Delphi Complete Works of Sidonius Apollinaris, page 127
Poem 22 (see the prefatory letter, § 1) was written not long after the occupation of Narbonne by Theodoric in A.D. 462. Probably the visit to Narbonne there mentioned is the same as the one mentioned in no. 23, which must in any case have been written not earlier than the year 462 and not later than 466 (the date of Theodoric’s death). If these two poems were specially written for inclusion in the published edition (see p lv, n. 1), we may plausibly assign the publication of poems 9-24 approximately to A.D. 463. The panegyrics must, of course, have been published after the delivery of the panegyric to Anthemius in the year 468. It is customary to assign them to 469 The letters also contain a number of poems. Several of them, in accordance with the stem resolution which Sidonius took on obtaining his bishopric, are of a religious cast, but these, with the exception of the poem in IX. 16. 3, are all very short. It may be of some interest, as the statements made on the subject are generally rather vague, to examine the letters with the object of discovering how seriously Sidonius took his vow to keep the old pagan Muse in check. Book II contains an inscription for the church built by Bishop Patiens at Lyons (II. 10. 4) and also an epitaph (II. 8. 3), which has no Christian content; but as the letters in this book seem all to have been written before his episcopate, they are not relevant to our enquiry. Apart from these, there are five poems in the first seven books. Three of these, all with a Christian tone (IV. 11. 6, a lament for Claudianus Mamertus, IV. 18. 5, an inscription for the rebuilt church of St. Martin at Tours, and VII. 17. 2, an epitaph on the monk Abraham), may be assigned to the period of his bishopric, but the other two (III. 12. 5, a Christian epitaph on his grandfather, and IV. 8. 5, a trivial inscription for a drinking-cup) cannot be assigned to the same time with any probability. Thus the complete collection of his letters as originally planned contains no evidence of “pagan” poetry written by Sidonius after becoming bishop. The first of the two supplementary books contains the poem already mentioned describing Euric’s court (VIII. 9.5); it has no trace of Christian influence. In the same book (VIII. 11. 3) Sidonius quotes a poem written in his old style which certainly belongs to his pre-episcopal days. So far he has only once broken his vow, and that one breach is so venial that it can scarcely be counted against him. Book IX is interesting. In the 12th letter, written “three Olympiads,” i.e.. 12 years, after his entry into holy orders (§ 2), he tells Oresius of the vow he had made on entering the ranks of the clergy to give up his old habit of versifying. This letter is placed, surely of set purpose, immediately before one written several years later, which contains a breach of his rule. Then, after a kindly letter to a young man with literary ambitions, there comes another in which his rule is broken. Next there comes, in the last letter of all, a sort of palinode in verse, in which, after sketching his secular career and mentioning the honorary statue which his poetry had brought him, he speaks in penitent tones of his early verses and registers a vow no more to indulge in verse-writing, unless it be to celebrate the holy martyrs. The way in which these last few letters expose his lapse from grace is as good as a sermon. Oresius had asked him for a poem (Epist. 12). After explaining that he had renounced such frivolities Sidonius promises to see if he can find any old compositions to satisfy his friend. Nothing of the kind is given in the letter. In the next letter (IX. 13) we find that Tonantius has asked him for a poem in Asclepiads which he might recite at a dinner-party. Sidonius with some show of diffidence sends him 28 Asclepiad verses in which he protests that he cannot now fitly satisfy such a request. This is a small lapse, but the mischief has been done; the memory of his happy days in the Muses’ company comes upon him and he goes on to quote a poem of 120 lines which he had composed at a dinner-party in the reign of Majorian. In letter 15 he relapses more completely into the bad old ways. Gelasius has heard of the verses written to Tonantius and wants some for himself. Sidonius composes a poem specially for him, 55 lines praising contemporary writers, and at the end he hints that he might be induced to write some more poetry for his friend. Then comes the great renunciation in the last letter of the book. Thus we find that the poem to Euric, which is scarcely to be counted, the very short poem in Epist. IX. 13, and the longer one in no. 15 are the only breaches of his self-denying rule, as far as one can gather from his correspondence. It is a very creditable record.
It is not known in what year Sidonius began to prepare his letters for publication; A.D. 469 is as likely a date as any. The idea was suggested by his friend Constantius of Lyons, to whom the work was dedicated in the introductory letter. It is certain that the collection was published in instalments, and not improbable that each book was published separately. The last letter of Book VII is an epilogue addressed to Constantius. There the work was meant to end. But the letters had aroused much interest; there was a demand for a supplement, and more and more friends wished to be represented in the collection by letters addressed to them. At the instance of Petronius he added an eighth book. In the last letter of this book, which is, like the epilogue of Book VII, addressed to Constantius, he says that he has now no letters left which are worth publication, but he gives a broad hint that with a little more time he might work up a few, and that a ninth book is not an impossibility. Firminus urged him to produce another book, pleading that Pliny had written nine books. Sidonius complied, and added a book of sixteen letters which are by no means the least interesting in the collection. With that volume the published correspondence closes.
