Letter 6046: We tried to keep the crocodiles -- the ones displayed at the theater show -- alive for your visit.

Quintus Aurelius SymmachusUnknown|c. 387 AD|Quintus Aurelius Symmachus
barbarian invasionillnessmonasticismtravel mobility

We tried to keep the crocodiles -- the ones displayed at the theater show -- alive for your visit. But they refused to eat, and after fifty days of fasting had wasted them away, they were finished off in the arena during the second round of games, in the usual style of staged combat. Two are still breathing, and we're saving them for when you arrive -- though their hunger strike doesn't give me much confidence they'll last long. Farewell.

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

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