LETTER XIV
Sidonius to his dear Burgundio, greetings.
1. I am doubly tormented by the fact that we are both confined to our beds. For nothing is harder than when friends who are together are separated by a shared illness. If it happens that they cannot even lie in the same room, there are no words, no consolations, no exchange of mutual prayer -- and so each man's grief is immense, and more on account of the other. For you can scarcely fear for yourself, however sick you may be, when the one you love is in danger.
2. But God, my dearest son, has lifted from me the great dread I felt on your behalf, for you are beginning to recover your former strength. You are said to be already willing to rise, and what I desire even more, already able. Indeed, you are so considerate of me, and with almost precocious solicitude you exercise me with little literary questions as though already fully restored to health, more eager, though still sick, to hear Socrates disputing about morals than Hippocrates about the body. You are truly deserving of the warm embrace of Rome, where the tiered benches of the resounding Athenaeum would quake at your recitation.
3. Which you would doubtless have achieved, if the condition of peace and place permitted you to be trained there, mingled with the company of senatorial youth. I judge you capable of such glory and fame from the quality of your oratory, in which your most becoming recent declamation was admired, even as you delivered what you had written, as if speaking extemporaneously -- admired by your well-wishers, marveled at by the proud, and given pause by the experienced. But lest we impudently press your modesty with excessive praises, we write your commendation more justly about you than to you. Let us rather introduce the subject that occasioned this letter.
4. You ask through your secretary what verses I call "recurrent," and request a quick explanation with an example. These are, of course, verses that, with the meter standing firm and the letters not moved from their places, read the same from beginning to end as from end to beginning. Thus the well-known ancient example:
Roma tibi subito motibus ibit amor.
("Love will come to you, Rome, suddenly, through upheaval.")
5. Also counted as recurrent are those that, while preserving the law of the feet, run backwards not letter by letter but word by word. An example is this couplet of mine (of the sort I think I have read many by many authors), which I composed as a jest about a stream that, swollen by a sudden downpour, overflowed the public road with a churning flood and inundated the cultivated land below the highway -- though it was soon to shed its wild abundance, since no spring of perennial water from above was swelling it with the weight of rain.
6. There, then -- for I had arrived as a traveler -- while I sought the bank rather than the ford, I crossed the turbulent torrent with this jest of an epigram, traversing its back with these feet at least:
What now rushes down in a headlong stream of flood
Consumed by time, will quickly fade and fail.
If you read this backwards:
It will fail and quickly fade, consumed by time -- the flood
That stream by headlong course now rushes down.
There you have the verses, whose construction you may admire syllable by syllable. But the grandeur they lack, they will not teach. I believe I have sufficiently indicated what you thought worth investigating.
7. You yourself do something similar if you restore the proposed themes and work out from the other end what you shall repeat. For the longed-for repayment of a most celebrated theme hangs over you: the panegyric, namely, that you had composed in praise of Julius Caesar. That subject is so vast that if any student, however copious, were to treat it, the one thing he must guard against above all is saying too little. For if one were to pass over what is written about the titles of the unconquered dictator in the Paduan volumes, who could equal the works of Suetonius in speech, or the history of Juventius Martialis, or indeed the diary of Balbus?
8. But we reserve these matters for your tablets. It is more our part to arrange the benches for the audience, to prepare ears for the thunders to come, and while you speak of another's virtues, for us to speak of yours. Do not fear that I shall summon any Catonian judges who cover their envy or their ignorance under the cloak of assumed severity. The ignorant, to be sure, deserve pardon; but whoever is so malicious as to understand fine writing and yet not praise it -- him the good understand and do not praise.
9. Therefore I free your anxieties from this fear: all will hear you with favor, all with warmth, and we shall share together in the joy you create as you recover. For many will praise your eloquence, most your genius, and all your modesty. For it will be counted no less praiseworthy that a young man -- or what is finer still, almost a boy -- should carry away from the arena of public examination the approval of his character as much as of his learning. Farewell.
EPISTULA XIV
Sidonius Burgundioni suo salutem.
