Letter 7022: You've redeemed two offenses against friendship in a single letter, with wit as your payment: you'd been away too...
Two offenses against friendship, committed together, you have redeemed by the wit of your letter: you had long been away, you had written nothing. What Colchian or Thessalian could have eased these offenses by his incantation or his hand? And so, in return for the soothing charm of your letter, you shall carry off the prize of pardon. I permit you, free from care, to keep your friend's wedding feast, and to make the city of Tibur [Tivoli], which lately bore the marriage-torches before you, a shared possession of Juno and Hercules. You will return, as I hope, after the wedding-revels to your household on the Caelian; or, if it still pleases you to pass the summer days in your orchards, my indignation must once again be appeased by the honey of your letters. 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AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed.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
Duo pariter commissa in amicitiam redemisti epistulae tuae salibus : diu afueras,
nihil scripseras. quis Colchus aut Thessalus cantu aut manu has offensiones levasset?
ergo ob epistulae delenimentum veniae pretium feres. sino, ut amici tui nuptiale fe- 20
stum curae vacuus exerceas et urbem Tiburtem, quae nuper tibi faces praetulit, com-
munem lunoni et Herculi facias. reverteris, ut spero, post repotia in Caelium larem ;
vel si adhuc iuvat aestivos dies in pomariis tuis ducere, iterum tibi indignatio mea
litterarum tuarum melle placanda est. vale.
XX ante a. 398. 25
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
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