Letter 1109: Whatever generosity you showed to those who were present might seem merely the expected tribute of their attendance.

Quintus Aurelius SymmachusUnknown|c. 401 AD|Quintus Aurelius Symmachus|AI-assisted
friendship

Whatever gift you have bestowed upon those present seems to have been conferred upon their official service: we, who were absent from your consulship through various engagements, have been honored with the distinction of friendship, not as a payment for attendance. I therefore give you abundant thanks for your consular gift, but still greater thanks for your good intention; and were it not that your modesty sets a limit to my words, I would range more widely. And for that reason my discourse on this matter shall for the present be sparing, but my remembrance of it more abundant. [Editorial note: before the year 381.]

AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed.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

Qnidquid in praesentes muneris contulisti, officio eorum videtur esse delatum:

nos, qui consulatui tuo varia occupatione defuimus, amicitiae honore adfecti sumus

15 non mercede praesentiae. ago igitur tibi pro oblatione consulari gratias uberes, sed

pro bona mente maiores, et nisi verecundia tua verbis meis poneret modum, latius

evagarer; atque ideo erit de hoc sermo interim parcus, memoria vero prolixior.

Cnn (LXXXXVin) ante a. 381.

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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