Letter 10037: I remain, despite everything, convinced that the way of life we have built — the culture, the friendship, the...

From: Quintus Aurelius Symmachus, Urban Prefect of Rome To: [Imperial court or senatorial colleague] Date: ~384 AD Context: Symmachus, Book X, letter 37; correspondence from his period as Urban Prefect of Rome (384-385), during which he sent his famous Relationes to the emperors. I remain, despite everything, convinced that the way of life we have built — the culture, the friendship, the cultivation of the mind alongside the cultivation of one's civic duties — is the best that human beings have yet achieved. 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