1. Dupliciter excrucior, quod nostrum uterque lecto tenetur. nihil enim est durius, quam cum praesentes amici dividuntur communione langoris; quippe si accidat, ut nec intra unum conclave decumbant, nulla sunt verba, nulla solacia, nulla denique mutui oratus vicissitudo: itaque singulis maeror ingens, isque plus de altero; nam parum possis quamquam et infirmus periclitante quem diligas tibi timere.
2. sed deus mihi, fili amantissime, pro te paventi validissimum scrupulum excussit, quia pristinas incipis vires recuperare. diceris enim iam velle consurgere, quodque plus opto, iam posse. me certe taliter consulis et sollicitudine prope praecoqua quaestiunculis litterarum iam quasi ex asse vegetus exerces, audire plus ambiens etsi adhuc aeger Socratem de moribus quam Hippocratem de corporibus disputantem; dignus omnino, quem plausibilibus Roma foveret ulnis quoque recitante crepitantis Athenaei subsellia cuneata quaterentur.
3. quod procul dubio consequebare, si pacis locique condicio permitteret, ut illic senatoriae iuventutis contubernio mixtus erudirere. cuius te gloriae pariter ac famae capacem de orationis tuae qualitate coniecto, in qua te decentissime nuper pronuntiantem quae quidem scripseras extemporaliter admirabantur benivoli, mirabantur superbi, morabantur periti. sed ne impudenter verecundiam tuam laudibus nimiis ultro premamus, praeconia tua iustius de te quam tibi scribimus. hoc potius, unde est causa sermonis, intromittamus.
4. Igitur interrogas per pugillatorem, quos recurrentes asseram versus, ut celer explicem, sed sub exemplo. hi nimirum sunt recurrentes, qui metro stante neque litteris loco motis ut ab exordio ad terminum, sic a fine releguntur ad summum. sic est illud antiquum:
Roma tibi subito motibus ibit amor.
[Et illud:
Sole medere pede, ede perede melos.]
5. Nec non habentur pro recurrentibus, qui pedum lege servata etsi non per singulos apices, per singula tamen verba replicantur, ut est unum distichon meum (qualia reor equidem legi multa multorum), quod de rivulo lusi, qui repentino procellarum pastus illapsu publicumque aggerem confragoso diluvio supergressus subdita viae culta inundaverat, quamquam depositurus insanam mox abundantiam, quippe quam pluviis appendicibus intumescentem nil superna venae perennis pondera inflarent.
6. igitur istic (nam viator adveneram), dum magis ripam quam vadum quaero, tali iocatus epigrammate per turbulenti terga torrentis his saltem pedibus incessi:
Praecipiti modo quod decurrit tramite flumen
tempore consumptum iam cito deficiet.
Hoc si recurras, ita legitur:
Deficiet cito iam consumptum tempore flumen,
tramite decurrit quod modo praecipiti.
En habes versus, quorum syllabatim mirere rationem. ceterum pompam, quam non habent, non docebunt. sufficienter indicasse me suspicor quod tu requirendum existimasti.
7. simile quiddam facis et ipse, si proposita restituas eque diverso quae repeteris expedias. namque imminet tibi thematis celeberrimi votiva redhibitio, laus videlicet peroranda, quam edideras, Caesaris Iulii. quae materia tam grandis est, ut studentum si quis fuerit ille copiosissimus, nihil amplius in ipsa debeat cavere, quam ne quid minus dicat. nam si omittantur quae de titulis dictatoris invicti scripta Patavinis sunt voluminibus, quis opera Suetonii, quis Iuventii Martialis historiam quisve ad extremum Balbi ephemeridem fando adaequaverit?
8. sed tuis ceris haec reservamus. officii magis est nostri auditoribus scamna componere, praeparare aures fragoribus intonaturis, dumque virtutes tu dicis alienas, nos tuas dicere. neque vereare me quospiam iudices Catonianos advocaturum, qui modo invidiam, modo ignorantiam suam factae severitatis velamine tegant, quamquam imperitis venia debetur; ceterum quisquis ita malus est, ut intelligat bene scripta nec tamen laudet, hunc boni intellegunt nec tamen laudant.
