Delphi Complete Works of Sidonius Apollinaris, page 42
XV.
To his friend Salonius c. A. D. 470
[1] EVERY time I go to Vienne, I would give a great deal if you and your brother stayed more frequently in the town, for we three are all united not only by the ties of friendship but by those of a common literary interest. But your brother eludes my reproaches by pretending the visits he has constantly to make to his suburban property, so that he is never present to stand on his own defence; you in your turn find a similar excuse, as one possessed by a newly-acquired possession. [2] Be all this as it may, come this time, and I will let you go on condition that you both promise to come again, either in turn, or [together?] at some later time. You may live in the country and be model cultivators; but not till you give more labour yet to the Church which you love, will you bring increase to the true land of your souls. Farewell.
XVI.
To Abbot Chariobaudus A.D. 477
[1] IN alleviating by a letter of condolence the trouble of an absent friend, O my one patron in Christ, you have acted like your benevolent self. May your thoughts ever turn to me thus; may this interminable chain of anxieties which your exhortations have worn down be finally broken by your prayers. [2] I think your freedmen have concluded the business on which you sent them, and are on their way home; they have done everything with such energy that they never required any assistance. I send you by them a cowl for nightwear, though I admit that the end of winter, with summer in sight, is not quite the right time to send you woollens. When you are exhausted by long fasting, it shall give you proper protection as you pass from your bed to Vigils and back again. Farewell.
XVII.
To his brother Volusianus A.D. 477
[1] You ask me, my lord brother, by the law of friendship which none may infringe, to set my long inactive fingers to the old forge. I am to write a sad funeral dirge for the sainted Abraham, newly departed this life. I shall not fail to obey, moved alike by your authority, and even more by the devotion of the noble Count Victorius, my patron according to the world, my son according to the Church, whom I honour as a client, and love as a father. He gave abundant proof of his ardent solicitude for the servants of Christ, when by the sick priest’s couch he humbled his dignity and bent his body low above the dying, his own face sympathetically paling with that already colourless by the approach of death; while his tears betrayed his deep feeling for the friend he was to lose. [2] He has insisted on taking the funeral almost entirely upon himself and defraying all the expenses required for the due obsequies of a priest; to complete the honour due to the memory of the departed, I can only contribute these few words, confining my pen to a plain testimony of a mutual affection.
*’Abraham, worthy to stand beside the celestial patrons whom I shall not fear to call thy colleagues, since they are gone before on the path which thou shalt follow; a share in the martyr’s glory gives a share in the kingdom of heaven. Born by Euphrates, for Christ thou didst endure the prison, chains, and hunger for five long years. From the cruel King of Susa thou didst fly, escaping alone to the distant land of the West. Marvels born of his holiness followed the steps of the confessor; thyself a fugitive, thou didst put to flight the spirits of evil. Wherever thy footsteps passed, the throng of Lemures cried surrender; the exile’s voice bade the demons go forth into banishment. All sought thee, yet didst thou yield to no vain ambition; the honours acceptable in thy sight were those that brought the heaviest burdens. Thou didst shun the tumult of Rome and of Byzantium, and the walls of the city that warlike Titus breached. Not Alexandria held thee, not Antioch; thou spurnedst Byrsa, the famed home of Dido. Thou didst contemn the populous lands of Ravenna by the marshes, and the city named from the woolly swine. But this corner of earth was pleasing to thee, this poor retreat, this hut roofed with reeds. Here didst thou rear a sacred house to God, thou whose own frame was already itself His temple. Here ended thy wanderings, here thy life’s course; now thy labours are rewarded by a twofold crown. Now dost thou stand in Paradise amid the thousands of the Saints, with Abraham for thy fellow wanderer. Now art thou entered into thine own land, from which Adam fell; now lies thy way clear to the sources of thy native stream.’
[3] With these lines I have paid, as you desired, the last observance due to him who is now laid to rest. But if it is the duty of those who yet live, of brothers, friends and comrades, to obey the commands of brotherly affection, I shall make you a request in my turn: I would beg you to use the principles with which you are so eminently endowed for the consolation of the dead man’s followers, confirm by the discipline of Lerins or of Grigny the shaken rule of a brotherhood now cast adrift without a leader. If you find any insubordinate, see to it in person that they are punished; if any obedient, give them praise from your own lips. The holy Auxanius is presumed to be their head; but he, as you well know, is too infirm of body and of too diffident a character, and more fitted to obey than to command. He himself insists that you should be called in, that in succeeding to the headship of the house, he may have the support of your overheadship; for if any of the younger monks should treat him with disrespect, as one lacking alike in courage and experience, thanks to you, a joint rule would not be slighted with impunity. I say no more. If you would have my wishes in a few words, they are these; I desire brother Auxanius to be abbot over the rest, and you yourself to be above the abbot. Farewell.
* The verses are translated by Fertig, Part ii, p. 45.
