Delphi Complete Works of Sidonius Apollinaris, page 34
XVI.
To his friend Ruricius (No indication of date)
[1] PATERNINUS has given me your letter; I can hardly say whether it pleases most by wit or charm. It presents such eloquence, such fragrant flowers of diction, that your progress is clearly due to something more than an acknowledged study: you must be working in secret as well. The abstraction of a book of mine to copy, for which you so apologize, I regard as an act redounding to your credit, and requiring no excuse. What can you do really wrong, when even your faults are laudable? [2] I am not the least vexed at being played this little trick in my absence; it is no loss at all, but really a signal privilege. The volume you appropriated to your use has not therefore ceased to be my property; your knowledge has not been increased at the cost of other people’s. On the contrary, you shall have full credit for your action, and rightly; for your nature has the quality of flame, which communicates itself entirely and yet remains entire; it is proper that you should act like your own element. Be no more uneasy, then; that were to betray a little too much uncertainty of your friend, who would only deserve the wound of blame were he vulnerable by the dart of envy. Farewell.
XVII.
To his friend Arbogast c. A.D. 477
[1] YOUR friend Eminentius, honoured lord, has delivered a letter dictated by yourself, admirable in style, and bearing in every line the evidence of three shining virtues. The first is the friendliness which leads you to esteem the lowly talents of one so far away, and so anxious to avoid publicity. The second is the modesty which makes you over-sensitive to blame, but deservedly wins you praise. The third is the gentle humour which makes you in the wittiest way accuse yourself of writing wretched stuff, whereas you have drunk at the well-spring of Roman eloquence, and no draughts from the Moselle can take the taste of Tiber from your mouth. You have your conversation among barbarians, yet you permit no barbarism to pass your lips; in eloquence and valour you equal those ancient generals whose hands could wield the stylus no less skilfully than the sword. [2] The Roman tongue is long banished from Belgium and the Rhine; but if its splendour has anywhere survived, it is surely with you; our jurisdiction is fallen into decay along the frontier, but while you live and preserve your eloquence, the Latin language stands unshaken. As I return your greeting, my heart is glad within me that our vanishing culture has left such traces with you; continue your assiduous studies, and you will feel more surely every day that the man of education is as much above the boor as the boor in his turn above the beast. [3] Were I to obey your wish and send you a commentary on some part of the Scriptures, it would be sorry verbiage; you would do far better to direct your request to the clergy of your own district. They are venerable in years, approved in faith, known by works; they are ready in speech and tenacious in memory, my superiors in all sublimer gifts. Even if we leave out of the account the bishop of your city, a character of supreme perfection, blessed in the possession and repute of all the virtues, you may far more appropriately consult on any kind of problem the celebrated fathers of the Church in Gaul; Lupus and Auspicius are both within your reach, and however inquisitive you may be, you will not get to the bottom of a learning such as theirs. In any case, you must pardon me for disobeying you in this matter, and that not only out of kindliness, but from simple justice; for if it is fair that you should escape from incompetence, it is equally right that I should avoid conceit. Farewell.
XVIII.
To his friend Lucontius c. A.D. 470
[1] I FEAR you have a memory defective in the matter of others’ requests but infallible in the matter of your own. It would be tedious to repeat all the promises of swift return which you and your family made to me and mine; not the smallest of them have you kept. Far from it, your flight was cunningly planned to make us think you were coming back for Easter; you took no heavy baggage out of town, neither carriage nor cart for luggage appeared in your train.
[2] It is too late to complain of the trick you made the ladies play us, causing them to travel with only the lightest of effects, while you and our brother Volusianus were hardly escorted by a single client or attendant. By this device you cheated the friends who came to see you off with the delusive hope that they were soon to see you back. Certainly our good brother Volusianus deceived us by the pretence of a short trip, when in fact he was probably bound, not merely for his own estate at Baiocassium, but the whole second province of Lyons into the bargain. [3] As for yourself, though you have broken faith by idling all this time away down there, you yet have the face to ask me for any poetical trifles I may have recently composed. I obey; but simply because you deserve the rubbish you will get; the verses I am sending are so rustic and unfinished that no one would believe they came from town and not from the depths of the country. [4] You must know that Bishop Perpetuus, a worthy successor of his great predecessor, has just rebuilt on a greater scale than before the basilica of the saintly pontiff and confessor Martin. It is said to be a great and memorable work, and all that we should expect when one such man does honour to another. For the walls of this church he has demanded of me the inscription you are now to criticize, and sure as he is of his place in my affection, he takes no denial in matters of this kind. [5] Would I could think this offering of mine would prove no blot upon the magnificence of that pile and its wealth of gifts; but I fear it must be so, unless some happy chance should lend its very defects a charm where all is of such perfection, just as a dark spot on a fair body is mocked at first, and then compels approval. But why should I dilate upon all this? Put down your shepherd’s pipe, and give a supporting hand to this hobbling elegy of mine:
*’Over the body of Martin, venerated in every land, the body in which renown survives the life departed, there rose a structure meet for poor men’s worship, and unworthy of its famous Confessor. Always a sense of shame weighed heavy on the citizens when they thought of the saint’s great glory, and the small attraction of his shrine. But Perpetuus the bishop, sixth in line after him, has now taken away the disgrace; he has removed the inner shrine from the modest chapel and reared this great building over it. By the favour of so powerful a patron the founder’s fame has risen together with the church, which is such as to rival the temple of Solomon, the seventh wonder of the world. That shone resplendent with gems and gold and silver; but this fane shines with a light of faith beyond the brilliance of all metals. Avaunt, Envy of the venomous tooth! be our forefathers absolved; may our posterity, however fond of its own voice, presume to add or alter nothing. And till the second coming of Christ to raise all people from the dead, may the fane of Perpetuus perpetually endure.’
