But if envy, deserving punishment, fans the flame of false accusation, in that very fact vengeance has already gone before the man assailed: namely that the impudent plaintiff, worn out by expense and by his journey, sweats over the discomforts of a suit rashly proposed; and this too at the sharpest onset of winter, amid the highest heaps of snow and crusts of ice. And that season, so far as concerns those who chase after lawsuits, is often indeed brief for a hearing, but always long for injury. Farewell. LETTER VII. Sidonius to his friend Simplicius, greeting. It is a common saying, 'you are urging on a runner,' when a man is asked to do what he was going to do even unasked. You may perhaps inquire to what end I set down these words in preamble. The bearer of this letter earnestly begs that he may carry a letter from me to you:
and since I had learned of his journey, he was in any case a man to be entreated to this very thing, even had he kept silent; for it was your love rather than any regard for the carrier that drew forth this service. Yet this very man reckons that he, who has rendered a favour, has deserved to receive one, although he has again and again obtained what he asked; but he scarcely recognizes the claims of friendship that bind us. Hence, though absent, I easily guess with what sudden amazement he will be struck, when, graciously admitted out of regard for me, he understands that he has demanded my page more idly than he will deliver it. I seem to see how, to a man not witty even to the point of provoking envy, all things will be new, when the stranger is invited to a home, the anxious man to conversation, the rustic to merriment, the poor man to a table.
And whereas here the common sort lives among crude fare and gorges of onions, there he will be treated with such courtesy as if until now he had been belching among Apician gluttons and Byzantine carvers of meat. Nevertheless, such as he is and however great, he has abundantly made me master of the service I vowed. But although persons of this kind are almost always contemptible, yet in cultivating friends by letters affection endures much loss, if it be called back from the practice of more frequent converse by the meanness of its carriers. Farewell. LETTER VIII. Sidonius to his friend Evodius, greeting. When the letter-carrier delivered your letter to me, one who confessed to certain friends that he was soon to set out for Toulouse at the king's command, we too were making for a country estate far removed from the town.
For my part, delayed at earliest morning, I could scarcely, with the tenacious throng of my escort, seize the occasion afforded by your page, so as to satisfy your charge at least as a wayfarer, at least as a rider. For at daybreak my household had gone ahead, to pitch our tent eighteen miles off, at which spot many conveniences await us for unloading our little bundles: a cold spring on a wooded hill, beneath it a field abounding in grasses, before our eyes a river well stocked with birds and much fish; and besides these, an old friend possessing a new house joined to the bank, to whose boundless kindness you could set no measure, whether you yield to it or refuse it.
So then, when our people had gone on before, and we had halted for your sake, in order that the boy might be sent back the more quickly even from the edge of the village, already two morning hours had passed, already the risen sun had drunk up the moisture of the dewy night with its swelling ray, heat and thirst were growing strong, and in the deep serenity the only thing to shield us against the heat was a cloud of dust. Then the length of the road, laid out for spectators across the green expanse of the open plain, was bemoaned by us, who for this very reason were to dine late; for even if it did not yet gall the travellers with toil, it already terrified them with expectation.
All these preliminaries, my lord and brother, tend to this: that I may prove to you that I was not much at leisure in mind, nor in body, nor in time, when I complied with your requests. Well then, to return now to the tenor of your letter: after the words which at first bore greetings, you asked this, that I should send you an epigram concluded in twelve verses, one that could be fitted to a capacious shell, which along either side of the handles, out to the utmost of the circle, is hollowed at the bottom of the disc with six flutings. Of these flutings, I suppose, you intend to inscribe single verses either on their swelling bellies, or, by a better plan, if that be more fitting, on their curving tops:
and, polished with this adornment, you plan to present it to Queen Ragnahilda, meaning thereby to prepare an unconquered patronage equally for your prayers and your undertakings. I serve your injunctions as best I can, though not as I would wish; but first pardon your own fault, you who granted more time to the silversmith than to the poet; since without doubt it is not hidden from you that within the workshop of men of letters, if the metrical anvil produce anything of song, it is polished no less with a strong and roughened file. But whither tend these things, or the like? Behold, sing now. 'The shell that on the fish-bearing Triton bears Cythera, let it not doubt to yield when matched with this. We ask thee, incline a little thy lordly summit: and, great patroness, accept a small gift.'