XVIII.
To his friend Constantius c. A. D. 479
[1] ‘WITH you my work began, with you it shall end.’ I send the volume for which you asked, but the choice of letters has been rather hurried. I could only find comparatively few; I had not preserved any number, never having contemplated their appearance in this form. Few and trivial as they are, I was soon done with them; though when I had once started, I found the love of scribbling by no means dead within me, and that I was keen to balance any deficiency in their number by an addition to their length.
[2] At the same time, I thought that if it was to attract so fine a critic, the book would be handier and need less apology if you had a smaller weight of parchment to deal with, since in parts there was a certain lightness of style and subject which might give you cause of offence. I therefore submit to your judgement these manifold emotions of my heart, well aware that a book as surely reflects a man’s mind as a mirror his face. A few of the letters preach, a number congratulate; some offer advice, others consolation; not a few are humorous.
[3] If here and there you find that I show unexpected heat, I would have you know that while Christ is my defender I will never suffer my judgement to be enslaved; I know as well as any one that with regard to this side of my character there are two opinions: the timid call me rash, the resolute a lover of freedom; I myself strongly feel that the man who has to hide his real opinions cuts a very abject figure. [4] To return to my original subject. If you ever allow yourself a rest from your unending studies in religious literature, these trivialities should afford you innocent distraction. There is here no interminable theme to weary you; each subject ends with its containing letter; you can see where you are at a glance, and have done before the inclination to read has died within you. Farewell.
BOOK VIII
I.
To his friend Petronius c. A. D. 480
[1] A MAN who makes it a principle, whenever he can, to encourage his friends along the path of glory deserves the gratitude of all good men everywhere: the practice is your honourable distinction; be true to it always. To no other cause can I ascribe this new request that I should turn out my cases at Clermont in the search for further letters. I should have thought the examples already published would have satisfied you; but I must needs obey, though I shall merely append a few at the end to supplement the original series, and crown the completed volume, as it were, by a marginal addition. [2] I shall now have fresh reason to be on my guard against malignant critics, for adding in this way to a book which has already seen the light. How, indeed, could I hope to escape the edged tongues of the spiteful-born, when even a Demosthenes and a Cicero for all their masterly periods and their perfected eloquence were not permitted to go free? The first found his detractor in Demades, the second in Antonius, carpers both, whose malice was as clear as their diction was obscure, and who have come down to posterity simply through their hate of excellence. [3] But since the command has gone forth, I set my sail to the old winds; I have navigated oceans, and shall I not cross this quiet water? I have always been convinced that a man should give of his best in anything he writes, and then tranquilly face all criticism. There is no middle course; one must either care no jot for what the malignant say, or else hold one’s peace altogether. Farewell.
II.
To his friend Johannes A. D. 478
[1] I SHOULD hold myself guilty of something like a crime against polite learning, most accomplished of friends, were I for a moment to defer congratulation on your own success in deferring the decease of Literature. One might almost speak of her as dead and buried; it is your glory to have revived, supported and championed her, and in this tempest of war which has wrecked the Roman power, you are the sole master in Gaul who has brought the Latin tongue safely into port. [2] Our contemporaries and our successors should all with one accord and fervent gratitude dedicate statues or portraits to you, as to a new Demosthenes or Tully; by your example they were formed and educated, and they shall preserve in the very midst of an invincible but alien race this evidence of their ancient birthright. Since old grades of rank are now abolished which once distinguished the high from the low, in future culture must afford the sole criterion of nobility. None is more deeply indebted to your learning than I; for like all authors professed, who write for posterity, I shall owe to your school and your teaching the certainty of an understanding audience. Farewell.
III.
