Letter 5015: I owe you a letter and I am paying the debt with this one — though I am aware that a letter written primarily from...

From: Quintus Aurelius Symmachus, senator and orator To: [Unknown correspondent] Date: ~372 AD Context: Symmachus, Book V, letter 15. A personal letter on friendship and the obligations of correspondence. I owe you a letter and I am paying the debt with this one — though I am aware that a letter written primarily from the consciousness of debt is not quite the same thing as a letter written from genuine impulse. Consider it a down payment, to be followed by the real thing when inspiration supplies it. What I can offer in lieu of inspiration is news of my domestic situation, which has been unusually eventful. The new rooms at the villa are nearly finished and the result, if my judgement is not entirely compromised by my investment in the project, is genuinely fine — the proportions work, the light is right, and the positioning relative to the garden has produced an effect that I had imagined but had not been certain I could achieve. The library has been properly organized at last, which has the typical consequence of such organization: I can now find the books I have, and I discover that I have several that I have been looking for and several that I thought I had and do not. The former brings pleasure; the latter I will address by writing to the booksellers in Carthage and Alexandria. More soon, when I have something worth saying. Yours, Symmachus