a full senate goes into the council-chamber; so I learned afterwards, for in the meantime I had departed. Our man proceeds to the senate-house, a little before newly shorn and pumiced, while the accusers, half-mourning and unkempt, awaited the summons from the decemviri, and by deliberate squalor had snatched from the defendant the pity due to him, casting it under the odium reserved for the mourning-clad. Being called, they are led in; they take their stand, as is the custom, on opposite sides. To the men of prefectorial rank, before the opening of the case, the right of sitting is offered. Arvandus, even then with unhappy shamelessness, thrusts himself with hurried step almost into the very midst of the judges' laps.
Ferreolus, with his colleagues standing about at his sides, modestly and gently sat down at the lowest end of the benches, so that he might remember himself to be no less an envoy than a senator: for which reason he was afterwards the more praised and honoured. While these things were passing, and those of the nobles who had been absent came in, the parties rise and the envoys state their case. The letter, after the provincial mandate mentioned above, is produced; and as it was slowly read out, Arvandus, before he was even questioned, cries aloud that he had dictated it. The envoys replied that, although it stood most wickedly established that he had himself dictated it,
But when that raving man, unaware how far he was falling, ran himself through with a confession twice and thrice repeated, it was acclaimed by the accusers and cried out by the judges that a defendant confessing to high treason was convicted. Besides this, he was cut to pieces by thousands of legal formulas that sanctioned it. Then at last, laborious with a tardy repentance, he is said to have grown pale at his own loquacity, learning too late that even one who had not aspired to the garb of the purple-clad could be pronounced guilty of treason. Immediately, stripped of the privileges of the double prefecture which he had ruled for five years with repeated fasces, and cast back into a plebeian family—not so much added to it as restored—he was adjudged to the public prison.
This indeed was most pitiable, as those who saw it related: that because he had entered adorned and polished among his black-clad accusers, before the judges, a little later, when he was led away as a condemned man, he was wretched, yet not to be pitied. For who would be too greatly moved over his state, seeing him carefully groomed and anointed, borne off to the stone-quarries or the workhouse? But when the judgment had been adjourned scarcely twice over a week, being condemned to death, he was flung into the pit of the Epidaurian serpent;
where, disfigured even to the grief of his enemies, and spat out from human affairs as it were by the vomit of a nauseated fortune, he now, by the old Tiberian decree of the senate, drags out a life of thirty days after the sentence, shuddering hour by hour at the hook, the Gemonian steps, and the noose of the turbulent executioner. We indeed, so far as we are able, both absent and present, make our vows, and redouble our prayers and supplications, that, the blow of the already drawn sword being suspended, the imperial clemency may bestow on the half-dead man, though his goods be confiscated, at least the gift of exile. Yet in his case, whether he awaits every extremity or endures it, nothing is more unhappy, if, after so many brands seared upon him and so many insults, he now fears anything more than merely to go on living. Farewell. LETTER VIII.
Sidonius to his friend Candidianus, greeting. You congratulate me on tarrying at Rome; yet you do so as if in jest, with sallies of raillery mixed in. For you say you rejoice that at last your friend may see the sun, whom, as a rare drinker of the Allia, I have seldom looked upon. For you reproach me with the fogs of my Lugdunum, and complain that our day, obstructed by the morning haze, is scarcely opened up by the noonday heat. And do you prattle these things at me, you a home-born slave of Caesena—that oven rather than town? Concerning the pleasantness or convenience of your native place to you alone, you yourself showed what you felt, when you migrated: yet in such a way that, while you play the more happily at exile in Ravenna, your ears bored through by the Po's gnats, a chattering throng of municipal frogs leaps about you.
In which marsh, by the law of all things perpetually reversed, walls fall, waters stand still, towers float, ships settle, the sick walk about, the physicians lie in bed, the baths are cold, the dwellings blaze, the living thirst, the buried swim, thieves keep watch, the magistrates sleep, the clergy lend at interest, the Syrians chant psalms, the merchants soldier, the soldiers trade, old men study ball-games, young men play at dice, eunuchs at arms, and the federate barbarians at letters. Look you what manner of city it is, where your household hearth is set—a city that could more easily have a territory than solid ground. Wherefore remember that the harmless dwellers beyond the Alps must be spared, who, content with the endowment of their own sky, are given no great glory if they shine bright only by comparison with worse. Farewell.
