Letter 5069: You are laying traps for my shyness, which I hide behind the modesty of silence.
You lie in wait for my speechlessness, which I cover over with a modest silence. For you promise that you will come to draw out replies from me, if I should give my assent, although it would have been readier for you to do this from close at hand than to pledge it. To me, however, while obtaining it is welcome, hoping for it is a tedious business. And yet I obey your wish, and I do not fear that you will transcribe into the pages of your copyist words poured out by me without due care. For if any of these things, which I speak with you rather carelessly, should stir up disgust in some reader, it will not be my negligence in writing, but your diligence in copying, that gives displeasure. 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AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed.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
Insidiaris infantiae meae, quam tego silentii verecundia. nam ad elicienda responsa
venturum, si adnuam, polliceris, cum hoc tibi facere de proximo quam spondere
promptius fuerit. mihi vero adipisci gratum , sperare prolixum est. et tamen volun-
tati tuae pareo nec vereor, ne temere a me effusa verba in paginas librarii tui re-
20 feras. nam si quid horum, quae apud te incuriosius loquor, cuipiam lectori nauseam
moverit, non in scribendo neglegentia mea, qnam tua in describendo diligentia dis-
plicebit. vale.
LXXXVII (LXXXV).
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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