[6] I send you, as you see, the most recent verses I can find. But if you persist in spinning vain delays, the concession will not stop me from shaking the stars with my complaints; nor, if the case requires it, shall I shrink from a resort to satire, and you will be very much mistaken if you imagine that I shall be as suave as in the verses you have had to-day. For it is a law of human nature that man is more telling, more fiery, and quicker on the mark in his censure than in his praise. Farewell.
* Translated by Fertig, Part ii, pp. 37-8; and by Chaix, i. 329.
XIX.
To his friend Florentinus (No indication of date)
[1] You blame me for my delay and my silence. I can purge myself of both charges, for I am not only on my way, but as you see, I write as well. Farewell.
XX.
To his friend Domnicius * c. A. D. 470
[1] You take such pleasure in the sight of arms and those who wear them, that I can imagine your delight if you could have seen the young prince Sigismer on his way to the palace of his father-in-law in the guise of a bridegroom or suitor in all the pomp and bravery of the tribal fashion. His own steed with its caparisons, other steeds laden with flashing gems, paced before and after; but the conspicuous interest in the procession centred in the prince himself, as with a charming modesty he went afoot amid his bodyguard and footmen, in flame-red mantle, with much glint of ruddy gold, and gleam of snowy silken tunic, his fair hair, red cheeks and white skin according with the three hues of his equipment. [2] But the chiefs and allies who bore him company were dread of aspect, even thus on peace intent. Their feet were laced in boots of bristly hide reaching to the heels; ankles and legs were exposed. They wore high tight tunics of varied colour hardly descending to their bare knees, the sleeves covering only the upper arm. Green mantles they had with crimson borders; baldrics supported swords hung from their shoulders, and pressed on sides covered with cloaks of skin secured by brooches. [3] No small part of their adornment consisted of their arms; in their hands they grasped barbed spears and missile axes; their left sides were guarded by shields, which flashed with tawny golden bosses and snowy silver borders, betraying at once their wealth and their good taste. Though the business in hand was wedlock, Mars was no whit less prominent in all this pomp than Venus. Why need I say more? Only your presence was wanting to the full enjoyment of so fine a spectacle. For when I saw that you had missed the things you love to see, I longed to have you with me in all the impatience of your longing soul. Farewell.
* Translated by Hodgkin, ii. 364.
XXI.