To his friend Leo A. D. 478
[1] I SEND you, at your request, the Life of Apollonius the Pythagorean, not in the transcription by Nicomachus the Elder, from Philostratus, but in that from Nicomachus himself by Tascius Victorianus. I was so eager to fulfil your wish, that the result is a makeshift of a copy, obscure and over-hurried, and rough as any version could be. Yet the work took me longer than I expected, and for this you must not blame me, for all the time I was a captive within the walls of Livia, release from which I owe, next to Christ, to you. My mind was sick with care and really unable to fulfil my task even in the most desultory manner; all kinds of hindrances prevented me — various obligations by day, my utter misery at night. [2] When the evening hour brought me at last to my quarters, ready to drop with fatigue, my heavy eyelids knew small repose; there were two old Gothic women established quite close to the window of my chamber, who at once began their chatter — quarrelsome, drunken, and disgusting creatures, whose like will not easily be seen again. As soon as my restoration to my own home gave me a little leisure, I dispatched the book with all its faults upon it, uncorrected, ill-digested, as you might say, an immature wine; in doing so, I thought more of your anxiety to have it, than of my own responsibilities. [3] Now that your wish is gratified, forsake awhile Apollo’s bays and the fount of Hippocrene; forget the measures of which you alone are absolute master, and which, in those who have only your learning without your eloquence, seem not so much to rise from a well-spring as to drip painfully from fevered brows. Stay the renowned stream of an eloquence peculiar to your race and line, which, flowing from your ancestor the great Fronto through successive generations, has now passed in due course into your breast. Lay aside awhile the universally applauded speeches composed for the royal lips, those famed deliverances with which the glorious monarch from his exalted place strikes terror into the hearts of tribes beyond the seas, or binds a treaty on the necks of barbarians trembling by the Waal, or throughout his newly extended realm curbs force itself by law as once he curbed his foes by force. [4] Shake off the burden of your endless cares and steal a little leisure from the affairs and agitations of the court. Not till you surrender yourself wholly to this book, and in imagination voyage with our Tyaneus to Caucasus and Ind, among the Gymnosophists of Ethiopia and the Brahmins of Hindostan, not till then shall you know the story you desired in its right hour and as it should be known. [5] Read, then, the life of a man who, but for his paganism, in many points resembled you, as one who did not pursue riches, but was pursued by the rich; who loved knowledge and did not covet money; who was abstemious among the feasters and went in coarse linen among princes robed in purple; who was grave amid luxurious follies; whose hair was matted, whose face was rough and hirsute among smooth, anointed peoples; who was conspicuous in the dignity of his squalor among satraps of crowned monarchs exquisite in person and drenched with nard and myrrh; who abstained from animal flesh and would not clothe himself in wool, — for such abstinence, indeed, held more in honour than contempt in the Eastern kingdoms which he traversed. When royal treasures were placed at his disposal, he asked only the gifts he liked to offer others and would not keep himself. [6] Why pursue the subject further? Unless I am much at fault, it may be doubted whether our ancestors’ days produced a biographer fit to write so great a life; but of this there is no doubt at all, that in your person our own times have produced a student worthy to peruse it. Farewell.
IV.
To his friend Consentius c. A. D. 478
[1] WILL Providence ever allow us to meet once more, honoured lord, on your estate of Octaviana — I call it yours, but it seems really to belong to your friends just as much as to you. Situated as it is near town and sea and river, it offers continual hospitality to all comers, and to yourself a regular succession of guests. How charming, too, is its first aspect, with its walls so cleverly designed in perfect architectural symmetry! how brilliant is the gleam of chapel colonnade and baths conspicuous near and far! Then there is the amenity of its fields and waters, its vines and olives, its approach, its beauty of hill and plain. Well stocked and furnished with abundance, it has also a large and copious library; when the master is there, dividing his interests between pen and plough, one might be in doubt whether his mind or his estate enjoys the finer culture. [2] No wonder this was the chosen place (unless my memory deceives me) where you have produced the swift iambics, the pointed elegiacs, the rounded hendecasyllables, and all the other verses fragrant with thyme and flowers of poesy to be sung by every one at Béziers and Narbonne! These poems, no less remarkable for speed of composition than for charm of style, make you beloved of your contemporaries and must increase your fame among those who shall come after us. I have always been convinced of it myself every time a new poem of yours has been brought me, as it were hot from the composer’s anvil, and though I may be an indifferent writer, I am no such despicable critic. [3] My earlier life might not improperly find time for such pursuits, and in fact it did so. But now I only read and write of serious things, for now it is high time to think rather of eternal life than of posthumous renown, and to remember that after death our good works, and not our literary work, will be weighed in the balance. [4] I am far from implying by this that you do not excel in both, or that the lively style which you still affect is inconsistent with gravity of judgement; but since by Christ’s grace you are already a saint in secret, I would have you openly submit to His salutary yoke a head and heart alike devoted to His service, your tongue unwearying in prayer and praise, your mind filled with pious thoughts, your hand ever open in benefaction. Especially would I insist upon the open hand, for all that you cast abroad among the churches is really gathered in for yourself. Let this reflection above all incite you to the exercise of generosity, that whatever be our opportunities in respect of the things which the foolish call this world’s goods, all that we give in charity remains our own, all that we keep is really lost to us. Farewell.
V.
To his friend Fortunalis c. A. D. 480
[1] You too shall figure in my pages, dear Fortunalis, column of friendship, bright ornament of your Spanish country. Your own acquaintance with letters is not, after all, so slight as to deprive you of any immortality which they can confer. The glory of your name shall live; yes, it shall survive into after ages. [2] If my writings win any favour or respect, if they command any confidence among men, I will have posterity know that none were more stout of heart than you; that none were goodlier to see or more equitable in judgement, none more patient, none weightier in council, gayer in company, or more charming in conversation. Last, and not least, it shall learn that these praises have been enhanced by your misfortunes. For it is more likely to hold you great, as one proved in the hard day of adversity, than as one who lay hidden in the bosom of kind fortune. Farewell.
