Author: Douglas Galbi

Living in the Gaulish city of Lyon in the early 460s, the Roman public official and poet Sidonius Apollinaris quartered Germanic Burgundians in his house. The Burgundians could serve as allies in Roman imperial intrigues and against invading Vandals and Visigoths. Sidonius apparently imagined that he had entered with the Burgundians a contubernium, a Roman quasi-marital relationship between a free citizen and a slave.[1] He was the slave and the woman to the Burgundian man. In that condition of exile from his Roman culture and Roman manhood, Sidonius lacked the strength to write a wedding song for his eminent Roman friend Catullinus. Sidonius imagined himself as being like the Jews, God’s chosen bride in Jewish understanding, living in exile in Babylon as represented in Psalm 137.

Why, as if I had the strength, do you order me
to compose a playful song honoring Venus?
I am among long-haired tentfuls
and enduring German words while
praising repeatedly with cringing face
what the gluttonous Burgundian sings,
he pouring upon his hair rancid butter!
Do you wish that I tell you what destroys poetry?
From this barbarian plucking is driven
my Thalia who has spurned the six-foot meter
since she saw these seven-foot patrons.
Happy are your eyes and ears,
happy too, one is pleased to call the nose
to which no garlic bulbs and foul onions
are belched out in the new morning from ten breakfasts,
and one not being as a little old grandfather or
a wet-nursing man, whom from the rise of dawn
men all so big as to be like giants attack,
such as not even Alcinous’s kitchen could endure.

{ Quid me, etsi valeam, parare carmen
Fescenninicolae iubes Diones
inter crinigeras situm catervas
et Germanica verba sustinentem,
laudantem tetrico subinde vultu
quod Burgundio cantat esculentus,
infundens acido comam butyro?
vis dicam tibi, quid poema frangat?
ex hoc barbaricis abacta plectris
spernit senipedem stilum Thalia,
ex quo septipedes videt patronos.
felices oculos tuos et aures
felicemque libet vocare nasum,
cui non allia sordidumque cepe
ructant mane novo decem apparatus,
quem non ut vetulum patris parentem
nutricisque virum die nec orto
tot tantique petunt simul Gigantes,
quot vix Alcinoi culina ferret. }[2]

Sidonius laments his inability to sing a wedding song with poignant gender contrasts. The ancient Mediterranean world admired long hair in women, but not in men.[3] The long-haired Burgundian men, however, are tall, a manly attribute attractive to women. Sidonius figures himself being as weak as a “little old grandfather {vetulus patris parens}” and as feminine as a “wet-nursing man {nutricis vir}.” The crude Burgundian men devour food as do those engaged in physically demanding, male-gendered work such as plowing, heavy construction, and fighting. Moreover, the Burgundian men have no sense for the luxurious cosmetics that women typically prize much more than do men. Human societies, and primate social groups more generally, usually are centered on women. “Uncivilized” behavior, in contrast, tends to be associated with men. Sidonius’s classical Roman muse Thalia, a woman, flees from the Burgundian men. They are perhaps obtusely singing hexameter songs of epic violence against men.[4]

Sidonius apparently knew the experience of being gender-subordinate within the home. Gregory of Tours reported:

Without his wife knowing, Sidonius would remove almost all the silver vessels from their home and disburse them to the poor. When his wife became aware, she was scandalized by it. But then he would give the value to the needy in money and restore the wares to their home.

{ plerumque nesciente coniuge vasa argentea auferebat a domo et pauperibus erogabat. Quod illa cum cognosceret, scandalizabatur in eum, sed tamen, dato egenis pretio, species domi restituebat. }[5]

A Roman husband nominally had higher status than his wife. But she ruled their home just as the Burgundians ruled Sidonius’s home.

Sidonius’s reference to Alcinous’s kitchen is best understood to refer to Alcinous hosting Jason, Medea, and the Argonauts, and then the pursuing Colchians. The Colchians, whom the Greeks regarded as barbarians, demanded that the Argonauts give the Colchian woman Medea to them. The host Alcinous declared that Medea would go with the Colchians if she hadn’t consummated a marriage with Jason. Swayed by Medea’s pleading, Alcinous’s shrewd wife arranged for Medea and Jason to consummate immediately their marriage. Thus a consummated marriage served as an excuse for Alcinous to dismiss the barbarian Cochians’ demand. Since the marriage of his friend Catullinus was still pending, Sidonius had no such excuse for turning away the barbarian Burgundians.[6]

Having imagined himself as old and female in relation to the Burgundians, Sidonius tellingly provided them with law. A shrewd, flexible mind and cultural authority have wide-ranging value. Writing about the year 474 to his friend Syagrius, Sidonius declared:

How inexpressibly amazed I am that you have seized knowledge of the German tongue with such ease. And yet I remember that your boyhood included good schooling in liberal Roman studies. I know for certain that you often declaimed with spirit and eloquence before your professor of oratory. This being so, I would like you to tell me how you have managed to absorb so swiftly into your inner being the exact sounds of an alien race. After reading Virgil under the schoolmaster’s cane and toiling through the rich fluency of the varicose man Cicero from Arpinum, now you have burst forth before my eyes like a young falcon from an old nest.