LETTER IX. Sidonius to his friend Heronius, greeting. After the nuptials of the patrician Ricimer—that is, after the wealth of both empires had been squandered—there was at last a return to public seriousness, which threw open the door and the field for transacting affairs. Meanwhile we, received into the household of Paulus, of prefectorial rank and venerable no less for learning than for sanctity, were courteously entertained with the offices of gracious hospitality. Indeed no man is more excellent than he in every kind of accomplishment. Good God, what riddles he frames in his propositions, what figures in his sentences, what neat phrases in his verses, what devices with his fingers! Yet in this he surpasses even the summit of all studies, that he possesses, above this eminent knowledge, a conscience still higher.
Therefore through him first of all I explore whether there is any access whatever to the court of favour: with him I confer as to which of the nobles could best avail to aid our hopes. Nor indeed was there much hesitation, since few were those about whose choice as patron one might be in doubt. There were indeed in the senate very many polished with wealth, exalted in birth, weighty in age, useful in counsel, elevated in dignity, affable in condescension: but, saving the honour of the rest, two most eminent men of consular rank, Gennadius Avienus and Caecina Basilius, were conspicuous above the others. These, in that most august order, the prerogative of the military party set aside, were easily, after the purple-clad prince, the chief men.
But even between these, though both were to be marvelled at, their characters were nevertheless diverse, and there was a likeness rather of temper than of talent. For I will say a few things somewhat more concisely about them. Avienus had come to the consulship by good fortune, Basilius by virtue. And so in Avienus a pleasant swiftness of dignities was extolled, in Basilius a slow abundance of them. Each indeed, if by chance they went forth from their homes, was hemmed in by a crowd of clients going before, following after, and thronging round: but far different, in men so alike, were the hopes and spirits of their retainers. Avienus, if he had any power, exerted himself in advancing his sons, sons-in-law, and brothers; and since he was always distracted by domestic candidates, he was less effectively efficacious in dispatching the needs of outside petitioners:
and in this the Decian house was preferred to the family of the Corvini, that such things as Avienus, while girt with office, obtained for his own kin, Basilius, ungirt of office, conferred on strangers. Avienus's mind opened itself to all, and quickly, but rather unfruitfully; Basilius's to few, and late, but more advantageously. Neither was of difficult access, neither of costly; but if you cultivated both, you would more easily obtain familiarity from Avienus, and a benefit from Basilius. Having long weighed these considerations on both sides, a mutual conference so tempered the matter that, the reverence due to the elder consular being reserved—into whose house we ventured not too rarely—we should rather attach ourselves to the throng of Basilius's frequenters.
And here, while through this most eminent man we were working out something concerning the petitions of the Arvernian embassy, lo, the Kalends of January arrived, which awaited the name of the consul Augustus, soon to be entered again upon the fasti. Then my patron said: 'Come now, my dear Sollius, although you are burdened with the weight of the office you have undertaken, I wish that in homage to the new consul you should bring forth your old Muse, singing something votive even with hasty strings. I will furnish the applicant with access, the reciter with encouragement, the one reciting with support. If you trust one who has tried, many serious advantages will be advanced for you by this sport.' I therefore obeyed his instructions: he did not withdraw his favour from what he had enjoined:
and as an unconquered supporter of the devotion imposed upon me, he prevailed with my consul to make me prefect of his senate. But you, unless I am mistaken, weary of the letter's prolixity, will now, I know, dwell more pleasurably on re-reading the verses of the little work itself; and on this account the loquacious paper carries in what follows the poem itself, which may in the meantime, for the few days until I come, converse with you on my behalf. And if the points of your judgment too be granted to it, it will be as gratifying to me as if, while I harangued in the comitium or among the rostra, at my 'bravo!' not only the applause of the broad stripe but also the din of the common folk were roused. Yet I advise, and forewarn, that you by no means equate the very sweepings of your Clio with my hexameters.
