Sidonius Apollinaris

He was recognised in life for his literary accomplishments; in 456 his bronze portrait was added to the gallery of writers in the libraries of Trajan's Forum, the last statue to be erected there.

[11] Sidonius spent time in the court of Theodoric II, king of the Visigoths, in 455 or 456, and wrote a letter about the experience to his brother-in-law Agricola.

[14] Gregory of Tours speaks of Sidonius as a man who could celebrate Mass from memory (without a sacramentary) and give spontaneous speeches without any hesitation.

[15] He writes in praise of the aristocrats who supported the Church, ascetics, and authors of theological works, including those who incorporated pagan philosophy.

[18] He compared the conflict to the Carthaginian capture of Capua during the Second Punic War, casting Euric in the role of Hannibal and himself as Decius Magius, loyally defending the city on behalf of Rome.

[19] When the city was finally conquered, he was imprisoned and exiled to Liviana, but Euric allowed him to return and resume his office as bishop in 476 or 477, following an intervention by the king's advisor Leo.

[18] Euric favoured Arianism over Catholicism and Sidonius maintained contacts with Catholic clergy throughout Gaul and beyond, in order to support them in legal disputes and with recommendations.

[21] Sidonius accepted a degree of collaboration with Euric's court as necessary to maintain the unity of the Roman aristocracy in Gaul,[18] but he was hostile to the Goths, writing to a senator "You shun barbarians because they have a bad reputation; I avoid them, even when they have a good one.

"[22] He mocks the literary pretensions of Euric's court, which was known as the Athenaeum, and presents the Visigothic conquest as responsible for a reversal of the social order, which had placed the uneducated in power over the educated.

[23] He was involved in legal disputes with a Gothic noble who had seized the majority of his mother-in-law's lands and clashed with Seronatus, whom he considered a collaborator, for encouraging them to billet their troops in the villas of Roman aristocrats.

[16] Sidonius's relations have been traced over several generations as a narrative of a family's fortunes, from the prominence of his paternal grandfather's time into later decline in the 6th century under the Franks.

Sidonius's son Apollinaris, who was a correspondent of Ruricius of Limoges, commanded a unit raised in Auvergne at the Battle of Vouille in 507, where the Goths were decisively defeated by the Franks.

[30] A collection of twenty-four Carmina by Sidonius survives, consisting of occasional verse, including panegyrics on different emperors , which document several important political events and draw largely upon Statius, Ausonius and Claudian.

For example, Carmen 22 is an ecphrasis of a painting of the Third Mithridatic War on the wall of the villa of Pontius Leontius "Dionysus", one of Sidonius' friends, at Burgus.

Sidonius' visit to the villa is compared to a meeting of Apollo with Dionysus, at which they decide to settle in Aquitania and establish learned symposiastic culture there.

[34] Sigrid Mratschek characterises Sidonius' Latin as intentionally elaborate and learned, calling it ... a language artfully and artistically fashioned from a complex intertextual weave of classical and biblical allusions, and the exclusive preserve of the cultural elite to whom alone it made sense.

For Sidonius and his circle the beauty of the Latin language (sermonis pompa Latini) ... refined sensibility and the intellectual life were a bulwark against the barbarians and a last refuge from the progressive dissolution of the old order.The complexity of the allusions to mythical, historical, biblical exempla often makes his writing very difficult to understand, but the difficulty was intentional and Sidonius disparages those unwilling to put in the effort necessary for a complete education in Roman language, literature, and culture.

Lac d'Aydat , site of Sidonius' villa, Avitacum.
Solidus depicting Avitus (r. 455), father-in-law of Sidonius.
Solidus depicting Anthemius (r. 467-472).
Map of Gaul in 475, on the eve of Euric 's conquest of Clermont. Yellow: Visigothic kingdom ; Orange: Western Roman Empire ; Green: Burgundian kingdom .
Opera (1598)