Sidonius Apollinaris, Letters. Tr. O. M. Dalton (1915)
Part Two
The great text-book in the schools of the fourth and fifth century was Virgil. To Sidonius, as to Augustine, he is the prince of poets. 233 Terence was evidently popular in Gaul; the Letters allude to his characters, and in the passage on the home-education of Apollinaris, Sidonius reads the Hecyra with his son, uncertain which delights him most, the fine style of the author, or the youthful grace and ardour of the boy. The influence of Horace is also evident in our author; he is second to Virgil among the poets.
234 The opulent and elaborated cxix style of Statius naturally commended him to such a society as that of fifth-century Gaul; he had been popular with Ausonius; and his influence on Sidonius as poet is undeniable. 235 It is the same with Claudian; the Panegyrics which charmed the ears of an Avitus or an Anthemius owe him much, but the splendour of the original is gone. Among prose-writers, not Cicero, 236 but the younger Pliny was the favourite. In the introductory Letter of the fifth book, Sidonius acknowledges him as his master; and in a later book again refers to this professed allegiance. 237 Pliny, the agreeable letter-writer, was the inevitable model of a society in which correspondence with friends was a main interest of existence: no less inevitable was the reproduction of his mannerisms rather than his excellences by purely imitative writers. In his introductory epistle to Constantius, Sidonius quotes as a warning the nickname given to Julius Titianus for his sedulous efforts to reproduce the style of Cicero: he was called 'the ape of orators' (pratorum simia). Yet he and his own contemporaries fell into the same error; they were apes of the second great Roman letter-writer, caricaturing their master by accentuating all his faults. Features of Sallust's style were distorted by them in the same manner. 238 cxx
Grammatical criticism of the classics was followed by specialized study of the great orators, with a view to proficiency in public speaking: this was the course of Rhetoric. The rhetor was a more important person in society than the grammarian. But, as noted above, he professed an art which, except in the Church, had little prospect of great or serious audiences; it was divorced from real life; it was the accomplishment of the speech-room. 239 The training was still, no doubt, a good one; rhythm, prosody, voice-production, division of the subject, were all thoroughly taught, and proved their value when there was a worthy occasion for their use. But most opportunities were hardly worth the taking; the speaker eulogized the great dead or the Epigoni of the present; he took part in academic displays or competitions before small circles, in which ancient or unreal issues were treated in the style of the class-room declamation. 240 An unbounded respect for certain models, a good memory with an endless stock of figures, metaphors and mythological examples always at command----these, and not the power to read hearts and cxxi sway them to a genuine emotion, were the essentials of oratorical success. These were the qualities which carried Ausonius, the rhetor of Bordeaux, to the highest office in the State. 241 The enthusiasm for letters which such promotion implies is laudable in itself; but in the time of Roman decadence the reward fell to an artifice which sterilized instead of fertilizing the mind, and drove hearts capable of valiant action into channels of sentimental retrospect. The fine flower of all this education was the panegyric, and it was an artificial flower.
It has been already noted that the Church was beginning a new education of her own (p. lxxvi), and that in some cases boys were placed under a religious teacher, as Sidonius' own brother studied under Faustus at Lerins. But as a rule, sacred learning would seem to have been neglected in the schools attended by wealthy pupils. 242 Some of the great families were probably still pagan: others appear to have shown little zeal for the religion which they nominally professed; the old mythology dominated literary culture. Perhaps Sidonius was never really grounded in the study of the Scriptures till after his consecration. Only after that event do his letters show a familiarity with cxxii Holy Writ; examples and illustrations derived both from the Old and New Testament then accompany or displace the mythological figures dear to his earlier years. By the side of Triptolemus, we hear of Joseph. 243 Moses, Aaron, and Solomon, Joshua, the Gibeonites, and the people of Nineveh are introduced in illustration. 244 The Church is the spiritual Sara; 245 Philosophy is the fair woman captured from the enemy and espoused by the captor; 246 the story of Peter and Simon Magus points its obvious moral. 247 St. Luke is quoted as a believer in the advantage of long descent. 248
In no capacity did this scholastic education so harm Sidonius as in that which it was designed to advance---- his quality as man of letters. He was too good a pupil of his peculiar masters to be anything but a bad writer. The curse of the rhetorical tradition clung to him like a chronic disease; it destroyed the originality of a genius never too spontaneous. In an age when it was improper for a literary man to be himself, he thought too faithfully of the proprieties. His age was just to him: he had the reward of his obedience. The society whose conventions he defended saw in him the mirror of contemporary writers; 249 in his heart, he cxxiii himself was sure that the vote of posterity was won. 250 Though, soon after his death, a Ruricius might whisper a doubt, it was long before the general verdict turned against him. The Middle Ages approved; and even after Petrarch's misgivings, the voice of admiration continued to be heard. But the Renaissance grew critical, the eighteenth century dared to attack. 251 If the value of Sidonius really lay in his style and diction, as he himself believed, then his credit would indeed be dead beyond resuscitation. Hardly any Latin author has received so short a shrift at the hands of modern criticism as this professed champion of the Roman tongue. When good Latinity was once more understood, our author's pedestal became a pillory; and the works of every writer upon style, from Horace to Boileau, provided missiles wherewith to pelt him. Gibbon, preferring his prose to his 'insipid verses', pays it a back-handed compliment after his manner. Even those who uphold particular merits are forced to draw upon the arsenal of epithets forged against the affected and the turgid writer. The most recent critics are the most severe of all. Hodgkin says that Sidonius has achieved nothing beyond a fifth-rate position as a post-classical author; Dill sees in him one of the most tasteless writers who ever lived. In the matter of depreciation the last word has been spoken; nothing fresh can now be said. The Latin style of Sidonius is condemned as finally as the French style of Voiture. 252 cxxiv
But the position of Sidonius no longer depends on his manner; his style is to-day brushed aside as a tiresome veil, obscuring what he has to say. He refused to write history; 253 he survives as the historian malgré lui. Though he missed one of the great opportunities in literature; though he failed to record much that was most worth recording in the world about him, and instead of the new drama of his times preferred to transmit for the hundredth time the vapid and worn-out stories of Greek mythology, he has yet preserved for us facts enough to constitute him a chief authority on the century in which he lived. His literary fate is indeed a paradox; he is one of those men whose parergon alone is valued, and who are esteemed for the very part of their work which they themselves deemed least important. By a careful sifting of the Letters and the Poems, 254 modern writers have extracted much material which, classified and co-ordinated, has thrown useful cxxv light on one of the darkest periods of history; on many points, Sidonius is the sole source of information. Nor is his mannerism always with him. 255 The Letters which yield most with least trouble are precisely those in which an eager personal interest in his subject, or the pressure of a busy life, or some unexpected necessity for haste have forced the writer to abandon his preoccupation with style and tell his business in a natural way. At such times he speaks directly: tam nunc dicit tam nunc debentia dici. The most efficient cause of plainer writing cxxvi was probably the stress of episcopal work; to this our debt is large. We are infinitely relieved when amid the familiar affectations we come upon the stilus rusticans or the sermo usualis for which he apologizes as a degradation of his pen. 256 We almost lose sympathy with him in his personal troubles, as soon as it appears that it is misfortune which has simplified his diction. 257 Appreciating to the full the honourable solicitude of Sidonius for the purity of Latin, and his ever-present fear of Celtic or Teutonic encroachments, 258 we are willing to condone any intrusions from the vulgar tongue to be rid for a while of the alliterations, the inversions, the forced antitheses, and to see the meaning quickly in a simple dress. What we want of Sidonius is plain fact, and it is pleasant to admit that occasionally we get it without too much exasperation; sometimes the actor removes the mask and speaks in unaffected tones. Let it therefore be recorded to his credit that he does not always offend, and that not once or twice, but many times, he writes in a manner worthy of Roman literature at an earlier day. Let it also be remembered that his cxxvii subject-matter is often well presented; when his narrative interests him, he can tell a story brightly and with effect. Nor should we overlook the fact that Sidonius has a gift for portraiture, which frequently lends animation to his pages. Sometimes a character is sketched in a few sentences, as in the case of Paeonius the parvenu, the malicious old Athenius, 259 the lively veteran Filimatius who plays ball with the younger men (V. xvii), and Himerius the model priest (VII. xiii). At other times the description is at greater length, and details are drawn with a free hand. We have amusing pictures of the young fortune-hunter Amantius (VII. ii), and of Ger-manicus the juvenile sexagenarian (IV. xiii), who dresses in the fashion, who will hear nothing of age except the increased respect it brings, and grows more boyish every day (non iuvenescit solum sed quodammodo repuerascit). We have the interesting sketch of Vectius the country gentleman, whose girdles are of exquisite design, who hunts, hawks, and entertains his friends, but listens to the Psalms at meals, and is more priestly in spirit than many of those who wear priests' garments (IV. ix). We have the memoir of Claudianus Mamertus who does all the hard work for his brother St. Mamertus, to which allusion has been made above (p. lxxxi); we have the reminiscences of Lampridius, the quicktempered rhetor, murdered by his slaves (VIII. xi). In other cases classes of men are portrayed with the same precision; for instance, informers, or popularity-hunting candidates for municipal appointments (XV. xix). A writer possessing such penetration and such graphic cxxviii powers as these deserves something more than an untempered ridicule.
Yet the counts in the indictment are sufficiently numerous. First and foremost there is the mania for antithesis, and plays on words which degenerate into the most lamentable of puns, for paronomasia, antonomasia, and all the other obliquities of language which sound like the infirmities which they are. A critical examination of Sidonius' work resembles literary pathology; his language is often diseased language, which could only regain a semblance of health by a free use of the knife. It calls aloud for amputation of the platitudes, pomposities, and verbal conceits which the euphuist himself would renounce as foolish. It is unnecessary to dwell long on a subject which has its pathetic side, yet concrete instances must be adduced in evidence.
First, we may take examples of the ruling passion for antithesis. The abuse of this is persistent, and sometimes verbal oppositions are cumulated with almost incredible pertinacity, as, for instance, in the description of Ravenna (I. viii). Sidonius pits against each other the words novus and vetus or antiquus, until the staleness of the trick infuriates. Thus novus clericus, peccator antiquus (IX. ii); novo exemplo amicitiarum vetera iura (VII. vi. l), in famillari vetusto novum ius potestatis (V. xviii). But no glaring contrast of word or sense, however elementary, comes amiss; for instance: pingues caedibus gladii, macri ieiuniis praeliatores (VII. vii. 3); confitetur repulsam qui profitetur offensam (VII. ix); pharetras sagittis vacuare, lacrimis oculos implere (V. xii); Cuius parva tuguria magnus hospes implesti (III. ii); Itinerum longitudinum, brevitatem dierum, &c. (III. ii. 3). cxxix
And so on, and so on. The reader who desires more of this misplaced ingenuity will find instances on every other page. Plays upon words are no less common. Inferre calumnias, deferre personas, afferre minas, auferre substantias (V. vii); scientia fortis, fortior conscientia (IX. iv); at non remaneamus terrent quibus terra non remanet (IX. iii); iuste iusta solventes (III. iii. 8); indidit prosecutionibus, edidit tribunalibus, prodidit partibus, additit titulis, &c. (VIII. vi. 7); seu sic sentiente concordia, seu sic concordante sententia (IV. xxv. 5); inconsulte consultat. (VIII. ix. 13); praedae praedia (IV. xxv. 2); suspicere iudicium, suscipere consilium (IV. xxii. 1). The changes are continually rung upon such words as dicere and ducere, suspicere despicere, orare perorare, ambiendus ambitiosus, providere praevidere, &c. The list of such things is endless, but we are not yet at the worst; we have to endure puns from which a schoolboy would recoil. A proper name like Faustus, Perpetuus, or Rusticus is seldom allowed to escape: let two of them represent the series: Perpetua durent culmina Perpetui (IV. xviii----this to be carved on the wall of a church); rusticans multum quod nihil rusticus (VIII. xi. 6, cf. Rusticus). It is pardonable for a man once in a way, in intimate conversation, to indulge a weakness of this kind, but how can a bishop be forgiven who puns for publication, and in work carefully revised not only by himself but by his friends? From a long list we may cite the following specimens: non tam honorare censor quam censetor onerare
(VIII. viii); honoris . . . oneris (IX. ii); ex more . . . ex amore (IX: iv. 1); classicum in classe cecinisse (VIII. vi. 13); Aptae fuistis, aptissime defuistis cxxx (IX. ix)----perhaps the worst of all. It is time to draw the. veil over faults which it is impossible to condone; we may conclude with the following instances of paronomasia and antonomasia. Leges Theodosianas calcans, Theudoricianasque proponens (I. ii. 3); flumen in verbis, fulmen in clausulis (IX. vii); inter perfectos Domini quam inter praefectos Valentiniani (VII. xii.
4).
The reader may be spared illustration of the overloaded interminable sentences;. or of the strings of illustrative instances and persons, sometimes eight or ten where two would have sufficed, till the tail is out of all proportion to the kite; or of the mannerism which declares for silence on things which might be praised, and then enumerates them to the bitter end; or of the labouring of points till they are, so to speak, hammered blunt; or the tautologies recalling the 'which here thou viewest, beholdest, surveyest or seest' of Armado: to insist on these things is to waste time; there is no possible defence. We may pass to other features, not reprehensible in themselves, but made so by immoderate or tasteless use. The metaphors of Sidonius for the most part are familiar, and worn in service. The world is a threshing-floor, spiritual exhortation a harrow. Life is like a river; a literary career is a sea-voyage; the mind of man is a sea, suddenly disturbed by the squall of adverse tidings. Silence is a curb; evil tongues are like barbed hooks. Verse written in sorrow is like the song of swans, or the music of very tense strings (VIII. ix. 4). A king's favour is a flame, which illuminates afar, but in neighbourhood consumes (III. iii. 9). A friendship not maintained is like a cxxxi sword that rusts if not frequently polished. 260 The schools of Lyons resemble a mint, in which youthful natures are struck on a philosophical die (IV. i. 3). Where originality is attempted, the result is often either crude 261 or over-intricate. As an example of the latter fault we may take the passage comparing the scion of a clerical family to a rosebush, for if he be not holy he stands amid all the roses armoured in the thorns of his sin (IV. xiii.
4); or that comparing Lupus, the generous discoverer of hidden talent, to the sun, whose searching rays will detect and draw up a moisture hidden deep under ground (IX. xi.
