SIDONIUS TO HIS DEAR PROBUS, GREETINGS
1. You are my brother-in-law as you are my wife's brother: hence the principal and primary bond between us — a cousinship, moreover, not a full sibling bond, which commonly loves itself the more purely, more vigorously, and more undiluted. For among full brothers, once the quarrel over property has been settled, those who are subsequently born of them enter into no controversy with one another; and from this it is often the case that affection runs deeper between cousins, since rivalry ceases at the point of division while feeling does not cease to flow from the common root. A second bond of our spirits has been added by our equal pursuit of learning, since we think, censure, and praise the same things in literature, and any given style of writing equally pleases or displeases us both — though I claim too much in comparing my own judgment to yours.
2. Who among the young and old does not know that you have been my own private master, although we seemed to have a common one? And whatever the heroic poet has composed that is lofty, the comic poet that is graceful, the lyric poet that is musical, the orator that is declamatory, the historian that is true, the satirist that is pointed, the grammarian that is regular, the panegyrist that is applause-worthy, the philosopher that is earnest, the epigrammatist that is playful, the commentator that is clear, the jurist that is abstruse — all of this you communicated in all its variety to each student, except to any whom a lack of talent or of application failed — how our fathers congratulated themselves on this! seeing that, by Christ's aid, you were able to teach and I was able to learn, and that you not only did what you could but willed what you did, and were thus declared good no less than expert.
3. And truly within the household of Eusebius a kind of mint had received you in those disciplines — shaped on its philosophical anvil, you there unfolded for us the various principles of things and of language, even to the approval of the very man who had taught you: now, like Plato almost surpassing his disciple in standing, or rather as you yourself under our Eusebius, now a practised dialectician, you gave an Attic brilliance to the Aristotelian categories, while Eusebius still subjected our mobile, tender, unformed boyhood now to the fire of corrective severity, now seasoned it with the health-giving salt of his precepts.
4. What teachings they were — good God! — and how precious! If anyone were to carry them to the marsh-dwelling Sygambri to philosophize among them, or to the Alans bred among the Caucasian peaks, or to the mare-milking Geloni, the stony hearts and icy fibers of those bestial and rigid nations would beyond doubt be softened and thawed, and we should have no cause to laugh at, despise, or dread their ferocity and stupidity — which rants and rages and blazes after the manner of brutes.
5. Therefore since kinship and learning alike have joined us, I beg you, wherever you are, to keep the claims of friendship unbroken and, though absent in person for however long, to be present in spirit; these inviolate claims, for my part, insofar as any life remains to me, shall be kept perpetual. Farewell.
EPISTULA I
Sidonius Probo suo salutem.
1. Soror mihi quae uxor tibi: hinc inter nos summa et principalis necessitudo, et ea quidem patruelis, non germana fraternitas, quae plerumque se purius fortius meracius amat. nam facultatum inter germanos prius lite sopita iam qui nascuntur ex fratribus nihil invicem controversantur, et hinc saepe caritas in patruelibus maior, quia desistit simultas a divisione nec cessat affectus a semine. secundus nobis animorum nexus accessit de studiorum parilitate, quia idem sentimus culpamus laudamus in litteris et aeque nobis quaelibet dictio placet improbaturque, quamquam mihi nimis arrogo iudicium meum conferens tuo.
2. quis enim iuvenum nesciat seniorumque te mihi magistrum fuisse proprium, cum videremur habere communem, et si quid heroicus arduum comicus lepidum, lyricus cantilenosum orator declamatorium, historicus verum satiricus figuratum, grammaticus regulare panegyrista plausibile, sophista serium epigrammatista lascivum, commentator lucidum iurisconsultus obscurum multifariam condiderunt, id te omnifariam singulis, nisi cui ingenium sibique quis defuit, tradidisse? deus bone! quam sibi hinc patres nostri gratulabantur, cum viderent sub ope Christi te docere posse, me discere, et non solum te facere quod posses sed et velle quod faceres ideoque te bonum non minus quam peritum pronuntiari!