For deservedly, when set beside yours, my songs will be compared not with the trappings of heroic verse, but with the dirges of epitaph-writers. Yet nevertheless rejoice, that this very panegyric received, if not the judgment, at least the outcome of a good work. Wherefore, if forbidding things must be sweetened with jesting, I wish to conclude the page with a glorious, that is, a Thrasonian ending, in imitation of the Plautine Pyrgopolynices. Therefore, since by the aid of Christ I have arrived at the prefecture by occasion of my pen, do you at once command—by the authority of the belted man, all the acclamations of every praise being heaped up on every side—that my eloquence be borne to the stars if I please, or my good fortune if I displease. I seem to see you laugh, because you perceive our boastfulness rivalling that most ferocious soldier of Comedy.
Farewell. LETTER X. Sidonius to his friend Campanianus, greeting. I received your letter through the prefect of the annona, in which you commend to me, as to a new judge, your old comrade. I give him great thanks, and you the greatest, that you have both resolved concerning my friendship either to presume upon it as safe, or to trust it as inviolate. But I embrace the acquaintance and friendship of the man not only willingly, but eagerly, since I know that our favour too will be the more closely bound by this compliance of mine. But do you also commend to his vigilance the state and cause of my good name—that is, of my repute. I fear, moreover, lest the din of the theatrical benches should resound the hunger of the Roman people, and by my misfortune the public famine be laid to my charge.
Truly I am at once preparing to send this same man forthwith to the harbour, because I have learned that five ships setting out from Brundisium with cargoes of wheat and honey have touched the mouths of the Tiber. If he does anything with energy, he will hastily cause their cargoes to be offered to the expectation of the people, thereby commending himself to me, me to the people, and both of us to you. Farewell. LETTER XI. Sidonius to his friend Montius, greeting. You ask, most eloquent of men—as you are about to set out for your Sequani—that some satire or other, if it has been written out by me, be sent to you: which for my part I marvel that you should have requested. For it is not right that you should quickly think ill and amiss of a friend's character.
I was indeed about to brood over this theme, being now at that leisure, and having that time of life, when to have dictated it as a young man and one on military service would have been presumptuous, but to have published it would have been dangerous. For to what grammarian, even when he was but greeting him, did that Calabrian not say: 'If any man has composed evil verses against another, there is a right and a judgment against him'? But lest you should believe anything further of the like against your comrade, what that thing was which the rumour and smoke of a sinister opinion breathed upon me, I will set forth from its origin, a little more at length. In the times of the emperor Majorian, there came into common circulation a paper about the court, but lacking any indication of authorship, full of biting satiric verses: which indeed, having abused the nakedness of names in a truly invective manner, carped much at vices, more at men.
Amid all this the people of Arles—where the matter was being handled—murmured, and sought which of the poets the weight of the public frenzy might deservedly press upon, chiefly at the instigation of those authors whom an uncertain author had exasperated by certain marks. It happened by chance that Catullinus, then an illustrious man, came thither from the Arverni, being a friend both to me always and especially by reason of our recent fellowship in service. For often travel abroad makes citizens more friendly. Therefore both Paconius and Bigerus laid these snares for one who suspected nothing: that in the presence of very many they might inquire of him, as of an unwary man, whether he recognized this new poem. And he said: 'If you have named it, I will tell you.'
And when in vain they poured out various things, as though in jest, Catullinus dissolved into laughter, and with untimely approval began to cry out that it was a poem worthy to be received, to be perpetuated in gilded letters, upon the beaked or even the Capitoline tablet. Paconius flared up, upon whom that satirist had all the more eagerly pressed the bite of a fiery tooth; and to the bystanding gossip-mongers he said: 'Of the common injury I have now found the guilty party. Do you see how Catullinus is dying with laughter? It is plain that a familiar note is being recalled to him. For what cause compelled him to precipitate a hasty verdict, unless that he already holds the whole who judges thus of a part? And so Sidonius is now among the Arverni: whence it is gathered that, with him as author and this man as hearer, the thing was woven.'
