Wholly worthy that Rome should cherish you with her applauding rewards, and that at your reciting the wedge-shaped, tiered benches of the resounding Athenaeum should be shaken. This you would doubtless attain, if the condition of peace and place permitted that you should there be trained, mingled in the company of the senatorial youth. Of this glory and fame I judge you equally capable from the quality of your oration: in which, as you most becomingly pronounced it lately—things you had indeed written extempore—the well-disposed admired, the proud marvelled, the expert lingered. But lest we immodestly press your modesty with excessive praises unbidden, we write your praises more justly about you than to you. Let us rather admit this, whence there is occasion for our discourse.
因此你藉一名傳信童子問我，我所謂的「回文詩」是指哪些，要我迅速解釋，卻要以實例為之。這些確乃回文：在格律穩立、字母位置不移的情況下，正如它們從頭讀到尾，也同樣從尾讀回到首。那句古語即是如此：「Roma tibi subito motibus ibit amor（羅馬啊，愛必藉其動而驟然臨你）。」還有這句：「Sole medere pede, ede perede melos（在日光下以足醫治；食吧，遍食此歌）。」同樣，那些在保守音步之律的情況下，即便不是逐一字母、卻是逐一詞語可倒讀者，也被算作回文：
You ask therefore, through a message-boy, which verses I would call 'recurrent,' that I may quickly explain, but by example. These indeed are recurrent, which—with the metre standing firm and the letters not moved from their place—just as they are read from the beginning to the end, so are read back from the end to the top. Such is that ancient one: 'Roma tibi subito motibus ibit amor' (Rome, love will come to you suddenly by its motions). And that: 'Sole medere pede, ede perede melos' (Heal by the foot in the sun; eat, eat through the song). And likewise those are counted as recurrent which, the law of the feet being kept, even if not through single letters, yet are repeated through single words:
正如我的一首雙行詩（此類詩我自認讀過眾多作者的許多首），是我戲作、關於一條小溪的。它為風暴的驟然湧入所餵飽，以粗暴的洪流漫過公共的堤堰，淹沒了路下耕作的田地——雖它不久便要放下這狂亂的泛濫，因為沒有恆常泉脈的上游之水量使它因雨水的添注而漲滿。於是我在那裡（因我作為旅人來到此地），尋覓河岸更甚於淺灘之際，戲作了這樣一首短詩，至少徒步兩次越過那渾濁急流的背脊：「Praecipiti modo quod decurrit tramite flumen, Tempore consumptum jam cito deficiet.（那方才沿陡峻之道奔流的河，為時間所耗，不久便將迅速枯竭。）」若你倒讀此詩，便如此讀出：
as is one distich of mine (of the sort that I myself think I have read many, by many authors), which I composed in sport about a brook. Fed by the sudden onset of a storm and overtopping the public embankment with a rough flood, it had inundated the tilled fields lying below the road—though it was soon to lay aside its mad excess, since no upper weights of a perennial vein swelled its water as it rose with rainy additions. So there (for I had come as a traveller), while I sought the bank rather than the ford, having jested with such an epigram, I crossed at least on foot, twice, over the back of the turbid torrent: 'Praecipiti modo quod decurrit tramite flumen, Tempore consumptum jam cito deficiet.' (The river which just now runs down its headlong path, consumed by time, will soon quickly fail.) If you read this backwards, it is read thus:
「Deficiet cito jam consumptum tempore flumen, Tramite decurrit quod modo praecipiti.」且看，你便有了可逐音節驚嘆其法度的詩句。至於它們所缺的華采，它們不會傳授。我料想已足夠指明你認為需要探究之事。你自己也做著類似之事，若你將所提出的命題復原，並同樣倒轉地，把你所複述者迅速道出。因為在你面前赫然立著一個最著名主題的還願之報——即對凱撒尤利烏斯的頌讚，那是你已寫就、如今必須加以完整結辭的。此題如此宏大，以致於學子中即便最為富於辭藻者，在其中所當提防的莫過於：他說得太少。因為若我們略過帕多瓦人（李維）卷帙中為那不可戰勝的獨裁者之名銜所寫的一切；
'Deficiet cito jam consumptum tempore flumen, Tramite decurrit quod modo praecipiti.' Behold, you have verses whose method you may marvel at syllable by syllable. As for the pomp they lack, they will not teach it. I suspect I have sufficiently indicated what you thought needed inquiring into. You yourself do something similar if you restore the propositions set forth, and, equally in reverse, expedite what you repeat. For there stands out before you the votive repayment of a most celebrated theme—the praise, namely, of Caesar Julius, which you had produced and must now bring to full peroration. This subject is so grand that, of students, whoever should be the most copious, ought to guard against nothing more in it than that he should say too little. For if we pass over what has been written to the titles of the unconquered dictator in the volumes of the Paduan (Livy);
who has equalled the works of Suetonius, who the history of Juventius Martialis, or who, in short, the ephemeris of Balbus? But we reserve these matters for your tablets. It is rather our office to arrange the benches for the hearers, and to prepare their ears for the thunders about to peal; and while you tell of others' virtues, let us endeavour to tell yours. Nor should you fear that I shall summon any Catonian judges, who cloak now their envy, now their ignorance, under the veil of a feigned severity—though even to the ignorant pardon is due. But whoever is so malicious that he understands what is well written and yet does not praise it, him good men understand, yet do not praise. Therefore I absolve your cares of this fear:
all will hear favouring, all cherishing, and we shall together enjoy the joys which your countenance will present as you recite. For very many will praise your eloquence, most your genius, all your modesty. For it will be counted no less to your praise that a young man—or what is fairer, one still almost a boy—should bring back the suffrages of morals as well as of letters from the public wrestling-school of the breathless. Farewell. LETTER XV. Sidonius to his friend Gelasius, greeting. You reprove me, and I do not deprecate it, for having done wrong—wrong indeed have I done, in that I have not yet joined any letter under your name to my work. But you write, moreover, that even the error will be pardonable, if I send you something that you too may chant, after the example; because, namely, I sent to my Tonantius, for a like occasion, letters of use in two metres.
