Chapter 17

Nevertheless, some comparison must be made in order to make clear the superiority of our blessings. Trajan was in the habit of visiting his friends when they were sick: so far we may grant that he had a considerate nature. Your practice is both to visit and to heal them: you provide them with attendants, you order their diet, you prescribe medicines, you furnish the cost of remedies, you comfort them in their pain, and you congratulate them on their recovery. See in how many ways you show advance beyond Trajan's single form of consideration! With the legions one and all, whenever any regrettable incident had occurred, as is the fortune of war, I have seen you go round the men's lines, asking How goes it?, attending to the wounds of casualties, giving strict orders that healing remedies should be applied and that there should be no delay about it. I have seen men who turned from their food with loathing take it on your recommendation: I have heard you speak words which gave them heart to recover. You anticipated what each man sorely needed, causing this man's pack to be carried by the mules of the royal train, providing special beasts for some to ride, furnishing others with servants in place of those whom they had lost: sometimes you would relieve the poorer soldiers out of your own purse, sometimes cover the nakedness of the thinly clad. You would do all unwearyingly and cheerfully, with the deepest charity and without a trace of display, bestowing everything upon the sick and claiming nothing from the cured. Thus it is that you have become dearer to us than our lives, and have deservedly gained friends who are obedient, ready, devoted, faithful—men who will stand by you for ever, since it is affection rather than accident which makes them yours.