They rush into fury, and into abuse of a conscience absent, unknowing, and innocent; nothing is reserved for the examination of the truth. Thus the man of the people, by his popular character, drew together the pliability of a fickle mob whithersoever he willed. For Paconius himself was wholly of the populace, one who with tribunician blasts would often drive the sea of seditions. Yet if you had inquired of his race and his home, he was born no more eminently than as a municipal; and whom, at the outset, the renown of his stepfather rather than of his father had caused to be known. Again and again, however, aspiring to grow through fair means and foul, and being sparing of money through avarice, prodigal of it through ambition,
For, in order that he might at least be joined by his daughter—however most honourable she was—to a family above his own, contrary to the strictness of civic custom our Chremes, as they say, had promised his Pamphilus a splendid dowry. And when the Marcellian conspiracy for seizing the diadem was being brewed, he had shown himself a standard-bearer among the youth of the nobility in the faction: a man still new in his old age, until at length, on account of his experiences of successful audacity, he gave to the obscurity of his birth the gleam of a gaping interregnum. For when the court was vacant and the commonwealth thrown into confusion, he alone was found who, daring to gird himself for the administration of the Gauls with the fasces before the codicils, ascended for many months as illustrious prefect the tribunal of the illustrious powers:
the year being completed, scarcely honoured about the very end of the final term of his service, after the manner of the accountants, or rather of the advocates, whose dignities begin only when their pleadings are finished. Therefore this man—a prefectorius so, a senator so (for that I do not fully pay the fitting praises of his character, I owe to the character of his kindred)—stirred up the hatreds of more than the good against me, while I was still ignorant, still a friend, as though I alone in my age had the power to sing in verse. I come to Arles, suspecting nothing as yet—for whence should I?—although I was thought by my enemies not likely to appear; and having seen the prince the day after, I go down into the forum as usual; which when it was seen, straightway the sedition, as he says, having dared nothing bravely, took fright.
Some, however, grovelled at my knees more than was seemly; others, lest they should salute me, fled behind the statues and hid behind the columns; others, sad and sullen, walked at my very side with their flanks joined to mine. Here I marvelled what this meant in these men—a form of excessive pride, in those, of humility—yet did not of my own accord inquire the causes, when one of the crowd of factious men, being suborned, presented himself to be saluted by me. Then, as the conversation proceeded, 'Do you observe this?' said he. And I: 'I see it,' said I, 'and I do indeed marvel at their behaviour, yet do not wonder at it.' To this our interpreter: 'They either execrate you as a satirist,' said he, 'or dread you.' 'Whence? When?' I replied; 'who has acknowledged the crime? Who has laid the charge? Who has proved it?'
And soon, smiling, 'Go on, friend,' said I, 'if it is not troublesome, and deign to consult in my name those who are swelling with rage, whether that informer or accuser who has fabricated that I wrote a satire will also fabricate that I published it: whence perchance it may be safer if they retract, that they may cease to be haughty.' And when the messenger reported this, straightway all of them, not modestly nor singly, but hastily and in a throng, gave me kisses and their right hands. Only my Curio, having inveighed against the perfidy of the deserters, when evening drew on, was carried off and brought home by his chair-bearing slaves, more grim than corpse-carriers. On the morrow Augustus commanded that we should be present at his banquet during the games of the circus.
First on the left horn reclined the consul ordinarius Severinus, a man ever equable in favour amid the vast upheavals of princes and the unequal state of the commonwealth. Next to him was Magnus, once ex-prefect, lately ex-consul, a personage doubled in his honours: behind him reclined Camillus, his brother's son, who, having himself also run through two dignities, had equally adorned his father's proconsulate and his uncle's consulate. On this side, close by, was Paeonius, and on that side Athenius, a man practised in the variety of lawsuits and of times. Him there followed Gratianensis, a man to be set apart from all infamy, who followed Severinus in honour just as he had preceded him in favour. Last of all I reclined, where the purple-clad prince's left side was extended along the right margin.
