Delphi Complete Works of Sidonius Apollinaris Read online

  The Complete Works of

  SIDONIUS

  (c.430-489 AD)

  Contents

  The Translations

  POEMS

  LETTERS

  The Latin Texts

  LIST OF LATIN TEXTS

  The Dual Text

  DUAL LATIN AND ENGLISH TEXT

  The Biographies

  INTRODUCTION TO SIDONIUS by W. B. Anderson

  SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS by Henry Wace

  The Delphi Classics Catalogue

  © Delphi Classics 2017

  Version 1

  The Complete Works of

  SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS

  By Delphi Classics, 2017

  COPYRIGHT

  Complete Works of Sidonius Apollinaris

  First published in the United Kingdom in 2017 by Delphi Classics.

  © Delphi Classics, 2017.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form other than that in which it is published.

  ISBN: 978 1 78656 383 5

  Delphi Classics

  is an imprint of

  Delphi Publishing Ltd

  Hastings, East Sussex

  United Kingdom

  Contact: [email protected]

  www.delphiclassics.com

  The Translations

  Lyon (ancient Lugdunum), a city in east-central France — Sidonius’ birthplace. His father Apollinaris was the Prefect of Gaul under Valentinian III.

  The Ancient Theatre of Fourvière, Lyon

  POEMS

  Translated by W. B. Anderson

  The poet, diplomat and bishop, Gaius Sollius Modestus Apollinaris Sidonius, better known as Saint Sidonius Apollinaris (c. 430-489 AD), was born in Lugdunum (Lyon). There are only two extant works by Sidonius: his poetry and nine books of letters. The poems are written in the form of panegyrics, concerning different emperors (largely drawing upon the models of Statius, Ausonius and Claudian) and detailing several important political events. Of particular note is Carmen 7, which is a panegyric written to his father-in-law Avitus on his inauguration as emperor. Carmen 2 is a panegyric to the emperor Anthemius, revealing Sidonius’ efforts to be appointed Urban Prefect of Rome. As well as three long panegyrics, there are shorter poems addressed to or concerned with friends, apparently written in Sidonius’ youth.

  Tremissis of Emperor Anthemius (c. 420-472), who was Western Roman Emperor from 467 to 472. He is regarded as one of the last capable Western Roman Emperors.

  CONTENTS

  I. PREFACE TO THE PANEGYRIC IN HONOUR OF THE EMPEROR ANTHEMIUS, CONSUL FOR THE SECOND TIME

  II. PANEGYRIC

  III. TO HIS LITTLE BOOK

  IV. PREFACE TO THE PANEGYRIC PRONOUNCED IN HONOUR OF THE LORD EMPEROR, IULIUS VALERIUS MAIORIANUS, CAESAR AUGUSTUS

  V. PANEGYRIC

  VI. PREFACE TO THE PANEGYRIC ADDRESSED TO THE EMPEROR AVITUS

  VII. PANEGYRIC

  VIII. TO PRISCUS VALERIANUS, OF PREFECTORIAN RANK

  IX. TO FELIX

  X. PREFACE TO THE EPITHALAMIUM OF RURICIUS AND HIBERIA

  XI. EPITHALAMIUM

  XII. TO CATULLINUS, SENATOR

  XIII. TO MAJORIAN XIII TO THE EMPEROR MAJORIAN

  XIV. SIDONIUS TO HIS FRIEND POLEMIUS, GREETING

  PREFACE TO THE EPITHALAMIUM ADDRESSED TO POLEMIUS AND ARANEOLA

  XV. EPITHALAMIUM

  XVI. THANKSGIVING TO BISHOP FAUSTUS

  XVII. TO OMMATIUS, SENATOR

  XVIII. ON THE BATHS OF HIS COUNTRY HOUSE

  XIX. ON HIS SWIMMING-BATH

  XX. TO HIS BROTHER-IN-LAW ECDICIUS

  XXI. FISH CAUGHT AT NIGHT

  XXII. SIDONIUS TO HIS FRIEND PONTIUS LEONTIUS, GREETING

  XXIII. TO CONSENTIUS

  XXIV. L’ENVOI

  A coin of Majorian (c. 420-461), who was the Western Roman Emperor from 457 to 461. A prominent general of the Late Roman army, Majorian deposed Emperor Avitus in 457 and was one of the last emperors to make a concerted effort to restore the Western Roman Empire.