9); again, that which likens an author who is always writing but never publishes, to a dog who only snarls but never barks out (VII. iii. 2). Sometimes we find similitudes extraordinary to our taste, like the mysticus adeps et spiritalis arvina, which recalls the startling similitudes of a Crashaw or a Donne (VI. vi. 2). It is not surprising to find that Sidonius will mix metaphors with any man. Salsi sermonis libra (III. ii. 1); lacrimis habenas anima parturients laxavi (IV. xi. 7); manum linguae porrigis (IV. i. 3); quibus . . .faece petulantiae lingua polluitur infrenis (III. xiii. 2), may suffice to show his quality. There are other defects or affectations, not immediately concerned with words, but equally due to the same imitative contentment with bad rhetorical tradition. There is the tiresome realism which insists upon elaboration of unessential details offensive to the finer sense----what Chaix has called la manie de tout cxxxii peindre; 262 there is the parade of erudition which, if less obtrusive than the determined pedantry of Cassiodorus, is yet a weariness to the reader; there are the hyperbole in flattery, the perverse preference of the inappropriate, the joy in 'combinations of confused magnificence'. We cannot more justly stigmatize the work of Sidonius at his worst263 than by continuing the criticism from which the last phrase was quoted, a criticism directed against certain English poets of the seventeenth century, 264 but equally applicable to our author of the fifth. For his style too is marred 'by descriptions copied from descriptions, by imitations borrowed from imitations, by traditional imagery and hereditary similes'. The thing could not be better said.
The result of all these artifices, applied with an unshrinking hand, is that Sidonius is often hard to construe. 265 Ruricius, his younger contemporary and cxxxiii partial imitator, was the first to complain of his obscurity, Petrarch confessed that he often found him unintelligible; 266 and the most accomplished modern editors of his text admit that he presents some problems which they cannot be sure of having solved. 267 While diffuseness is his besetting sin, some of his phrases are condensed to the point of impenetrability, and his constructions are rendered obscure by the imperfect development of his thought. Petrarch wondered at the audacity of his style; yet, as Baret has remarked, when it is examined, it is found that in prose he has fewer direct irregularities than Tacitus, and, in verse, than Virgil. It is rather a certain strange exotic character, instinctively felt, but not easily defined, which characterizes our author's work, compared not only with that of the golden age, but with that of a late writer like Symmachus. He is 'heteroclite' 268; his cadences have an unfamiliar ring; when they are read aloud, they strike us as differing not in degree, but in kind from those of the classical authors. Were it not that an early critic has given blunt utterance to the suspicion, 269 cxxxiv we should hardly dare to hint that some subtle Celtic influence had really affected his manner, and that, unknown to himself, the older Gaul was secretly revenged upon this son of hers who had only ears for an Italian idiom. Is it merely a fancy that indigenous turns of thought have been unconsciously adopted by this champion of the classics? Do we witness the first movement towards the changes which were to issue in the Romance language in the South of France? Various indications seem to point that way. The synthetic structure of the older Latin tends to pass into analysis: the conjunctions quia or quod replace the complementary infinitive; the abstract replaces the concrete term. Prepositions grow more indispensable to inflected cases; the genitive is used in a manner which is almost French. The reader of the Latin text will discover a number of words or turns of expression used in a mediaeval or modern way. In one place, if not in two, the word familia is employed in the French, in place of the old Latin sense (VI. vii). Vir litterarum is homme de lettres; cxxxv nebula de pulvere is nuage de poussière. Baret records a number of these peculiarities, and gives a list of the archaisms and neologisms in the text. 270 We may note a few favourite or peculiar words: e. g. tumultuarius, used of rapid or impromptu composition; lenocinari, to coax or flatter; fatigatio, chaff or banter; eventilare, to go over, or search through; humanitas, hospitality; piperatum, 'piquant' or caustic. To some words Sidonius appears to give a new sense; thus it is hard to avoid the conclusion that more than once he employs toreuma where toral is alone appropriate. In his complimentary formulae he is as a rule correct and Roman; though he is fond of abstract terms like celsitudo or Sanctitas tua as honorific appellations. 271 His superscriptions give the name of his correspondent in the dative, with the addition of suo, if the person is a friend, or of the title domino papae if he is a bishop. 272 Sidonius does not employ the affectionate modes of address adopted by Ruricius, e. g. domino pectoris sui Lupo; domino animae suae Pomerio; domino venerabili, admirabili, et sanctis omnibus aequiparando Sidonio. As a rule, the letter ends with a Vale; but when the correspondent is a bishop, the formula is: memor nostri esse dignare, domine Papa. In one instance he closes with an ora pro nobis (VII. xii----to Ferreolus).
So much for the more obvious characteristics which cxxxvi mar the style of Sidonius; we have now briefly to estimate his merits as a letter-writer. It need hardly be said that he cannot be placed in the first rank; he is not, as his friends averred, a second Pliny, far less a second Cicero. But he touches so many sides of contemporary life; he lived through such momentous times; he is so exceptional in speaking with two voices, first as man of letters, nobleman and high official, then as a prominent Churchman, that in spite of his deterrent style, he has an interest somewhere for almost every reader. 273 In most things but the cultivation of brevity, he is superior to his predecessor Symmachus, whose letters seldom touch either great or entertaining issues, but are written to discharge the obligations of a punctual correspondent, and are often brief as memoranda, and of an unsurpassed aridity. 274 It will be more easy to understand the level on which Sidonius should be placed if we consider a few of the gifts which make the letter-writer, and then ask whether he possessed them. The master in this art must not be argumentative, or his letters become treatises; he must not always be serious, or they may insensibly change to sermons. He must know, as one of the greatest of the craft has said, how cxxxvii to approach great matters by their small side----prendre les grandes choses par les petits cotes. If he confines himself chiefly to questions of public concern, he must be doubly careful to be individual, terse, and vivid; above all, he must have the light touch, and the latent gaiety, which never permit the tale to drag. He must be skilled in expression; things must be put, they will not put themselves. But the art must be so concealed that what he writes affects us like the prompt phrases of an unpremeditated conversation. He must be catholic in taste and subject. He must interest most men and not a few; the greatest letter-writers play upon an instrument of many strings. And, in the modern view, at any rate, his letters should be often intimate, revealing the writer's own mind, and telling something of his private life. We thus require of the perfect correspondent much that even the greatest of the ancient letter-writers cannot give. They are mostly Romans; and Roman manners entailed reticence on intimate things; hence a certain preoccupation with intellectual themes and public affairs, which tends to reduce the human interest of their letters. It is not that human interest is absent; there is evidence enough, especially in the case of Cicero, to prove the contrary. But it is often too much in the background, and a correspondence which is too objective is not letter-writing at its very best: it is one-sided; it lacks the perfect balance. For these reasons, even the first among the ancients will sometimes disappoint a modern reader familiar with the achievement of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but approaching the classics for the first time. In many ways Cicero is almost modern; his lively cxxxviii sympathies bring him nearer to natural unreserve than any letter-writer of antiquity; he stands in a class by himself. But if we are conscious of a something wanting when reading Cicero, with all his ardour, his mobility, his colour and conciseness of phrase, it is inevitable that the same deficiency in the less admirable Sidonius should cause a more conspicuous void. The studied care for form which makes the agreeable Pliny sometimes tire, is exaggerated in his last disciple until all spontaneity is lost. And while the manner is frequently repellent, the matter often wearies in its turn; there is too much laudation of obscure literary efforts, too little talk of home affairs, of country life, of details of travel, of the natural beauties of southern France. Nature is overlooked, or regarded, as it were, with the eyes of a duke or cardinal of the Renaissance, seated at a comfortable point of vantage and with quotations from Virgil nearer to his lips than true feeling to his heart. 275 When Sidonius visited Rome in the time of Anthemius, his route followed the Flaminian Way from Rimini; and the latter part of it was the wonderful hundred and fifty miles beginning at Foligno, the stage which travellers from northern Europe used to cover before the days of railways. Goethe followed it when he first approached Rome; Shelley came down it in 1818, and felt the charm to the full. But of that charm the Gallo-Roman cxxxix poet is silent, betraying no interest in these things, and assuming none in his correspondent. He has nothing to say of Spoleto, or the falls of the Velino; we should never guess that he had seen Soracte from Civita Castellana, or looked from Castelnuovo across the valley of the Tiber towards the distant Alban hills. And on his river journey down the Ticino and the Po, though the song of the birds in the bulrushes gives him pleasure, his thoughts are soon diverted to Tityrus and the metamorphosis of Phaethon's sisters. For these and other reasons Sidonius cannot be placed very high among the masters who have expressed themselves through the medium of letters. It is in vain to seek in his pages the unstudied brilliance of Mme de Sévigné, the wit and vivacity of Voltaire, the light irony of Horace Walpole, or the natural gaiety of Cowper. We feel that Sidonius would never christen a path or copse 'La Solitaire' or 'La Sainte Horreur';276 or stay alone in the woods all day for sheer love of verdure. His is not the art to throw off a likeness in half a dozen words, or to resume an affair of State in a pair of sentences; nor is it his to make a hearthside event like the escape of a pet hare an absorbing and complete adventure. In edification, he lacks the winning simplicity, the amiable grace of St. Francis of Sales. He cannot restrain his scholarship like Gray, or expand in confidences like Lamb. His humour often strikes us cxl as forced; 277 he has compliments like those of the Hôtel de Rambouillet, but less adroitly turned. In fine, he was the victim of an artificial training; he lived in times not of renaissance but of dissolution; his was an age more eager for epistolary honours than any other, but more obviously debarred by circumstance from their attainment. 278
Though we are not primarily concerned with Sidonius as poet, the inclusion in the Letters of some dozen epigrams and short pieces compels us to ask whether Gibbon's contemptuous phrase is deserved. Were these verses all that remained to us, there could be but one answer; ' insipid ' is a temperate epithet for some among them. Of the two impromptu epigrams, one on the imputed satire (I. xi. 14), the other on Filimatius' towel (V. xvii. 10) we can only say that, like other couplets written against time, they should not cxli have been exposed to time's revenge. The epitaphs, elegies, and church inscriptions have the mechanical correctness to be expected of one whose mind was continually exercised by questions of metre. But they are mostly written out of good nature, or out of kindness of heart, motives which in all ages have often left the imagination uninspired. In truth, some of them come near to deserving the title of naenia epltaphistarum which their author almost feared for them himself. The poet's reputation cannot, however, be judged by these secondary efforts; it rests upon the Carmina, the twenty-four poems issued in 468,279 and chiefly upon the three panegyrics in honour of Avitus, Majorian, and Anthemius. In these more ambitious works, which challenge, if unsuccessfully, a comparison with Claudian and Statius, we find the same faults so conspicuous in the writer's prose, with others added----the glittering antitheses, the far-fetched metaphors, the forced emphatic utterance, the unquestionable facility, the lack of emotional inspiration, the tiresome parade of knowledge, making whole parts read 'like versified chapters out of Livy'. But though over the greater part hangs the curse of an implacable memory that cannot forget the Schools, though Pegasus is ever reined to the manège, the whole achievement cannot fairly be dismissed as bad because the bad preponderates. 280 It may be that here, as in the stilted periods cxlii of the Letters, the ear is arrested by unfamiliar rhythms and strange sonorities; here, too, a breath of barbarism has passed. But where the author feels his conscious power, there is dexterity, opulence and movement, there is a pageantry of changing form and colour to which the name of poetry cannot be denied. There are narrative passages which seize and hold the interest; for example, the description of the Vandals, or of the Roman army crossing the Alps. Parts of the Panegyric of Majorian advance with an ardour worthy their theme, while here and there flash out gnomic phrases after the glittering style of Lucan. 281 The declamatory manner of these hexameters, so far removed from the suave Virgilian grandeur, admits of frequent brilliance in description; the effect is that of historical painting on a large scale by a skilful but uninspired master. Some of the pieces on less ambitious subjects are not without occasional grace. The verses to Majorian, pleading for remission of the triple tax, strike a light vein with more success than the humour of the Letters would lead us to expect; but the Epithalamia would damage any reputation. 282 Sidonius is at his best in the rhetorical vein; he is the rhetor through and through. In his never-failing fluency, his adroit use of mythology and proverbial wisdom, he is the natural successor of Ausonius, and takes his place after him among the poets of the Roman decadence.
The literary reputation of Sidonius long survived his death. Ruricius of Limoges, in some respects cxliii a pupil, refers to him in eulogistic terms, though conscious, as we have seen, of a certain obscurity in his style; 283 so does Avitus of Vienne, another late writer of letters. 284 Gregory of Tours praises his eloquence and power of improvisation. 285 Cassiodorus regards him as a master; Ennodius and Fortunatus are his frank admirers; 286 Jornandes had clearly read his poems. 287 Savaron has illustrated his popularity during the Middle Ages, when John of Salisbury, Abelard, and other scholars were familiar with his works, and mediaeval writers sought to imitate his manner. 288 But in the fourteenth century, the growing familiarity with Classic models reacted unfavourably upon his reputation. We have already noted that Petrarch was critical; and the Renaissance more critical still. Politian was unimpressed by his style; Vives called his prose ridiculous (absurdissima); Casaubon is severe, though Scaliger can still find words of praise. 289 The editions of Savaron and Sirmond revived an interest in his works; but with the eighteenth century he finally lost credit as a writer of Latin, while securing a permanent place as an authority for the history of his times. From Tillemont and Gibbon to Amédée Thierry, Guizot and more recent historians of his age, cxliv all have rendered homage to his involuntary merit, while one man of letters at least, Chateaubriand, has borrowed material from his pages (p. xciii above). Despite his chastisement as stylist, Sidonius has not fared ill at the hands of the posterity to which he entrusted his fame. Though his periods will never be recited either for pleasure or instruction, neither his name nor his work is forgotten; and in our greater libraries, while men pursue research, the Letters and the Panegyrics will always hold their undisputed place.