Sidonius revised his old letters for publication and added several specially written for inclusion in the collection. His chief model is Pliny, though Symmachus also had a great influence on him, especially in the later books. The mere fact that nearly every letter has only a single theme is, as in the case of Pliny, a sure sign that they were considerably modified; real letters to friends are not generally so limited. Much that we should have liked to know about the age and its personalities must have been pruned away. Many of the letters are simply miniature panegyrics; derogatory remarks are much rarer than one would expect them to be in the genuine familiar correspondence of an average human being. The many letters to bishops assume a very humble, sometimes abject, tone. Nearly every letter is assiduously worked up according to the principles of contemporary rhetorical teaching. It is impossible here to give any adequate idea of the ostentatious combination of stylistic elaboration with sesquipedalian verbiage, Frontonian archaisms, weird neologisms, and verbal jingles which makes the correspondence such a nerve-wracking conglomeration. But it would be a mistake to regard the style and diction of Sidonius as something new and without precedent. He was in the main only carrying out with misguided zeal and a conspicuous lack of taste the principles which had been taught in the schools of rhetoric for centuries. These principles were often sound enough, and might be helpful to people who really had something to say, but even as the young men in Quintilian’s time had seized on Senecas dulcia vitia for imitation and ignored the qualities which made him a great writer, so also after his time the young students and, too often, their professors as well, were inclined to regard composition as a field for the exploitation of specious “tricks of the trade,” which became ends in themselves and were developed in the most fantastic manner. This tendency increased as time went on. Sidonius was not an original genius: he was a conscious artist working with traditional materials and seeking only to exploit to the uttermost limit all the “tips” which he had derived from the mechanical teaching of the schools and from his reading of earlier writers. The result is a reductio ad absurdum of all the resources of rhetoric and a travesty of the Latin language. But although he had detractors, most of his educated contemporaries seem to have admired him. So many recherché effects had never before been found concentrated in such small space. If he took liberties with the meaning of words, that only increased the dazzling glamour of it all. If he was obscure — well, anyhow it was great art, great art, my masters! It is pathetic to find Ruricius humbly trying to imitate him though compelled to admit that he did not understand him. One may be sure that in preparing the letters for publication Sidonius elaborated and multiplied their mystifying artifices; but most of them must have been rather terrible even in their original form. There are some cases where he writes more simply, but his manner never completely leaves him.
Sidonius, imitating Pliny, arranges his letters with-out regard to chronological order, though all the letters contained in Books I and II seem to have been originally written before his election to the bishopric. There are some signs of intentional grouping. The whole of Book VI and the first eleven letters of Book VII are addressed to bishops; the same is true of letters 13-15 in Book VIII and 2-4 in Book IX. In the latter part of Book IX, as we have seen, the letters seem to be arranged according to a set plan. The collection includes a letter from Claudianus Mamertus (IV. 2), which is followed by the reply of Sidonius. There is one letter to Papianilla; all the other recipients are men. Not many people are honoured by more than one letter, as the number of persons anxious to have their names perpetuated by inclusion in the correspondence was very large and Sidonius was anxious to oblige them.
Whatever one may think about their style and diction, the letters of Sidonius are an invaluable source of information on many aspects of the life of his time. It is true that one is often tempted to sigh for information which he withholds and to upbraid him for telling us so little when he might have told so much. The appetising lists sometimes drawn up of subjects on which he might well have thrown light make one’s mouth water. But he did not set out to write a history, and he was unfitted for such a task. His views were limited. It is doubtful if he really thought or cared much about the social evils and distresses of his day until he was brought into contact with them as a bishop; and even then perhaps he only partially realised them. For a good part of his life his horizon was bounded by the pride and prejudices of his class; indeed his aristocratic pride sometimes breaks out rather ludicrously even in his later years. He was not a deep thinker, but he was a keen observer of external details. Many of his descriptions, in spite of their pretentious language, are both vivid and picturesque. From his pages we gather much knowledge of the lives led by the Gallo-Roman nobility as the Empire in the West tottered to its fall. Its pleasures, its good-fellowship, its ambitions, and sometimes its lack of ambition, its often narrow and pedantic but not unwholesome interests, its apparent indifference to many of the most terrible things going on around it, all pass before our eyes. We find also some valuable pictures of the “barbarians” who were taking over the Roman heritage. Here and there we get pleasing sidelights on the lives of great clerics, and we are helped to realise the power, mostly beneficent, wielded by the great Gallic bishops and priests in those troubled times. For these and many other glimpses we may well be grateful. As for Sidonius himself, when one has recovered from the exhaustion caused by wrestling with his showy pedantry one cannot repress a liking for him. Amid all his prejudices, his time-serving pliability at certain junctures, his excessive pride in his lineage and his ill-disguised literary vanity, one can discern a sympathetic nature and a simple goodness of heart. He accepted great responsibilities at a testing time and rose nobly to the occasion. He walked humbly before God, and all his pride fell from him as he contemplated his unfitness for his high lxv calling. Though strictly orthodox he is untouched by the bitterness which so often showed itself in the religious controversies of the day. He abhors the religion of the Jews, but he can admire a Jew as a man, and he dares to say so. No one without goodness and charm could have had such a circle of devoted friends as he had. He could write in all sincerity to Bishop Faustus: “Thanks be to God, not even my enemies can charge me with half-hearted friendship” (Epist. IX. 9. 5).
