Letter 7072: Don't judge my care for you by the length of this letter.
Don't judge my care for you by the length of this letter. A greeting is brief in words but expansive in its prayers. Let me imitate, in my regard for you, the economy of religious rites — short in their outward form, boundless in their devotion.
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To Sibitius: My heart is sick until I have certain word that you have reached the harbor of health. I ask you to satisfy this expectation. What I seek is not the honor of a literary courtesy, but relief from a very great anxiety.
AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed.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
cxxvnn.
Curam de te meam nolo ex epistula metiaris: pauca fsalutantis verba sunt . . .
.... sed vota prolixa. liceat igitur mihi imitari erga te parsimoniam religionum.
ostenta . . . o cura ura 6 . . . obis ille que . . . i exitus offlcia 7 . . . a enim quae direi) . . . igata pa-
tuerunt 8 . . . ii reuertetur legib; . . . sed patris sensui acer . . . nc uestrae deme exi^ 9 . . . go atque —
et . . . ia nri apud optimates ui 10 ... nansura — coe . . . s 3 defensione V fecerunt] (77),
fecerit V 6 haec] (i7), hoc V uiuinns V 8 quidem] (/7), quod V acerua K, aoer// P,
asseruata (//] secessio U nunc uestrae] non cura est V
tibi accedit F 14 tantum — 15 decerpi om. F tantum] VF, tanti P insimulationum] P 2 m, VF,
insimulationem P I m. improbitate P 2 m.j probitate P l m. VF 15 decerpsi V uir con-
sularis F laudatur P 1 m. 16 ingemescit P 1 m. uirisimile P 1 m. 17 posse F
tare metum F, metum licitare V 22 mihi om. F 24 c. u.] ego, cum P, om, VF adferas P
28 imitare V
214 SYMMACHI EPISTVLAE
PVF quibus iure amicitia confertur, et officium pium brevi pagina tamquam parvo
ac ore persolvere. neque enim requirit dictio excursum. tibi autem prae-
scribo stili terminos: eioint mihi, quae de te scripseris, nimis magna, si laeta sint.
cxxx.
AD SIBIDIVM. 5
Aeger est animus meus, quamdiu fides certa sit, quod portum sanitatis intraveris.
huic expectationi satisfacias volo. non enim mihi honorem fieri obsequio litterario,
sed magnae soUicitudinis tribui levamen exopto.
CXXXI.
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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