Apollinaris (son of Sidonius)

Apollinaris was the son of Sidonius Apollinaris, the celebrated Gallo-Roman aristocrat, poet, and bishop of Clermont. Born into the senatorial nobility of Auvergne in the later fifth century, he came of age as Roman authority in Gaul collapsed and the Visigothic and then Frankish kingdoms absorbed the region. He fought (according to Gregory of Tours) on the Visigothic side at the disastrous Battle of Vouille in 507, and late in life briefly held his father's old see as bishop of Clermont before dying shortly after, around 515. He survives chiefly through the letters of his contemporaries in the surviving Gallo-Roman literary network, notably Ruricius of Limoges, who corresponded with him as a fellow member of the cultivated provincial elite trying to preserve Roman letters and Christian piety in a post-imperial world.