Letter 5018: I recently read your letter and could tell your spirits were low.

Quintus Aurelius SymmachusUnknown|c. 374 AD|Quintus Aurelius Symmachus
travel mobility

I recently read your letter and could tell your spirits were low. I was deeply surprised that a sudden quarrel had erupted among people who are so close to each other. I've written to my lord and brother to urge him not to depart from his usual character.

As for you, I ask — not just for my sake but for your own — that you show the same patience that distinguishes your other virtues, and bear with everything that the conditions of living abroad tend to produce. I hope that the mediation of my son Flavianus, together with the physician Eusebius's soothing manner, will calm everything down.

Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.

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