Letter 6080: I got ahead of your inquiry -- knowing you'd be worried when you heard I'd fallen ill -- and although I'd already...
I anticipate your inquiry, since I have noticed that you would be anxious that I had been afflicted by illness; and although I have written of my own accord that the hardships of my suffering are easing, nevertheless, for the sake of dispelling your worry, which among those who love is always disposed to disbelief, I now also report - if no envious glance of Fortune should put a curse upon what I have said - that I am returning into harmony together with health. But the pleasantness of the seashore does not yet penetrate my senses. For just as, after a long tossing upon the sea, a steady step is recovered only slowly, so there is need of time, that the departure of so great an evil may make room for pleasure. Therefore for the time being I take no sweetness either in the shore of Formiae [a coastal town in Latium] or in my building work. But these things, as I hope, will all return along with the restoration of my health, and conveyed by my pen they will soon reach you to gladden your spirit.
AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed.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
Anteveni inquisitionem , cum vos sollicitos fore, quod essem morbo adtemptatus,
15 adverterem, et quamvis ultro scripserim, doloris mei adversa tenuari, abolendae ta-
men sollicitudinis vestrae causa, quae apud amantes semper incredula est, nunc quo-
que nuntio, si dictum nullus Fortunae livor effascinet, in concordiam me cum sanitate
redire. sed nondum sensum meum penetrat amoenitas litoralis. nam ut ex longa
maris iactatione stabilis gressus sero reparatur, sic tempore opus est, ut tanti mali
20 decessio locum faciat voluptati. ergo neque Formianae orae neque aedificationis meae
tantisper ullam capio dulcedinem. sed haec, ut spero, omnia cum bono valetudinis
revertentur moxque ad laetitiam vestri animi stilo meo communicata pervenient.
Lxxvm (Lxxvim).
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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