Letter 1099: Let unknown men be praised so that the light of testimony may illuminate merits hidden in obscurity.
Let the unknown be praised, so that the splendor of testimony may shed light upon their merits which lie hidden. For my part, I must at present forbear from writing of this kind, lest I labor in vain at my undertaking, if I should vouch for my brother Palladius, esteemed by all good men for his eloquence and his learning. Next, caution is needed, lest a tribute unequal to so great a man both fail to match him to whom it is offered and rob my effort of its grace. I therefore lay aside this role, and I wish you to be persuaded of this one thing: that the eloquence of Palladius is such as to make us grieve that he has been denied to the city, and that his amiability is such as to make us rejoice that he has been summoned.
AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed.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
Laudentur incogniti, ut eorum merita in occulto sita testimonii splendor inradiet;
mihi inpraesentiarum supersedendum est huiusmodi scriptione, ne incepti frustra sim,
si fratrem meum Palladium spectatum bonis omnibus facundiae atque eruditionis ad-
stipuler.^ dehinc cauto opus est, ne inpar tanto viro praedicatio neque eum, cui de-
fertur, aequiperet et meam operam devenustet. quiesco igitur has partes et hoc unum 15
persuasum tibi volo, mereri facundiam Palladii, ut doleamus, quod urbi negatus est,
mereri amabilitatem eius, ut quod accitus est^gaudeamus.
LXXXXV (LXXXVmi) a. 379.
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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