Letter 15: I am doubly tormented by the fact that we are both confined to our beds.

Sidonius to his dear Burgundio, greeting. 1. I am doubly tormented, because each of us is confined to his bed. For nothing is harder than when friends who are present are kept apart by a shared sickness; indeed, if it should happen that they do not even lie ill within one chamber, there are no words, no consolations, no exchange at last of mutual conversation. And so each feels an immense grief, and more of it on the other's account; for, weak though you are, you can scarcely fear enough for yourself when one you love is in danger. 2. But God, my most beloved son, has shaken from me, anxious as I was for you, a most pressing worry, because you are beginning to recover your former strength. For you are said already to wish to rise, and—what I desire still more—already to be able to. You certainly consult me in such a way, and with a solicitude almost premature you exercise me with the little questions of letters as though already wholly restored to vigor, eager to hear, sick though you still are, Socrates discoursing on character rather than Hippocrates on bodies; altogether worthy that Rome should cherish you with applauding arms, and that, at your recitation too, the wedge-shaped benches of the resounding Athenaeum should be shaken. 3. This without doubt you would have attained, if the condition of peace and place permitted that you should there be educated, mingled in the company of senatorial youth. That you are capable of this glory and renown alike I infer from the quality of your oratory, in which, when you lately delivered most becomingly the very things you had written, the well-disposed admired you extempore, the proud marveled at you, the skilled lingered over you. But lest I should immodestly oppress your modesty with excessive praises unbidden, we write your panegyrics more justly about you than to you. Let us rather take up this, which is the occasion of our discourse. 4. So then, you ask through a courier which verses I call recurrent, that I may quickly explain—but by way of example. These, to be sure, are recurrent which, with the meter standing firm and the letters not moved from their place, are read back from the end to the beginning just as from beginning to end. Such is that ancient line: "Roma tibi subito motibus ibit amor" ["Rome, to you suddenly by your strivings love will come"—the same letters read backward]. [And this one: "Sole medere pede, ede perede melos" ["With the sun heal your foot; bring forth, consume the song"].] 5. Likewise there are reckoned among the recurrent those which, the law of the feet being preserved, are folded back—though not through each individual letter, yet through each individual word—as is one couplet of mine (such as I myself think I have read many of, by many authors), which I composed in sport about a little stream that, fed by a sudden onset of storms and overtopping the public causeway with a turbulent flood, had inundated the cultivated fields lying below the road—though it was soon to lay down its mad abundance, since indeed no weights from above of a perennial spring were swelling it as it rose with the addenda of the rains. 6. So then, there (for I had arrived as a traveler), while I was seeking the bank rather than the ford, having jested with such an epigram, I made my way across the back of the turbulent torrent at least with these feet: "Praecipiti modo quod decurrit tramite flumen / tempore consumptum iam cito deficiet" ["The river that just now runs down by a headlong channel, consumed by time will soon quickly fail"]. If you run this back, it reads thus: "Deficiet cito iam consumptum tempore flumen, / tramite decurrit quod modo praecipiti" ["It will fail quickly, now consumed by time, the river that just now runs down by a headlong channel"]. There you have verses whose principle you may wonder at syllable by syllable. For the rest, the pomp which they do not possess they will not teach. I suspect I have sufficiently indicated what you thought ought to be inquired about. 7. You yourself do something similar, too, if you restore what has been set forth and from the reverse direction unfold the things you would repeat. For there hangs over you the votive repayment of a most celebrated theme, namely the praise to be delivered in full, which you had composed, of Julius Caesar. This subject matter is so grand that, if anyone of the students should be the most copious of all, he ought to guard against nothing more in it than that he say anything too little. For if we leave aside what has been written about the titles of the unconquered dictator in the Paduan volumes [of Livy], who in speaking could have matched the works of Suetonius, who the history of Juventius Martialis, or who, finally, the journal of Balbus? 8. But these things we reserve for your wax tablets. It is rather our duty to arrange the benches for the listeners, to prepare ears for the crashes that will thunder, and, while you tell the virtues of others, for us to tell yours. And do not fear that I shall summon any Catonian judges, who under the veil of an assumed severity cloak now their envy, now their ignorance—though pardon is owed to the unskilled; but whoever is so malicious that he understands what is well written and yet does not praise it, him good men understand and yet do not praise. 9. Therefore I release your cares from this fear: all will listen approving, all favoring, and together we shall enjoy the joys with which you, restored, will refresh us. For most will praise your eloquence, very many your talent, all your modesty. For it will be counted no less to your praise that a young man—or, what is finer, one still almost a boy—should carry back from the wrestling-school of public examination the votes for his character as much as for 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.