When a great part of the feasting was over, Caesar directed his speech to the consul, and that briefly; thence it rolled on to the ex-consul, with whom, being often repeated because it turned on letters, it was, as occasion offered, transferred to the illustrious Camillus, so far that the prince said: 'You truly have an uncle, brother Camillus, on whose account I congratulate myself on having conferred one consulate upon your family.' Then he, who was wishing for something similar, having found the moment, said: 'Not one, Lord Augustus, but a first.' With the loudest uproar—so that not even reverence for Augustus could withstand it—the saying was received. Thence, questioning Athenius about something or other, the imperial address passed over Paeonius who was interjected—whether by chance or by design, I know not.
When Paeonius had taken this ill, disgracefully, and—what was more disgraceful—answered though not addressed, Augustus smiled, as, with his authority preserved, he had given himself over to sociability, full of jest: through which laughter no less vengeance fell to Athenius than affront had befallen him. So that most wily old man collects himself, and, as he was ever inwardly consumed by the heat of shame that Paeonius should be preferred to him, said: 'I do not wonder, Augustus, if he tries to snatch from me the place of standing, who does not blush to invade yours of speaking.' And the illustrious Gratianensis said: 'Much scope is opened for satirists by this quarrel.' Here the emperor, turning his neck toward me, said: 'I hear, Count Sidonius, that you write satire.'
And I said, 'This I hear too, my Lord Prince.' Then he, but laughing, said, 'Spare us at least.' But I said, 'In that I refrain from what is unlawful, I spare myself.' After which he said, 'And what shall we do with those who provoke you?' And I: 'Whoever he is, my Lord Emperor, let him accuse me publicly. If we are refuted, let us pay the deserved penalties of the reproach: but if we have not implausibly disposed of the charges laid, I pray that, by the indulgence of your clemency, besides the wrong done to the law, I may write against my accuser what I will.' At this he himself, having caught sight of Paeonius, began by a nod to consult the man who was wavering, whether the condition pleased him. But when he, confounded, kept silent, and the prince consulted him as he blushed, he said: 'I grant your requests, if you seek this very thing forthwith in verse.'
'Be it so,' said I; and turning about, as though I were asking water for my hands, and delaying only so long as the swift attendants run round the circle of the couch, I gave back my elbow to the cushion. And the emperor: 'You had pledged that you would request in impromptu verses the licence of writing a satire.' And I: 'Whoso blames me for writing satire, most mighty prince, this I ask you to decree—let him either approve it or fear it.' There followed an uproar—except that to say so is boastfulness—equal to the Camillan one; which indeed not so much the dignity of the poem as the brevity of the time deserved. And the prince: 'I call God and the public state to witness that I will henceforth never forbid you to write whatever you wish, seeing that the charge fastened upon you can in no way be proved;'
At the same time it is a grave injustice that the sentence of one clad in the purple should be surrendered to these private feuds, so that an innocent and untroubled nobility should be imperiled by an uncertain charge on account of certain hatreds. When I myself, modestly and with bowed head, was rendering thanks for this verdict, the face of my accuser began to grow pale — a face upon which, a little before, sadness had succeeded to anger; and little was wanting but that they froze, as though bidden to offer their necks to the drawn blade. Scarcely after this, and a few other words, we rose. We had gone forward a little from the emperor's sight, and were still being wrapped in our cloaks, when the consul fell upon my breast, the men of prefectorian rank upon my hands, and that very friend of mine, while all pitied him again and again and abjectly, humbled himself:
so that I feared he might, by his supplication, stir up against me the odium which he had not roused by his accusation. At length, pressed by the entreaty of the assembled nobles, I said that he should know that nothing would be requited to his efforts in verse — that I would refrain from disparaging his conduct, if only he for his part would spare mine in future; for it ought to suffice that the charge of satire had won me fame and him infamy. In sum, my honored lord, I bore with him as one who was not so much a maintainer of calumny as a mutterer of it. But since satisfaction was made to me such that, for his guilt, so many summits and rights of powers and dignities were bowed before my breast, I confess that the beginning of such an affront was worth so much, whose end was glory. Farewell. LETTER ONE. Sidonius to his friend Ecdicius, greeting.
