Letter 5013: I'm tired and annoyed with writing — how long are we going to keep imitating the pleasure of real conversation with...

Quintus Aurelius SymmachusUnknown|c. 371 AD|Quintus Aurelius Symmachus|AI-assisted
women

I'm tired and annoyed with writing — how long are we going to keep imitating the pleasure of real conversation with the mere image of a pen? Besides, public happiness and the peace of the world now urge you to come home.

On this point, our friend Ponticianus will be a timely nudge. By good fortune he's been given the task of convincing you — delayed as you are by your wife's business — to start wanting to see Rome again.

AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed.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

Taedet pigetque iam scribere ; quousque enim stili imagine iucunditatem vivi ser-
monis imitabimur? quid quod etiam felicitas publica et pax orbis hortatur, ut larem 10
repetas? qua in re tibi oportunus incentor frater noster Ponticianus accedet bonorum
petitu sortitus hanc operam, ut tibi ob rem uxoriam demoranti desiderium revisendae
urbis admoveat.

XXXIII (XXXI).

Revision history

  1. 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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