To his friend Aper c. A.D. 472
[1] IN every genealogy the father’s line must take precedence, yet we owe not a little to our mothers. For it hardly befits us to accord a lesser honour to her who bore, than to him who begot us. I leave the biologist the care of defining what we are or how we came into the world, passing on to the subject introduced by these reflections. [2] Your father is an Aeduan, your mother comes from Auvergne. Aeduan, then, you are first and foremost, but yet not altogether. For remember the passage in Virgil to the effect that Pallas is Arcadian, but at the same time Samnite. He might have qualified, as a foreigner, to lead the Etruscans against Mezentius, save only for the fact that through his Samnite mother he traced his descent in part to her country of Etruria. Here you have evidence of great moment from the greatest of authorities (unless, indeed, you believe poets false to facts even when they deal with history), that the mother’s country must count no less than that of the father. [3] Now if the Arvernians in their turn rightly claim at any rate a half-share in you, pray give a patient hearing to the complaint of men who yearn for your presence, and now unburden the bosom-secret of a whole population through the lips of a single spokesman. Imagine them as standing before you and addressing you face to face. ‘What is our offence, ungrateful fellow citizen, that all these years you shun the soil which nourished you as if it were an enemy’s country? Here we tended your cradle, here we heard your infant cries and formed your tender limbs; it was our people who carried you in their arms. [4] This was the country of your grandsire Fronto, whose indulgence to you was equalled only by his own self-discipline, which our models of to-day might take as a model for themselves. This was the country of your grandmother Auspicia, who from a single heart after her daughter’s death gave to the helpless orphan a devotion great enough for two. Your aunt was also of our land, and so was Frontina, the virgin holier than a nun, held by your mother in respect, by your father in veneration, and so ascetic and austere in her life, so perfect in God’s faith and fear, that she inspired an awe in all men. It was here that our schools vied one with the other to perfect you in grammar and in rhetoric, when the time came for your initiation in the liberal arts, with such results that even by virtue of your education alone you cannot but think of Clermont with affection. [5] I shall not recall to you the unique charm of our land; the broad main of tillage, where the profitable waters flow harmless through the crops, bringing rich increase; where the more the industrious man traffics, the less he need fear shipwreck; the land which is easy to the traveller, fertile to the cultivator, to the hunter a perpetual joy; where pastures crown the hill-tops and vineyards clothe the slopes, where villas rise on the lowlands and castles on the rocks, forests here and clearings there, valleys with springs, headlands washed by rivers; the land, in short, of which a single glimpse suffices to make many a stranger forget his own country. [6] Need I remind you of the town which was always so devoted to you that you ought to find no society more agreeable than that of its nobility? You were received with open arms, and all were so delighted to have you with them that no one could ever see enough of you. Need I speak of your own property? the more you visit it the better it will make good your outlay. For the very expenses of a proprietor cultivating his own land contribute to the increase of his income. I unburden myself thus in the name of all our citizens, and certainly of the best among them. Such is the affection which they show, so high the compliment implied in their desire, that you may imagine the greater joy which will be yours if you assent to their request. Farewell.
XXII.
To his friend Leo A.D. 477
[1] THE magnificent Hesperius, pearl of friends and glory of letters, informed me on his return from Toulouse not long ago that you wished me to begin writing history as soon as my volume of Letters is completed. I need not tell you with what respect and gratitude I receive an opinion of such weight, and moreover so flattering to myself; for if you hold that I ought to abandon the work of smaller compass for the greater, it must be because you think me competent. But frankly, I find it easier to respect your judgement than to follow your advice. [2] The task indeed is one which is worthy of your recommendation, but it is no less worthy of your own practice. Tacitus long ago gave similar advice to Pliny and then anticipated his friend by following his own counsel. The precedent bears perfectly on your suggestion; for I am a mere disciple of Pliny, whereas in the old historical style you excel Tacitus. Could he return to earth, could he witness your literary eminence and reputation, he would soon follow the hint conveyed by his own name. [3] You, therefore, are the man to shoulder the burden of your own proposal; you have an excellent gift of eloquence and to vast erudition you join unrivalled opportunities. For as adviser of a most potent sovereign, whose policy is concerned with all the world, you are admitted to the secrets of his business and his laws, his wars and treaties, you understand their local significance, their extent and their importance. Who, then, more fit to gird him for the task than he who is behind the great scene of public affairs, who knows the movements of the peoples, the embassies that pass between them, the generals’ feats of arms, the treaties of the princes, who stands himself at such an altitude that he need neither suppress the truth nor broider the fabric of a lie?
[4] How different is my own condition, afflicted with the griefs of exile, deprived of the old facilities for study; a cleric, sworn to renounce ambition, and keep the middle path of his obscurity. My trust is no longer in the gifts of this present world, but in the hope of a world to come. My failing strength plays me false, and makes me delight in idleness; I care no more for the praise of my own generation, and as little for that of men who shall come after me. [5] History is the last field in which I should now pursue fame; we churchmen are ill-advised to publish our own affairs and rash to meddle with those of others; we record the past without advantage to ourselves, and the present from imperfect knowledge; we write what is untrue to our disgrace, and what is true at our peril. It is a work or subject in which the mention even of the virtuous wins a man scant credit, and of the great, unbounded enmity. Forthwith some hue and flavour of satire invades the historian’s style, and this is wholly incongruous with our vows. Historical writing begins in spite, proceeds in weariness, and ends in ill repute. [6] Let a cleric once dabble in it, and all these woes will fall upon him; forthwith the viper’s tooth of envy is into us; if our style be straightforward, we are called mad; if polished, we are presuming beyond our place. But you can enter upon this province with a light heart; your fame allows you to spring from strength to strength. You will tread the neck of the detractor or lightly leap above it. None will have written in a more exalted vein than you, none so near the antique manner, even though your theme be the story of our own times. For as you were trained long since in the art of letters, and now are no less versed in that of affairs, you have left the venomed fang no hold whatever on you. Therefore it is that in years to come your works will be consulted with advantage, heard with delight, and read with assurance of their authority. Farewell.
