Letter 9003: I see we've gotten into a contest of wits over a matter that friendship, reason, and time should have settled long ago.

Quintus Aurelius SymmachusUnknown|c. 366 AD|Quintus Aurelius Symmachus|AI-assisted
friendship

I see that there is a contest of wits between us in this matter, which the principle of friendship ought long since to have brought to an end. I therefore set a limit to our mutual remonstrances, lest these most bitter exchanges of letters go on without end. The gift of the complete work of Livy, which I promised, is even now delayed by the labor of correction. But I ask of you a carrier for the aforesaid gift, since my praetorian retinue has driven my people, scattered into distant regions, and keeps them there and unknown to me. Farewell.

[Book XIV, around the year 399.]

AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed.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

Ingeniorum video inter nos esse certamen in eo negotio, qnod ratio amicitia tem-

puB abolere debuerat. modum igitur expostula/tonibas mutuis facio, ne amarissimae

5 scriptionum vices sine fine procedant. mnnus totius Liviani operis^ quod spopondi,

etiam nunc diligentia emendationis moratur. sed a te praedicti muneris posco vecto-

rem, quia meos praetorius apparatus spamm in longinqua egit retinet et

ignotos. vale.

Xnil a. 399.

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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