Letter 10013: The news from the Danube frontier has been better in the past month than in the previous year, which is a relief;...

From: Quintus Aurelius Symmachus, senator and orator To: [Unknown correspondent] Date: ~372 AD Context: Symmachus, Book X, letter 13; early personal correspondence from his career as a senator and man of letters before his prefecture. The news from the Danube frontier has been better in the past month than in the previous year, which is a relief; the city has been anxious and anxiety is bad for the food markets. 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