Letter 7072: Don't judge my care for you by the length of this letter.

Quintus Aurelius SymmachusUnknown|c. 397 AD|Quintus Aurelius Symmachus
illness

Don't judge my care for you by the length of this letter. A greeting is brief in words but expansive in its prayers. Let me imitate, in my regard for you, the economy of religious rites — short in their outward form, boundless in their devotion.

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To Sibitius: My heart is sick until I have certain word that you have reached the harbor of health. I ask you to satisfy this expectation. What I seek is not the honor of a literary courtesy, but relief from a very great anxiety.

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

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