Letter 1039: ...if you press too hard on something delicate, it bruises like a lily.
[...] you may bear it too harshly [...]. I remember having read that affection is often wounded by one's very expression: what would that so serious a judge have decided about unbroken silence and the dissembled duty of writing? You will weigh these matters more carefully within yourself, but for my part it was a scruple of conscience to cover over the things that grieved me. For just as I hang upon you unceasingly in spirit, so with the greatest effort do I seek the enjoyment of your like-mindedness. Farewell.
AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek below for scholarly use.
Latin / Greek Original
10 durins teras, livet nt lilia. legisse me memini, vnltu saepe laedi pietatem:
quid ille tam serius arbiter snper continuo silentio ac dissimnlato scribendi munere
oensuisset? tecum haec pensius aestimabis, sed mihi religio fuit tegere, qnae dolebant.
nam ut in te animi nsque pendeo, ita opere maximo usuram tuae unanimitatis ex-
pe/o. vale. ^
15 XXXV(XXVini) posta. 369.
Revision history
- 2026-05-27v2.2.34-import
Initial corpus import from modern symmachus retranslated v1.
Fields: letter text, metadata, source links. Source: https://archive.org/details/qaureliisymmach00seecgoog
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