Letter 5021: Your uncle Victorius — as outstanding a man as he was thoroughly learned in every respect — composed many things...
Sidonius to his friends Sacerdos and Justinus.
Your uncle Victorius — as outstanding a man as he was thoroughly learned in every respect — composed many things powerfully, but verses most powerfully of all. I too have cultivated the Muses from childhood. Now you come as heirs to your kinsman — as rightly as deservedly. I, for my part, become the poet's neighbor by profession, while you become his by blood. It is therefore most fitting that each of us should succeed the departed man according to the bond that connects us. So keep the estates, and give me the poems. Farewell.
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.
Related Letters
Your uncle Victorius, a man as distinguished as he was universally learned, composed verses with supreme power among...
What my tongue speaks my conscience approves; since even before you had become engaged in the employments of any office of dignity, I have greatly loved and greatly respected you. For the very modesty of your deportment made certain incipient claims on affection even from one who had been resistant. And, when I heard that you had come to adminis...
The spite of the ancient foe has this way of its own, that in the case of those whom, through God resisting him, he cannot delude into the perpetration of evil deeds, he maims their reputation for a time by false reports. Seeing, then, that a sinister rumour about our brother and fellow bishop Leo had disseminated certain things inconsistent wi...
Gozolas, a Jew by nationality and a client of your household — a man whose person would be dear to me as well, if...
Faustus, bishop, to Lucidus, beloved brother in Christ.