Letter 2009: Both my respect for you and my sense of duty would make any occasion for writing worth seizing — let alone one as...

Quintus Aurelius SymmachusVirius Nicomachus Flavianus|c. 369 AD|Quintus Aurelius Symmachus|From Rome|To Rome|AI-assisted
illness

For the sake both of my regard for you and of my own duty, any occasion whatever for writing ought to be embraced; so far is it from being the case that I should have passed over this one, which a fellow-citizen has pressed upon me. For you recognize a man from the Seven Hills [of Rome], known both at home for the goodness of his lineage and abroad for his years of military service. On his behalf it is not necessary for me to speak to you at length. For a recommendation ought to be furnished to those who are unknown; but for this man, to win the favor of your goodwill, it suffices that he is both a Roman and a friend.

AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed.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

Et tui cultus et mei officii gratia quaelibet ad scribendum amplectenda esset
10 occasio; tantum abest, ut eam praeterire debuerim, quam civis ingessit. agnoscis enim
de septem montibus virum et domi cognitum bonitate generis et foris aetate militiae.
pro qno mihi apud te loqui longum non est necesse. commendatio enim praestari
debet incognitis, huic vero ad conciliationem gratiae tuae sufficit, quod et Romanus
et amicus est.

t& X ante a. 895.

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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