Of Sidonius as a man it is almost unnecessary to speak; the Letters prove his noble qualities, and those written after his entry into the Church reflect the saintliness which won him the honour of canonization. His chief fault, a defect of his ambitious early life, was an over-readiness to flatter where flattery, if given at all, should not have come from him. There were times when he too conveniently forgot the antecedents of the great, or their connexion with men whom honour forbade him to conciliate. Majorian was the comrade and the nominee of that Ricimer who had murdered Avitus; Sidonius forgets the fact too soon. Theodoric II had murdered his own brother; Sidonius, perhaps for a political end, appears oblivious of all save the royal virtues. Such flexibility is unworthy of the man who was to write the stern letter of rebuke to Graecus; nor was it a true part of the nature which trials and disillusions proved to be really his. This is the worst charge which can be brought against him; his other failings are little weaknesses which make him real to us, and which he never seeks to conceal. Thus cxlv he sometimes appears too lenient towards unworthy action: for instance, towards the deception of the young adventurer Amantius; but he confesses with a charming frankness that he does not like censorious rigour (VII. iv 3). His literary vanity is now and then accentuated by false modesty (VII. iii, IX. xiii); but as a rule his simple confidence disarms resentment. When he assured his friend Fortunatus that the appearance of his name on the superscription of one of the Letters would ensure its immortality, he was probably more serious than not; after all, he spoke the truth, for the name of Fortunatus is preserved (VIII. v). He probably had no objection to being called a second Pliny (IX. i), and was quietly convinced that his critics were in the wrong. 290 But no doubt he discounted the eulogy which he received; much of it was complimentary verbiage, belonging to the etiquette of his day; and he himself was so profuse of it to others, that he can have been under no illusion as to its current value. The age allowed a great latitude in exaggeration; but it must be admitted that Sidonius availed himself of it upon occasion to an extent which is revolting to modern sentiment. His letter to Claudianus Mamertus reaches the limit of extravagance, 291 and with all allowance for the influence of an eulogistic time, we cannot read it cxlvi without continual irritation. When we are told that the subject of his praise can hold his own with the first names in every field, with Orpheus, Aesculapius, Archimedes, Vitruvius, Thaïes, Euclid, Chrysippus, and all the greatest Fathers of the Church as well, credulity is too obviously taxed, and we wish that Sidonius had remembered more often the gnomic saying which he ascribes to Symmachus: ut vera laus ornat, ita falsa castigat. Nevertheless it must be remembered that eulogies almost as absurd have been perpetrated in periods very near our own. Thus Prior, in his Carmen Saeculare so grossly flattered William III that, in Johnson's phrase, he exhausted all his powers of celebration. 292 We may dismiss the present subject by once more applying to Sidonius the words of the same critic, and say of him that in these matters he 'retained as much veracity as can be properly exacted from a writer professedly encomiastic'.293 Again, Sidonius was quickly moved, and sometimes allowed his temper to impair his dignity. He 'blazes out'294 when views are expressed which controvert a pet opinion; and when more seriously offended, does not confine himself to words. The apparently innocent disturbers of his grandfather's grave feel the weight of his fists or the lash of his whip (III. xii); he explodes at the cxlvii carelessness of a slave who lost some letters, and will not speak to him for days (IV. xii. 2).
But these are the small defects of great qualities. The most affected of writers is the most natural of men. Though uncommunicative about his home, he says enough to show that he was a good father of his family, affectionate to his wife, solicitous for the health and welfare of his children. There is real charm in the passage, already noted, in which he describes himself as sitting reading with his son, distracted between delight in the boy's ardour, and in the fine passages of the poets (IV. xii); there is real regret when in later years the enthusiasm of the young Apollinaris waned (V. xii).
He was a loyal friend. Mention has been made of his fidelity to Arvandus in the dangerous hour of disgrace (V. vii). Similar qualities are apparent in the letter on the death of Lampridius, another friend to whose faults he was by no means blind. At a time when his own anxieties were great, he exerts himself to the utmost at the Burgundian court to foil the informers who had brought Apollinaris into danger (V. vii). A large number of the Letters illustrate his anxiety for the health and prosperity of those for whom he felt regard, or his sympathy with them in their misfortunes. 295 When he became bishop, this fellow feeling was extended to a wider circle, and Claudianus Mamertus bears the highest possible testimony to the unselfishness of his life, when he complains that Sidonius is so busy attending to those who have no real claim upon him, that he finds too little time to answer cxlviii the letters of old associates. He, too, like this venerated friend, 'remembered through good and evil the necessities of the human lot.'296 He was generous alike in the distribution of gifts and in the sentiment which is always ready to recognize the qualities of others. Gregory of Tours relates, in a passage often quoted, how he gave away his silver plate to relieve distress, and how, when Papianilla insisted on the recovery of the silver, the poor were compensated in other ways. 297 An example of his kindly thought for others is seen in VII. xvi, where he sends the winter cowl to Chariobaudus. He is ever ready to encourage the literary efforts of younger men
(II. x, IX. xi), and even to lend them most precious volumes in his library, a supreme test of human kindness. He was capable of tolerance298 towards those whose religious views he most detested; the Letters concerning the two Jews Gozolas and Promotus exhibit him in a pleasing light, and his dictum that a man may be a Jew and yet be sound in judgement does credit to his breadth of vision. He was sociable and friendly, 299 possessed of tact and patience, accommodating affairs to men in a manner which would have won the approval of his favourite Horace. Nor was he devoid of humour; though the examples of his wit which have come down to us are sometimes tiresome, he was probably cxlix good company when in the mood. Throughout the Letters he appears as the kindly intermediary who endeavours to help others in the practical difficulties of life. As bishop, his benevolence is always active. We see him receiving a truant son and bringing about a reconciliation with the injured father (IV. xxiv); securing the remission of interest on an old debt for the advantage of an orphaned family (IV. xxiv); persuading a delinquent husband to return to his wife (VI. ix). But he never countenanced favouritism. He saw clearly that reward should only follow efficient service, and expressly opposed the plea that promotion should go by seniority (VII. ix; VIII. vii). He was a man of insight and common sense, upon whom people relied for good advice. Many reflections and maxims in the Letters attest his practical wisdom. He insists that the safeguard of enduring friendship lies in community of likes and dislikes (III. i); he sees that self-depreciation may be pushed to the verge of folly (IX. iii. 7); he knows that the most bitter family quarrels are those which arise over the division of estates (IV. i), and that at a Burgundian court, as at most others, proximity to kings is dangerous (III. ix).300
He was a patriot both as Roman and Arvernian. In the earlier part of his career we find him always urging the strenuous life for the credit of the Roman name. We have seen that more than once he rebukes the men of family who allow all interest to centre in their estates or pleasures, while the imagines of trabeated cl ancestors look down on their degeneracy (I. vi); even philosophy is not accepted as an excuse for inactive contemplation (VI. vi). He did not despair of the empire even in the days of Julius Nepos; he thought that if only patriotism were fairly rewarded, as good men would appear to show it as in the great days of the past (III. viii). When Auvergne was attacked by Euric, his spirit was worthy of Roman tradition at its best. Both during the siege of Clermont and after it, he evinced a courage and a fortitude which proved him worthy of his ancestors. It is unnecessary to dwell upon this crisis of his life; his nature issued from it confirmed in strength and refined as by fire. He possessed to the full the moral strength which enables men to overcome old prejudice in the service of a changed ideal. The exclusive magnate who chose his acquaintances with such care became the friend of all men; the proud noble could beg for the Church (III. i; VIII. iv). He was consistent in his loyalty to his new profession, and resolutely maintained the dignity of the priesthood even against the high worldly rank which he never ceased to respect (IV. xiv; VIII. vii). He was sincerely humble in his sense of his own unworthiness to be the shepherd of others at a time when he felt the need of guidance for himself: in his Letters to Lupus and other bishops after his election to the see of Clermont, the language is emphatic but the contrition is sincere (V. iii; VI. i; VII. vi). The devotion which in earlier years had perhaps depended much on formality of observance was now the guiding principle of his life; the reputation for piety which he gained among cli his contemporaries and immediate successors is sufficient proof of his sincerity. History records no career precisely comparable to this. Conspicuous alike for his rank and literary celebrity, Sidonius was in many ways the first personage in his native land, yet he fulfilled his arduous and unfamiliar duties in a spirit of abnegation equal to that of colleagues trained to the renunciations of monastic life. In the evil days which fell upon his country, he never abandoned his people; when his own fortunes were darkest, he rejoiced that others escaped affliction (IV. ii). If Sidonius failed of greatness as a writer, he surely attained it as a man.
There are extant more than sixty manuscripts containing the whole or the greater part of the works of Sidonius, and some twenty containing a small part of them. 301 Out of this large number, Lütjohann, when editing the text for the Monumenta Germaniae Historica, selected six as of superior importance, some of these having affinities to a few other manuscripts, which for this reason were occasionally employed. The six manuscripts are:
1. Codex Laudianus, (Bodleian Library, MS. Lat. 104) 9th or 10th century. Known as L. Related to this book are Parisinus 1854 of the 10th century, known as N, and Vaticanus
1783, 10th century, known as V.
2. Marcianus. (Marcian Library, Venice, 554.) 10th century. Known as M. clii
3. Laurentianus. (Laurentian Library, Florence, Plat. XLV. 23.) 11th-12th century. Known as T.
4. Matritensis. (Madrid.) 10th-11th century. Known as C. (Related to this is Vaticanus 3421, 10th century.)
5. Parisinus. (Bibl. Nat., Paris, 9551.) 12th-13th century. Known as F.
6. Parisinus. Bibl. Nat., Paris, 2781.) 10th-11th century. Known as P.
Of these, the first is the most valuable, with the two related, manuscripts in Paris and at the Vatican, and with M and T for use where it fails; the other three are of subsidiary importance. It may be noted that certain lacunae are common to all; this would seem to indicate that they had a single archetype, which in these places presented difficulties to the copyist or had perhaps been damaged by fire.
Printed editions of Sidonius begin with the last quarter of the fifteenth century, at which period one was issued from Utrecht and another from Milan, the latter being reprinted at Basel in 1542 and 1595. E. Vinet's edition appeared at Lyons in 1552, and Wouweren's in Paris in 1598. The same year saw Savaron's first edition; his second (the first of critical value) followed in 1609. J. Sirmond's valuable edition, with notes from which every one has something to learn, was issued in 1614; Elmenhorst's five years later. Complete translations have hitherto appeared only in French; the first, by R. Breyer, Canon of Troyes, was printed in 1706; that of cliii E. Billarden de Sauvigny in 1787 and
1792; Grégoire and Collombet's version dates from 1836. The last-mentioned work has often been criticized for inaccuracy, but it is not for one who knows by experience the difficulties of their task to join in censure upon this point. Single Letters, or parts of Letters, are summarized or translated by many writers on Sidonius or his age.
The arrangement of the Letters in nine books is, as far as is known, that of Sidonius himself. Seven books were issued at different times at the request of Constantius, the first appearing in 478.302 The Poems had already seen the light, perhaps as early as 468 (see above, p. cxli). The eighth book was added at the request of Petronius the jurisconsult of Arles (VIII. i),303 and the ninth at that of Firminius (IX. i), perhaps about the year 484.304 It soon becomes apparent to any reader familiar with the history of the times, that the order of the Letters is not chronological; most books contain Letters from the earlier and later parts of Sidonius' life; and within the limits of the several books the arrangement often seems capricious, Letters logically and historically connected being separated by others unrelated to them in subject. This confusion is partly due to the fact that, to complete his tale of nine books, 305 Sidonius had to ransack all his drawers cliv and cases at Clermont for drafts of letters written long years before: this explains the inclusion in the two last books of Letters referring to his early manhood. But it is also true that in preparing for publication he was not primarily concerned with chronological sequence; he brought his letters together for other reasons, by associations of idea which to us are often obscure. One of them probably was to ensure to each book a wide variety of subject, that his readers might not accuse him of monotony. 306 Again, he regarded it as an advantage of the collection of Letters as such that it is essentially discontinuous, and provides reading for odd moments: from this point of view, lack of logical order is not of prime importance. It has before now been suggested that the author's arrangement should be disregarded, and that an edition should be issued with every letter in its proper order. If it were possible to give a precise and certain date to the majority of the letters, the overriding of the order approved by Sidonius might be justified on utilitarian grounds. But although certain Letters date themselves by recounting known events, while the period of others can be inferred from personal or other allusions, there remains a large proportion to which nothing more than conjectural or approximate dates can be given. This being so, it is hardly justifiable to upset the sequence which received the author's sanction, and has been retained for fifteen hundred years. Moreover, the convenience gained in one direction would be lost in another; for the references to Sidonius in historical clv and critical literature all follow the old system; and, were it changed, the reader, driven to consult a table of concordance at every turn, would soon wish the old order back. It has therefore seemed best to keep the nine books as they stand in the texts, placing at the head of each letter its certain or conjectural date wherever such can be reasonably assigned.
In many cases the year is exactly or approximately indicated by the contents. In others, a particular allusion, or the general tone, may enable us to infer the period: for instance, it is often possible to say with some confidence that a given letter must have been written before or after the entrance of Sidonius into the Church, or the abandonment of Auvergne by the empire. Again, there is a long interval of leisure in the author's career between A. D. 461 and 467, within which many letters descriptive of provincial life seem naturally to fall: a few of these might be transferred to the years between A. D. 456 and 459, though I have not actually suggested this. It will thus be seen that the date of the majority of letters can only be regarded as approximate.
[Footnotes have been renumbered and placed at the end]
1. 1 Sidonius is the principal name, and by it he is properly designated. He himself (Carm. ix) gives the order of his names as Sollius Apollinaris Sidonius. Caius is substituted for Apollinaris by Claudianus Mamertus in the dedication of the De Statu Animae. Modestus is derived from the MS. of the Abbey of Cluny, in which Savaron discovered the epitaph (see p. lii below); but our author himself does not mention it. The description 'Sidonius Apollinaris' dates from the thirteenth century, and became general through its adoption by Politian (Fertig, p. 5; Germain, pp. 178-80).
2. 2 Mommsen (Praefatio, p. xlvii) gives the year of his birth as between 430 and 433. Hodgkin (Italy and her Invaders, ii. 304) is in favour of about 430.
3. 1 His father, whose name may have been Apollinaris, was a secretary of state under Honorius, and prefect in Gaul under Valentinian III in 448-9 (V. ix. 2). His grandfather, the first member of his family to be converted to Christianity (III. xii), was prefect in the time of the usurper Constantine (the 'Tyrant'), A. D. 408.
4. 1 Among the connexions of Sidonius were Tonantius Ferreolus, Philagrius, Magnus and his sons Probus and Felix, Priscus, and Valerianus. For his pedigree, see Mommsen, Praefatio, p. xlvii.
5. 2 Carm. xvi. 70 ff., where Faustus is thanked for the care bestowed on his education.
6. 3 Agricola seems to have led a country life and taken no prominent part in affairs (II. xii).
7. 4 In this display of personal courage he was but following the example of his father Avitus, who once challenged a Hun trooper to single combat, and slew him in the sight of two armies (Carm. vii. 246). Several allusions in the Letters present Ecdicius in the light of a lover of outdoor sports and physical prowess. He had other moral qualities besides courage; he rivalled Bishop Patiens in the generosity with which he relieved the distress of Auvergne after the Visigothic invasion (see below, p. xl), and is thought by some to have ultimately become a bishop.
