Letter 10019: The events at Adrianople have changed the texture of Roman public life in ways that are not yet fully visible; I set...
The events at Adrianople have changed the texture of Roman public life in ways that are not yet fully visible; I set down some initial observations.
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
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.
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