Letter 2062: Both the dress and the hair of Serapammon proclaim him a man of literary learning -- he would never have adopted the...

Quintus Aurelius SymmachusUnknown|c. 393 AD|Quintus Aurelius Symmachus|AI-assisted
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Both his bearing and his hair are an indication of it: Serapammon professes a mastery of letters, and if he had been mindful that he was without it, he would never have assumed an adornment befitting philosophers. But let the judgment on this matter be yours, you who lay claim to knowledge of such things. For my part, I made it a point of conscience not to refuse my words to one who asked for them. You will be acting in keeping with your character if by your aid and kindness you assist the fortune of a traveler.

AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed.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

25 £t habitus et crinis indicio [est] Serapammon litteraram peritiam pollicetur, cuius
si se meminisset exortem, numquam philosophis congruentem sumpsisset omatum. sed
de hoc vestra aestimatio sit, qui talium reram profitemini notionem. mihi religio fuit,
non negare verba poscenti. facies rem morum tuoram, si ope atque humanitate for-
tnnam peregrinantis adiuveris.

30 LXn (LXI) a. 390.

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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