Letter 5047: I should not be a braggart about my devotion to you -- our mutual obligations spring from a genuine sense of duty...

Quintus Aurelius SymmachusNeoterius|c. 387 AD|Quintus Aurelius Symmachus|From Rome|AI-assisted
friendship

I ought not to be a parader of my devotion toward you; for services that proceed from the obligation of conscience refuse all boasting. On the contrary, I have received it as a mark of abundant favor that Scipio, a most distinguished man [vir clarissimus], drawing on you as his introducer, has approached my friendship. For it is the greatest of gains to seek the intimacy of good men. And indeed I hope that he too will be devoted to us in all things, once he has learned, by the report of his own people, what our care has contributed to his business.

AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed.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

Ostentator mei in te studii esse non debeo; officia quippe ex debito religionis
profecta iactationem recusant. quin immo uberis gratiae instar accepi, quod amicitiae
meae v. c. Scipio te mystagogo usus accessit. maximum enim lucrum est quaerere 20
familiaritatem bonorum. et sane spero, ipsum quoque in omnibus nostri diligentem
futumm, postquam cognoverit suorum relatu, quid negotio eius cura nostra contulerit.

LXV (LXni) a. 397—398.

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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