8. 1 Though a single letter is addressed to Papianilla, who is there praised as a good wife, she too remains a rather shadowy figure. The only actions attributed to her which at all suggest a personality are related by Gregory of Tours (see below, p. cxlviii).
9. 2 Unless, as Mommsen has suggested, the three names all belong to a single person.
10. 3 Apollinaris associated himself with Victorius whom Euric appointed governor of Auvergne, and accompanied him on his flight to Italy, where he almost shared his fate. From Milan he managed to effect his escape, and returned to Auvergne, where he was reconciled to his father, reformed his ways, and married Placidina (Ruricius, Ep. II. xxv; and cf. Chaix, ii. 289 ff.). Gregory of Tours in one place relates that in A. D. 507 he led the nobles of Auvergne at the battle of Vouglé or Vouillé near Poitiers, in which the forces of Alaric II were defeated by Clovis. In another place he mentions him as one of the successors of Sidonius in the see of Clermont, stating that he died four months after his election. The two passages are reconcilable, because Gregory never says, as some critics have assumed, that Apollinaris died at Vouillé, only that he was present at the battle (Gregory of Tours, De gloria martyrum, lxv; cf. Hist. Franc. II. xxxvii. Cf. also Chaix, ii. 379; L. Schmidt, Geschichte der deutschen Stämme, p. 276).
11. 1 Gregory of Tours, Hist. Franc. III. ii. 12; De gloria martyrum, c. 64.
12. 2 Among his teachers were Hoënius (Carm. ix. 313) and Eusebius (VI. i. 3); among the comrades of his youth, Probus, Avitus (III. i), Faustinus (III. iv), and Aquilus (V. ix).
13. 1 Sidonius describes himself as always a great devotee of all games (on which see pp. cxi, cxii). He also rode, hawked, and hunted (IV. iv). Cf. Chaix, i. 69 ff.
14. 2 The consistently eulogistic nature of the letter is sufficient indication that it was written with an ulterior purpose. We may compare Carm. xxiii. 70 ff.:
Martius ille rector atque Magno patre prior, decus Getarum, Romanae columen salusque gentis Theudoricus . . .
15. 3 He is even said to have taught the younger Theodoric to appreciate Virgil (Carm. vii. 497; Jornandes, De reb. Get. xl, xli). Cf. Hodgkin, ii, p. 379.
16. 1 As noted above, Avitus' attitude towards the barbarians was shared by his son Ecdicius. It was also shared by other members of his house, for at the time of Euric's aggression, Sidonius appealed to a younger Avitus to dissuade the Visigothic king from his provocative policy (III. i. 5).
17. 1 In the Panegyric of Avitus, Sidonius describes the part taken by the Goths in the elevation of that prince (Carm. vii. 441 ff., 508 ft, 570 ff.).
18. 2 The Seven Provinces formed the Dioecesis Viennensis, the second of the two 'dioceses' into which Gaul was divided. They were: Viennensis, Narbonensis Prima and Secunda, Novempopulana, Aquitanica Prima and Secunda, Alpes Maritimae (Marquardt, Römische Staatsverwaltung, i. 261, 509). In 418 Honorius had issued a Constitution renewing the Council of Representatives of the Provinces, which under normal circumstances met at Arles (cf. L. Schmidt, Geschichte, as above, pp. 288-9, and p. xxx below.
19. 3 Cf. IX. xvi; Carm. viii. 8:
Ulpia quod rutilat porticus aere meo.
The statue, which was placed between the Greek and Latin Libraries, is now lost. As a work of art illustrative of the decadence, it would have possessed for us an interest almos equal to that of the Panegyric which has survived.
20. 1 For the career and character of Avitus see Gibbon, Decline and Fall, ch. xxxvi; Hodgkin, as above, pp. 374 ff.; L. Schmidt, Geschichte der deutschen Stämme, i, 1910, pp. 252 ff. Gibbon's accusations of immorality are not now regarded as justified (Hodgkin, p. 393; and Bury, Gibbon, vol. iv, p. 14, note). Avitus seems to have been a man of a simple nature, whose inaptitude for empire lay rather in lack of subtlety than want of virtue. His greatest claim to distinction was probably his action (already noticed) in bringing about the rapprochement between the Gallo-Romans and the Visigoths.
21. 1 L. Schmidt, as above,"p. 254; C. M. H. i. 421.
22. 2 John of Antioch (Fr. 202) says that he was either starved or strangled. Gregory of Tours (Hist. Franc, II. xi) relates that he attempted to escape from Italy and take sanctuary at the shrine of S. Julianus at Brioude (Brivas) in his native country of Auvergne, but that he died on the road, his remains being carried for burial to the church which he had attempted to reach alive.
23. 3 The, episode of the conspiracy is obscure, and the commentators are strangely silent. It should be observed that Sidonius alludes to it as coniuratio Marcelliana (I. xi,
6), the adjective (if this is the word he really wrote), pointing rather to a Marcellus than a Marcellinus. Marcelliniana is a possible emendation, or Marcellini, as suggested by Mommsen (cf. P. Allard, Revue des questions historiques, lxxxiii, 1908, pp. 438 ff.).
24. 1 Barker, in C. M. H. i. 425.
25. 2 Mommsen, Praefatio, p. xlviii, places this first visit of Majorian to Gaul in the autumn of 458. Cf. also Schmidt, C. M. H. i. 202.
26. 3 Carm. v. 572 ff.; Schmidt, Geschichte der deutschen Stämme, Part i, pp. 256, 373.
27. 4 The miseries of Lyons may have been in part due to internal feuds breaking out when the hopelessness of the rebellion became apparent.
28. 1 Carm. iv. n, 12, and v. 572 ff.:
Mihi diverso nuper sub Marte cadenti Iussisti placido, Victor, ut essem animo.
29. 2 Carm. xiii.
30. 3 The failure of Gaul to establish a state based in the last resort upon Visigothic support, was perhaps a loss to civilization. Hodgkin has observed that had the effort resulted in a Visigothic power sufficiently strong to resist the Franks, the empire of Charlemagne might have been anticipated by a nobler nation.
31. 1 It must be remembered in this connexion that the eulogistic description of Theodoric II (I. ii) was written in full consciousness of the fact that the Visigothic king had succeeded to the throne by murdering his brother Thorismond (Thorismud).
32. 2 It is Carm. vii: an abstract of it is given by Hodgkin, ii. 410. The kind of flattery which was expected from an imperial panegyrist in the fifth century is illustrated by the words: Fuimus vestri quia causa triumphi, Ipsa ruina placet.
33. 3 This is the date accepted by Mommsen (Praefatio, p. xlviii), and by Clinton. The Circus games which were just over (I. xi. 10) are taken by the latter authority to be the Quinquennalia of Majorian. But Hodgkin considers that the emperor was probably in Spain and Italy during the season 460-1.
34. 1 This is one of the best of the descriptive letters. It is probable that the intimacy of Sidonius with Majorian had aroused the jealousy of others who, like Paeonius, were less successful in winning the emperor's good graces. These men were glad to use any opportunity to disgrace their brilliant rival, and used the episode of the lampoon to suit their own ends (cf. Chaix, i. 132). Hodgkin thinks that Sidonius may really have written the satire. It is true that he does not explicitly deny the charge brought against him; but the balance of probability seems against his authorship.
35. 2 Majorian was dethroned and put to death at Tortona in Piedmont in August 461. During the disturbances following his death Theodoric obtained possession of Narbonne (Schmidt, Geschichte, as above, p. 258). Before his murder in 466, this king had very probably seized Novempopulana and a great part of Narbonensis Prima
(ibid. p. 263). The death of Majorian seems also to have been the signal for encroachment on the Burgundian side. Gundioc reoccupied Lyons, and by 468 his frontiers had been widely extended towards the south, more or less with Roman consent (ibid, p. 375).
36. 1 For the events attending this change of policy, see Hodgkin, ii. 440; C. M. H. i. 426.
37. 2 The name of the bride was unknown until the discovery of the (fragmentary) History of John of Antioch (cf. C. Müller, Fragt. Hist. Gr. IV, pp. 535 ff., Frag. 209; Bury's edition of Gibbon's Decline and Fall, vol. iv, appendix, p. 552). For the pedigree of Anthemius, see Hodgkin, p. 461. For Sidonius' description of Rome at the time of the wedding, see I. v. 10.
38. 1 These are dated 461-7 in the translation. Chaix would reduce the number by assigning a few to the period after 475. In a few cases 1 have followed his opinion in preference to that of Baret, whose dating I have generally accepted.
39. 2 He probably felt in his own person all the discontent with which, in the moment of his success, he endeavoured to inspire his friend Polemius (I. vi).
40. 1 Successor of Theodoric in 466. The imperial policy included an alliance with the Armoricans under Riothamus (cf. III. ix), whose part it would be to hold Berry against the Visigoths; and also an understanding with the Franks.
41. 2 The enlarged Burgundian territory was bounded, now or shortly afterwards, on the south by the Visigoths of Aquitanica Prima and by Narbonensis Secunda, on the north by the weak state of Aegidius and Syagrius in Belgica, soon destined to be absorbed by the Franks (Schmidt, Geschichte, pp. 375-7). It included the Viennensis, Maxima Sequanorum, Alpes Graiae et Poeninae, Lugdunensis Prima, including Nevers, and part of Narbonensis Secunda between the Rhône and the Durance.
42. 1 Anthemius had been consul for the first time thirteen years earlier, at Constantinople.
43. 2 Cf. I. i: sufficientis gloriae anchora sedet.
44. 1 The letters to Polemius and Gaudentius illustrate this (IV. xiv; I. iii, iv). In the case of both, the persuasion appears to have been effective. Gaudentius became a vicarius; Polemius was the last Roman prefect in Gaul.
45. 2 The duties of the Prefect of Rome are defined in the Notifia Dignitatum, c. iv; cf. also Cassiodorus, Var. vi. 4; Marquardt, Römische Staatsverwaltung, ii. 131; C. M. H. i.
50.
46. 3 The impeachment was decided upon by the Council ot the Seven Provinces, established by Honorius (Carette, Les assemblées provinciales de la Gaule romaine,
1895, p. 333; cf. also above, p. xviii). For the whole affair cf. Gibbon, ch. xxxvi ff.; Chaix, i. 299 ff. Arvandus seems to have completed a first tenure of office with credit; his disgrace began with the second. He was perhaps a man with certain good qualities, but a spendthrift, and incurably vain. During his second tenure he was embarrassed by debt, and this was the origin of his downfall. Äs we shall see, the advice which he gave to Euric was actually carried out by that king.
47. 1 Decline and Fall, ch. xxxvi.
48. 1 Cf. Chaix, i. 303. Yet the leanings of Arvandus towards the Goths can hardly have been altogether unknown to any of his acquaintances.
49. 2 It has been suggested by Martroye (Genséric, pp. 234-5) that Arvandus may not have been so stupid as he appeared, and that the correspondence with Euric may have been undertaken with the approval of Ricimer. The king-maker's privity to his treason would explain Arvandus' arrogant confidence on his arrival in Rome, as well as his sudden dejection, when he found himself left in the lurch by the powerful personage on whom he counted (cf. Prof. Bury's note in his edition of Gibbon's Decline and Fall, iv.
44, n. 108).
50. 1 When the breach soon afterwards occurred Ricimer alluded Anthemius as Graeculus, while the emperor deplored the necessity which had made him give his daughter in marriage to a 'skin-clad barbarian' (pellito Getae). In 470 a rupture was averted by the intercession of St. Epiphanius, Bishop of Pavia; but in 472 Ricimer proclaimed Olybrius, and marched on Rome. Anthemius was slain, but after little more than a month the victor himself died (Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encyclopadie, s. v. Anthemius).
51. 2 It is generally assumed that he retired in 469. Fertig (i. 19) thinks he may have remained till 471.
52. 1 A similar conversion occurred in the case of Sidonius' friend Maximus, who also was called to the Church by the voice of his fellow citizens (IV. xxiv. i); cf. Fertig, ii. 6.
53. 2 He may have passed the lower ecclesiastical grades per saltum like Ambrose, who rose from baptism to the episcopate in a week (C. H. Turner, in C. M. H. i. 151).
54. 3 The length of the interval between the return of Sidonius from Rome and his entry into the Church depends upon the view adopted as to the date of his retirement from the prefecture. Mommsen reduces it to less than a year (Praefatio, p. xlviii). Schmidt seems to be of the same opinion (Geschichte, p. 264). Others, while accepting the date of departure from Rome as 469, consider that three years elapsed, and that the episcopate of Sidonius began in 472. They argue from the passage in VI. i, where Sidonius says that at this time Lupus had been a bishop for forty-five years; now Lupus was elected to the see of Troyes in 427 (cf. Chaix, i. 439; Dill, p. 179). Tillemont
(Mémoires, p.
750), followed by Germain (p. 19), makes Sidonius' ecclesiastical career begin a few months earlier, at the close of 471, on the ground that when the letter was written he must already have been bishop some little time.
55. 1 V. viii. 3 Utpote cui indignissimo tantae professionis pondus impactum est. Cf. VII. ix; VI. vii. This language, as Germain remarks, recalls that of St. Ambrose, when raised in a similar manner to the episcopal throne of Milan.
56. 1 The see of the Metropolitan was at Bourges.
57. 2 Baret, pp. 32-3.
58. 3 Cf. note, p. xxviii above. About this time Gundioc was succeeded by his brother Chilperic I, who had no children. Gundioc left four sons, called on Chilperic's death the 'tetrarchs': Gundobad ruling at Lyons, Chilperic II at Vienne, Godgisel at Besançon, and Gundomar at Geneva.
59. 4 Riothamus, to whom one of the letters (III. ix) is addressed, foolishly provoked the attack of Euric and was crushed at Bourg-de-Déols on the Indre, not far from Châteauroux, whence he fled with the remnant of his force to the Burgundians. This may have been in 470, or perhaps in 469, for Euric's aggression was probably hastened by the failure of the Roman expedition against the Vandals in 468. Cf. Gregory, Hist. Franc. II. xviii; Jornandes, Getica, xlv; Dill, pp. 302, 316; Fauriel, v. 314; Schmidt, in C. M. H., p. 283.
60. 1 The Burgundians may even have driven him by force from this district (Schmidt, Geschichte, p. 377). It may be that Euric was to some degree influenced by a desire to avenge Arvandus and Seronatus, who had given him such practical advice. Except that he had not come to terms with the Burgundians, his present policy was that recommended by Arvandus in the famous letter which caused his condemnation (cf. p. xxxi above, and Fauriel, Hist. de la Gaule méridionale, i. 214).
