Letter 5064: I escort with this letter a fellow citizen and mutual friend, whose virtues are already known to you and therefore...

I commend by this letter a fellow citizen and a friend we share in common, whose good qualities, because they are known to your own judgment, require no advocacy from me. Deservedly, then, when I speak of him to one who already knows him, my words can be easy and brief. Nevertheless I urge that, for my sake, he be the more strongly esteemed, and that he may understand, from this proof, how my concern for him flourishes in your eyes, his affection toward him being thereby increased. [The remaining line is the editor's apparatus, not part of the letter: a note marking textual variants and the agreement of the two manuscripts, with the closing rubric "Symmachus's letter ends" and the marginal addition "to Licinius" by a third hand.]