Letter 2008: I write to you with the deepest sorrow.

To Desideratus. I write to you with the deepest sorrow. The day before yesterday, the lady Filimatia died — and not without public mourning. She was a dutiful wife, a kind mistress, a devoted mother, a loving daughter — a woman to whom her inferiors owed obedience, her superiors respect, and her equals affection. As the only surviving daughter of a mother long dead, she had with all manner of tenderness made her still-young father feel no need for a child of the other sex. But now, by this sudden death, she has pierced him with widowerhood and desolation at once. To this must be added the fact that, as a mother of five children, her untimely end has turned her fertility into a curse. If those little ones had lost their already-frail father while their mother still lived, they would have been considered less orphaned. Still, if any honor paid to the dead is not in vain, it was not the grim services of common undertakers that buried her. Rather, as all — even strangers — wept and pressed forward to touch the bier, to hold it back, to kiss it, she was received by the hands of priests and kinsmen and carried to her eternal resting place, looking more like one who sleeps than one who has died. After this, at the bereaved father's request, I composed a funeral poem — almost while the tears were still warm — not in elegiac couplets but in hendecasyllables, to be inscribed on her marble. If you do not entirely disapprove, the bookseller will add it to the other volumes of my epigrams. If otherwise, it is enough for a stone-hard poem to be contained in stone: Swift and cruel was the death that seized her, leaving five children, a father, and a husband. The hands of a grieving homeland placed the lady Filimatia in this tomb. Splendor of her family, glory of her husband — prudent, pure, graceful, firm, and gentle, a model even to her elders — she united qualities usually thought incompatible through the harmony of her character: for her life's companions were a dignified freedom and a graceful modesty. And so we grieve that barely your third decade had been completed when, in the flower of your years, the final rites were unjustly paid. Whether you like the poem or not: hurry here and visit the city at once. You owe the duty of consolation to the afflicted households of two fellow citizens. May you discharge this duty, I pray to God, without ever having it repaid in kind. Farewell.

EPISTULA VIII Sidonius Desiderato suo salutem. 1. Maestissimus haec tibi nuntio. decessit nudius tertius non absque iustitio matrona Filimatia, morigera coniunx domina clemens, utilis mater pia filia, cui debuerit domi forisque persona minor obsequium, maior officium, aequalis affectum. haec cum esset unica iam diu matris amissae <filia>, facile diversis blandimentorum generibus effecerat, ne patri adhuc iuveni soboles sexus alterius desideraretur. nunc autem per subita suprema virium caelibatu, patrem orbitate confodit. his additur, quod quinque liberorum parens immaturo exitu reddidit infortunatam fecunditatem. qui parvuli si matre sospite perdidissent iam diu debilem patrem, minus pupilli existimarentur. 2. hanc tamen, si qui haud incassum honor cadaveribus impenditur, non vispillonum sandapilariorumque ministeria ominosa tumulavere; sed cum libitinam ipsam flentes omnes, externi quoque, prensitarent remorarentur exoscularentur, sacerdotum propinquorumque manibus excepta perpetuis sedibus dormienti similior inlata est. post quae precatu parentis orbati neniam funebrem non per elegos sed per hendecasyllabos marmori incisam planctu prope calente dictavi. quam si non satis improbas, ceteris epigrammatum meorum voluminibus applicandam mercennarius bybliopola suscipiet; si quid secus, sufficit saxo carmen saxeum contineri. 3. hoc enim epitaphion est: Occasu celeri feroque raptam gnatis quinque patrique coniugique hoc flentis patriae manus locarunt matronam Filimatiam sepulchro. o splendor generis, decus mariti, prudens, casta, decens, severa, dulcis, atque ipsis senioribus sequenda, discordantia quae solent putari morum commoditate copulasti: nam vitae comites bonae fuerunt libertas gravis et pudor facetus. hinc est quod decimam tuae saluti vix actam trieteridem dolemus atque in temporibus vigentis aevi iniuste tibi iusta persoluta. Placeat tibi carmen necne: tu propera civitatemque festinus invise. debes enim consolationis officium duorum civium domibus afflictis. quod ita solvas deum quaeso, ne umquam tibi redhibeatur. vale.