{ quantum stupeam sermonis te Germanici notitiam tanta facilitate rapuisse. atqui pueritiam tuam competenter scholis liberalibus memini imbutam et saepenumero acriter eloquenterque declamasse coram oratore satis habeo compertum. atque haec cum ita sint, velim dicas, unde subito hauserunt pectora tua euphoniam gentis alienae, ut modo mihi post ferulas lectionis Maronianae postque desudatam varicosi Arpinatis opuentiam loquacitatemque quasi de harilao vetere novus falco prorumpas? }[7]

Defensively deploying wit like Cato the Elder confronting demands for more men teachers in elementary schools, Sidonius explained:

You have no idea what amusement it gives me, and others too, when I hear that in your presence the barbarian is afraid to perpetrate a barbarism in his own language. The bent elders of the Germans are astounded at you when you translate letters, and they adopt you as umpire and arbitrator in their mutual dealings. You are a new Solon of the Burgundians in discussing the laws, a new Amphion in tuning the lyre, but a three-stringed lyre. You are loved, your company is sought, you are much visited, you delight, you are picked out, you are invited, you decide issues and are heeded. Although these people are stiff and uncouth in body and mind alike, they welcome from you and learn from you their native speech combined with Roman wisdom.

{ aestimari minime potest, quanto mihi ceterisque sit risui, quotiens audio, quod te praesente formidet linguae suae facere barbarus barbarismum. adstupet tibi epistulas interpretanti curva Germanorum senectus et negotiis mutuis arbitrum te disceptatoremque desumit. novus Burgundionum Solon in legibus disserendis, novus Amphion in citharis, sed trichordibus, temperandis, amaris frequentaris, expeteris oblectas, eligeris adhiberis, decernis audiris. et quamquam aeque corporibus ac sensu rigidi sint indolatilesque, amplectuntur in te pariter et discunt sermonem patrium, cor Latinum. }

Sidonius wryly counseled Syagrius:

Only one thing remains, most clever of men: continue with undiminished zeal, even in your hours of ease, to devote some attention to reading. Like the most refined man that you are, observe a just balance between the two languages. Retain grasp of your Latin tongue, lest you be laughed at, and practice the other, in order to have a laugh at them.

{ restat hoc unum, vir facetissime, ut nihilo segnius, vel cum vacabit, aliquid lectioni operis impendas custodiasque hoc, prout es elegantissimus, temperamentum, ut ista tibi lingua teneatur, ne ridearis, illa exerceatur, ut rideas. }

Sidonius apparently followed such advice himself. The epitaph for him praised him for giving law to barbarians:

A leader of troops and a judge in the forum,
calm amid the swelling waves of the world,
constantly moderating the motions of cases,
he gave laws to the barbarian fury.
He brought back peace with considerable
counsel to kingdoms at war.

{ Rector militie forique iudex,
Mundi inter tumidas quietus undas,
Causarum moderans subinde motus
Leges barbarico dedit furori;
Discordantibus inter arma regnis
Pacem consilio reduxit amplo. }[8]

Like the Jewish Joseph rising to become vizier to the Egyptian pharaoh, Sidonius with his mind overcame the crude masculine strength of the Burgundians to become a judge for them.

In the middle of the twentieth century, the brilliant medievalist Helen Waddell poetically recognized the relationship of Sidonius’s lament to Psalm 137. She began her English adaptation of Sidonius’s poem with:

How should I, even if I could
write you Epithalamium [9]

Those two tetrameter verses are metrically close to a transposed beginning of the King James Version of Psalm 137:

There we sat down, yea we wept,
by the rivers of Babylon [10]

Sidonius all but weeps in his description of the Burgundians occupying his house. His lament for the muse Thalia in Waddell’s adaptation is similarly telling:

How can she write a six-foot line
with seven feet of patron?

That seems to correspond to the Psalm 137 verses:

How shall we sing the Lord’s song
in a strange land?

Waddell’s translation adds an extra foot to the line associated with seven feet. That change, like Sidonius’s original poem, invokes wry laughter. As a Roman facing non-Romans invading Gaul, Sidonius would have pondered the pain of Jews driven from their beloved Jerusalem and lamenting in Babylonian captivity. The humor of Sidonius’s poem shouldn’t be allowed to obscure the question of exile that it presents.