Your people of Auvergne now endure two evils at once. 'Which?' you ask: the presence of Seronatus, and your absence. Of Seronatus — of whose very name let me speak first — it seems to me that Fortune, as if foreknowing the future, made sport, just as, on the contrary, our forefathers called those battles than which nothing is fouler 'wars' (bella, as though 'fair'), and with like contrariety named those Fates that spared nothing the 'Sparers' (Parcae). The very Catiline of our age has returned, lately from Aturres, so that the blood and fortunes of the wretched, which the former had there in part poured out as a toast, this one might mix down to the last drop. Know that in him the spirit of a long-dissembled madness is being laid open day by day: openly he envies, abjectly he feigns, slavishly he plays the proud:
He imposes as a master, exacts as a tyrant, condemns as a judge, slanders as a barbarian; all day long he is armed by fear, fasting from avarice, terrible from greed, cruel from vanity; he ceases not both to punish thefts and to commit them at once; openly, with laughing cronies summoned, he belches out among citizens the talk of battles, among barbarians the talk of letters — letters which, not even sufficiently initiated in his first alphabet, he publicly dictates out of boastfulness and corrects out of shamelessness; everything he covets he 'acquires' as it were, neither paying the price (for he scorns it), nor accepting the deeds of purchase (for he despairs of them); in counsel he is silent, in the council he commands, in church he jokes, at the banquet he preaches, in the bedchamber he condemns, at the inquiry he dozes;
daily he fills the woods with fugitives, the villas with billeted 'guests', the altars with the accused, the prisons with clerics; exulting over the Goths, insulting the Romans, mocking the prefects, colluding with the accountants; trampling the Theodosian laws and putting forward the Theodorician, he hunts out old faults and new tributes. Therefore quickly unwind your delays, and whatever it is that holds you back, cut it off. The last liberty of your quivering citizens awaits you. Whatever is to be hoped, whatever to be despaired of, it is resolved that it be done with you in the midst, with you presiding. If there be no forces from the state, no garrisons, if there be — as rumor holds — none of the resources of the emperor Anthemius: the nobility has determined, on your counsel, either to give up their homeland or their hair. LETTER II.
Sidonius to his friend Domitius, greeting. You reproach me for being in the country, when I have rather ground to complain that you are now kept in the city. Already spring gives way to summer, and the sun, drawn toward its furthest lines, is stretched with wandering ray toward the Scythian pole. What here shall I say of the climate of our region? whose expanses the divine workmanship has so stretched out that we are the more subjected to the vapors of the western world. Why say more? The world has grown white-hot, the Alpine ice is dissolved, and the earth is inscribed with the gaping windings of parched fissures; the gravel lies squalid in the shallows, mud on the banks, dust on the fields, and the very water, wherever it flows unceasingly, grows faint with lingering course. Now the wave is not only warm, but is cooked;
and now, while one man sweats in linen, another in silk, you — muffled in a thick cloak without, swathed in bandages within, and moreover cramped in the hollow seat of the town of Camerinum, with your pupils pale not less from the heat than from fear — yawning, begin to expound, 'A Samian woman was my mother.' Why not rather, if anything wholesome is dear to your heart, swiftly withdraw from the panting straits of the city, and, eagerly joined to our company, cheat the dog-star's harshness in this most delightful retreat? If it please you, then, learn what is the situation of the estate to which you are called. We are at Avitacum; this is the name of the property, which, because it is my wife's, is sweeter to me than my father's. Here, God presiding, unless you fear some evil eye, I have concord with my household.
A mountain on the west, earthen though it be, yet steep, pours forth below itself lower hills as from a twin source, drawn off about four acres in breadth. But until the level ground fitting for the house opens as a forecourt, the sides of the slopes accompany the middle valley in straight tracts, right to the edge of the villa, which is extended with its fronts turned to the North and the South. The bath clings on the southwest to the roots of a wooded crag; and if the coppice-wood on the ridge be felled, it is thrust, by an almost spontaneous fall, in falling heaps into the mouth of the furnace. Hence rises the chamber of the hot water, which squares off with a corresponding equality of space to the adjoining anointing-room, save for the semicircle of the capacious basin: