SIDONIUS TO HIS DEAR ECDICIUS, GREETINGS
1. Your Arverni are laboring under two evils at once. "What do you mean?" you ask. The presence of Seronatus and your absence. Seronatus, I say — and even to speak first of his very name, it seems to me that Fortune, with a prescience of things to come, made sport of this man, just as our ancestors, employing an equal irony, called battles — than which nothing is more hideous — by the word for "good things" (bella); and with the same principle of contraries, since the Fates do not spare, they were named the Sparing Ones (Parcae). This Catiline of our age has lately returned from the region of the Adour, to mingle here the complete measure of the blood and fortunes of the wretched that he had only half consumed there.
2. Know that in him the long-concealed fury of his spirit reveals itself with every passing day. He envies openly; he dissembles abjectly; he is proud after the manner of a slave. He gives orders like a master, exacts like a tyrant, condemns like a judge, and calumniates like a barbarian. Armed the whole day long with fear, lean with avarice, terrible with desire, cruel out of vanity, he never ceases simultaneously to punish and to commit theft. With spectators gathered and laughing openly, he belches forth among Roman citizens his campaigns against them and among barbarians his literary pretensions. Letters — which he has not mastered even in their rudiments — he dictates publicly out of boastfulness and corrects out of shamelessness.
3. Everything he covets he as good as purchases, but he pays no price out of contempt and accepts no receipts out of desperation. He commands in council and holds his tongue in consultation; he jokes in church and preaches at table; he condemns in the bedchamber and dozes at an interrogation. Daily he fills the forests with those who flee and the farmhouses with enemies, the altars with accused men and the prisons with clergy. He exults over the Goths and insults the Romans; mocks the prefects and schemes with the accountants; trampling the Theodosian Code underfoot, he posts the Theodosian — that is, Theoderic's — laws, and seeks out old offenses and new taxes.
4. Accordingly, cut short your delays without hesitation and sever, whatever it may be, that which detains you. The last liberty of trembling citizens awaits you. Whatever is to be hoped, whatever to be despaired of, let it be accomplished with you in the midst, with you as our guide. If the state has no strength, no resources, if the promises of the Emperor Anthemius prove — as rumor has it — empty, the nobility has resolved, at your instance, either to abandon the homeland or to cut their hair. Farewell.
EPISTULA I
Sidonius Ecdicio suo salutem.
1. Duo nunc pariter mala sustinent Arverni tui. 'quaenam?' inquis. praesentiam Seronati et absentiam tuam. Seronati, inquam: de cuius ut primum etiam nomine loquar, sic mihi videtur quasi praescia futurorum lusisse fortuna, sicuti ex adverso maiores nostri proelia, quibus nihil est foedius, bella dixerunt; quippe etiam pari contrarietate fata, quia non parcerent, Parcas vocitavere. rediit iste Catilina saeculi nostri nuper Aturribus, ut sanguinem fortunasque miserorum, quas ibi ex parte propinaverat, hic ex asse misceret.
2. scitote in eo per dies spiritum diu dissimulati furoris aperiri: aperte invidet, abiecte fingit, serviliter superbit; indicit ut dominus, exigit ut tyrannus, addicit ut iudex, calumniatur ut barbarus; toto die a metu armatus, ab avaritia ieiunus, a cupiditate terribilis, a vanitate crudelis, non cessat simul furta vel punire vel facere; palam et ridentibus convocatis ructat inter cives pugnas, inter barbaros litteras; epistulas, ne primis quidem apicibus sufficienter initiatus, publice a iactantia dictat, ab impudentia emendat;
3. totum quod concupiscit quasi comparat nec dat pretia contemnens nec accipit instrumenta desperans; in concilio iubet in consilio tacet, in ecclesia iocatur in convivio praedicat, in cubiculo damnat in quaestione dormitat; implet cotidie silvas fugientibus villas hostibus, altaria reis carceres clericis; exultans Gothis insultansque Romanis, inludens praefectis conludensque numerariis, leges Theodosianas calcans Theodoricianasque proponens veteres culpas, nova tributa perquirit.
4. proinde moras tuas citus explica et quicquid illud est, quod te retentat, incide. te exspectat palpitantium civium extrema libertas. quicquid sperandum, quicquid desperandum est, fieri te medio, te praesule placet. si nullae a republica vires, nulla praesidia, si nullae, quantum rumor est, Anthemii principis opes, statuit te auctore nobilitas seu patriam dimittere seu capillos. vale.
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SIDONIUS TO HIS DEAR ECDICIUS, GREETINGS
1. Your Arverni are laboring under two evils at once. "What do you mean?" you ask. The presence of Seronatus and your absence. Seronatus, I say — and even to speak first of his very name, it seems to me that Fortune, with a prescience of things to come, made sport of this man, just as our ancestors, employing an equal irony, called battles — than which nothing is more hideous — by the word for "good things" (bella); and with the same principle of contraries, since the Fates do not spare, they were named the Sparing Ones (Parcae). This Catiline of our age has lately returned from the region of the Adour, to mingle here the complete measure of the blood and fortunes of the wretched that he had only half consumed there.
2. Know that in him the long-concealed fury of his spirit reveals itself with every passing day. He envies openly; he dissembles abjectly; he is proud after the manner of a slave. He gives orders like a master, exacts like a tyrant, condemns like a judge, and calumniates like a barbarian. Armed the whole day long with fear, lean with avarice, terrible with desire, cruel out of vanity, he never ceases simultaneously to punish and to commit theft. With spectators gathered and laughing openly, he belches forth among Roman citizens his campaigns against them and among barbarians his literary pretensions. Letters — which he has not mastered even in their rudiments — he dictates publicly out of boastfulness and corrects out of shamelessness.
3. Everything he covets he as good as purchases, but he pays no price out of contempt and accepts no receipts out of desperation. He commands in council and holds his tongue in consultation; he jokes in church and preaches at table; he condemns in the bedchamber and dozes at an interrogation. Daily he fills the forests with those who flee and the farmhouses with enemies, the altars with accused men and the prisons with clergy. He exults over the Goths and insults the Romans; mocks the prefects and schemes with the accountants; trampling the Theodosian Code underfoot, he posts the Theodosian — that is, Theoderic's — laws, and seeks out old offenses and new taxes.
4. Accordingly, cut short your delays without hesitation and sever, whatever it may be, that which detains you. The last liberty of trembling citizens awaits you. Whatever is to be hoped, whatever to be despaired of, let it be accomplished with you in the midst, with you as our guide. If the state has no strength, no resources, if the promises of the Emperor Anthemius prove — as rumor has it — empty, the nobility has resolved, at your instance, either to abandon the homeland or to cut their hair. Farewell.
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.