school of Tyrannus, “by the tongue of my dogs from the enemies by himself,” because I have translated the books On First Principles into Latin. What unheard-of shamelessness this is! They accuse the physician for detecting the poison. And they do it to protect their seller of drugs, not by winning for him the reward of innocence but by his partnership with the criminal; as if the number of offenders made the crime smaller, or as if an accusation depended on our personal feelings and not on the facts. Pamphlets are written against me. They are pressed on everyone’s attention, and yet they are not openly published, so that the hearts of simple people are troubled while I am given no chance to answer. This is a new way of injuring a man: to make accusations you are afraid to send abroad, and to write what you are obliged to hide. If what he writes is true, why is he afraid of the public? If it is false, why did he write it? When we were boys we read the words of Cicero: “I consider it a lack of self-control to write anything which you intend to keep hidden.” I ask, what is it they are complaining about? Where does this heat, this madness of theirs, come from? Is it because I rejected a pretended eulogy? Because I refused praise offered in insincere words? Because under the name of a friend I detected the snares of an enemy? In this preface I am called brother and colleague, yet my supposed crimes are set out openly, and it is proclaimed that I have written in favor of Origen and have praised him to the skies. The writer says he did this with a good intention. Then how does it happen that he now throws in my face, as an open enemy, what he praised back then as a friend? He declared that he meant to follow me as his predecessor in his translation, and to borrow authority for his work from some poor works of mine. If that was so, it would have been enough to state once and for all that I had written them. Why did he need to repeat the same things, to force them on people’s notice by saying them over and over, and to turn the same words around again and again, as if no one would believe his praises? Praise that is simple and genuine is not so anxious about whether the reader will believe it. How is it that he fears no one will believe him when he praises me unless he brings in my own words as witnesses? You see that we understand his tricks perfectly. He has plainly been to acting school and has practiced long and hard at playing the part of the man who praises in order to mock. It does no good to put on a veil of simplicity once the schemer has been caught in his malicious purpose. To make a mistake once, or even, to stretch the point, twice, may be bad luck. But how is it that he makes this supposed mistake with his eyes open, repeats it, and weaves it into the whole fabric of his writings, so that I cannot possibly deny the things he praises me for? A true friend who knew what he was doing would, after our earlier misunderstanding and our reconciliation, have avoided every appearance of suspicious conduct, and would have taken care not to do by accident what might look as if it were done on purpose. Cicero says in his speech in defense of Gabinius: “I have always felt that it was a religious duty of the highest kind to preserve every friendship I have formed, but most of all those in which kindness has been restored after some disagreement. In friendships that have never been shaken, if some attention has been neglected, the excuse of forgetfulness, or at worst of carelessness, is readily accepted. But after a return to friendship, if anything is done to cause offense, it is put down not to carelessness but to unfriendly intent. It is no longer a question of thoughtlessness but of breach of faith.” So Horace writes in his letter to Florus: [a] “Kindness, badly knit, does not hold, but flies apart.” [e]