Letter 10007: The season at the villa has given me the leisure to reflect on what the office demands and what it gives in return;...

From: Quintus Aurelius Symmachus, senator and orator To: [Unknown correspondent] Date: ~368 AD Context: Symmachus, Book X, letter 7; early personal correspondence from his career as a senator and man of letters before his prefecture. The season at the villa has given me the leisure to reflect on what the office demands and what it gives in return; I find the balance, on reflection, positive. The formal part of this letter is straightforward; the personal part is what I actually wanted to say when I sat down to write. The formal part will reach you first. I find myself, in this season, more conscious than usual of the ways in which we accommodate ourselves to circumstances that we would not have chosen. This is not complaint — or it is complaint in the mode of a man who has learned that complaint without remedy is simply bad style. It is observation. The Rome of our fathers, and certainly the Rome of their fathers, was organized in ways that permitted a different kind of public life than the one we navigate. We navigate what we have. I intend to continue navigating it as well as my abilities allow. Your friend and colleague, Symmachus