Letter 10022: The restoration of the Altar of Victory [the famous pagan altar in the Senate House, removed by Gratian in 382 and...
A dispute that recently arose over the tribunate of the swine-market [forum suarium, the office charged with provisioning Rome with pork] gave me cause to consult the arbiters of the laws, my lords emperors. A man newly promoted was pressing his claim, that he might obtain the office conferred upon him; the incumbent, relying on the law which fixed definite terms for offices of this kind, refused to retire from his honor. Following the custom preserved over a long age, I admitted the one who put forward the recent benefit of your majesty. But so that hereafter, should the occasion perhaps arise, a settled rule may remove all hesitation in judgment, I have resolved to inquire of the sacred oracle of your divinity: whether it is lawful that new tribunes be deferred and the law be kept, or whether rather the old ones ought to be removed, with their devotion [to the imperial appointment] given precedence.
AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed.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
De tribunatu suarii fori nuper oi*ta contentio causam mihi adtulit legum arbitros
consulendi, ddd. imppp. provectus instabat, ut delatum sibi sortiretur officium; vetus e kge, quae tempora istiusmodi actibus certa decrevit, recusabat honore decedere. secutus morem longa aetate servatum eum, qui recens raaiestatis vestrae beneficium praeferebat, admisi; sed ut deinceps, si forte usus tulerit, cunctationem iudicii
absoluta forma submoveat, statui sacrum numinis vestri oraculum sciscitari, uti*um fas
sit novos tribunos servata lege diflferri an magis veteres oporteat praelata devotione
removere.
Revision history
- 2026-05-27v2.2.34-import
Initial corpus import from modern symmachus workflow v1.
Fields: letter text, metadata, source links. Source: https://archive.org/details/qaureliisymmach00seecgoog
Related Letters
The fame of your literary cultivation made me desire your acquaintance long ago, but I put off the duty of writing...
I practically seized Simplicius, the imperial agent, at the very gate of the Via Flaminia, just to dictate these few...
The due limits of a letter, and that mode of addressing you, render it inconvenient for me to write all I think; at the same time to pass over my thoughts in silence, when my heart is burning with righteous indignation against you, is nearly impossible. I will adopt the midway course: I will write some things; others I will omit. For I wish to c...
Quite a few young men have come from you to us, yet not a single letter from you.
If you have any regard for your father-in-law, come and see him before he departs — and quickly.