'And do not, in thy graciousness, spurn Evodius as thy client, whom by making great, thou too shalt be the greater. So may there be for thee, whose father, whose father-in-law and husband is a king, a son who is also a king, together with his father, and after his father. Happy the waters, that, enclosed by the gleam of metal, yet cherish a face brighter than their mistress. For when the queen deigns to bathe here her countenance, whiteness is sent into the silver from that face.' If you are so bound by love of me that you do not blush to write these trifles, conceal the author, being the more rightly secure on your own part. For in such a forum, or Athenaeum, your paper will be praised more than my writing. LETTER IX. Sidonius to his friend Industrius, greeting.
Lately I called upon Vettius, an illustrious man, and inspected his daily conduct most intimately and, as it were, at leisure. And since I found these things worthy of being known, I judged them not unworthy of being related. In the first place, that which we shall rightly set before his other praises, he keeps unspotted in his household a decorum equal to that of the master: to the old men useful, to the country folk complaisant, to the townsmen friendly, to friends obedient, and content with his patron; a table that feeds the guest no less than the client; great kindness, and greater sobriety. Those are lighter matters, that this very man of whom we speak, in the training, watching, and taking about of horses, dogs, and hawks, is second to none. Utmost elegance in his garments, refinement in each detail, splendour in the trappings; a stately gait, a serious mind;
the one asserts his public credit, the other his private dignity; a relaxation that does not corrupt, a rebuke that does not draw blood, and a severity of such a temper that it is not repellent, but grave. Amid these things, frequent reading of the sacred volumes; through which, while eating, he more often takes the food of the soul; he reads the psalms frequently, chants them more frequently, and by a new manner of living completes the monk, not under the cowl but under the general's cloak; he abstains from the flesh of wild beasts, yet takes his ease in the chase: thus, secretly and delicately religious, he uses the hunt, yet does not use the game. His only daughter, left small after his wife's death, he nourishes as the solace of his widowerhood with ancestral tenderness, motherly diligence, fatherly kindness.
Toward his own household, neither threatening in offering counsel, nor scornful in admitting advice, nor relentless in tracking down guilt, he governs the state and condition of his subordinates not by lordship but by judgment: you would think that he does not possess his own house, but rather administers it. Having observed the industry and temperance of the man, I thought it pertinent to the instruction of the rest as well, if a life such as his were made public to others, even superficially. To follow it, apart from the habit by which he is for the present placed within this world, all men of our profession would most usefully be spurred on. For — and let me say it with the leave of my order — if only single good qualities exist in single men, I admire the priestly man more than the priest. Farewell.
LETTER X. Sidonius to his friend Felix, greeting. I burst forth into a greeting, though a late one, my lord, being myself now for many years ungreeted; not daring to keep up the frequency of the old courtesy, after the adversities of exile broke me down, banished from the bounds of my native soil. Wherefore it is fitting that you too should pardon those who blush; since it befits the humbled to follow humble ways, and not to maintain with those men the same steadfastness of familiarity, toward whom it might chance to be presumptuous to bestow more of love than of reverence. For this reason, in fine, I have long been silent; and I received it more with patience than with pleasure that you too kept silence, when my son Heliodorus came hither: but you used to say, though in jest, that you were somewhat afraid, as it were, of my eloquence.
