Letter 1001: SIDONIUS TO HIS DEAR CONSTANTIUS, GREETINGS

SIDONIUS TO HIS DEAR CONSTANTIUS, GREETINGS 1. For some time you have been urging me, my senior and superior in authority of counsel — for in matters requiring deliberation you are, as always, the wisest of advisors — to take all the letters that have flowed from my pen, polished to some degree, on various occasions and as circumstances, individuals, and the times elicited them, and to revise and refine them, gathering them all into a single volume in the presumptuous footsteps of Quintus Symmachus for his rounded style and of Gaius Pliny for his disciplined maturity. 2. About Marcus Tullius I think it better to say nothing. Not even Julius Titianus, writing under the names of illustrious women, managed a worthy likeness of Cicero in his epistolary style. This is why those who followed in the Fronto tradition, emulating that archaic manner of speaking as though it were a school to which they belonged, called him the ape of the orators. In all these cases, my own judgment has, I confess, always yielded to them enormously, and I have declared it a rule that the distinctive privilege of each period and each set of merits must be preserved. 3. But of course I have deferred to you, and I have entrusted these modest little letters to your scrutiny — not merely to be reviewed (that would be doing too little) but to be, as the saying goes, refined and polished — knowing you to be an immoderate champion not only of literary studies but of those who pursue them. It is you, then, who now urge me — hesitant as I am at every step — out upon the open sea of posterity. 4. To be sure, I would have remained more safely silent about a work of this kind, content with the reputation of verses composed more happily than skillfully, a reputation which long since has had its anchor of sufficient glory set in the harbor of public judgment, once I had navigated past the Scyllas of the envious and their barking. But if even upon these trifles envy does not fix a genuine molar tooth, volumes more numerous still, teeming with copious discourses, shall soon multiply from my hand for you. Farewell.

EPISTULA I Sidonius Constantio suo salutem. 1. Diu praecipis, domine maior, summa suadendi auctoritate, sicuti es in his quae deliberabuntur consiliosissimus, ut, si quae litterae paulo politiores varia occasione fluxerunt, prout eas causa persona tempus elicuit, omnes retractatis exemplaribus enucleatisque uno volumine includam, Quinti Symmachi rotunditatem, Gai Plinii disciplinam maturitatemque vestigiis praesumptiosis insecuturus. 2. nam de Marco Tullio silere melius puto, quem in stilo epistulari nec Iulius Titianus sub nominibus illustrium feminarum digna similitudine expressit. propter quod illum ceteri quique Frontonianorum utpote consectaneum aemulati, cur veternosum dicendi genus imitaretur, oratorum simiam nuncupaverunt. quibus omnibus ego immane dictu est quantum semper iudicio meo cesserim quantumque servandam singulis pronuntiaverim temporum suorum meritorumque praerogativam. 3. sed scilicet tibi parui tuaeque examinationi has <litterulas> non recensendas (hoc enim parum est) sed defaecandas, ut aiunt, limandasque commisi, sciens te immodicum esse fautorem non studiorum modo verum etiam studiosorum. quam ob rem nos nunc perquam haesitabundos in hoc deinceps famae pelagus impellis. 4. porro autem super huiusmodi opusculo tutius conticueramus, contenti versuum felicius quam peritius editorum opinione, de qua mihi iampridem in portu iudicii publici post lividorum latratuum Scyllas enavigatas sufficientis gloriae ancora sedet. sed si et hisce deliramentis genuinum molarem invidia non fixerit, actutum tibi a nobis volumina numerosiora percopiosis scaturrientia sermocinationibus multiplicabuntur. vale.