3. et vere intra Eusebianos Lares talium te quaedam moneta susceperat disciplinarum, cuius philosophica incude formatus nunc varias nobis rerum sermonumque rationes ipso etiam qui docuerat probante pandebas, nunc ut Platon discipulus iam prope potior sub Socrate, sic iam tu sub Eusebio nostro inter Aristotelicas categorias artifex dialecticus atticissabas, cum ille adhuc aetatulam nostram mobilem teneram crudam modo castigatoria severitate decoqueret, modo mandatorum salubritate condiret.
4. at qualium, deus bone, quamque pretiosorum, quae si quis deportaret philosophaturus aut ad paludicolas Sygambros aut ad Caucasigenas Alanos aut ad equimulgas Gelonos, bestialium rigidarumque nationum corda cornea fibraeque glaciales procul dubio emollirentur egelidarentur neque illorum ferociam stoliditatemque, quae secundum beluas ineptit brutescit accenditur, rideremus contemneremus pertimesceremus.
5. igitur quia nos ut affinitas, ita studia iunxerunt, precor, quoquo loci es, amicitiae iura inconcussa custodias longumque tibi etsi sede absumus, adsimus affectu; cuius intemeratae partes, quantum spectat ad vos, a nobis in aevum, si quod est vitae reliquum, perennabuntur. vale.
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SIDONIUS TO HIS DEAR PROBUS, GREETINGS
1. You are my brother-in-law as you are my wife's brother: hence the principal and primary bond between us — a cousinship, moreover, not a full sibling bond, which commonly loves itself the more purely, more vigorously, and more undiluted. For among full brothers, once the quarrel over property has been settled, those who are subsequently born of them enter into no controversy with one another; and from this it is often the case that affection runs deeper between cousins, since rivalry ceases at the point of division while feeling does not cease to flow from the common root. A second bond of our spirits has been added by our equal pursuit of learning, since we think, censure, and praise the same things in literature, and any given style of writing equally pleases or displeases us both — though I claim too much in comparing my own judgment to yours.
2. Who among the young and old does not know that you have been my own private master, although we seemed to have a common one? And whatever the heroic poet has composed that is lofty, the comic poet that is graceful, the lyric poet that is musical, the orator that is declamatory, the historian that is true, the satirist that is pointed, the grammarian that is regular, the panegyrist that is applause-worthy, the philosopher that is earnest, the epigrammatist that is playful, the commentator that is clear, the jurist that is abstruse — all of this you communicated in all its variety to each student, except to any whom a lack of talent or of application failed — how our fathers congratulated themselves on this! seeing that, by Christ's aid, you were able to teach and I was able to learn, and that you not only did what you could but willed what you did, and were thus declared good no less than expert.
3. And truly within the household of Eusebius a kind of mint had received you in those disciplines — shaped on its philosophical anvil, you there unfolded for us the various principles of things and of language, even to the approval of the very man who had taught you: now, like Plato almost surpassing his disciple in standing, or rather as you yourself under our Eusebius, now a practised dialectician, you gave an Attic brilliance to the Aristotelian categories, while Eusebius still subjected our mobile, tender, unformed boyhood now to the fire of corrective severity, now seasoned it with the health-giving salt of his precepts.
4. What teachings they were — good God! — and how precious! If anyone were to carry them to the marsh-dwelling Sygambri to philosophize among them, or to the Alans bred among the Caucasian peaks, or to the mare-milking Geloni, the stony hearts and icy fibers of those bestial and rigid nations would beyond doubt be softened and thawed, and we should have no cause to laugh at, despise, or dread their ferocity and stupidity — which rants and rages and blazes after the manner of brutes.
5. Therefore since kinship and learning alike have joined us, I beg you, wherever you are, to keep the claims of friendship unbroken and, though absent in person for however long, to be present in spirit; these inviolate claims, for my part, insofar as any life remains to me, shall be kept perpetual. Farewell.
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.