Sidonius Apollinaris

“ Symmachus, in the last years of the fourth century, and Sidonius Apollinaris, some half-century later in the fifth century, were close imitators of Pliny. Their Letters have come down to us; and the popularity which they enjoyed in their own time, a popularity which has endured more or less in all succeeding ages, tells us what a powerful and enduring influence the correspondence of Pliny must have exercised over the old world of Rome. ”

“ We must believe that they were better than the Romanised nations whom they conquered, because the writers of those nations, Augustine, Salvian, and Sidonius Apollinaris, for example, say that they were such, and give proof thereof. Not good men according to our higher standard—far from it; though Sidonius’s picture of Theodoric, the East Goth, in his palace of Narbonne, is the picture of an eminently good and wise ruler. ”

“ Total Extinction Of The Western Empire.—Part II.
The pressing solicitations of the senate and people persuaded the emperor Avitus to fix his residence at Rome, and to accept the consulship for the ensuing year. On the first day of January, his son-in-law, Sidonius Apollinaris, celebrated his praises in a panegyric of six hundred verses; but this composition, though it was rewarded with a brass statue, seems to contain a very moderate proportion, either of genius or of truth. The poet, if we may degrade that sacred name, exaggerates the merit of a sovereign and a father ”

“ Kayser, præf. ix.) .
20 August., Epp., cxxxviii. Text quoted by Legrand d’Aussy, op. cit., p. 294.
21 Isidorus Pelusiota, Epp., p. 138; ed. J. Billius (Paris; 1585) .
22 See Arnobius, loc. cit.
23 Sidonius Apollinaris, Epp., viii. 3. Also Fabricius, Bibliotheca Græca, pp. 549, 565 (ed. Harles) . The work of Sidonius on Apollonius is unfortunately lost.
24 Amplissimus ille philosophus (xxiii. 7) . See also xxi. 14; xxiii. 19.
25 τι θεῶν τε καὶ ἀνθρώπου μέσον, meaning thereby presumably one who has reached the grade of being superior to man, but not yet equal to the gods. ”

“ Perhaps this singular adventure, which is marked with so many circumstances of truth and nature, was related by Attalus himself, to his cousin or nephew, the first historian of the Franks. Gregory of Tours 110 was born about sixty years after the death of Sidonius Apollinaris; and their situation was almost similar, since each of them was a native of Auvergne, a senator, and a bishop. The difference of their style and sentiments may, therefore, express the decay of Gaul; and clearly ascertain how much, in so short a space, the human mind had lost of its energy and refinement. ”

“ Sidonius Apollinaris, (l. v. epist. 9, p. 139, and Not. Sirmond. p. 58,) after stigmatizing the inconstancy of Constantine, the facility of Jovinus, the perfidy of Gerontius, continues to observe, that all the vices of these tyrants were united in the person of Dardanus. Yet the praefect supported a respectable character in the world, and even in the church; held a devout correspondence with St. Augustin and St. Jerom ”

“ It should seem that this trick of carrying people to Rome was attributed to the devil, by those conversant with his habits, in other centuries besides the nineteenth.
I have not here the means of looking at the work to which Pluquet refers; but if any of your correspondents, who live in more bookish lands than this, will do so, they may perchance obtain some clue to the original authorship of the lines; for in Sidonius Apollinaris I cannot find them. The only edition of his works to which I have the means of referring is the quarto of Adrien Perrier, Paris, 1609. ”

“ He is the patron saint of France and of the cities of Mainz and Würzburg. The Life by his disciple Sulpicius Severus is practically the only source for his biography, but it is full of legendary matter and chronological errors. Gregory of Tours gives a list of 206 miracles wrought by him after his death; Sidonius Apollinaris composed a metrical biography of him. ”

“ Nor can the practice of the Roman poets of making the metrical quantity of their mistress's feigned name answer precisely to that of the real one be alleged as an insuperable objection. We have already seen that Sidonius Apollinaris did not so consider it. In Ovid's case the great disparity of rank would have made it dangerous to adopt too close an imitation; not to mention that the title of Corinna would convey a compliment to Julia, as comparing her for wit and beauty to the Theban poetess. ”