61. 1 The claim of Trojan descent is more than once mentioned by Sidonius (cf. II. ii. 19; VII. vii. 2. Cf. also Pliny, Nat. Hist. IV. xxxi).
62. 2 Seronatus was perhaps governor of Aquitanica I (Schmidt, Gesch., Part I, p. 261), where he openly acted in the interests of the Goths (cf. VI. i. l; V. xiii. i, 4; VII. vii. 2). He also was brought to justice, and lacking Arvandus' useful friendships, underwent sentence of death (cf. Chaix, i. 377).
63. 3 Arverni is the general form for Clermont, though Jornandes uses Arverna. The earlier name was Augustonemetum. When autumn set in the Goths raised the siege, and drew off into winter quarters.
64. 4 Cf. VIII. vii, addressed to Audax, Prefect of Rome.
Nepos, nephew of Verina, consort of the Emperor Leo, was proclaimed in Constantinople in 473, and landed in Italy in the following year, Glycerius being consecrated bishop of Salona. He only reigned a year and two months; in 475 he was dethroned by Orestes, who invested his own son Romulus Augustus with the purple. Nepos, at the beginning of his reign, appears to have endeavoured to rejuvenate the Civil Service, and secure a more efficient administration. But the effort came too late.
65. 1 III. i. 5. The efforts of Avitus may have been made in concert with Licinianus (Schmidt, Geschichte, as above, p. 265). The memory of the Emperor Avitus, the friend of the first Theodoric and instructor of the second, must still have been fresh among the Visigoths. This younger Avitus may himself have had a personal influence among them; the degree of his kinship to the emperor is unknown.
66. 2 Fertig, i. 12.
67. 1 III. iii. The episode is also related by Gregory of Tours (Hist. Franc, II. xxiv), who allows Ecdicius only ten men. Ecdicius seems to have been successful, at some time during the operations, in bringing up Burgundian support (Chaix, ii. 176); he also engaged troops at his own expense (III. iii. 7).
68. 2 VI. xii. Cf. Gregory of Tours, loc. cit.
69. 3 This may have been done by letter. It is possible that the personal visit of Sidonius to Lyons and Vienne took place in some interlude between the sieges, though we may doubt whether he would have left the city at so critical a moment. Cf. below, p. xlii.
70. 1 III. ii. This is the same Constantius to whom the earlier books of the Letters are dedicated.
71. 2 V. xiv; VII. i.
72. 3 The dignity had been promised by Anthemius. Several writers have remarked that though the Roman dominion was on the point of disappearing, and though the titles which Rome conferred were about to become emptier names than ever, Sidonius and Papianilla regarded the augmentation of the family honours as a matter of serious importance. In spite of the threatening aspect of affairs, they could not even now persuade themselves that Auvergne was really to be abandoned by the empire. Perhaps it was this ineradicable confidence in Roman stability which enabled Sidonius to write several cheerful letters during this time of suspense, e. g. III. viii and VII. i. We may note as an example of a similar confidence manifested by others, that a friend whom he asks to attend the Rogations is taking the waters at a bathing resort (V. xiv. 1).
73. 1 IV. v.
74. 2 But cf. p. xl, note 3.
75. 3 Schmidt, Geschichte, as above, p. 265. But if the four bishops made a firm stand for Auvergne, why was Sidonius so indignant with Graecus? The account of Epiphanius' proceedings given by Ennodius is uninforming (Vita Epiph. §81).
76. 1 Sees had been left vacant; churches were allowed to fall in ruins; cattle grazed about the altars (VII. vi). Gregory of Tours (Hist. Franc, ii. 25) says that bishops and priests were actually put to death, but it is doubtful whether things were pushed to this extremity; cf. Chaix, ii. 182.
77. 2 VII. vii. Hodgkin compares the protest of betrayed Auvergne with that of the city of Nisibis, surrendered to Persia by Jovian against the will of the inhabitants. The reproach directed by Sidonius against Graecus, that he considered nothing but his own interest, seems hardly justified. It is probable that as a result of the treaty, to which the Burgundians appear to have been parties, the whole territory between the Loire, the Rhône, the Pyrenees, and the two seas passed to Euric, who now possessed Aquitanica I and II, Novempopulana, Narbonensis I, and part of Lugdunensis III (Schmidt, p. 265).
78. 1 The treaty still left Rome the country between the Mediterranean and the Durance, and from the Rhône to the Alps; but a part of this at least was taken by Euric in
476, when he renewed the war, and drove the Burgundians beyond the Durance (Schmidt, Geschichte, p. 377).
79. 2 Victorius may have degenerated (cf. Chaix, ii. 504). Gregory (Hist. Franc. II. xx) states that he was obliged to fly to Italy; the young Apollinaris followed him (cf. note 3, p. xiv, above).
80. 3 In the Peutinger chart it is called Liviana, and placed twelve miles from Carcassonne. Cf. the Index Locorum in Mommsen's Praefatio.
81. 4 In VIII. iii and IX. iii Sidonius speaks of officia which occupied a great part of his day during his captivity.
82. 1 The task which he suggested was an edition of Philostratus' work in honour of Apollonius of Tyana (VIII. iii. i; cf. Fertig, ii. 22). Sidonius had a far higher opinion of Apollonius than that entertained by the Catholic Church in later times (cf. note, 140. i, p. 245). It is questioned whether he undertook a regular translation from the Greek, or merely a transcription, as Sirmond thought.
83. 2 Chaix thinks that Sidonius returned to Clermont on his release from Livia; and that the visit to Bordeaux was undertaken later, with the express object of presenting a petition with regard to his confiscated property (ii. 227).
84. 3 VIII. ix. The Visigoths, in accordance with precedent, probably appropriated a fixed proportion of the conquered territory (cf. p. lvi below). But Sidonius' active share in the war may have led to the confiscation of his land.
85. 1 Sidonius may have been really impressed by the visible signs of Euric's power, and forced into a kind of enthusiasm, despite his private feelings. But the verses bear the signs of exaggeration, and historical evidence hardly confirms their claim that Euric was arbiter of the destinies of half the world.
86. 2 Another letter containing verses (IV. viii) addressed to Evodius was probably composed at Bordeaux. Evodius, who at a later time may have risen high in the Gothic service (Chaix, ii. 290), was presenting a silver cup to Ragnahild, Euric's consort, for which he desired a poetical inscription. Sidonius, who realized as fully as his friend the great influence wielded over their lords by the Teutonic queens, complied with a few couplets well calculated to attain their object. But in a tone of irony which betrays his real sentiment with regard to Teutons, he remarks at the end of the letter that the verses themselves hardly matter, since in the place where the cup is going there will be eyes only for the silver of which it is made.
87. 1 Cf. the visits to Vectius and Germanicus (IV. ix, xiii; cf. Chaix, ii. 239, 241). He paid other visits beyond his diocese, e. g. those to Elaphius and Maximus (IV. xv, xxiv; cf. Chaix, ii. 234, 236).
88. 2 See below, p. cliii.
89. 1 VIII. i. 1; xvi. 1.
90. 2 IX. i, xvi.
91. 3 He says himself that after his entrance into the Church, his prose style suffered, but he was ' more of a bad poet than ever ' (IV. Hi. 9).
92. 4 Cf. the convivial verses written at a late period for Tonantius, son of Tonantius Ferreolus (IX. xiii).
93. 5 The request came from Prosper, Bishop of Orleans (VIII. xv).
94. 1 De scriptoribus ecclesiasticis, xcii. The theological writings of Sidonius are not the only works of his which are lost to us. He mentions epigrams and satires from his pen----evidently composed in earlier life (cf. Chaix, ii. 310). In the verses included in the last of all his letters, he alludes to certain juvenile productions: unde pars maior utinam faceri possit et abdi!
95. 2 V. xv; cf. Germain, p. 117.
96. 3 It is argued that he must have been writing after 480, because in a letter to Oresius (IX. xii) he says that he has given up secular poetry for three Olympiads, and the period of abandonment to which he alludes must be the year of his election as bishop. Mommsen, however, considers him to have died in 479 (Praefatio, p. xlix), in which Prof. Schmidt follows him (Geschichte der deutschen Stämme, p. 378). But his argument is chiefly based on a conjectural emendation of the vague date at the end of the epitaph (XII Kal. Sept. Zenone imperatore), and his conclusion appears to accord no better with facts than that of Tillemont (see next page).
97. 1 The Catholicism of the Franks was of great assistance to them in their final struggle with the Arian Teutonic tribes. There is no doubt that their orthodoxy led the Gallo-Roman population to favour their projects and to desire their supremacy, and that Alaric II regarded the Catholic bishops as formidable, if secret adversaries.
98. 2 Earlier authorities, the Benedictines (Histoire litt. de la France, ii. 557) and Tillemont (Mémoires, xvi. 274 and 755), were in favour of about 489 as the date of Sidonius' death. Gregory of Tours says that in Sidonius' lifetime the echo of Frankish arms resounded in Gaul, and that Arvernians desired their arrival in Auvergne: this seems to point to a period later than the battle of Soissons (cf. Germain, p. 181). It might also be contended that the references which Sidonius himself makes to advancing age seem difficult of explanation if he did not survive the year 479, when he would only have been about fifty (V. ix. 4; IX. xvi, line 45 of the poem. Cf. also Hodgkin, ii, p. 317).
99. 3 Gregory of Tours, Hist. Franc. II. xxiii.
100. 1 Gregory, as above. On Sidonius' decease, the infamous Hermanchius usurped the bishopric, but was struck dead at a banquet while he was celebrating his success. Aprunculus, formerly Bishop of Langres (cf. IX. x), only held the see for a short time, being succeeded by Euphrasius, whose tenure was also brief. Cf. Gregory of Tours, Hist. Franc. III. ix, xii, xviii.
101. 2 Cf. p. xiv above, and Gregory, III. c. ii; Chaix, ii. 379. Placidina, the wife, and Alcima, the sister, of Apollinaris, are said by Gregory to have visited the newly-elected bishop and persuaded him that he did not possess the qualities required for the efficient government of the see; it would be better, therefore, if he withdrew in favour of Apollinaris. He agreed with them, and effaced himself.
102. 3 Gregory tells us that the younger Apollinaris had a son, Arcadius, whose daughter was named, like her grandmother, Placidina, and is mentioned by Venantius Fortunatus (Carm. i. 15, 45). It has been supposed that the family of Polignac represents the line of Apollinaris, but this is disputed.
103. 1 Codex Matritensis, known as C; tenth to eleventh century (see p. clii below; and cf. E. Le Blant, Inscriptions chrétiennes de la Gaule, I, no. 562). It is quoted by Sirmond, and by later writers on Sidonius, e. g. Germain, p. 36 (cf. Baret, Introduction, p. 101). The placing of this long metrical epitaph over his remains would probably have accorded with his own wishes. Did he not compose one of similar length for his grandfather's tomb, with the comment that 'a learned shade does not reject a poetic tribute'
(Anima perita musicas non refutat inferias. III. xi)?
104. 2 But, as observed below (p. cli), the Letters have never ceased to be accessible, if only to a limited number of readers.
105. 1 Sidonius' description of Avitacum, with its fine baths, winter and summer dining-rooms, women's quarters and weaving-chamber, imitates Pliny's accounts of his two chief country-homes, the Laurentinum near Ostia, and the larger Tusculanum at the foot of the Apennines in the upper Tiber valley (Ep. II. xvii; VI. vi). It is rather curious that he makes no mention of his garden, though such must surely have existed. Pliny, on the other hand, is very detailed in his description of the gardens of his villas. He speaks of walks bordered with box and rosemary, topiary-work, a 'wilderness', fountains and marble seats, summer-houses, &c. (cf. also Sir A. Geikie, The Love of Nature among the Romans, pp. 132ff.).
106. 1 Cf. II. xiv.
107. 2 Even Theodoric II had shown his desire of territorial aggrandizement in Gaul (Schmidt, in C. M. H. i. 283).
108. 1 It is generally held that when the Visigoths first settled in Aquitaine, they appropriated two-thirds of the tilled land, and one-half of the woodland, while such land as was not thus partitioned was divided equally between Goth and provincial. When the Goths annexed large new territories, the division probably became less ruinous to the Gallo-Roman, because the barbaric numbers had not increased in proportion to the fresh land seized (Schmidt, Geschichte, pp. 281,287). For the Burgundian division, see Dahn, Die Könige der Germanen, vi. 56; and for the partition of lands in Italy by the Ostrogoths, cf. Dumoulin, ibid. p. 447. The Visigothic Code issued by Euric in 475, of which only a part is preserved, was drawn up by Roman jurists. It borrowed much from the provisions of Roman law with regard to property; with regard to moral offences, it retained much of the old Teutonic severity. From the time of Theodoric I, Gothic law had already begun to be romanized, but the effect of long contact with Roman custom was now much more obvious (cf. C. Zeumer, Leges Visigothorum antiquiores, 1894; L. Schmidt, Geschichte, pp. 296ff.; F. Dahn, as above, vi. 226 ff.).
109. 1 e. g. at the house of Magnus at Narbonne ( Carm. xxiii).
110. 2 Theodoric II, the Visigoth, who evidently conformed in many ways to Roman usage, hunted before the midday meal; he too began the day very early with a religious service, and then transacted state-business, which must have been over before 10 A. M. (I. ii). Sport with hawk and hound is mentioned in connexion with the beautiful country-house of Gonsentius near Narbonne (VIII. iv), and with the estates of Namatius, Euric's admiral in Oleron (VIII. vi).
111. 3 II. ix; villas of Tonantius Ferreolus and Apollinaris. For the disposition of the wealthy Roman's day, little changed from early imperial times, cf. J. Marquardt, Privatleben der Römer, p. 258.
112. 1 It is hard to say from the writings of Sidonius whether or not the Roman matron was still the commanding figure of the earlier empire. She was much occupied with domestic concerns: thus the wife of the wealthy Leontius of Bordeaux spins Syrian wool, and works embroidery (Carm. xxii. 195). But there are examples of ladies with intellectual interests. Sidonius expects Eulalia, wife of his friend Probus, to read his poems; and the expectation implies in her more than a slight tincture of letters (Carm. xxiv. 95). He tells a friend about to marry, that wedlock need imply no break in his literary work, since his future wife may encourage and aid his studies. Probably the influence of the materfamilias was none the less effective for being exerted in an inconspicuous way.
113. 1 I. vi; II. xiv. For Eutropius, who bade fair to become a 'country bumpkin', Sidonius draws an admonitory picture of the future, when the man who has allowed all his opportunities to go by, will have to stand in his old age silent at the back of the hall, an inglorius rusticus, while younger men, without his advantages of birth, sit in the front places and express their judgement.
