Letter 10071: The book you requested has been copied and will arrive with this letter; I add to it another that I think will...
The book you requested has been copied and will arrive with this letter; I add to it another that I think will interest you, without your having asked for it.
The practical question I raise will be clear enough from the text of the letter; I will not repeat it here in the covering note. What I want to say, which would not fit naturally into the official form, is that the matter in question is one on which my judgment is confident even if the official presentation requires more hedging than I would choose.
Please respond at your earliest convenience. The situation will not wait indefinitely for resolution, and a delay that is optional now will become costly if allowed to continue.
More cheerfully: the dinner I owe you has been planned for next month if circumstances cooperate.
Your devoted friend,
Symmachus
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.
Related Letters
If the advocate of Marcion's blasphemy puts forward their so-called Gospel, take it up and read it — you will find...
1. I do not feel pleasure in writing of the subjects which I was wont to discuss; I am not at liberty to write of new themes. I see that the one would not suit you, and that for the other I have no leisure.
No, my dear Pylaemenes — I call the god who presides over our friendship to witness — I never dreamed of ridiculing...
Those who love virtue and live rightly during their time on earth find their reward in eternity — they are honored...
1. Although I suppose that, before this reaches you, you have received through our son the deacon Cyprian, a servant of God, the letter which I sent by him, from which you would be apprised with certainty that I wrote the letter of which you mentioned that a copy had been brought to you; in consequence of which I suppose that I have begun alread...