Letter 1022: People who lack confidence in themselves seek letters of recommendation from me.
People who lack confidence in themselves seek letters of recommendation from me. But this case is different. I've given this letter to my friend Potitus [a fellow senator] on the condition that he recommend it, not the other way around. He's every bit as much one of your closest friends as I am.
Once he's presented himself to you in person, I'm afraid my excuse for staying behind won't be easily forgiven. But if I know your forgiving nature — and I've tested it thoroughly — you won't hold my absence against me by comparison with his arrival. Instead, you'll welcome him all the more warmly on behalf of us both. Farewell.
AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed.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
Qui sua fiducia deseruntur, epistulas meas in usum commendationis accipiunt. id
nunc aliter est. nam fratri meo Potito hac condicione litteras dedi, ut eas ipse com-
mendet. est enim nihilo secus, atque ego sum, de summatibus amicorum tuorum. qui 15
ubi te conpotem fecerit praesentiae suae, vereor ne excusatio mea ignoscenda non sit.
sed si mihi placabilitas tua experiundo probe cognita est, futurum reor, non ut me,
qui resedi, conlatione venientis alterius incessas, sed ut illum magis pro utroque sus-
cipias. vale.
XX (KY) a. 378. 20
Revision history
- 2026-03-20v2.1.0-import
Initial corpus import from Seeck edition OCR from Internet Archive.
Fields: letter text, metadata, source links. Source: https://archive.org/details/qaureliisymmach00seecgoog
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