  I. PREFACE TO THE PANEGYRIC IN HONOUR OF THE EMPEROR ANTHEMIUS, CONSUL FOR THE SECOND TIME

  WHEN nature established the young Jupiter above the stars and the new god was entering upon an ancient sovereignty, all the deities vied in paying worship to their deity, and uttered in diverse measures the same “bravo.” Mars with trumpet’s blare acclaimed his sire and with thunderous din praised the thunderbolts. The Arcadian and the Archer God sounded the clanging strings, the one more skilled to strike the zither, the other the lyre. Castalia’s maiden band gave forth their plaudits in varied strains with songs, reeds, thumb, voice and foot. But after the denizens of heaven, ’tis said, the god brooked even the inferior chants of demigods; then Dryads in union with Fauns, Mimallones with Satyrs, a rustic multitude, poured forth a sprightly song. The Pans that sound the hemlock-reed left high Maenalus, and after the lyre the hoarse pipe pleased Jove’s ears. Amid this throng Chiron, dancing to the sounding quill, moved his ungainly horse-limbs elegantly, and that beast-man earned a hearing and found grace even though he neighed in the midst of his singing.

  So tongues rich and poor made an acceptable offering, and the greatest tribute in that day’s sacrifice was song. In like manner, O Caesar, chiefest hope of our time, I come after great lords and offer thee humble incense, boldly singing my lay in presence of the learned Victor, who is wont to speak either with the voice of Phoebus or with thine, and who, though he is quaestor in thine everlasting court, shall everlastingly be my master. So, my prince, let offering of diverse utterance pay worship to thee; for thou makest our hearts new temples for thy habitation.

  II. PANEGYRIC

  RAISE up, Augustus, thy second fasces, seconded by Fortune; gleaming with mass of gold upon thy robe do thou, an old consul, begin the new year, and deem it no disgrace to grace the roll of office twice with thy name. Although thou walkest with a diadem surmounting thy hair and thy shoulders are covered by a Tyrian mantle after the fashion of thy predecessors, yet may the bright purple of the consul’s gown charm thee more; for repeated consulships have from all time been rare. And thou, Janus, to whom a laurel wreath is due every year, dispel thy lethargy, bind thy locks with any foliage; and be not affrighted by the sudden radiance of our prince, nor deem that the elements are in upheaval. Nature is making no change; this day’s Sun also has come from the East.

  This, my Lords, is the man for whom Rome’s brave spirit and your love did yearn, the man to whom our commonwealth, like a ship overcome by tempests and without a pilot, hath committed her broken frame, to be more deftly guided by a worthy steersman, that she may no more fear storm or pirate. The country-dweller’s prayer, the goodwill of the leagued peoples, the trumpet in the camp, the plaudits in the senate-house all called for thee; for thee have the tribes recorded their suffrages, and thy colleague hath consigned thee to us and the sovereignty to thee: all the votes that the whole world can muster are for thee. I confess we were all sore disquieted lest thine honest colleague should commit to thine own decision what all the people had decided. Will future generations believe it? — to ensure, O Prince, that this complete power over us should be thine, full power over thyself was denied thee. Augustus Leo, thou dost surpass the deeds of thy forerunners; for he who can command a man to reign towers above regal power. Now your government shall be more perfectly one, having thus become a government of two.

  All hail to thee, pillar of sceptred power, Queen of the East, Rome of thy hemisphere, n
o longer to be worshipped by the eastern citizen alone, now that thou hast sent me a sovereign prince — O home of Empire, and more precious in that thou appearest before the world as Empire’s mother! The land of the Thracians, whereon Rhodope and Haemus rest, is thine, a region fruitful of heroes. Here children are born into a world of ice, and their native snow hardens the soft limbs of infants even from the mother’s womb. Scarce anyone is reared at the breast; rather is he dragged from the maternal bosom to suck from a horse through a wound; thus deserting milk the whole race drinks in courage. They have grown but a short time, and anon they play at battle with javelins; this sport is prompted by the wounds that suckled them. The boys, gifted hunters, clear the dens of their beasts; the young men, enriched with plunder, honour the laws of the sword; and when their old age has reached its fullness not to end it with steel is a disgrace. Thus do these countrymen of Mars order their lives. But thou, surrounded by the sea, dost imbibe a tempered blend of Europe’s and Asia’s air, commingled from two sides; for the Thracian blasts of Aquilo are gradually softened by the breath of Eurus’ trumpet, wafted from Calchis hard by. Meanwhile Susa trembles before thee, and the Persian of Achaemenes’ race in suppliant guise inclines his crescent-tiara. The Indian, with hair steeped in fragrant balm, disarms for thy profit the throat of his land’s wild denizens, that he may make payment of curved ivory; thus the elephant takes home ingloriously a mouth shorn of the tribute yielded to the Bosphorus. Thou dost spread out a great city of spacious walls, yet doth the multitude therein make its bounds too narrow; so the sea is invaded with massive masonry and new land cramps the old waters; for the dusty sand of Puteoli is brought thither and made solid by entering the water, and the hardened mass bears upon it imported plains amid an alien flood. Thus art thou ordered; on all sides thou beholdest harbours, and, walled in as thou art by the sea, thou art surrounded by all the blessings of earth. Right fortunate art thou in having shared Rome’s triumphs, and now we regret it no longer; farewell to the division of the empire! The two sides of the balance are poised; by taking over our weights thou hast made all even.