Besides this you complain that my page, if it be relaxed into play, is frequented by hendecasyllables alone. Wherefore, the trochaic garrulity being suspended, you further require some little senarii. I serve your commands: only do you receive them placidly—if you prefer to call this very thing a 'sale' or an 'eclogue.' For a metre I say too little practised is woven more roughly. You bid, my friend, that through our volumes the fierce iambus resound with quicker measures, and the trochee thus far; and that the spondee add its sluggish pairs and its four beats, so that the wing-footed trimeter may have a little delay grafted in; and that that swiftest foot, once well named from the Pyrrhic art, should sound mingled in, to be placed anywhere in the last position:
the anapaest being about to give a spondee also, from time to time, to the verse—now in the earlier part, now in the last—though it itself be pronounced more freely, when the third syllable that follows, both short and long, clings to a pair of syllables. These things a common poet scarcely knows how to temper, as you yourself see is the case with Sollius (myself). His tongue errs upon the comb, nor unfolds the modulation fittingly through the hollow of the mouth. But Leo would more fitly have furnished that epic, or one who has followed the tracks of Leo—Consentius, who survives his father, in Latin song, since he is prior in Attic; who is said, by faith, voice, and metres, to have sung by Pegasus' streams an all-shaped canticle; and, as often as he has versified Greek words, joined to Pindar, to have held the lofty stars; and, a victor, to have gone up the two-peaked mount, second to none among the Delphic stars.
But each of the bards, if he should fit a Latin song to the poetic lyre without the Doric—you, Flaccus, would draw forth your Venusian plectrum in vain, and the Iapygian home-bred swan of the Aufidus—that you, worsted, should groan that the Atax thunders with its own swans, and, vanquished, that your hoary and tuneful throat sighs. Nor are these the only skilled breasts, though these are more skilled than the skilled: Severianus the rhetor would have dictated these things more loftily, Domnulus, African and shrewd, more polished, and the scholastic Peter, under rounder Muses, more keenly—nor would his style everywhere in letters forbid the man, so that he might accomplish astonishing things. These things Proculus could always have made more effectively, sprung from soil and race in Liguria, to resound with melodious strokes, filing every witty poem so, that with his favour he might challenge the Venetian Mantua;
and, himself equal even to Homeric glory, calming the wheels of Maro with matching art. But I, justly despicable in heart and mouth—why, at your asking, should I prattle among these men, proving the impudence of loquacity, and the vows of a spirit destitute of letters? Yet what shall I refuse, not even terrified by shame? Love knows not how to fear: therefore I obeyed. Pardon one repeating things disused, and one who, for having fulfilled what you had bidden, awaits nothing more than the indulgence granted to rarity. But for the rest, if you shall bid me things similar hereafter—that I may become the more compliant—you will see to it, in return for a poem, either to dictate what I may sing, or to leap what I may laugh at. Farewell. LETTER XVI. Sidonius to his friend Firminus, greeting.
