Letter 1015: You ask me for longer letters.
You ask longer letters of me. This is a token of true affection toward us. But I, who am conscious of my own poor talent, prefer to cultivate Laconic [Spartan] brevity rather than publish the leanness of my own dullness over many-paged sheets. Nor is it any wonder if the vein of our eloquence has been thinned, which long since neither any poem of yours nor [...] of prose volumes [...]
AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed.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
Petis a me litteras longiores. est hoc in nos veri amoris indicium. sed ego qui
sim paupertini ingenii mei conscius, Laconicae malo studere brevitati quam multi-
ingis paginis infantiae meae maciem publicare. nec mirum, si eloquii nostri vena
30 tenuata est, quam dudum neque ullius poematis tui neque pedestrium voluminum
Revision history
- 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
Related Letters
People who lack confidence in themselves seek letters of recommendation from me.
So where am I supposed to find an abundant supply of words when you've lent me nothing in the way of literary capital?