Letter 2009: I have already sent a letter through my servants informing you how much your recommendation has benefited brother...

Bishop Avitus to Bishop Euphrasius. I have already sent a letter by my servants, by which I would let you know how much your recommendation has profited brother Emeterius in my regard. Yet, having no doubt that at the outset of his episcopate he will, as is fitting, attend to the duties owed to his elder brother, I have gladly added this letter as well, sent by his own hand; and by it I rejoice all the more that the long-sought plunderer of my little work has at last come into my hands. And because he is carrying back to you the little book itself, as he has indicated to me, I ask that, such as it is, you would deign — if you think it worthy — to make this little work public and to commend it to that exalted and most pious man, our brother Apollinaris [son of Sidonius Apollinaris], though it has been neither previously published nor by any means fully corrected. It would have been impious not to offer it to him first, by the right of charity, were it not in turn absurd for me to stir up disdain, even on the charge of presumption, in the son of lord Sidonius — one who in my own day would feel nausea amid the delights of his father's eloquence. Therefore, if the aforesaid brother, to whom the volume must be presented more cautiously through you, judges that it ought to be read even to children, I can learn as much through any writings of his magnificence. But if, after the rivers of his father's springs, he casts aside — as I rather think — the poverty of my vein, which trickles with the thinnest dew, then, without shame to me and without impiety on his part, it will suffice for me to have understood the censure of his reprehension from this alone: if he keeps silent.

Avitus episcopus Eufrasio episcopo. Iam quidem per pueros meos litteras dedi, quibus scire vos facerem, quantum fratri Emeterio apud me commendatio vestra profecerit. Tamen non dubitans eum inter initia pontificatus sui senioris germani, sicut dignum est, officia curaturum, has etiam per ipsum libenter adieci, quibus opusculi mei iam diu quaesitum praedonem in manus meas venisse plus gaudeo. Et quia libellum ipsum, quantum mihi indicavit, vobis reportat, peto ut, qualecumque est opusculum ipsum, nec ante editum nec omni- modis emendatum viro sublimi ac piissimo, si dignamini, fratri nostro Apollinari pu- blicare atque excusare dignemini. Cui impium fuerat non primum iure caritatis offerri, si non rursus fuisset absurdum me domni Sidonii filio inter facundiae paternae delicias meis temporibus nauseaturo movere etiam de praesumptione fastidium. Quo- circa volumen per vos temperatius ingerendum si supradictus frater vel infantibus legi debere censuerit, possum per quaecumque magnificentiae suae scripta cognoscere. Si autem post flumina fontium paternorum, ut potius reor, paupertatem venae tenuissimo rore manantem abiecerit, sine verecundia mea suaque impietate sufficiet me repre- hensionis suae censuram hinc tantummodo intellexisse, si taceat.