Letter 1050: Shortly afterward, I had promised to support the son of my friend Trygetius as a candidate for the praetorship...

Quintus Aurelius SymmachusVettius Agorius Praetextatus|c. 388 AD|Quintus Aurelius Symmachus|From Rome|To Rome|AI-assisted
barbarian invasionfriendshipillnesstravel mobility

[...] indulgence [...] I endure [...] to you to have done [...] The day brought the occasion for seeking [office] among our colleagues; our father gave thanks to the Senate with that gravity of eloquence for which he is well known. It was then the Kalends, the day on which the year opens. After a short interval, when I had pledged my efforts on behalf of the son of my friend Trygetius, a candidate for the praetorship, a scruple of conscience took hold of my mind, so that I might fulfill, on the occasion of the duty assigned to me, an obligation still owed by me to my father, but, as I have said, already discharged by him to the Senate. Therefore on the fifth day before the Ides of January I delivered a speech in that most distinguished body; and when these words have come into your hands, you will infer from your own judgment the opinions of the rest. For my part, while your own assessment was still uncertain, I thought the opinions of the others ought to be kept hidden, lest I should seem to forestall you with the prejudgment of so great an order.

AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek below for scholarly use.

Latin / Greek Original

dulgentia {F) 31 patior V tibi feoisse VM

qnendi apud collegas adtulit dies', egit pater seDatui gratiam ea facundiae gravitate, VMII
qna notas est. kalendae tanc erant, qaibus annas aperitar. brevi interyallo cam 2
familiaris mei Trygeti filio praetorio candidato operam spopondissem , animam religio
eonyenit, at occasione destinati officii obirem manas adhac a me patri debitam sed,
b at dixi , ab illo senatai iam solatam. ergo a. d. qaintam Idas lanaarias verba fed
in amplissimo ordine ; qaae abi in manns taas venerint, ex tao animo conicies iadicia
ceteroram. ego sab^incerto examinis tai alioram sententias occalendas patavi, ne te
praeiadicio tanti ordinis viderer argaere.

XXXXV (XXXVini) ante a. 385.

Revision history

  1. 2026-05-27v2.2.34-import

    Initial corpus import from modern symmachus retranslated v1.

    Fields: letter text, metadata, source links. Source: https://archive.org/details/qaureliisymmach00seecgoog

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