Letter 2028: Go ahead — judge my decisions in hindsight, as you like, and blame me for the prefecture's complaint that it was...
Find fault, if you will, with the plans for affairs after the outcome, and impute it to me as a fault that the prefecture has complained of being held in contempt. A man abandoned by aid is easily accused; and therefore in my case I would rather accept the confession of error, lest I should reproach either my friends with negligence or my opponents with harshness. Let it have been the doing of fortune, not of my conscience, that I seemed to be defeated, I who had not yet even begun to litigate. But you write besides that one should refrain from cases of a like kind. You see how much is permitted to the event. You have forgotten my character. I, for my part, will join to my customary modesty a cowardly fear as well, and I will give thanks for your letter, which, now that confidence in the law and in my friends has been laid aside, exhorts me to silence concerning all wrongs.
AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed.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
- 2026-05-27v2.2.34-import
Initial corpus import from modern symmachus retranslated v1.
Fields: letter text, metadata, source links. Source: https://archive.org/details/qaureliisymmach00seecgoog
Related Letters
The most distinguished Honoratus has pleased me above all others for his integrity and his way of life.
Has it really pleased our common father [the emperor] to keep you detained longer than I would wish?
It is a duty of human decency to furnish recommendations to those who seek them.
It is the voice of law and justice that a good-faith contract cannot be rescinded.
Your love for Domitius is well known and firmly established, which spares me the labor of commending him.