If you remember, lord son, you had enjoined this on me: that this ninth little book, dictated peculiarly for you, should be coupled with the other eight which I wrote to Constantius—a man of singular genius, of salutary counsel, certainly in public treatises surpassing other eloquent men, whether he decide diverse or like matters, excelling by the endowments of a more outstanding eloquence. The promise has been fulfilled—not indeed exactly, yet at least promptly. For, having by chance traversed the dioceses, when I came home, if any hasty scrap lay carelessly about, contained in rotten and mouldering little papers, I hurriedly transcribed it, a hasty and constrained copier, in no way delayed by the wintry season, but rather that I might straightway complete your commands;
although the antiquary's page, unable to dry because of the frost, and the drop harder than the pen, delayed him—a drop which you would have judged not to flow, but to break, under the pressing fingers. Yet even so I took care to acquit myself of my duty before Favonius, with his warm blast and natal rains, should wed our twelfth month, which you name the month of Numa. It remains that, with you as arbiter, we not demand of one another things utterly discrepant—maturity and speed. For as often as any book is bidden to be written quickly, the author looks not so much to the honour from merit as to that from compliance. As for the rest—since you pronounce that the iambics lately sent to Gelasius, a most kindly man, pleased you—through these I shall also present you with the home-bred slaves of the town of Mytilene.
Already through the alternating sea of speech my skiff has driven its bold course; nor did it fear to turn the helm at the twofold Malea. It loosed its sail-yards, gathered its high sails, the hand lays down the oar-blade, and, the thwarts being joined for the leap, it sought the sand to be kissed—the shore's leap. Though the muttering chorus of the envious betrays their fury with vain white, they say nothing openly, and fear the public votes. They beat the stern, they shake the keel, they fan the rounded sides of the flanks; around the mast fly the hisses of the left-handed tongue. Yet we, guiding the prow straight with skill, fearing not the swelling storms, halt in harbour, having won the leaf of a twofold crown:
the crown which the people of Quirinus granted me, or which the purple-bearing senate bestowed, which the fellow order of learned judgments gave. When Nerva Trajan saw a lasting statue set up with my titles among the authors of either library; and the crown which, seen afterwards nearly after a decade of years, I received on taking up the honour—he who once alone governs the rights of the fathers and the plebs at the same time. Besides heroic verse, I have woven many jests on many rags; and I have often whirled elegiacs, subjected to six feet, in the well-named 'comma.' Now, wont to ride upon eleven syllables, I have sported swiftly; and in Sapphic metre I have frequently sung, quickened by the harsh iambus. Nor can I recall how much I wrote, once, in the first ardour of youth—whereof I would that the greater part could be kept silent and hidden away.
For with the goal of old age nearer, whatever we join to our latest years, it shames me the more, if my age has trifled with anything light, now to recall. Shuddering at this, I have transferred every kind of care to the cultivation of letters, lest, guilty by too wanton a song, I be guilty in deed also; nor let me be thought loosed through pleasant sayings, if I join figures and ornaments to my papers—lest the fame of a poet stain the strictness of a cleric. In short, hereafter I shall not be borne prone to any and every epigram, nor with tender metre or grave shall I henceforth be quickly compelled to bring forth any song, unless perhaps I speak of the interrogations of the persecutors, and the martyrs who deserved heaven, having purchased by the price of death the rewards of life.
Of these, let a hymn first sing to me of him who held the see of Toulouse, cast down from the topmost step of the capital's heights—whom, a denier of Jupiter and Minerva and a confessor of the good things of Christ's cross, the raging populace bound living to the side of an unyoked bull, that, over the precipice, the bull being goaded, it might scatter in its course his mangled corpse, the rocks stained with the warm porridge of his loosened brains. After Saturninus, I wish the plectra to sing of those whom I have approved as the rest of my patrons, hard to me through anxious toils, having brought their aid. For the author used ecstasy in Philetus, pleonasm in Abascantis.
More religious in his Itinerary was Numatianus, who, when he could not embrace in verse—the metre's laws being preserved—the true, that is, the last name of Venerius Rufius Volusianus, was content to attest his desire: 'Here we learn that the prefecture of the sacred city was conferred, sweet friend, on your merits. I could wish to embrace the true name in song: but a harsh rule shuns certain feet. Your surname in verse, most dear Venerius Rufius, my page has long been singing of you.' Those whom now, one by one, piously named, our words cannot confine in verse—those whom the strings cannot sound—our hearts shall sound. Let us return at the end to the oratorical style, meaning to terminate the present matter in the order once set:
lest, if we close a prose work with musical epilogues, according to the rules of Flaccus—where the jar began to be fashioned, a pitcher should rather seem to have come out. Farewell. For he addresses, as I said, Volusianus, son of Albinus, whose proper name is Volusianus, his cognomina Venerius Rufius. The same, a little above: 'Rufus, great glory of your father Albinus, who derive the name Volusius from an ancient lineage.' Of the urban prefecture of Volusianus, which he congratulates as conferred on him, witness is the edict of Volusianus himself, Vir Perfectissimus, against the heretic Caelestius. And so, in the Itinerary of Numatianus—by our conjecture at least—the title is to be restored: TO RUFIUS VENERIUS VOLUSIANUS.