That excuse of yours, even had it been true, had passed away: for after finishing a little book which is somewhat too polished, I now weave the rest of my letters in the customary speech, though a more careful style is no better for me. For it is not worth so much to burnish formulae that will lack publication. But if you restore to your affection its former course of conversations, then we too shall return to the old paths of talkativeness. Besides this, eagerly, with Christ going before, wherever in the world you may be, only let the patron on his return grant it, we shall fly to you, that friendship may be quickened by deeds, which, unpractised in words, had grown numb. Farewell. LETTER XI. Sidonius to his friend Petreius, greeting.
The loss of my age grieves me exceedingly, now that your uncle Claudianus has lately been snatched from our eyes — I doubt whether they will hereafter behold any man his equal. For he was a man foreseeing, prudent, learned, eloquent, keen, and most ingenious concerning the temper, the place, and the people of his own land; who unceasingly philosophized without harm to religion; and although he did not let his hair and beard grow, and now mocked, now even cursed the philosopher's cloak and staff, yet from the company of the fellow-Platonists he was set apart by habit and by faith alone. Good God! what a thing that was, as often as we came together to him for the sake of consultation alone. How readily he laid open the whole matter to all at once, not hesitating, not disdaining! reckoning it a most delightful thing,
if perchance some insoluble difficulty of certain questions had arisen, that the labyrinthine treasures of his knowledge should be poured forth. Now if we had sat down in numbers, he assigned to all the duty of listening, but to one alone, whom perchance we had chosen, the right of speaking: about to dispense the riches of his teaching man by man, and each in turn, not in tumult, nor without some artful gesture of a figure. Then whatever he had said, we straightway received with the contradictions of resisting syllogisms. But he repelled the rash oppositions of us all. And so nothing was accepted that had not been weighed and proved. Hence too there was for him among us the greatest reverence, in that he did not too impatiently bear a sluggish complaisance in any.
This, in his eyes, was a pardonable fault: whence it came about that his patience was praiseworthy for us without imitation. For who would consult unwillingly a man about hidden matters, from partaking in whose discussion not even the inquiry of the ignorant and unskilled was rejected? So much for his studies. But as for the rest, who could extol it with fitting proclamation? that, mindful of the human condition in all things, he comforted the clergy by his work, the common people by his speech, the mourning by exhortation, the destitute by consolation, the captives by ransom, the hungry by food, the naked by covering. Likewise I judge it superfluous to unfold more upon these matters. For his merits, by which, impoverished in wealth, he enriched a conscience made rich, he piously strove to conceal in the hope of future recompense.
His elder brother, a bishop, he most affectionately regarded, whom he loved as a son while venerating him as a father. But the other too looked up to him greatly, having in him a counsellor in judgments, a deputy in the churches, a procurator in affairs, a steward on the estates, an accountant in the taxes, a companion in readings, an interpreter in expositions, a tent-mate on journeys. Thus by each to the other, even to the point of an enviable example, the ripe offices of brotherhood in good faith were rendered. But why, meaning to moderate our grief, do we rather furnish fuel for grief from its very causes?
So then, as we had begun to say, for him — as is that Virgilian phrase, 'to ungrateful ash,' that is, to one who will render no thanks — we composed a sad and mournful dirge, with almost painful labour, because disuse of composing made the task difficult: save that grief, heavy with weeping, kindled a mind by nature most slothful. This is his poem: 'The glory and grief of Mamertus, his brother, the singular pomp of admiring bishops, this sod covers the limbs of Claudianus. Under whose mastership the threefold library — Roman, friendly (Greek), and Christian — shone bright: which whole, as a monk in his green age, he drank in by secret discipline. Orator, dialectician, poet, expositor, geometer, and musician,
skilled to loose the bonds of questions, and with words as with a sword to cut through the sects, if any assail the catholic faith. He, the modulator and precentor of the psalms, before the altars, his brother rejoicing, taught the arrayed choirs to sound. He prepared for the yearly festivals what readings might suit each season. He was a prelate in the second rank, relieving his brother, the bishop, of his burden. For of the pontifical honours, by the tenure of the highest, the one took the insignia, the other the labour. But as each of you grieves, friendly reader, that of so great a man almost nothing survives, spare to wet the marble with weeping cheeks; his mind and glory cannot be buried.' Behold the poem which, when I first was present, I inscribed over the bones of my like-minded brother. For I was absent when he was buried;
nor for this reason, however, did I altogether lose the most longed-for occasion of weeping. For while I chanced to be meditating, I loosed the reins to my tears, my soul bringing them to birth; and I made for an epitaph what others had made for a tomb. This, then, I have written to you, lest perchance you should suppose that we cherish only the fellowship of the living, and were in your judgment such, did we not always remember our friends bereft of life, equally as the living. For even from this, that scarcely is an imaginary fidelity preserved even for survivors, you will not think beyond reason, if you conjecture that they are very few who love the dead. Farewell. LETTER XII. Sidonius to his friends Simplicius and Apollinaris, greeting. Good God!
