Letter 7070: I've grown more confident in my affection for Athanasius, a man of fine qualities, now that I've learned your...

Quintus Aurelius SymmachusMacedonius|c. 396 AD|Quintus Aurelius Symmachus|From Rome|To Macedonius (recipient)|AI-assisted
grief death

I have begun to love Athanasius, distinguished in the worthy arts, more confidently since I learned your judgment about him. For it is a great recommendation to have pleased a wise man. Therefore I refrain from commending him, lest I bring forward something less than I believe you feel. That part is readier for me to speak: that you love in him the hope you have given, and that you add completion to the benefit you have begun. And if some turn of events should frustrate that hope, bring it about, I beg you, by granting greater things, that the loss of his earlier prayer may profit him.

AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed.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

Athanasium bonis artibus clarum securius amare coepi, postquam de eo iudicium
VF tuum I conperi. magna enim praerogativa est , placuisse sapienti. quare commenda-
tione eius abstineo, ne minora adferam, quam tibi credo sentirt. illa pars mihi pro-
nior dictu est, ut ames in eo spem, quam dedisti, addasque inchoato beneficio per- 15
fectionem. quam si aliquis eventus eluserit, effice, oro te, maiora praestando, ut illi
prioris voti prosit amissio.

CXXVI a. 4U1— 402.

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

Related Letters