“ Before the senate-house, in the forum, Boethius greeted him [Pg 40] with a speech. The German king admired the forum of Trajan, as the son of Constantine, 143 years before, had admired it. Statues in the interval had not ceased to adorn it. Romans and Franks, heathens and Christians, alike were there: Merobaudes, the Gallic general; Claudian, the poet from Egypt, the worshipper of Stilicho, in verses almost worthy of Virgil; Sidonius Apollinaris, the future bishop of Clermont, who panegyrised three emperors successively deposed and murdered. ”

“ Such an incident is not at all likely to have happened in the reign of either Nerva or Trajan, but it may well have occurred under Hadrian, who became emperor in A.D. 119. Hadrian himself was a patron of actors and artistes of every kind, and he was quite a person who might have taken offence at a supposed insult offered to one of his favourites. The words of Sidonius Apollinaris, in the sixth century, who says of Juvenal irati fuit histrionis exul, show how steadily the tradition of the banishment had maintained itself. ”

“ Alaric fell by the hand of his rival; and the victorious Frank was saved by the goodness of his cuirass, and the vigor of his horse, from the spears of two desperate Goths, who furiously rode against him to revenge the death of their sovereign. The vague expression of a mountain of the slain, serves to indicate a cruel though indefinite slaughter; but Gregory has carefully observed, that his valiant countryman Apollinaris, the son of Sidonius, lost his life at the head of the nobles of Auvergne. Perhaps these suspected Catholics had been maliciously exposed to the blind assault of the enemy ”

“ One man alone gives us that detailed information concerning the thoughts, characters, persons of the actors in the great drama which can make the dry bones of the chronologer live. This is Caius Sollius Apollinaris Sidonius, man of letters, imperial functionary, country gentleman, and bishop, who, notwithstanding much manifest weakness of character and a sort of epigrammatic dulness of style, is still the most interesting literary figure of the fifth century. ”

“ The Panegyric was pronounced at Lyons before the end of the year 458, while the emperor was still consul. It has more art than genius, and more labor than art. The ornaments are false and trivial; the expression is feeble and prolix; and Sidonius wants the skill to exhibit the principal figure in a strong and distinct light. ”

“ And now, to refresh us with a gleam of wholesome humanity after all these horrors, let us turn to our worthy West Goth cousins for a while. They have stopt cutting each other’s throats, settled themselves in North Spain and South France, and good bishop Sidonius gets to like them. They are just and honest men on the whole, kindly, and respectable in morals, living according to their strange old Gothic Law. But above all Sidonius likes their king—Theodoric is his name. A man of blood he has been in his youth: but he has settled down, like his people ”

“ On this memorable occasion, Sidonius, whose early ambition had been so fatally blasted, appeared as the orator of Auvergne, among the provincial deputies who addressed the throne with congratulations or complaints. 74 The calends of January were now approaching, and the venal poet, who had loved Avitus, and esteemed Majorian, was persuaded by his friends to celebrate, in heroic verse, the merit, the felicity, the second consulship, and the future triumphs, of the emperor Anthemius. Sidonius pronounced, with assurance and success, a panegyric which is still extant ”

“ They cannot, Sidonius and his friends, ignore as Ausonius and his friends did, that something is happening to the empire. The men of the fifth century are concerned at these disasters and they console themselves, each according to his kind. There are some who think it cannot last. After all, they say, the empire has been in a tight place before and has always got out of it in the end and risen supreme over its enemies. Thus Sidonius himself, the very year after they sacked the city; Rome has endured as much before--there was Porsenna, there was Brennus, there was Hannibal.... ”

“ But the power of bishops, ever growing [1759] since the days of Constantine, was throughout a powerful influence holding the various communities together, maintaining law and order, and doing much for the protection of their own people. A native of Lugudunum, the chief city of Gaul, Sidonius came of a noble and wealthy family, and his social position evidently helped him in his remarkable career. In 468 he was city prefect at Rome, barely eight years before Odovacar removed [427] the last of the titular Western emperors. ”

