XXXVII. To Salustius the Governor. 1676
When rulers keep the scales of justice true, and let them hang in even balance, they confer all kinds of benefits upon their subjects; if they are also gifted with prudence and further show loving-kindness to him that needs it, manifold advantages accrue from their rule to them that live under it. Having enjoyed these good things through your excellency, and having experienced them in your former administration, they have now been moved with joy at the information that to your munificence the helm of government has been entrusted. I pray that they may gain yet greater good, that your excellency may win still higher praise, and that the encomiums of your eulogists may be vindicated by the addition to all your other honourable titles to fame of that colophon 1677 of good things—true religion. As I was compelled to pass several days in Hierapolis I hoped to have the pleasure of meeting your excellency, and persistently enquired of new comers if the insignia of office had been conveyed to you. But I was compelled by the divine feast of salvation to return in haste to the city entrusted to me. Now however that I have received your excellency’s letter, with very great pleasure I return your salutation, and without delay have sent, as you requested, the honourable and pious deacon who is by God’s grace a water-finder. May the Lord in His loving kindness grant him both to do good service to the city and increase your excellency’s glory.
Colophon was one of the twelve Ionian cities founded by Mopsus on the coast of Asia Minor and was one of the claimants for being the birthplace of Homer. To put a colophon to anything became a proverbial expression for to put the crowning touch, to complete—from the fact according to Strabo (C. 643) that the Colophonian cavalry was so excellent as at once to decide and finish a battle in which it appeared. So the place and date of the edition of a book, with the device of the printer, appended to old editions is called a colophon.