114. 2 Verses were often enclosed or incorporated in letters until, as in the correspondence of M. de Coulanges, they must have seemed 'as numerous as Sibylline leaves'
(Mme de Sévigné, Letter 1177).
115. 3 II. ix. 4, 5.
116. 1 Cf. IV. xii. 1.
117. 2 His friends are mostly of his own rank, but he may make exception in favour of rhetors or grammarians, a class whose company was eagerly sought in a society devoted to parlour-rhetoric. Cf. the cordial invitation to Domitius, the Grammarian of Camerius (II. ii).
118. 1 But even as late as the end of the fifth century the Christianity of some among the nobles was probably more a matter of conformity than conviction, as it had been with Ansonius at an earlier date (cf. Ausonius, Ep. ii. 15; X. xvii).
119. 2 Cf. II. xiii, where Sidonius speaks of doctors who conscientiously kill off their patients, and quarrel across the invalid's bed.
120. 1 Cf. Sidonius' apologia for the long neglect to erect a monument over his grandfather's remains (III. xii. 6).
121. 2 Gallula Roma Arelas: Ordo urbium nobilium, X. 2.
122. 3 The banquet of Majorian (II. xi) and that of a sodalis quidam at Arles during the imperial sojourn in the town (IX. xiii).
123. 1 VIII. xii. copiosissima penus aggeratis opipare farta deliciis.
124. 2 Difficile discernitur, domini plusne sit cultum rus an ingenium (VIII. iv. i).
125. 1 The distinction of 'senatorial' rank had ceased to bear any direct relation to the Senate; the title implied the status conferred by the possession of a certain amount of landed property, or the previous tenure of some honorary office or dignity. After Constantine's time the class rapidly increased in the provinces (cf. J. S. Reid, C. M. H. i. 49).
126. 2 The Gallic estates were not so large as the Italian, but Ausonius had one, described as small, which exceeded a thousand acres; and the great nobles owned numerous properties. It may be assumed that Sidonius was a proprietor on rather a large scale. Symmachus is thought to have had about £60,000 a year of our money; if Sidonius had only a third of that amount, he would still be a wealthy man according to our ideas. The really opulent members of the senatorial class had anything between £100,000 and £200,000 a year (cf. Dill, p. 126).
127. 3 Though they paid a land-tax (follis senatorius), the aurum oblaticium, and other taxes imposed in the province where they resided (cf. J. S. Reid, C. M. H. i. 50).
128. 1 The mortgagor generally became dependent on the mortgagee. In this relation may be sought one of the beginnings of the feudal system (Dill, p. 218).
129. 2 Cf. Dill, pp. 224 ff. The less scrupulous among the senatorial class, indirectly engaged in commerce though trading was forbidden to them, patronized usurers and fraudulent creditors, winked at dishonest action on the part of their agents, and overbore the lesser officials of the state by their local prestige.
130. 1 A great part of the estate was tilled by slaves; and such part as was cultivated by coloni must have yielded the landowner a very handsome profit. Some labour was paid by wages, but not a high proportion (J. Marquardt, Privatleben, p. 139).
131. 2 Probably the relations of the average master to his servants were as a rule not unkindly: but there are exceptions, both good and bad. The admirable Vectius has a devoted household (IV. ix. 1); the violent Lampridius is murdered by his slaves (VIII. xi. 11). Sidonius was almost certainly a good master, though once at least he shows excitability (IV. xii. 2). An interesting Letter (V. xix) deals with the abduction of a freed woman by a man in the servile state. Sidonius, from whose house she had been taken, insists with Pudens, whose slave the abductor was, that the man should be also freed and so be promoted from the class of coloni to that of plebeian clients (mox cliens factus, e tributario plebeiam potius incipiat habere personam quam colonariam). The tenth Letter of Book IX is also of interest in this regard. Injuriosus, who may have been a clerk, left Sidonius for Aprunculus, bishop of Langres, without ceremony and without the proper litterae commendatoriae, Sidonius stipulates that if the offender should ever treat Aprunculus in a similar way, both of them should prosecute him as a fugitive servant.
132. 1 The reader will find references to the principal works on the subject in Dill, p. 208; cf. also C. M. H. i. 52; J. Marquardt, already quoted, Römische Staatsverwaltung, i.
92 ff. For the municipality, see Prof. J. S. Reid, The Municipalities of the Roman Empire, 1913. The decurions had not only to control municipal finance, but were responsible for the collection of imperial taxes. They had liabilities in connexion with enlistment for the army, and with the maintenance of the posting service on the great roads. During the fifth century the imperial government made worthy efforts to improve jurisdiction and administration, but over-centralization neutralized their effect in the provinces, where old abuses persisted and reforms were not easily applied (cf. C. M. H. i. 396).
133. 1 Hist. de la civilisation en France, ed. 1846, i. 91. For the organization of the Church, see C. H. Turner, in C. M. H. i. 145. For the Catholic Church in barbaric territory, see F. Dahn, Die Könige der Germanen, vi. 367 ff.; L. Schmidt, Gesch. der deutschen Stamme, Part I, p. 300 f. Of Arian organization, either in the Visigothic or the Burgundian State, practically nothing is known.
134. 2 We see from VIII. xi (line 8 in the poem) that visitors to the town who could not find accommodation with their friends sometimes expected the bishop to find room for them. Many letters show the bishop in a most pleasant light as mediator in family disagreements, or as patron of worthy aspirants.
135. 3 The Constitutions of 408 gave bishops civil jurisdiction in their dioceses (C. M. H. i. 396). Several passages of Letters in Book VI illustrate episcopal influence. As Baret remarks, Sidonius always seems to assume that the pondus of the bishop will settle the matter when it is placed in the scale.
136. 1 Cf. Hist. franc. IV. xii; V. xxi. Sidonius does not conceal his sentiments when he finds ground for disapproval of the clergy, as in the case of the dissentient priests at Bourges (VII. ix. 3). In IV. viii. 9 he implies that many who wore clerical garb 'imposed upon the world', and that he personally inclined to prefer the man 'who is priestly in morals to one who merely bears the priestly title'.
137. 1 It was the same in the case of men distinguished in the professions: Germain of Auxerre was once a soldier; Lupus of Troyes an advocate.
138. 1 Cf. IV. iii; and Chaix, i. 438.
139. 1 Cf. the effect produced by the address of Faustus at the consecration of Patiens' new church at Lyons (IX. iii. 5).
140. 2 For Church schools, see G. Kaufmann, Rhetorenschulen und Klosterschulen, &c., in Raumer's Historisches Taschenbuch, Ser. IV, vol. x, 1869, pp. 54 ff.
141. 3 For the growth of the influence of the Church as a body, cf. C. H. Turner in C. M. H., as above, pp. 145, 152, 155.
142. 1 If the bishops of the province could not attend, the canon provided that those of neighbouring provinces should be summoned. Thus at Bourges, Sidonius invites the cooperation of Agroecius of Sens. Cf. Chaix, ii. 2 2.
143. 2 Bourges had been in Gothic hands since about 470. Of the bishops present at the election, two came from territory which was still Roman, one from a diocese in Burgundian territory. The fact illustrates both the universal character of the Church, and the tolerance of the barbaric governments.
144. 1 For the gradual elimination of the popular element see C. H. Turner, as above, p. 152.
145. 2 Though the authority of Rome was unquestioned, throughout the Letters there is no mention of appeal to, or intervention by, the Pope.
146. 3 In the sixth century, though the Frankish kings exerted an influence over the elections, scandals continued to occur, if not quite in the same way as at Bourges and Châlon (Gregory of Tours, Hist. Franc. IV. xxxv; VI. vii, xxxviii).
147. 4 Erant quidem prius, quod salva fidei face sit dictum, vagae, tepentes, infrequentesque, utque sic dixerim, oscitabundae supplicationes, quae saepe interpellantum prandiorum obicibus hebetabantur.
148. 1 Sometimes festivals were protracted for many days. That which celebrated the consecration of Patiens' church lasted a whole week (IX. iii. 5, festis hebdomadalibus). Cf. the long festival at Gaza: G. F. Hill, The Life of Porphyry, Bishop of Gaza, by Mark the Deacon, 1913, ch. 92.
149. 2 Thus Lupus of Troyes transferred to his diocese prayers in use at Lerins (IX. iii). The austerities of Faustus have been already mentioned. For the development of monastic life in the West in the early Christian centuries, see Dom Butler in C. M. H. i. 531 ff. There was no ordered code or written rule, except the short rule of Caesarius of Arles, until the seventh century. Before that time the eremitical type of monachism practised in Egypt and Syria prevailed, sometimes with the extreme austerities habitual in the latter country. It is even doubtful whether Honoratus wrote a rule for Lerins.
150. 1 Cf. Gregory of Tours, Hist. Franc. II. xxi, and Vit. Patr. iii. In Bk. VI, ch. vi, of the former work, Gregory alludes to the miracles of the saintly recluse Hospicius of Nice, who in the second half of the sixth century made his usual diet of bread and dates, and in Lent subsisted on roots brought in merchant-ships from Egypt. In Gregory's time Auvergne still contained hermits practising extreme asceticism.
151. 1 IV. ii, iii. Tertullian, Jerome, and Cassian had given support to the doctrine thus proclaimed by Faustus, and Augustine had taken a prominent part on the other side. A chief argument used by Faustus was that to call the soul of man immaterial is to claim for it a quality belonging only to God (cf. Dill, p. 184). For the treatise of Faustus, see Gennadius, De Script. Eccles. 85. In Engelbrecht, Corpus Script. Eccles. Lat., the treatise and Claudianus Mamertus' reply are printed together.
152. 2 Among them Fonteius, Auspicius, Agroecius, Principius, and Aprunculus, the successor of Sidonius at Clermont.
153. 1 It has been already noticed that previous to their election to the sees of Troyes and Riez, Lupus and Faustus had both occupied the position of Abbot of Lerins. Hilary of Arles and Eucherius of Lyons had been members of the same community. A brief description of a visit paid by Sidonius to Lerins is given in Carm. xvi. 105 ff., and the visit is alluded to in IX. iii. For Lerins, cf. note, 80. 1, on p. 239. Cf. also VI. i; VII. xvii. 3; VIII. xiv. 2; IX. iii. 4. For the Jura monasteries, see note, 47- 2, p. 235.
154. 2 Chaix, ii. 224.
155. 1 V. vi, vii.
156. 1 But in their family relations both the Visigothic and Burgundian royal houses were guilty of murderous brutality. It has been noted that Theodoric II assassinated his brother Thorismond, and was in turn assassinated by Euric. Gundobad the Burgundian in like manner murdered two of his brothers, destroying at the same time the wife and children of Chilperic under circumstances of such cruelty that public opinion became indignant, and Sidonius' friend Secundinus, the poet of Lyons, wrote a satire against the king (V. viii).
157. 1 The hostility of the clergy was always a danger to Alaric II before the final conflict with Clovis (cf. L. Schmidt, Geschichte der deutschen Stämme, p. 302).
158. 2 Dill, Bk. IV, chs. i and ii.
159. 3 The Visigoths had been granted Aquitanica Secunda and Toulouse by Honorius. The Burgundians were established south of Lake Leman by Aëtius.
160. 4 Cf. V. vi. 2, where Chilperic is described as magister militum (V. vi; cf. VII. xvii).
161. 1 Cf. L. Schmidt, Geschichte, p. 271. Prof. Schmidt considers that the Visigoths treated the Gallo-Romans almost on a footing of equality before the law (ibid. p. 279), while the Burgundians certainly conceded equal rights (ibid. p. 403).
162. 2 Salvian, holding a brief for barbaric integrity against Roman corruption, may exaggerate the virtue of his clients; but his attribution of hospitality, chastity, and honesty to various tribes was probably founded on contemporary experience. He does not altogether close his eyes to their faults, styling the Goths perfidious, and the Franks untruthful. (For Salvian, see Hodgkin, i. 504.) Ammianus (XXII. vii) confirms Salvian on the national perfidy of the Goths (XXII. 7); and it is interesting to note that after the Frankish Conquest the Goths were regarded as poor fighting men, shunning close quarters, and relying on the bow (Gregory of Tours, Hist. Franc. ii. 27, 37).
163. 1 As already noted, Avitus' son Ecdicius showed, during the last struggle for Auvergne, that the race of heroes was not extinct (III. iii). Under Gothic rule, Gallo-Romans were probably exempt from military service (see note 64. 1, p. 238), but they served in the Burgundian ranks (Schmidt, Geschichte, p. 40).
164. 1 Cf. VI. iv. 1. The Vargi in many ways resembled the Bagaudae of an earlier time. Cf. Salvian, De Gub. Dei, v. 24, 25; Sirmond, Notes, p. 65; Dill, p. 315; Hodgkin, ii.
104.
165. 2 But at its worst how different from the fate which ultimately befell our own country (cf. Haverfield in C. M. H., pp. 378 ff.; C. W. C. Oman, England before the Norman Conquest, Bk. III, ch. xi).
166. 3 Sidonius says that Euric was not so much the prince as the chief-priest of his nation (VII. vi. 6 ut ambigas, ampliusne suae gentis an suae sectae teneat principatum).
167. 1 Leo probably combined in his own person the functions of the Quaestor Sacri Palati (the highest legal officer) and the magister officiorum or head of the Civil Service
(cf. Schmidt, C. M. H. i. 290).
168. 2 For the Visigothic administration of justice, with its twofold system for Goth and Gallo-Roman respectively, see L. Schmidt, Geschichte, pp. 295-6; for the Burgundian, ibid. p. 423.
169. 3 Cf. II. x; IV. xvii.
170. 4 Syagrius, if not an official, was a persona grata at Lyons (V. v).
171. 1 Sidonius' rather fulsome poem on Euric reached the king's eyes through being written in a letter to Lampridius, who was intended to exhibit it (VIII. ix). Cf. above, p. xlvi.
172. 2 V. vi, vii. Sidonius' denunciation of these men, though written in his most artificial style, breathes a genuine and righteous indignation.
173. 3 So, perhaps, the Vandals, whose raiding habits he describes in the Panegyric of Majorian (11. 386 ff.).
174. 1 VII. xiv. In Carm. XII. vi he asks how he is to write verses in six feet, with seven-foot giants all about him. The Burgundians also greased their hair with rancid butter, had enormous appetites, and spoke in stentorian tones. The poem is translated by Fertig (Part ii, p. 17).
175. 2 We may recall Anthemius' complaint (cf. p. xxxiii above).
176. 1 Hodgkin has accentuated this point (ii, p. 372).
