Letter 10011: A poet of real quality has appeared among the younger men of the senatorial class; I draw your attention to him...
A poet of real quality has appeared among the younger men of the senatorial class; I draw your attention to him because talent of this kind deserves recognition before it has time to become famous on its own.
The practical question I raise will be clear enough from the text of the letter; I will not repeat it here in the covering note. What I want to say, which would not fit naturally into the official form, is that the matter in question is one on which my judgment is confident even if the official presentation requires more hedging than I would choose.
Please respond at your earliest convenience. The situation will not wait indefinitely for resolution, and a delay that is optional now will become costly if allowed to continue.
More cheerfully: the dinner I owe you has been planned for next month if circumstances cooperate.
Your devoted friend,
Symmachus
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.
Related Letters
I have loved and admired you since those days when Klematios — that man who, after a just life, met an unjust end —...
A bantering letter to an indifferent correspondent. Of the same date as the preceding. Heliodorus, who is so dear to us both, and who loves you with an affection no less deep than my own, may have given you a faithful account of my feelings towards you; how your name is always on my lips, and how in every conversation which I have with him I be...
The greatness of the calamities, which have befallen our native city, did seem likely to compel me to travel in person to the court, and there to relate, both to your excellency and to all those who are most influential in affairs, the dejected state in which Cæsarea is lying. But I am kept here alike by ill-health and by the care of the Churche...
The wise man, even if he dwells far away, even if I never set eyes on him, I count a friend. So says the tragedian Euripides. And so, if, though I have never had the pleasure of meeting your excellency in person, I speak of myself as a familiar friend, pray do not set this down to mere empty compliment.
Marcianus, on whose behalf I write, is my fellow citizen, an old friend, no stranger to letters, and he has a son...