Letter 2028: Go ahead — judge my decisions in hindsight, as you like, and blame me for the prefecture's complaint that it was...
Go ahead — judge my decisions in hindsight, as you like, and blame me for the prefecture's complaint that it was disrespected. It's easy to accuse a man who's been left without support. And so I'd rather accept the confession of error myself than charge my friends with negligence or my opponents with hostility.
If I appeared defeated before I'd even begun to fight, that was Fortune's doing, not my conscience. And yet you write that I should stay away from cases like this in the future! You see how much the outcome is allowed to determine everything. You've forgotten my character. I, for one, will add timid cowardice to my habitual restraint — and I thank your letter for urging me, stripped now of all confidence in law and friends alike, to meet every injustice with silence.
AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed.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
Argue , nt vis , remm consilia post exitnm et mihi vitio verte, quod contemptum
sni praefectura conquesta est. facile accusatur desertus auxilio; atqne ideo in me
tu recipere malo erroris confessionem, ne aut amicos neglegentiae aut adversatos asperi-
tatis incessam. fuerit fortnnae non conscientiae meae, nt victus viderer, qni necdum
coeperam litigare. at etiam scribis, causis similibns abstinendum. vides, quantum
liceat eventui. oblitus es morum meorum. ego vero solitae verecundiae ignavnm
quoqne iungam timorem et litteris tnis agam gratias, quae me deposita iuris et ami-
15 coram fiducia ad omnium iniuriarum silentium cohortantnr.
XXVmi ante a. 395.
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
Related Letters
Eudikios is said to have grieved only briefly for his father, and the reason is said to be you — you who removed...
We tried to keep the crocodiles -- the ones displayed at the theater show -- alive for your visit.
The question is now in your hands: whether I should continue to maintain my regular habit of writing to you, or...
Concerning the monks, your excellency has, I believe, already rules in force, so that I need ask for no special favour on their behalf. It is enough that they share with others the enjoyment of your general beneficence; still I feel it incumbent upon me too to interest myself in their case. I therefore submit it to your more perfect judgment, th...
Many people speak well of Sexio's record as former governor of Calabria, and for that reason they've asked me to...