177. 2 See below, note 35. I, p. 233. Chateaubriand, in Le Martyrs, adapts Sidonius' description of the Franks.
178. 3 Cf. Carm. vii. 236. Cf. note 155. 2, p. 247.
179. 4 VIII. vi. 15, and cf. Carm. vii. 369.
180. 5 Carm. vii. 236: also Pan. Mai, 210 ff.
181. 1 VIII. ix, 11. 28 ff. of the poem. The term 'Sigambrian' is used generically for the tribes of the lower Rhine (W. Schul tze, Deutsche Gesch. ii. 38), and the present captives may have been taken during some expedition of Euric's troops against the Franks.
182. 2 Carm. ii. 243.
183. 3 In the letter to Namatius, VIII. vi.
184. 1 Perhaps there were sleeping-rooms for the daily siesta as well as for the nightly rest, as was the case at the villa of Caninius Rufus on the shores of Como, described in one of Pliny's letters (Ep. I. iii). The account of the open apartment at Avitacum looking out on the lake, where the guest might sit in contemplation at any hour, suggests a place adapted for the siesta.
185. 1 As excavations in more than one country sufficiently prove, the hypocaust was commonly used for other rooms beside the bath. Cf. Carm. xxii. 188, where the hiberna domus of Leontius is described; here the wood-fed furnace spargit lentatum per culmina tota vaporem----in fact, central heating.
186. 2 He mentions also the baths in the Octaviana of Consentius at Narbonne, and those in the Burgus of Leo near Bordeaux (Carm. xxii.).
Almost more interesting than Sidonius' description of these elaborate structures, is the account which he gives of the extemporized vapour-baths used by him at Vorocingus and Prusianum, where the baths of his hosts were for some reason unavailable. He there caused a pit to be dug and enclosed by an arched roof of wattling, upon which coverings of Cilician goat's-hair were laid. Red-hot stones were placed in the pit and upon these warm water was thrown, with the result that the improvised chamber was filled with vapour. In this the bather sat for some time, receiving when he came out a douche of cold water. The whole procedure recalls that employed in Russia, the East, and in primitive America (cf. note, 52. 2, p. 225). For the general arrangement of Roman baths, see Daremberg and Saglio, Dict. des ant. grecques et rom. i. 651; Marquardt, Privatleben, pp. 279 ff. It is interesting to contrast Sidonius' descriptions of Roman country-houses with what he has to say of the palace of Theodoric II at Toulouse (I. ii). There he describes a large hall of audience, a treasure-chamber, and a stable, but nothing is said of any baths.
187. 1 But cf. Carm. xxiv. 56 ff., where the garden of Apollinaris is mentioned.
188. 1 Leaving off the toga was one of the first delights of country life. Pliny (Ep. V. vi. 45) says of one of his haunts nulla necessitas togae (cf. Juvenal, Sat. iii. 171).
189. 2 The Burgus of Leontius was fortified. Dill (p. 310) notes the fact that in isolated cases such fortification seems to have begun at the time of the Visigothic settlement in Gaul. The remains of the castle built by Dardanus, Prefect from 409 to 413, were identified by an inscription found on the spot (C. I. L. xii. 1524). Cf. Fauriel, Hist, de la Gaule méridionale, i. 560. The foundation of these strongholds in difficult country heralded the approach of a feudal system.
190. 3 The absence of information about the towns themselves is also disappointing. Several allusions show that they were protected by walls: thus Vienne (VII. i. 2) and Clermont (III. ii. 1). The mention of the statues in the forum at Arles is interesting (I. xi. 7), and the allusion to the deer which took refuge in the forum at Vienne (VII. i. 3) seems to show that the forum of that place still stood in the late fifth century.
191. 1 For Roman dining arrangements, see Marquardt, Privatleben, pp. 302 ff.
192. 2 Or at any rate with subjects familiar on Sassanian textiles of the sixth to eighth centuries. Similar motives, however, were favoured in other places in the Near East, among others probably in Alexandria (O. von Falke, Kunstgeschichte der Seidentextilien; Berlin, 1913).
193. 1 Silver plate, as we should expect from a wealthy Roman writer, is often mentioned. Theodoric's was unostentatious (I. ii); but there were families who thought more of their old plate than of being useful in the world (VIII. vii. 1). A silver cup with fluted sides, like a shell, is considered an appropriate gift for Ragnahild, queen of Euric (IV. viii. 4,
5). Sidonius is silent as to his own plate; to Gregory of Tours we owe the story that in the time of greatest distress at Clermont the bishop disposed of his silver to relieve the poor (see p. cxlviii).
194. 2 Iuvat et vago rotatu dare fracta membra ludo, simulare vel trementes pede veste voce Bacchas: lines 64-7 of the poem. It is here implied that even the costume of the Bacchante was assumed.
195. 1 The reference probably is to carvers who officiated with a studied style and flourish, as if they worked to music (see note, 15. 1, p. 230).
196. 2 II. ix. 6, xiii. 4. For the clepsydra, see note, 51. 2, p. 224.
197. 3 His visits to Rome inspire him with no desire to dwell upon the artistic treasures of the capital. He dismisses the frescoes in his baths with the remark that there was nothing in them to offend modesty. K. Purgold has shown that most of the descriptions in his poems which seem to suggest observations of works of art are really borrowed from Claudian and other Roman poets (Claudianus und Sidonius, 1878). Some of these are elaborate, but in no case does the poet speak with enthusiasm or evident personal comprehension. In Carm. xxii he enumerates frescoes and pictures in the house of Pontius Leontius rather in the style of an abstract inventory, and without any critical appreciation: the chief subjects were: Mithridates sacrificing his horses to Neptune; an episode from the siege of Cyzicus; the infant Hercules strangling the serpents; and (an interesting point) episodes from Jewish history. In the epithalamium of Polemius and Araneola (Carm. xv. 159ff.) a number of classical episodes are woven by Araneola on a toga palmata for her father, themes perhaps derived from familiar pictures.
Sidonius refers more than once to encaustic painting (VII. xiv. 5; and Panegyric of Majorian, 1. 590). The description of the mosaics in the church of Patiens is difficult (see notes, 54. I, 55. 1, pp. 225-6). But whatever the exact translation of the author's words may be, it seems certain that no figure-subjects were depicted, but only ornamental or conventional designs, in which the colours of blue and green preponderated. As Hodgkin has observed, their parallels may perhaps be sought in some of the purely decorative designs in the mosaics of churches at Ravenna.
198. 1 Sidonius says that the sunlight was reflected from the gilded roof, which, at a period when gold backgrounds were not yet employed in mosaic, certainly implies the ceiling of painted and gilded wood usual in early basilicas. It may be noted, however, that he speaks of mosaics covering the camera, a word which implies vaulting, but is probably here applied to the concha of the apse (cf. note, 54. 1, p. 226, below). Sir T. G. Jackson, Byzantine and Romanesque Architecture (Cambridge, 1913), ii. 31, also regards the church as ceiled. He draws attention once more, as Viollet-le-Duc in an earlier generation, to the poverty of our information on the churches built in Gaul before the tenth century. Neither Sidonius nor any other writer gives us a tithe of the facts which they might so easily have presented.
199. 1 Hist. Franc. II. xiv. In IV. xx Gregory mentions its destruction by fire. He himself restored it; and as he must have been familiar with its details, should be regarded as a competent witness.
200. 2 This was a position where inscriptions are known to have been placed (H. Holtzinger, Die altchristliche Architektur, &c., p. 184).
201. 3 The monastery must have been of the eremitic type, like those of St. Martin at Marmoutier and Tours, and based on oriental prototypes (cp. p. lxxix above). The church was completed by Abraham (Petits Bollandistes, vii. 59, 60).
202. 1 For these, cf. note, 6. i, p. 216.
203. 2 He liked the music of birds, to which he refers more than once. He also mentions without resentment the piping of the local 'Tityri', heard on the hills near Avitacum.
204. 3 IV. xi, lines 13-15 Psalmorum hic modulator et phonascus Ante altaria fratre gratulante Instructas docuit sonare classes. St. Amabilis of Auvergne was in early life cantor in the church of St. Mary at Clermont (Chaix, ii. 66).
205. 1 Summus nitor in vestibus, cultus in cingulis, splendor in phaleris. The lively sexagenarian Germanicus is said to have accentuated his youthful appearance by wearing 'tight clothes' (IV. xiii. 1). This may refer only to the tunic; but it is conceivable that the influence of Teutonic or Celtic fashions may have made itself felt, and that some garment for the leg may be indicated; or did he wear a buttoned garment? Cf. Fertig, i. 24.
206. 2 The pallium was first distinctive of philosophers, who continued to wear it after it came into general use, differentiating themselves from the unlearned by carrying a staff and wearing the hair and beard long. From IV. xi. I we infer that this costume was still affected by philosophers in Gaul in the middle of the fifth century.
207. 3 Cf. VIII. vi. 6; and Carm. xv. 145 ff., where Araneola embroidered a toga palmata for her father; for this garment, cf. Marquardt, Privatleben, p. 549. It has been noticed
above that, even in earlier times, the cumbrous toga was discarded as soon as possible.
208. 1 II. ii. 2 Endromidatus exterius, intrinsecus fasceatus.
209. 1 IV. xx. 1. The Teutonic princes and nobles became very fond of wearing silk in later times; but the mention of it here is interesting from the comparatively early date
(perhaps A. D. 470) at which the letter was written. Cf. what has been said above of the silk textiles of oriental style used by contemporary Gallo-Romans. The excavation of Frankish graves has abundantly illustrated the fondness of the Franks for gold ornaments, a taste which was shared by all the Teutonic peoples, notably the Goths. The whole passage is so important for the student of early Teutonic archaeology that it is worth while to give the original words: pedes primi perone saetoso tales adusque vinciebantur; genua crura suraeque sine tegmine; praeter hoc vestis alia stricta versicolor, vix appropinquans poplitibus exertis; manicae sola brachiorum principia celantes; viridantia saga limbis marginata puniceis; penduli ex humero gladii balleis supercurrentibus strinxerant clausa bullatis latera rhenonibus. . . . For Visigothic and Burgundian weapons and personal ornaments, see Barrière Flavy, Les arts industriels des peuples barbares de la Gaule, vol. 1; Feuvrier et Févret, Les cimetières bourgondes de Chaussin et de Wriande, 1902.
210. 1 Cf. above, p. xxxiii, also I. ii. The Greeks had a similar notion that the use of furs was a barbaric habit.
211. 2 The Gothic princes do not seem to have allowed their hair to grow so long as to fall on their shoulders as the Merovingians did (Lindenschmit, Handbuch der deutschen Altertumskunde, i. 330). The Gallo-Roman Germanicus had his hair cut 'wheel-fashion', whatever that may mean (IV. xiii. I crinis in rotae specimen accisus): perhaps the effect was similar to that of the male coiffure on late Roman diptychs and on tombs of the fifteenth century, as exemplified by the monuments of English knights whose hair is cut across the forehead, as if a basin had been used by the barber.
212. 1 The hood is said by Cassian to have been adopted in imitation of children's dress, to suggest innocence and simplicity (Inst. Coen. I, ch. iii).
213. 2 The none too serious sportmanship of Namatius may perhaps be compared to that of the younger Pliny, who sat by the net armed, not with a boar-spear, but with his tablets, and recommended Tacitus to do the same, providing himself in addition with a luncheon-basket and a bottle of wine (Ep. I. vi).
214. 3 The peasants set night-lines in the lake at Avitacum, where fish were plentiful and of good quality (II. ii. 12); in other places Sidonius alludes to streams containing good fish. Beyond the fact that Euric had ships on the Atlantic to protect his shores from the attack of the swift myoparones of the Saxons (VIII. vi. 13), we learn nothing of naval matters: Sidonius enters into no particulars as to the style of the ships or the tactics pursued. His reference in the Poems to the Vandal raiders has been already noticed (p. xci above).
215. 1 On the Ticino and Po in Italy there was a service of 'packet' boats (cursoriae) (I. v. 3). Such services were kept up in Italy under Theodoric the Great. Cf. Cassiodorus, Varias, II. xxi, IV. xv, where the crews (dromonarii) are in question.
216. 2 In this there was a board (tabula) used both with dice and men, as appears to have been the case with Theo-doric's game (see note, 5.1, p. 216). A tabula, with 'men' of two colours, is again mentioned as one of the attractions on the river-boat in which the luxurious Trygetius is to travel (VIII. xii. 5).
217. 3 Pyrgi (V. xvi. 6); fritiili (II. ix. 4). But in the second of these passages tesserae are mentioned as well as the dice-boxes; and in the first there is also a tabula, so that perhaps in neither case have we to do with mere hazard. Cf. I; V. xvii.
218. 1 There were regular grounds, sphaeristeria, at all considerable villas. Pliny had them at both his principal country-houses (Ep. II. xvii; V. vi).
219. 2 It may have been the harpastum ( a(rpasto&n). See note 73- 2, p. 239.
220. 3 Majorian held them at Arles (I. xi. 10). Cf. Carm. xxiii. 268.
221. 4 Papyrus was the common material for letters; it was not adapted for use on both sides, as parchment was (cf. Marquardt, Privatleben, pp. 807 ff.).
222. 1 Possibly shorthand was used on such occasions. Shorthand was certainly employed by copyists of manuscripts; and in the episode of Sidonius' chase after the mysterious book by Lupus, which Riochatus had concealed from him, shorthand writers were used to make excerpts on the spot (IX. ix. 8 Tribuit et quoddam dictare celeranti scribarum sequacitas saltuosa compendium, qui comprehendebant signis quod litteris non tenebant): Exceptores were of great service in the Church, and Ennodius in his life of Epiphanius relates that the Bishop of Pavia in his youth was an expert in tachygraphy. For the class of civil servants named exceptores see Hodgkin, The Letters of Cassiodorus, p. 110.
223. 2 Mme de Sévigné records the same thing as occurring at Grignan in Provence during her visit to her daughter, the Comtesse de Grignan.
224. 1 It would seem from III. xii. 5 that the tomb of Apollinaris was to be a flat slab, and therefore unlike the large structural tombs erected by the earlier Romans, and perhaps exemplified in Lyons by the Conditorium of Syagrius, mentioned in V. xvii. 4. This Conditorium was perhaps one of the monuments lining the high road, which ran close to the church; but the grave of Sidonius' ancestor would appear to have been in a crowded cemetery. It is a rather curious fact that Sidonius and his father should have allowed the remains of the elder Apollinaris to lie unmarked until the traces of the mound above it were almost obliterated.
