Letter 3001: I'm writing from the country, paying you my usual tribute of correspondence.

Quintus Aurelius SymmachusJulianus|c. 365 AD|Quintus Aurelius Symmachus|From Rome|AI-assisted
friendship

Settled in the country, I pay you my customary tribute. For I allow no span of time to take a holiday from this duty, nor, though a separation of places comes between us, am I led to forget our intimacy. If you were to make me readier by spurring me with reciprocity, I should assuredly never hold my tongue idle. And yet I diligently discharge my office, and am not drawn aside by your example of inactivity; rather I ascribe this silence of yours to the difficulties of your public occupation, since it is enough for the assurance of my friendship that I believe myself loved in return. Farewell.

AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed.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

Ruri positns vectigal tibi sollemne dependo. nuUum enim tempus esse patior ab
hoc munere feriatum, nec locomm intercedente divortio in oblivionem familiaritatis i&
adducor. qui si me vicissitudinis stimulo faceres promptiorem, numquam profecto lin-
guam desidem continerem. et tamen enixe meum fungor officium , nec cessationis
transducor exemplo, atqne hoc silentium tuum difficultatibus publicae occupationis
adscribo, quia satis est mihi ad amicitiae fiduciam, quod me credo redamari. vale.

ni ante a. 388. 20

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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