how like the storm-tossed sea is the movement of our minds, since indeed by the adverse whirlwinds of messengers it is confounded as by a storm of its own. Lately I and our common son were chewing over the wit of Terence's 'Hecyra': I sat beside him as he studied, mindful of my nature and forgetful of my profession. And that he might follow the comic rhythms the more fully with quickened aptitude, I myself also had in my hands a play of similar argument, that is, the 'Epitrepontes' of Menander. We read together, we praised, we jested: and — such are common wishes — the reading captivated him, he captivated me; when suddenly a household boy stood by, with a woeful look: to whom we said, 'Why so?'
And he said, 'I saw the reader Constans by name before the doors, returning from the lords Simplicius and Apollinaris; he delivered,' said he, 'the letters which he had received, but lost those which he was given in return.' On learning this, the serenity of my joy at once grew foul with the clouding of an overspreading gloom: and the contrariety of this news stirred up in me such great bile, that for very many days I inexorably forbade that most stupid blockhead himself to come before my eyes; being ready to bear it ill if he did not deliver to me letters, of whatever kind or from whomsoever — I say nothing of yours, which, as long as my mind keeps command of the right, though rare, will be judged by me most to be desired.
But after our anger, by the interval of time, had gradually subsided, I inquired whether anyone had reported anything besides by word of mouth. He himself replied — though he was trembling and grovelling, and from his guilt stammered with his lips and was blinded in his gaze — that everything by which I might be instructed or delighted had been entrusted to the pages that had been lost. Wherefore, run back to your tablets, unfold your parchments, and rewrite what was written. For I so long admit with equanimity that a sinister outcome should stand in the way of my desire, until there reach you by our speech the news that your speech did not reach us. Farewell. LETTER XIII. Sidonius to his friend Vettius, greeting. Lately, at the request of Germanicus, a man of rank, I inspected the church of Cantilena.
He himself is easily the first of those settled there; and who, though he is now passing his twelfth lustrum, yet daily, with his breath and appearance conspicuous, not only does not grow young, but in a manner grows young again. For indeed his dress is close-fitting, his buskin taut, his hair cut back to the pattern of a wheel, his beard, plunged within the recesses of his wrinkles, trimmed to the skin with the shears; to this too, by the gift of heaven, the solid conjunction of his limbs, his sight unimpaired, his stride ample in swift progress, his gums milk-white with the unspoiled framework of his teeth. His stomach does not nauseate, his vein is not inflamed, his heart is not shaken, his lung does not gasp, his loin is not stiff, his liver does not swell, his hand does not grow soft, his spine is not bent;
but, endowed with youthful health, he claims for himself from old age reverence alone. On account of these special benefits of God, since the great claims of friendship are strong for you, being neighbours, I beseech and admonish that, by your counsel — to which, by following it, he grants great, nay the greatest, authority through his conscience — he trust not much to uncertain things, nor credit too much his too-great soundness: but at length, having laid hold of the profession of religion, let him grow strong rather by the powers of a resurgent innocence, and let a man old in years make himself new in merits. And since there is scarcely anyone who lacks punishable hidden faults, let him too, concerning those things which he remembers were secretly committed, be absolved by satisfaction openly poured out.
