Letter 10021: The young man I am recommending to you is someone I have watched for three years, and my confidence in him is not...
The young man I am recommending to you is someone I have watched for three years, and my confidence in him is not the quick enthusiasm of first acquaintance.
I write briefly because the day has been long and my powers of composition have been exercised to their limits by obligations that do not carry my name. What remains is still genuine, even if it is not fresh.
The season passes; the city makes its demands; the literary projects that I meant to complete this year remain the projects I mean to complete next year. This is the condition of every serious person who also has serious responsibilities, and I accept it with the grace that long experience has made available.
Write to me when you can.
As always,
Symmachus
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.
Related Letters
The mystery of the Trinity is the foundation of everything we believe, and I want to set it out as clearly as I can.
I have given you many sermons, brothers and sisters, and in most of them I have tried to teach, to instruct, to...
Jerome invites two of his old friends at Rome, Desiderius and his sister (or wife) Serenilla, to join him at Bethlehem. It is possible but not probable that this Desiderius is the same with Desiderius of Aquitaine, who afterwards induced Jerome to write against Vigilantius. An interval of seven years separates this letter (of which the date is 3...
[To a friend] A man traveling to give thanks needs no letter of introduction, so my son Flavianus, relying on the...
Do not be surprized if I ask of you a great favour; for it is from a great man that I am asking it, and the request must be measured by him of whom it is made; for it is equally absurd to ask great things from a small man, and small things from a great man, the one being unseasonable, and the other mean. I therefore present to you with my own ha...