225. 1 From the phrase used in III. ii, angustiae mansionum, we may infer that the accommodation was not luxurious. In Italy, as we should expect from the continuance of the river service, the Cursus publicus was maintained under the Ostrogoths as the references in the Variae of Cassiodorus show (e. g. I. xxix; IV. xlvii).
226. 2 e. g. VIII. xi, lines 41 ff. of the poem: Ne, si destituor domo negata, Maerens ad madidas eam tabernas, Et claudens gemmas subinde nares Profiter fumificas gemam culinas, &c., &c.
227. 1 On education in the fifth century, see Dill, pp. 338 ff. The principal academic centres in Gaul were now Bordeaux, Toulouse, Narbonne, Arles, Lyons, Clermont
(Arverni), and Vienne. The first had been the most important, prior to the Visigothic occupation.
228. 1 As already observed, the most original work in philosophy was done by ecclesiastics like Claudianus Mamertus and Faustus. Sidonius had perhaps more than a smattering of philosophy. Several passages indicate his general information, and one of his letters (VII. xiv) contains long passages in the sententious style of Seneca. In certain Gallic circles there was an interest in Platonism (Collegium Conplatonicorum, IV. xi. 1), and there were real enthusiasts for abstract thought, but the spirit which governed much philosophizing of the day was evidently that of Martianus Capella.
229. 2 Cf. Cassiodorus, Varias, IV. xxii, xxiii, where Theodoric orders the trial of two Romans of rank, Basilius and Praetextatus, for practising magical arts.
230. 1 IX. xiii. If Sidonius translated Philostratus, and did not merely transcribe him, he must himself have been an adequate Greek scholar.
231. 2 Carm. xxiii. 100 ff.
232. 3 Cf. IX. xxi, and Dill, p. 347.
233. 4 V. xiii.
234. 5 Horace, like Cicero, was 'caned into' Sidonius and his schoolmates at Lyons (IV. i; V. iv).
235. 1 R. Bitschofsky, De C. Sollii Apollinaris Sidonii studiis Statianis.
236. 2 Cicero seems to have been regarded as hopelessly beyond imitation. This appears to be the real sense of the remark in I. i, which irritated Petrarch (see note, I. i, p.
215).
237. 3 I. 1; IV. xxii. In IX. i. 1 Sidonius states that Firminus has called him a second Pliny.
238. 4 A list of the quotations from Latin authors in Sidonius, or obvious loans from them, is given by Mommsen, Monumenta Germaniae Historica (Auctores Antiquissimi], viii, pp. 352 ff.
239. 1 Cf. above, p. lxxvi. The address of Sidonius at Bourges (VII. ix. 5) shows what skilful rhetoric could still accomplish.
240. 2 The oration of the young Burgundio on Julius Caesar is a case in point (IX. xiv). Sidonius promises to attend with a claque of applauding supporters (IX. xiv). This at least was a sensible subject: those of 'school declamations' were often far-fetched or absurd (cf. Dill, p. 370). On the Declamatio, cf. Nettleship, Lectures and Essays, 2nd series, 112, 113.
241. 1 Ausonius taught Gratian rhetoric, and the emperor made splendid provision not only for him, but for all his relations. Gaul had a special reputation for rhetoric; the blending of the Latin and Celtic strains appears to have been favourable to the art.
242. 2 In the passage relating to education in the Panegyric on Anthemius (Carm. i. 156 ff.) there is no mention of the Bible or of Christian works.
243. 1 VI. xii.
244. 2 VI. i. 6; VII. i. 3; VIII. xiv. 3; IX. viii. 2, A single letter has allusions to Lazarus, Pharaoh, Babylon, and Assur. All this is in complete contrast with the old indulgence in mythological allusion; it is the language of another world.
245. 3 VIII. xiii. 4.
246. 4 IX. ix. 12.
247. 5 VII. ix.
248. 6 Ibid. St. Luke is also quoted in VI. i. 2.
249. 7 Claudianus Mamertus, Preface to the De Statu Animae; Gennadius, De Script. Eccl. c. 92.
250. 1 Yet he credits himself with facility rather than talent: Scribendi magis est facilitas quam facultas (III. vii).
251. 2 Casaubon said: Sidonius . . . in re Latinitatis improbus intestabilisque (cf. Germain, p. 114).
252. 3 Appreciations of Sidonius' style will be found in all writers who deal with his works. The substance of their criticisms is contained in the severe judgement of the Benedictines: Sa diction est dure, ses phrases obscures; en un mot, sa prose est insupportable (Hist. litt, de la France, ii, p. 570).
253. 1 He was asked by Prosper of Orleans to write on events in the war with Attila (VIII. xv), and by Leo on the later history of Gaul (IV. xxii); in each case he refused, either from disinclination, a sense of incapacity, or from worldly wisdom. In his reply to Leo he gives his reasons why a cleric should not turn historian. In this case Sidonius may have been doubly impressed by the need for caution, as Leo may have been the mouthpiece of Euric.
254. 2 The Poems, especially the Panegyrics, are as rich in historical fact and allusion as the Letters.
255. 1 Cf. Baret, pp. 68 ff. Sidonius is the sole authority for the tradition that Horace was saved after Philippi by the intervention of Maecenas (Pref. to the Panegyric of Majorian), and that Crispus was poisoned by Constantine (V. viii). He alone relates the attacks of Euric on Auvergne, the war waged by Leo I against the Huns (Panegyric of Anthemius, 1. 236), the victory of Aëtius and Majorian over Cloio (Panegyric of Majorian, 1. 212), and the campaign of Euric against Auvergne (Letters, passini). All that we know of the life of Bishop Patiens is derived from him; so is our knowledge of the priests Constantius and Claudianus Mamertus; Prosper of Orleans is only mentioned in his pages, and he has preserved the names of numerous Gallo-Roman philosophers and poets otherwise unrecorded or hardly known. The names of Ragnahild and Sigismer are given only by him. He has clone similar service in his literary allusions. We can infer from IV. xii. 1 that the Epitrepontes of Menander, of which we have now recovered a great part, was preserved intact in his time. Through him we learn of works now wholly lost, e. g. an account of Julius Caesar by Livy, a history of Caesar by Juventius Martialis, and the Ephemerides of Caesar's lieutenant, Balbus (all IX. xi). He also mentions works of Palaemon and Junius Gallio, brother of Seneca, which are no longer extant (V. x). An epigram attributed by him to Symmachus does not occur in the works of that author as we now possess them (VII. x. 1).
256. 1 VII. ii. 1; IV. x. Cf. VIII. xvi Nos opuscula sermone condidimus arido exili, certe maxima ex parte vulgato.
257. 2 IX. iii.
258. 3 Cf. VIII. ii; and III. iii, where he uses the phrase: Sermonis Celtici squama. The Latin language stood in a more impregnable position than the pessimists supposed. Not only was it the most efficient instrument of expression in law, theology, and the sciences, but it was indispensable as the language of diplomacy between the varions Teutonic courts. Probably most of the principal barbarians could speak it, at any rate among the Visigoths. Cf. Germain, p. 133.
259. 1 I. xi. 5 and 12.
260. 1 The rusty sword or rusty armour is used more than once in different comparisons (cf. VI. vi. i).
261. 2 Fortunae nauseantis vomitu exsputus (I. vii. 12).
262. 1 ii, p. 97. Cf. the description of the parasite (III. xiii).
263. 2 It need hardly be said that Sidonius is at his worst when he believed himself at his best. His calculated effects are almost all tedious in form and redolent, not (to use a phrase of his own) of the Muses, but of the rhetor's lamp. Among such show-pieces are (in addition to the description of the parasite): the reply to the complaint of Claudianus Mamertus (IV. iii), the letter on Claudianus Mamertus' death (IV. xi), that on the informers at Chilperic's court (V. vii), that with the disquisition on necessary affinity between the cultured (VII. xiv). Even the letters on Theodoric (I. ii) and Petronius Maximus (II. xiii) are not free from these defects.
264. 3 Johnson, Lives of the Poets: Life of Cowley.
265. 4 For instance, the translator will be confronted by sentences like the following: Nam cum viderem quae tibi pulchra sunt non te videre, ipsam eo tempore desiderii tui impatientiam desideravi (IV. xx. 3).
266. 1 Sidonii temeritatem admirari vix sufficio, nisi forte temerarius ipse sim, qui temerarium ilium dicam, dum sales eius, seu tarditatis meae, seu illius styli obice, seu fortassis (nam unumquodque possibile est) scripturae vitio, non satis intelligo (Preface to Epistulae ad fam.).
267. 2 See Preface, p. iv.
268. 3 The word is Baret's, p. 106.
269. 4 Giraldus of Ferrara (quoted by Baret), who says that both in prose and verse Sidonius strikes him as having something of the Gaul and the barbarian: in utroque dicendi genere, Gallianum nescio quid et barbarum redolere videtur. (De poet. hist. Dialog, v; in Opera, ii, p. 114.) Sidonius would himself have borne any reproach rather than this. For the lifelong guardian of pure Latin in Gaul, the contemner of the Celtica squama, to be told that his own style smacked of barbarism, would have been a blow too grievous for endurance. His zealous interest in Latinity and his uneasiness at the indifference of certain fellow nobles to correct diction, deserved a better reward (II. x; III. iii. 2; IV. xvii; VIII. ii). Discussing the influence of Celtic dialect, Fertig asks what kind of Latin the middle classes spoke, if even nobles were so careless? (Part iii, p. 24). It is perhaps significant that Sidonius himself insists on his preference for current words, and on his avoidance of archaisms or far-fetched terminology (VIII. xvi).
270. 1 p. 99; pp. 115 ff.
271. 2 But after Diocletian, such epithets as 'your sublimity', 'your magnificence', became the common mode of addressing great officials of State.
272. 3 The word papa is applied to bishops throughout.
273. 1 Sidonius tends to avoid the deeper subjects which occupy the thoughts of Jerome and Augustine. But in the ordinary field of life his range is very wide.
274. 2 Cf. Dill, Book ii, ch. 2. The successors of Sidonius as representatives of the art of letter-writing in Gaul, Ruricius of Limoges and Avitus of Vienne, both share his defects of over-elaboration and tumidity. Cassiodorus, the Italian, writing in the first half of the sixth century is no improvement; he has been described as 'concealing commonplaces within fold after fold of verbosity '.
275. 1 Though, as Sir A. Geikie has once more demonstrated (The Love of Nature among the Romans, 1913), several of the great writers had a true passion for natural beauty, yet, taking Latin literature as a whole, we find the spectacular aspect of nature rather too prominent; landscape and 'scenery' are the same thing.
276. 1 Though Pliny nicknamed his villas on Lake Como 'Tragedy' and 'Comedy', because one was on a high rock, the other on a low. Yet here again the Stage intrudes on Nature.
277. 1 Germain, in defence of Sidonius' humour, cites the letter to Graecus on Amantius (VI. viii), and the letter to Trygetius (VIII. xii). The former is probably the best which our author achieved in this field. In the second, as in that to Namatius, there is a certain straining after effect which tires the reader and defeats the humorist's end. We may add the remarks about doctors (II. xii) and incompetent sportsmen (VIII. vi). Cf. also IV. xviii; IX. vii.
278. 2 In many ways Sidonius recalls the Seigneur de Balzac (Jean-Louis de Guez, b. 1594, d. 1654), just as much as Voiture. The following passage from Balzac's letter to Corneille acknowledging a copy of 'Cinna' will illustrate the affinity: Votre Cinna guérit les malades; il fait qtie les paralytiques battent des mains; il rend la parole à un muet . . . S'il était vrai qu'en quelqu'une de ses parties vous eussiez senti quelque faiblesse, ce serait un secret entre vos Muses et vous, car je vous assure que Personne ne l'a reconnue.
279. 1 The poems were published at the request of Magnus Felix. The fact that the panegyric of Anthemius is placed first, out of its historical sequence, is in favour of the date mentioned above.
280. 2 Fertig, Part ii, p. 15.
281. 1 Cf. the often quoted lines: Has inter clades et funera mundi Mors vixisse fuit.
282. 2 Carm. XI. xv.
283. 1 Baret, p. 102; Germain, pp. 112, 113.
284. 2 Ep. xxxviii.
285. 3 Hist. Franc. II. xxii.
286. 4 Ennodius, in his In Natali S. Epiphanii, adapts four lines from the Panegyric on Anthemius, v. 69 ff.
287. 5 The portrait of Attila (Get. c. 24, 25) is indebted to the Panegyric of Avitus.
288. 6 In the excerpts from mediaeval writers (Elogia Veterum) at the beginning of his edition.
289. 7 See Baret, p. 105.
290. 1 Sidonius had critics, and apparently sharp ones. Cf. I. i; III. xiv; IV. xxii; VIII. i; IX. iv. But his attitude to criticism is sane: namque aut minimum ex hisce metuendum est, aut per omnia omnino conticescendum,
291. 2 Unless it is excelled by the poem to Consentius (Carm. xxiii), of which Dill says that he is ashamed to transcribe the absurdities (p. 362). Cf. also IV. iii. 22; VIII. i, x, xi, xiii; IX. iii, vii.
292. 1 We may remember, too, that even Mme de Sévigné once compared her daughter's style to that of Tacitus.
293. 2 That such indiscriminate eulogy was really a convention, and not natural to Sidonius, is shown by his readiness at all times to speak a frank word in season (IV. iv, xiv; V. xix; VII. vii). His practice did not contradict his theory that outspokenness is generally best (VII. xviii).
294. 3 Incandui (VII. xiv. i).
295. 1 Cf. V. iii, vi, ix, xii.
296. 1 Condicionis humanae per omnia memor (IV. xi. 4).
297. 2 Hist. franc. II. xxii.
298. 3 In his judgements of Origen and Apollonius of Tyana (II. ix. 5; VIII. iii. 4) we mark a distinct freedom of judgement.
299. 4 In his earlier life he could enjoy good cheer, and evidently appreciated the refinements of luxury.
300. 1 Cf. his remarks on friendship (V. iii; IX. xiv), on happiness (VI. xii), and prudence (IV. vi).
301. 1 See the Summary by Dr. P. Mohr, Praefatio to the Teubner edition, pp. iii-vi; and Lutjohann and Löwe in Mon. Germ. Hist. VIII (Auct. Antiq.), pp. vi-xiv.
302. 1 Chaix, ii, p. 272.
303. 2 Petronius had the privilege of revising this book, but, like those which had preceded, it appeared under the auspices of Constantius.
304. 3 Chaix, ii, p. 306.
305. 4 The number was imposed upon him as a professed admirer and imitator of Pliny. Cf. note, 176. i, p. 250.
306. 1 Pliny seems to have acted on the same principle: his letters in like manner are not chronological.
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