For a priest's father, and a pontiff's son, unless he be holy, becomes like a bramble; which, though born of roses and bringing forth roses, and set midmost among flowers begotten and begetting, is walled about by the roughness of thorns to be compared with piercing sins. Farewell. LETTER XIV. Sidonius to his friend Polemius, greeting. Gaius Tacitus, one of your ancestors, a consular of Ulpian's times, under the words of a certain German commander in his history reported, saying: 'With Vespasian I had an old friendship, and while he was a private man, we were called friends.' To what does this preface tend, you ask? Namely, that you may remember that, at the time when you bear a public person, you ought ever to be mindful of a private favour.
Nearly two years are drawing to a close, during which we rejoice in you as praetorian prefect of the Gauls, not by your new advancement, but by our affection still of old. If the adversity of Roman affairs allowed it, we should bear it with difficulty, unless individual persons — I will not say provinces — were enlarged by various benefits through you. And now, since that which your power does not have, modesty does not ask for: I should wish you to say how you would have been kindly in deeds, who continue miserly in words. For, compared to the skill of your people, you can surpass not only the Cornelii as orators, but the Ausonii too as poets. If a new glory suddenly seizes you, hitherto a philosopher, on account of your jurisdiction, then we too have borne some name and honour.
But if the humility of our profession is to be held in contempt, because for Christ, who is to heal human affairs and lives, we lay bare our squalid ulcer with the knife of a double conscience: which, even if in the men of our order there still reeks somewhat of negligence, yet swells no longer with pride: I would have you know that it is not with the judge of the world as it is before the prelate of God. For as he who has not kept silent his own disgraceful deeds to you is condemned; so with us, he who has confessed the same to God is absolved. Whence it plainly appears that a man is very unfittingly pronounced guilty by your side, whose cause looks rather to another tribunal. Wherefore you will by no means be able further to pour out the impending complaint of our grief;
because, when prosperity succeeds, whether you forget or neglect the old favour, it is equally bitter. Accordingly, if you weigh future things as great, write to the cleric; if present things, write to the colleague. And cultivate this virtue in yourself, if it is natural; if not, apply it as grafted; whereby you may never disdain old comrades for the novelty of those who come after. But further, you will be seen to use friends thus as flowers, pleasing so long as fresh. Farewell. LETTER XV. Sidonius to his friend Elaphius, greeting. Prepare a manifold banquet, and most capacious couches for the feast; from many roads, with many throngs, men come to you; so it has settled in the company of the good: since indeed the time of the coming dedication has become clear to all.
For you write that the baptistery which you were once constructing can now be consecrated. To these festivals your vow, our ministry and duty, summons many, but the cause of faith summons all of us wholly. Since indeed it is a matter of great example, that at such a time new summits of churches should be built by you, when scarcely another would dare to patch up old ones. As for what remains, we pray that, as you render your vows to our God through fruitful years, so you may vow things to be rendered: and that not only by religion kept hidden, but by conversion made manifest; and, with the condition of the times softened, may Christ grant to my desire as much as to that of the Ruthenians; that you may be able to offer sacrifices also for those who already offer altars for you.
For the rest, although late autumn already shortens the day, and rings round the anxious ears of travellers with a rustling crackle, as the leaves fall throughout the whole grove; and the fortress to which you invite, being girt as it is with Alpine crags, is climbed with more difficulty in the neighbourhood of the winter cold; we nevertheless, with God going before, coming along the rugged flanks of your mountains, shall dread neither the underlying rocks nor the overhanging snows: although the deep declivity of the ridges must often be traversed again by a spiralling shattered bank; because, even if there were no festival, you are yourself worthy enough — as is that Tullian saying — as one for whose sake Thespiae is visited. Farewell. LETTER XVI. Sidonius to his friend Ruricius, greeting.
