I have received your letter, most charmingly expressed, in which you say that the intermission in my letters has caused a longing for them to arise in you. Socrates was right, then, in his opinion that "pleasures are generally linked to pains," when in his imprisonment he held that the pain caused by the tightness of his chains was made up for by the pleasure of their removal.1 Precisely so in our case the fondness which absence stimulates brings as much comfort as the absence itself causes affliction. For fond longing comes from love. Therefore, absence makes the heart grow fonder, and this is far the best thing in friendship. Then as to my health, about which you enquire, I had already written to you that I was suffering so much pain in the shoulder that I could not succeed in writing the very letter in which I mentioned it, but, contrary to my usual custom, had to employ another hand . . . .
? 144–145 A.D.
To my master, greeting.