Letter 2003: SIDONIUS TO HIS DEAR FELIX, GREETINGS
SIDONIUS TO HIS DEAR FELIX, GREETINGS
1. I rejoice, my elder and superior, that you have obtained the insignia of a very great dignity. But I rejoice in this no less for the sole reason that it was announced to me by a messenger especially sent. For though you are at present the most powerful of magistrates and the patrician title has returned after so many ages to the Philagrian household by your fortune alone, yet you find, most constant of friends, a way in which the height of your honors may grow by sharing — and by a rare kind of example you exalt your greatness through humility.
2. Just so the public favor once preferred the master of horse Quintus Fabius to the dictatorial severity and the pride of Papirius; just so the never-disdainful popularity lifted Gnaeus Pompey above his rivals; just so Germanicus suppressed the hatred of Tiberius by the love of the whole people. Therefore I have no wish for the imperial benefits to congratulate themselves too greatly upon your successes, since they could confer nothing more upon you than the fact that, had we been unwilling, we would have passed over it against our will. This is your own, this is your singular grace: that you have as few who emulate you as you have who follow you. Farewell.
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.
Related Letters
I break into a greeting — late though it is, my lord — having myself gone many years without one.
You have been abstaining from correspondence for a long time.
To Riothamus [a British king or warlord commanding a force of Britons in Gaul, allied with the Roman cause against...
Our young men add greatly to their credit when, faced with uncertain legal questions, they turn to the counsel of...
Beyond the duty that is owed without end to your incomparably eminent apostolate — though it can never be fully...