Roman Letters: A Digital Corpus of Late Antique Correspondence

Vander Galien, Craig

doi:10.5281/zenodo.19142059

Letter 8033: What you are to me and what I am to you — these are things that titles cannot change and promotions cannot diminish.

Ennodius of Pavia→Hormisdas, Rome|c. 519 AD|Ennodius of Pavia

friendship

◆

Ennodius to Hormisdas the deacon.

What you are to me and what I am to you — these are things that titles cannot change and promotions cannot diminish. I write to you now as I have always written: as a friend first, and as everything else second.

The world may address you by new titles, but I still hear the voice of the man I knew before the tiara. May God preserve that man, and the friendship between us. 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AI-assisted translation — This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed.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

XXXIII. ENNODIVS HORMISDAE DIACONO.

Et quod es miseratione ornatur et quod futurus es pietate
conquiritur, et diaconum his studiis extulisti, cuius rei promittit
cura pontificem. praesentium baiulus honestus moribus
natura sublimis genuini solacii orbatus praesidio Romam pro
honestis artibus, licet peregrinaturus, expetiit. uide si mereantur
a religioso bene nato locupleti iuuari ista quae praetuli.
nunc officio salutationis exhibito rogo, ut si me, si bonam
quam coemisti opinionem diligis, inpensis portitori adulescat
auxiliis.

Translation source →View original manuscript →