Letter 7018: I'm glad you missed hearing from me, but I reject any charge of negligence.

Quintus Aurelius SymmachusAttalus|c. 374 AD|Quintus Aurelius Symmachus|From Rome|To Attalus (recipient)|AI-assisted
illness

I am glad that you missed a reply from me in turn, yet I put aside the reproach of negligence. For your letter-carrier, dispatched (as I learned by report) on account of the uncertainty of your health, abandoned the replies I had already prepared. You surely recognize that the reasons for my silence are unpainted and are not dragged up from far off. I shall go no further, because the affirmation of truth is brief. Now I congratulate you on your good health, which, once known after too much fear, made a great brightness of joy shine forth in my heart. And the charm of your letter displayed the token of your reviving vigor. For you ask that to you [...]

AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed.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

Vicem sermonis mei desiderasse te gaudeo, sed amolior invidiam neglegentiae.
parata enim responsa desernit tabellarius tuus excitus, ut fando conperi, valetudinis

5 tuae dubio. agnoscis nempe infucatas esse neque ex alto trahi cessationis meae cau-
sas. non ibo longius, quia brevis est adsertio veritatis. nunc sanitatem tibi gratulor,
qua post nimium metum cognita multum diluxit in pectore meo gaudii. indicium au- 2
tcm respirantis vigoris litterarum tuarum iucunditas praetulit. petis namque, ut tibi

Revision history

  1. 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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