“ The well-known epigram of the Latin Anthology [156] expresses the attitude of mind:
Inter hails goticum, scap jah matjan jah drigkan
non audet quisquam dignos educere versus.
[26]
How can one write poetry, exclaims Sidonius, among people who put rancid oil on their hair? ‘The Muse of the six-foot metre has scorned her task, since the appearance of patrons seven feet high.’ [157] And to Philagrius he confesses: ‘barbaros vitas quia mali putentur: ego etiamsi boni’. [158]
How sensitive men of Sidonius’s class were to the charge of barbarism we may see from Avitus’s letter to Viventiolus. ”

“ Sidonius’s panegyric on Avitus procured him a statue in the forum of Trajan, [839] after his panegyric on Majorian (who had been nominated by Avitus’s murderer Ricimer) , he was admitted into the court and became a count, and when he performed the same service for Anthemius in 468 he was made prefect of Rome and president of the Senate; he tells us himself that he obtained the praefecture ‘sub ope Christi, styli occasione’. [840]
These were the rewards of the brilliant. But even the humblest grammarian enjoyed the emperor’s favour as a potential panegyrist. ”

“ All these sides of Christian education show an activity which corresponds to that of the pagan schools and outlives it. Sidonius’s letters present an interest in literature which is very often shallow, but never slack. He is continually sending round specimens of his literary efforts to his friends, and is assiduous in writing polished epitaphs [265] or inscriptions that will live on the plate if not in the memory of men. [266] There is one thing that his friends must never neglect, the reading of many books: ‘opus est ut sine dissimulatione lectites, sine fine lecturias’. ”

“ The door has to be broken open, and Sidonius is found lying to all appearances dead. A feather burnt under his nose produces slight signs of life; and when a good beating with the bar of the door is threatened, he at length rouses himself. Servants come in, and their different duties are described. They fall to quarrelling and become uproarious; and in the scuffle Sidonius is hurt. ”

“ He is more than man. I own in him the Eternal Creator, Redeemer, and Lord!”
“Yea,” said Sidonius to his friend Æmilius, “a great work hath been wrought out. Thus hath the parable of actual life led this zealous but half-taught youth to enter into the higher truth. Lucius will be none the worse priest for having trodden in the steps of Him who was High-priest and Victim. Who may abide strict Divine Justice, had not One stood between the sinner and the Judge? Thus ‘Mercy and Truth have met together; Righteousness and Peace have kissed each other.’”
THE CAT OF CAT COPSE ”

“ As he spoke this, he beheld a young man opposite, looking earnestly at him. He was a robust, hard-favoured fisherman, clad in a coarse frock. Apollonius, driven by his distresses, humbly besought this man's assistance, even with tears starting from his eyes. "Pity me," said he, "whomsoever thou art; pity a man stripped of all by shipwreck; one, to whom better days have been familiar, and who is descended from no ignoble family. But that you may know whom you succour, understand that I am a prince of Tyre, and that my name is Apollonius. ”

“ Sidonius was a not contemptible poet, and an interesting letter-writer. Like most literary men of his class he was given to what we call flattery; and this Ecdicius, of whom he made a sort of Dark Age Admirable Crichton, was his brother-in-law, an Emperor's son, and Count or Duke (the titles were often interchangeable) of the district. But it is fair to say that Gregory of Tours, the accepted historian of the period, and living only in the next century, makes the exploit over the Goths even more signal—for he reduces the troopers to ten. ”

“ All barbarians were not friendly giants, and the Visigoths next door, under their new king Euric, turned covetous eyes upon Auvergne. Sidonius had not been two years bishop of Clermont before he had to organize the defence of the city against their attack. The Avernians stood out gallantly; they would fight and they would starve, but they would defend this last stronghold of Rome in Gaul. But they were a small people; to resist successfully they must have help from Rome itself. ”