Letter 3020: You've chosen the easier topic.
You have chosen the easier subject. For human speech is better suited to complaint than to thanks. For this reason I suppose it has come about that you have assailed me for my silence, although I strive with unceasing care to give and to return greetings. And indeed you did this to my pleasure. For a man who counts another's neglect of duty as a fault is promising more ready diligence on his own part. [...] Your demand, therefore, is as good as a pledge. I will not rehearse new words, I will not devise fine sentiments: if by keeping silent you have incurred a fault, you will be convicted by your own letter alone. Farewell. The twenty-first day before [...], 380.
AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed.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
Elegisti materiam proniorem. adcommodatior est enim querellae oratio humana
quam gratiae. qua causa factum puto, ut me taciturnitatis incesjseris, cum perpetem
curam dandae et reddendae salutis adnitar. quod quidem me libente fecisti. nam
qui alteri culpae ducit officii neglegentiam, pollicetur de se operam promptiorem. ex-
to postulatio igitur tua instar est sponsionis. non meditabor nova verba, non excogitabo
sententias: si peccatum silendo contraxeris, tuis tantum litteris argueris. vale.
XXI a. 380.
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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