I received through Paterninus your page, of which it is uncertain whether it has more of honey or of salt. Moreover it displays such abundance of eloquence, gives off such flowers, that it well appears you profit not only by open, but also by stealthy reading (of Curtius). Although even this theft which you deprecate — of a copied booklet — ought to look for glory rather than pardon. For what would you do without merit, you who do not commit even sins themselves without praise? But I indeed gladly hear whatever fraud has been imposed upon me, being as it were absent, and embrace it as a chief boon, seeing that I have in some way borne a loss without loss. For neither, because it accrued to your use, did it depart from our property;
nor did you come to the increase of your own knowledge through the loss of another's. Nay rather, you yourself will henceforth not lack rich proclamation by right; you who, with fiery genius, have becomingly imitated the nature of fire, from which, if you wish to take away anything, the whole that is transferred remains entire. Whence now cease to tremble, and to believe somewhat contrary to right concerning a friend's character. For in this deed the wound of fault sooner defiles us, if the stroke of envy should strike. Farewell. LETTER XVII. Sidonius to his friend Arbogastes, greeting. Your friend Eminentius, my greater lord, presented to me the lettered letters which you yourself dictated, filled with the adornment of a threefold shining grace:
of which virtues the first is assuredly love, which compelled you to deem us worthy of humble regard, though we are strangers, or now desiring to lie hidden: then modesty, at whose prompting, while you undeservedly tremble, you are deservedly extolled; the third, urbanity, whereby you most wittily allege that you play the fool, and, filled with the Quirinal fountain of eloquence, a drinker of the Moselle, you belch forth the Tiber: thus familiar with barbarians, yet ignorant of barbarisms; equal to the ancient generals in tongue and hand — but to those whose right hand was wont to ply the pen no less than the sword. Wherefore the pomp of Roman speech, if any anywhere still is, once abolished from the Belgic or Rhenish lands, has settled in you:
with which, whether while you are safe or while you plead, even though at the very frontier the Latin laws have fallen, your words do not stumble. Wherefore, repaying your greeting in turn, I greatly rejoice that at least in your illustrious breast the traces of vanishing letters have remained: which, if you continue by frequent reading, you will find day by day, that as far as men excel the beasts, so far are the instructed to be preferred to the boorish. As for your wish, indeed, that concerning spiritual pages I, a presumptuous interpreter, should prattle something, these things will more justly be demanded of priests near at hand in place, advanced in age, illustrious in faith, renowned in work, ready in speech, tenacious in memory — of those, in short, the more pre-eminent in every gift of sublime merits.
For — to leave aside the bishop of your city, a most consummate man, near to the blessed both in the conscience and the fame of all virtues — far more opportunely, concerning whatsoever questions, the renowned fathers and chief hierophants of the Gauls are consulted for you: Lupus, placed not too far off, and Auspicius, not a little near at hand; whose doctrine, abounding to be poured out, not even your consultation suffices. Accordingly, that on this part of your entreaties I have not complied, pardon kindly, but also justly: because, if it is right for you to flee inexperience, it also becomes me to avoid ostentation. Farewell. LETTER XVIII. Sidonius to his friend Lucontius, greeting. You forget what you are asked, and on the contrary, if you enjoin anything, you remember to demand it back to the last farthing.
It is a long story, concerning the speedy return which you and yours promised to me and mine: of all which not even the least parts have been fulfilled. Nay rather, when you were contriving flight from us — so that we might suppose you were to return for the holy Passover — no heavy baggage was led from the town to the estate, no wagons, no carriages were dragged up for conveying loads. And that I may complain of no fraud on the matronly side, whom you took away with your baggage light, you and our common brother Volusianus were scarcely attended by an escort of single clients and boys: whereby you soon cheated the solicitude of your followers with the barrier of a hope of soon returning;