9. Proinde curas tuas hoc metu absolvo: faventes audient cuncti, cuncti foventes, gaudiisque, quae facies recreatus, una fruemur. nam plerique laudabunt facundiam tuam, plurimi ingenium, toti pudorem. non enim minus laudi feretur adulescentem vel, quod est pulchrius, paene adhuc puerum de palaestra publici examinis tam morum referre suffragia quam litterarum. vale.
◆
LETTER XIV
Sidonius to his dear Burgundio, greetings.
1. I am doubly tormented by the fact that we are both confined to our beds. For nothing is harder than when friends who are together are separated by a shared illness. If it happens that they cannot even lie in the same room, there are no words, no consolations, no exchange of mutual prayer -- and so each man's grief is immense, and more on account of the other. For you can scarcely fear for yourself, however sick you may be, when the one you love is in danger.
2. But God, my dearest son, has lifted from me the great dread I felt on your behalf, for you are beginning to recover your former strength. You are said to be already willing to rise, and what I desire even more, already able. Indeed, you are so considerate of me, and with almost precocious solicitude you exercise me with little literary questions as though already fully restored to health, more eager, though still sick, to hear Socrates disputing about morals than Hippocrates about the body. You are truly deserving of the warm embrace of Rome, where the tiered benches of the resounding Athenaeum would quake at your recitation.
3. Which you would doubtless have achieved, if the condition of peace and place permitted you to be trained there, mingled with the company of senatorial youth. I judge you capable of such glory and fame from the quality of your oratory, in which your most becoming recent declamation was admired, even as you delivered what you had written, as if speaking extemporaneously -- admired by your well-wishers, marveled at by the proud, and given pause by the experienced. But lest we impudently press your modesty with excessive praises, we write your commendation more justly about you than to you. Let us rather introduce the subject that occasioned this letter.
4. You ask through your secretary what verses I call "recurrent," and request a quick explanation with an example. These are, of course, verses that, with the meter standing firm and the letters not moved from their places, read the same from beginning to end as from end to beginning. Thus the well-known ancient example:
Roma tibi subito motibus ibit amor. ("Love will come to you, Rome, suddenly, through upheaval.")
5. Also counted as recurrent are those that, while preserving the law of the feet, run backwards not letter by letter but word by word. An example is this couplet of mine (of the sort I think I have read many by many authors), which I composed as a jest about a stream that, swollen by a sudden downpour, overflowed the public road with a churning flood and inundated the cultivated land below the highway -- though it was soon to shed its wild abundance, since no spring of perennial water from above was swelling it with the weight of rain.
6. There, then -- for I had arrived as a traveler -- while I sought the bank rather than the ford, I crossed the turbulent torrent with this jest of an epigram, traversing its back with these feet at least:
What now rushes down in a headlong stream of flood Consumed by time, will quickly fade and fail.
If you read this backwards:
It will fail and quickly fade, consumed by time -- the flood That stream by headlong course now rushes down.
There you have the verses, whose construction you may admire syllable by syllable. But the grandeur they lack, they will not teach. I believe I have sufficiently indicated what you thought worth investigating.
7. You yourself do something similar if you restore the proposed themes and work out from the other end what you shall repeat. For the longed-for repayment of a most celebrated theme hangs over you: the panegyric, namely, that you had composed in praise of Julius Caesar. That subject is so vast that if any student, however copious, were to treat it, the one thing he must guard against above all is saying too little. For if one were to pass over what is written about the titles of the unconquered dictator in the Paduan volumes, who could equal the works of Suetonius in speech, or the history of Juventius Martialis, or indeed the diary of Balbus?
8. But we reserve these matters for your tablets. It is more our part to arrange the benches for the audience, to prepare ears for the thunders to come, and while you speak of another's virtues, for us to speak of yours. Do not fear that I shall summon any Catonian judges who cover their envy or their ignorance under the cloak of assumed severity. The ignorant, to be sure, deserve pardon; but whoever is so malicious as to understand fine writing and yet not praise it -- him the good understand and do not praise.
9. Therefore I free your anxieties from this fear: all will hear you with favor, all with warmth, and we shall share together in the joy you create as you recover. For many will praise your eloquence, most your genius, and all your modesty. For it will be counted no less praiseworthy that a young man -- or what is finer still, almost a boy -- should carry away from the arena of public examination the approval of his character as much as of his learning. Farewell.
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.