  A citizen from such a city, thou shinest also with the lustre of thy father Procopius, whose ancient lineage springs from imperial ancestors, a man whom no eloquence could worthily celebrate — not even if from Avernus that bard should arise who once with his song swayed rocks and with his tuneful fingers impelled the woods to hasten, all ears, to the sounding quill, while the waters of Hebrus stood still and, its flow held fast, the waves of the entranced river were strangely athirst for song.

  To him once in his youth was committed the restoring of peace with Assyria. The Parthian was amazed that he had no power to withstand the aged wisdom of those youthful years. Every satrap that sat below the king faltered in terror, so strongly had the envoy’s genius gripped them. The Median realms trembled, and Babylon, that had not closed her gates against the serpent-born foe, now at last thought herself too widely opened. Then when a treaty had been established between them on new terms, recited by Procopius to the Magi, they took oath by their gods, fire and water, and he called his divine ancestors to witness that the bargain should be upheld. An aged Chaldaean over a victim’s entrails, in the manner of the pontiffs, muttered the mystic words, and the king himself, holding a jewelled bowl, stooped and poured out cups over the incenseburning altar. When the envoy returned, the eminence of a twofold honour welcomed him; Patrician now and Master of Horse and Foot, he was set in command of camps where he must needs hold the barriers of Taurus and force the roaming Ethiopians over the border by the terror of war and behold Orontes with calmed flood subservient to his will.

  His wife’s father was Anthemius, who, as prefect and likewise consul, ordered peoples by his judgments and the year by his name. Men of the purple are ever attended by Fortune with purple ready to bestow; the only change that happens to them is that he who was consul becomes sovereign. But I pass over all the others: come thou to my lyre, thou whose hair frayed by the warrior’s helmet came to wear the diadem, thou who hast laid aside the breastplate to receive the glowing purple of a Caesar, and whose hand hath been emptied of the sword to be filled with the sceptre. Thy cradle gleamed with tokens of imperial power, and the prophetic earth, altering her progeny, gave promise of a golden age. They tell how, at thy birth, honey appeared, making rivers flow tardily with sweetened waters, and oil ran through the amazed mills while the olive-berry still hung upon the bough. The plain brought forth without seed a waving crop and the vine-branch looked grudgingly on the grapes brought into being without her. Roses blushed red in winter and lilies scorning the cold mocked the surrounding frosts. When Lucina is bringing such a birth to fulfilment the order of the elements gives way and a changed world gives assurance of coming sovereignty. Thus does nature declare that blessed gods have arrived. Flames played lovingly round the childish locks of the staunch lulus; Astyages, fated to be dethroned by his grandson Cyrus, shuddered to see the grape-clusters spreading from the vine that grew from the womb; the mother-wolf gave suck to the untroubled Quirinus; Julius came into the world whilst a laurel blazed; Alexander the Great and Augustus are deemed to have been conceived of a serpent god, and they claimed between them Phoebus and Jupiter as their progenitors; for one of them sought his sire near the Cinyphian Syrtes, the other rejoiced that from his mother’s marks he was deemed the offspring of Phoebus, and he vaunted the imprints of the healing serpent of Epidaurus. Many have been encircled by eagles, and a quick-formed ring of cringing plumage has playfully figured the crown that was to come. But as for this prince of ours, illustrious Lords, right early might it be known that he was destined for the sceptre, when it came to pass that in his father’s house a severed vine-branch brought forth shoots no longer its own. That was the spring-time of his sovereignty; in the guise of leafage happy omens burgeoned along that withered branch. But when the early years of infancy were past he would clamber over his father’s armour, and gripping with his two forearms the neck pressed by the close-fitting metal he would loosen the helmet and find an entrance for his livid kisses. In boyhood it was his sport to handle eagerly arrows that had been seized from the foe, and on captive bows to force the resisting strings on to the curving horn, or to hurl with boyish arm the quivering javelin, or with a leap to throw upon the back of a chafing steed all his weight of steel chain-armour and heavy lance; or at other times to find and chase the wild beasts, to seek them in their leafy lurking-places and, when he espied them, sometimes to enclose them in a tight net, sometimes to pierce them with cast of spear. Then would he oft be cheered with great noise by his comrades, as with gnashing teeth the beast received the steel and the weapon entered and passed clean through the shoulders. Now hide thy Thessalian honours, scion of Aeacus, high-mettled boy and hunter — though, as thou didst bestride thy master’s compliant back, and so traverse the haunts of beasts in safety, it was rather thou that wert controlled by thy steed. Even Paean Apollo did not aim his shafts better than our prince, as the god stood over Python and, sore distressed, with quiver wellnigh emptied, pierced those numerous coils with innumerable weapons.

