To Anatolius the Patrician, on His Leaving Office

Your greatness knows very well how all the people of the East feel toward your magnificence: as sons feel toward a loving father. Why then have you shown hatred to those who love you? Why have you deprived them of your kind care, and driven them all to weeping and lamentation, by putting your own advantage ahead of serving others? In truth I think there is not one of those who fear the Lord who is not deeply grieved at losing your rule in office. And I think that all the rest too, though they lack right knowledge of divine things, share in this distress when they think of the kindnesses you have done them. For my part I am especially sorry when I think of your dignity and your unaffected character, and I pray the God of all always to give you the bulwark of his unconquerable right hand, and to supply you with every kind of blessing in abundance. [a]

We beg your excellency, no less when absent than when present, to give us your usual protection, and to undo the rage of that unworthy bishop of ours, whose purposes your greatness knows perfectly well. He is trying, so I am told, to ruin our district completely. He has taken on the role of an informer to slander the recent survey, and this when everyone knows, in a word, that the taxes of our district are very heavy, and that as a result many estates have been abandoned by those who farmed them. But this man, despising his excommunication and fleeing from the holy synod, has thrust out his tongue against the unhappy poor. So may your magnificence agree to see to it that the truth is not defeated by a lie. And I bring the same plea on behalf of the Cilicians, for we will not stop wailing until the injustice is undone. The Lord, who promises to reward even a drop of water, will repay you for this trouble.