Letter 10064: My correspondence pile is, as always, a reproach to my sense of order and an index of my affections; the people I...

From: Quintus Aurelius Symmachus, senator and orator To: [Unknown correspondent] Date: ~394 AD Context: Symmachus, Book X, letter 64; personal correspondence from his long career as a senior senator in the late Roman West. My correspondence pile is, as always, a reproach to my sense of order and an index of my affections; the people I have been neglecting most are, predictably, those I am most attached to. 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