Besides his poems and letters Sidonius wrote a number of short speeches or addresses (called by him contestatiunculae), a copy of which he sent to Bishop Megethius (Epist. VIII. 3). It is not certain that he published them. Gregory of Tours (Hist. Fr. II. 22) refers to masses (missae) composed by him. He was urged to write on the war with Attila and especially on the siege of Orléans and the wonderful achievements of its bishop, Anianus. He found such a large task too exacting, but promised to celebrate the glories of Anianus (Epist. VIII. 15). There is no evidence that this projected work was ever written. He declined to write a historical work which Leo had suggested to him (Epist. IV. 22). He did not translate the life of Apollonius of Tyana, as is often said, but merely transcribed it (see p xlix). He wrote many poems besides those which have come down to us, but it is not certain that he published any collection of them.
The numerous manuscripts of Sidonius seem all to be derived from a single archetype of no great antiquity. They suffer from extensive dislocations, interpolations, corruptions, “corrections” and lacunae, but as they can very often be successfully used to check one another a text in the main satisfactory can be evolved from them. It is difficult to construct a convincing stemma codicum, but we may divide the MSS. into four classes on the basis of certain dislocations and of differences in their contents. I have added to the MSS. most used by Luet-johann and Mohr the codex R. It is impossible to mention all the codices.
Class I. (containing all the writings in the proper order, except that in Epist. IX letters 6 and 7 are put after 9).
C. Matritensis Ee 102 (formerly at Cluni), Madrid. X-XI cent. Much interpolated. Akin to this MS. is Vaticanus 3421. X cent.
Class II. (All with disturbance in the order of the letters in Books VI and VII; some contain all the works, some Epist alone, some Epist and some poems).
F. Parisinus 9551. XII cent.
Class III. Intermediate between I and II.
P. Parisinus 2781. X-XI cent.
Class IV. (a superior class, but with large lacunae. Some contain only Epist.)
T. Laurentianus plut. XLV. 23, Florence. XI-XII cent.
M. — Marcianus 554, Florence. X cent. (Epist and Carm. I-VIII.)
L. Laudianus lat. 104, Oxford. Epist only. IX cent. The best MS.
N. — Parisinus 18584. Epist only. X cent. Closely akin to L, but with more lacunae and numerous “corrections.”
V. Vaticanus 1783. Epist only. Xcent. Mutilated at the beginning and in the middle.
R. Remensis 413, Rheims. Epist only. IX-X cent. Closely akin to V. V and R. are less closely related to L than N is.
The fullest account of variant readings is given in Luetjohann’s edition. Mohr gives a shorter but very useful apparatus criticus.
The following is a short list of works useful to the student of Sidonius. An excellent and, on the historical side, much more comprehensive bibliography will be found in the work of Stevens mentioned below, pp. 216-220.
TEXT WITH COMMENTARY.
Caii Sollii Apollinaris Sidonii opera. Io. Savaro recog et librum commentarium adiecit. II. editio auctior et emendatior. Parisiis, MDCIX.
Ill-digested learning, with much irrelevance, but useful in several places.
C. Sol. Apollin. Sidonii opera, lac. Sirmondi cura et studio recognita notisque illustrata. Editio secunda. Parisiis, MDCLII.
A masterpiece, invaluable for its notes on subject-matter: the only pity is that they are not more numerous. The commentary is reprinted in Migne’s Patrologia Latina, LVIII.
There are some useful notes in the edition with French translation by Grégoire and Collombet, 3 vols., Lyon-Paris, 1836, but as the text is antiquated and the translation contemptible, the work is of no great value.
TRANSLATIONS.
Sidonius has very seldom been translated into any language. The only rendering worth mention is a translation into English of the letters alone by O. M. Dalton, 2 vols., Oxford, 1915. This translation, though it does not profess to follow the Latin closely, has been justly welcomed by students of Sidonius. It is accompanied by a valuable introduction and some helpful notes. Besides the effort of Grégoire and Collombet, mentioned above, there is another French translation (not markedly superior) by Baret in Nisard’s Collection des auteurs latins (with text: along with Ausonius and Venantius Fortunatus), Paris, 1887.
LIFE AND WORKS OF SIDONIUS.
Chaix, L. -A. Saint Sidoine Apollinaire et son siècle. 2 vols. Clermont-Ferrand, 1866.
Uncritical, but of considerable value.
Fertig, M. Cajus Sollius Apollinaris Sidonius “seine Zeit, nach seinen JVerken dargestellt. 3 parts. Wiirzburg, 1845-6, Passau, 1848. Germain, A. Essai littéraire et historique sur Apollinaris Sidonius. Paris, 1840.
