SIDONIUS TO HIS DEAR CONSTANTIUS, GREETINGS
1. The people of the Arverni salute you — people whose modest hovels you, a great guest, filled, ostentatious in no retinue but eminently worthy of our retinue of affection. Good God, what joy it was to the toilers when you set your holy foot inside our half-ruined walls! How you were pressed about on every side by every rank and sex and age! What a judicious salt in your manner with each person! How the boys measured you as kind, the young men as affable, the old men as grave! What tears you shed, like a father of all, over houses brought down by fire and half-burned dwellings! How deeply you grieved over fields buried under unburied bones! And then your exhortation, your spirit in urging restoration!
2. Add to this: finding a city emptied no less by civic discord than by barbarian incursion, you by urging peace gave them back to one another and both to their homeland. With those who at your admonishment returned as much into one counsel as into one town, the walls owe to you the people brought back, and the people brought back owe to you their concord. Accordingly, they consider themselves as fully yours and you as fully theirs; and — what is your greatest glory — they are not mistaken.
3. For there is present to the minds of each individual, every day, the fact that you — a person venerable in the gravity of your age, frail in health, elevated in nobility, revered in religion — broke through for the sole cause of love so many barriers, so many difficulties of the journey interposed: the length of the roads, the brevity of the days, the abundance of snow, the scarcity of fodder, the breadth of solitudes, the narrowness of the lodgings, the yawning gorges of the roads either rotten with the moisture of rains or roughened by the dryness of frost; and moreover embankments harsh with stones, rivers slippery with ice, hills rough with the effort of ascent, or valleys worn smooth by the constant slipping — through all these discomforts you brought back the public's love, because it was no private advantage you were seeking.
4. For the rest, we pray God that, with the boundaries of your years extended according to our prayers, you may untiringly seek, obtain, and carry back the friendships of the good, and may the affection you leave behind follow you, and may the gratitude initiated by you everywhere be repaid to you for long years — as much the foundations as the pinnacles. Farewell.
EPISTULA II
Sidonius Constantio suo salutem.
1. Salutat populus Arvernus, cuius parva tuguria magnus hospes implesti, non ambitiosus comitatu sed ambiendus affectu. deus bone, quod gaudium fuit laboriosis, cum tu sanctum pedem semirutis moenibus intulisti! quam tu ab omni ordine sexu aetate stipatissimus ambiebare! quae salsi erga singulos libra sermonis! quam te blandum pueri, comem iuvenes, gravem senes metiebantur! quas tu lacrimas ut parens omnium super aedes incendio prorutas et domicilia semiusta fudisti! quantum doluisti campos sepultos ossibus insepultis! quae tua deinceps exhortatio, quae reparationem suadentis animositas!
2. his adicitur, quod, cum inveneris civitatem non minus civica simultate quam barbarica incursione vacuatam, pacem omnibus suadens caritatem illis, illos patriae reddidisti. quibus tuo monitu non minus in unum consilium quam in unum oppidum revertentibus muri tibi debent plebem reductam, plebs reducta concordiam. quocirca satis te toti suum, satis se toti tuos aestimant; et, quae gloria tua maxima est, minime falluntur.
3. obversatur etenim per dies mentibus singulorum, quod persona aetate gravis infirmitate fragilis, nobilitate sublimis religione venerabilis solius dilectionis obtentu abrupisti tot repagula, tot obiectas veniendi difficultates, itinerum videlicet longitudinem brevitatem dierum, nivium copiam penuriam pabulorum, latitudines solitudinum angustias mansionum, viarum voragines aut umore imbrium putres aut frigorum siccitate tribulosas, ad hoc aut aggeres saxis asperos aut fluvios gelu lubricos aut colles ascensu salebrosos aut valles lapsuum assiduitate + derasas; per quae omnia incommoda, quia non privatum commodum requirebas, amorem publicum rettulisti.
4. quod restat, deum precamur, ut aevi metis secundum vota promotis bonorum amicitias indefessim expetas capias referas sequaturque te affectio, quam relinquis, et initiatae per te ubicumque gratiae longum tibi redhibeantur quam fundamenta tam culmina. vale.
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SIDONIUS TO HIS DEAR CONSTANTIUS, GREETINGS
1. The people of the Arverni salute you — people whose modest hovels you, a great guest, filled, ostentatious in no retinue but eminently worthy of our retinue of affection. Good God, what joy it was to the toilers when you set your holy foot inside our half-ruined walls! How you were pressed about on every side by every rank and sex and age! What a judicious salt in your manner with each person! How the boys measured you as kind, the young men as affable, the old men as grave! What tears you shed, like a father of all, over houses brought down by fire and half-burned dwellings! How deeply you grieved over fields buried under unburied bones! And then your exhortation, your spirit in urging restoration!
2. Add to this: finding a city emptied no less by civic discord than by barbarian incursion, you by urging peace gave them back to one another and both to their homeland. With those who at your admonishment returned as much into one counsel as into one town, the walls owe to you the people brought back, and the people brought back owe to you their concord. Accordingly, they consider themselves as fully yours and you as fully theirs; and — what is your greatest glory — they are not mistaken.
3. For there is present to the minds of each individual, every day, the fact that you — a person venerable in the gravity of your age, frail in health, elevated in nobility, revered in religion — broke through for the sole cause of love so many barriers, so many difficulties of the journey interposed: the length of the roads, the brevity of the days, the abundance of snow, the scarcity of fodder, the breadth of solitudes, the narrowness of the lodgings, the yawning gorges of the roads either rotten with the moisture of rains or roughened by the dryness of frost; and moreover embankments harsh with stones, rivers slippery with ice, hills rough with the effort of ascent, or valleys worn smooth by the constant slipping — through all these discomforts you brought back the public's love, because it was no private advantage you were seeking.
4. For the rest, we pray God that, with the boundaries of your years extended according to our prayers, you may untiringly seek, obtain, and carry back the friendships of the good, and may the affection you leave behind follow you, and may the gratitude initiated by you everywhere be repaid to you for long years — as much the foundations as the pinnacles. Farewell.
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.