Letter 6039: A greeting comes first -- it suits my wishes above all else and is the proper way to begin a letter.
I put the expression of a greeting first, since it both accords above all things with my own wish and is owed to the opening of a letter. Next, I commend to your diligence, my lady daughter, the birthday banquet of your brother; for our man pleads that the shores have been left deserted by the flight of the sailors, a circumstance which has compelled me to entrust to your holiness matters of less moment to be done. As for public affairs, there is nothing worth writing about, apart from the fact that in Trajan's square the collapse of a single apartment-block crushed its inhabitants; and over this the envy of the common people has so far turned against the fortune of the public conveyance that it now makes use of a private driver. 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AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed.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
Dictionem salutis antefero, quae et voto meo supra omnia convenit et litterario
debetur exordio. dehinc diligentiae tuae, doroina filia, natalicium fratris tui com-
mendo conviviuro; homo 'enim noster allegat fuga nautamm litora destituta; quae
30 res conpulit, ut sanctitati tuae factu minora committam. de publicis scribenda non
suppetunt absqne eo, quod in Traiani platea raina unius insulae pressit habitantes;
qnod adeo ad fortunam vehiculi publici plebeia vertit invidia. ut iam privato rectore
utatar. vale.
dlfferri P
21
164 SYMMACHI EPISTVLAE
XXXVIII (XXXVUIl) a. 401.
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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