  And amid all these doings he busied himself no less in hearkening to the lore of ancient sages; how Thales, that son of Miletus, condemned all lawsuits, how Cleobulus of Lindus sings “Let moderation be our ideal,” how Periander of Corinth practises everything, how Athenian Solon keeps his eye wisely fixed on life’s end, how Bias of Priene deems the wicked to be the majority, how Pittacus, native of Lesbos, advises to mark well the opportune time, and how Chilon of Lacedaemon would have all men know themselves. Moreover, he learned new doctrines of divers schools — whatsoever in the Scythian land Anacharsis praised, all the gain that Sparta got with Lycurgus for her law-giver, all that the company of Cynics debates in the Erechthean gymnasium, copying the disciples of Epicurus; all that the two Academies loudly proclaim, affirming naught to be true; all the wisdom that Cleanthes has won with much biting of nails; the tears of Heraclitus, the laughter of Democritus, or the si
lence of Pythagoras; whatsoever teaching Plato’s intellect, which dwelt in the citadel, sets forth in triple array; or again, the snares that Aristotle, dividing speech into its members, sets for us with his syllogistic reasoning; and also whatever has been bestowed by Anaximenes, Euclid, Archytas, Zeno, Arcesilas, Chrysippus and Anaxagoras, and by the soul of Socrates as it lives after his death in the Phaedo, a soul that recked naught of the huge fetters on his wasted leg, while death’s self trembled before the prisoner and the executioner’s hand was pale as it proffered the poison, though the master’s heart was untroubled. Besides these he was wont to range through all that antiquity strove to inscribe on Latin pages: the battles and the ocean perils that Mantua paraded, copying the trumpet-tones of Smyrna’s bard; whatever aid to speaking the consul of Arpinum affords, he who follows without ceasing that smith’s son who set his father at naught, deeming more precious a tongue made keen by use of eloquence; or again whatever the volumes of the Paduan deliver for all time in those Euganean pages; the brevity that wins applause in Crispus, the weightiness of Varro, the wit of Plautus, the lightning of Quintilian, and the majesty of Tacitus, a name never to be uttered without praise.

  By such studies was he moulded, from such lineage sprung, in such habits nurtured; and the prince to whom at that time the world from east to west was giving the sceptre, on whom an only daughter, now of age for wedlock, must needs bestow grandchildren that should wear the purple, chose this man for her husband. Yet he did not rest in slothful luxury, content with her father’s glory, seeking a life of ease and owing nothing to himself; nay, receiving a count’s authority he traversed the Danube bank and the whole length of the great frontier-lines, exhorting, arranging, examining, equipping. Even so had Pius under his father’s sway ruled his father’s camps; thus Marcus, too, while Pius still lived; these two, destined later to be lawgivers, then commanded legions innumerable. When Anthemius returned, every office was bestowed upon him; he shone upon the world as Master of Both Services and as consul; to this was added the authority of Patrician; and thus with speedy step he ran through the highest dignities that a subject may reach; youth though he was, he mounted the curule throne of the elders, and sat, a young veteran, on the gold that belongs to the old campaigner.