Letter 3008: I honor the ancients, but not so much that I would rank below them the virtues or merits of my contemporaries.

To Eucherius. I honor the ancients, but not so much that I would rank below them the virtues or merits of my contemporaries. Even if the Roman state has sunk to these last extremities of misfortune, so that it never rewards those who serve it, the ages of men still produce their Brutuses and Torquatuses [Roman heroes famous for selfless courage]. Where is this going, you ask? My subject is you — I am writing to you about yourself, most effective of men — you to whom the republic owes what history praises as already paid to those heroes of old. So let the ignorant suspend their rash judgments and stop either looking up exclusively to the past or down upon the present. For it is perfectly clear that the republic delays its rewards — but men like you continue to earn them. Though it should hardly be surprising: with the federate nations [the barbarian allied peoples settled within the empire] not merely mismanaging Roman power but undermining it at its foundations, if the deeds of noble, military, and astonishingly brave men — men who surpassed both our hopes and our enemies' expectations — have gone without reward rather than without accomplishment. Farewell.

EPISTULA VIII Sidonius Eucherio suo salutem. 1. Veneror antiquos, non tamen ita, ut qui aequaevorum meorum virtutes aut merita postponam. neque si Romana respublica in haec miseriarum extrema defluxit, ut studiosos sui numquam remuneretur, non idcirco Brutos Torquatosque non pariunt saecula mea. quorsum istaec, inquis? de te mihi ad te sermo est, vir efficacissime, cui debet respublica quod supra dictis solutum laudat historia. 2. quapropter ignari rerum temeraria iudicia suspendant nec perseverent satis aut suspicere praeteritos aut despicere praesentes; quandoquidem facile clarescit rempublicam morari beneficia, vos mereri. quamquam mirandum granditer non sit, natione foederatorum non solum inciviliter Romanas vires administrante verum etiam fundamentaliter eruente si nobilium virorum militariumque et supra vel spem nostrae vel opinionem partis adversae bellicosorum non tam defuerunt facta quam praemia. vale.