Sidonius attempting to compose a wedding song with Burgundians in his house coincides with him beginning to engage more extensively with Christianity. Soon after 461, Sidonius:

occupied himself with Christian concerns in Gaul, attending services at Lyons and sophisticated theological seminars at Vienne, reporting on the activities of bishops, and putting his poetic talents at their service. [11]

Pprobably in the 460s, Sidonius wrote his poem “Thanksgiving to Bishop Faustus of Riez {Eucharisticon ad Faustum Regensem episcopum}.” That poem deeply engages with Hebrew scripture.[12] In a letter securely dated to 468, Sidonius credited Christ as much as his literary style for his recent promotion to the top imperial administrative office, Praefect of Rome {Praefectus Urbi}:

I have atttained to the Praefect office under Christ’s help by the exercise of my literary style.

{ ad praefecturam sub ope Christi stili occasione pervenerim }[13]

Sidonius in 470 was elected Bishop of Clermont-Ferrand. When he died about 489, his epitaph declared:

You who will call on God with tears,
pour out your prayers over his fortunate tomb.
Known to all and read throughout the world,
there by you Sidonius is invoked.

{ Quisque hic cum lacrimis deum rogabis,
Dextrum funde preces super sepulchrum:
Nulli incognitus et legendus orbi
Illic Sidonius tibi invocetur }[14]

This epitaph suggest that Sidonius was invoked as a saint. Gregory of Tours called him “saintly {sanctus}.”[15] Sidonius in fact acquired a feast day as a saint in the Roman Catholic liturgical calendar.

Sidonius’s refusal to sing a wedding song with Burgundians in his house retreats into silence for fear of being called satire. The satirical problem in its deepest sense concerns exclusiveness in the relations of persons and peoples. A scholar recently characterized Sidonius’s poem as a “xenophobic portrait of the Burgundians.” In less anachronistic terms, Christians understand all to be children of God — whether Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female — through faith in Christ.[16] Christians thus shouldn’t feel themselves to be exiled because of differences in language, food, and other aspects of human culture. Christians, however, honor in marriage special, exclusive love for one’s own spouse. Sidonius loved Latin culture exclusively.[17] His refusal to celebrate exclusive love with Burgundians in his house poignantly questions Christian universalism.

Is cultural exile less painful for a Christian than for a Jew? Amid the collapsing Roman Empire, Sidonius Apollinaris hosting Burgundians in his house considered that question. His poem refusing to celebrate marriage is dangerously close to satire on dominant pieties.[18]

* * * * *

Read more:

• Sidonius’s myth and philosophy in marriage of Araneola & Polemius
• swan-song of Rome: Rutilius, On returning home / De reditu suo
• Ennodius celebrated seminal blessing & disparaged eunuch Tribune

Notes:

[1] Sidonius regarded contubernia with disdain. Writing to Bishop Ambrosius, Sidonius disparaged the contubernium that “our dearly beloved man {dilectissimus noster}” had entered with a “slave-woman {ancilla},” “to whom his way of life has totally surrendered itself by obscene habit {se totum consuetudine obscena victus addixerat}.” As Sidonius approvingly explained, this young man, apparently a priest, had broken off his contubernium and married a young woman of lofty character and birth. Sidonius Apollinaris, Letter {Epistola} 9.6, “Sidonius to the Lord Bishop Ambrosius, Greetings {Sidonius Domino Papae Ambrosio salutem},” Latin text from Anderson (1965), my English translation, benefiting from that of id.

[2] Sidonius Apollinaris, Song {Carmen} 12, “Epigram to the Most Notable Man Catullinus, that because of the hostility of barbarians he is unable to write a wedding song {Epigramma ad u.c. Catullinum quod propter hostilitatem barbarorum epithalamium scribere non ualeret},” vv. 1-19 (of 22), Latin text from Anderson (1936), my English translation, benefiting from that of id. The poem’s title is from Kelly (2021), with my English translation. Here’s a version of Sidonius’s poems with metrical scansion. Sidonius’s works survive in substantial form in seventy-seven manuscripts. On the manuscript record for Sidonius, Dolveck (2020).

The title “Most Notable Man {vir clarissimus / u.c.} is a senatorial title ranking below “Illustrious Man {vir illustris}” and “Admirable Man {vir spectabilis}, respectively.

Sidonius literally refers to songs of “Fescennine celebration {Fescenninicola}.” Those are playfully crude songs associated with wedding celebrations. He also literally refers to Dione, another name for the classical love goddess Venus.

Sidonius apparently composed this poem in the early 460s. That dating is based on its reference to satire in its last verse. Sidonius was accused of writing satire in a public dispute in 461. See Sidonius, Letter {Epistola} 1.11, “Sidonius to his friend Montius, Greetings {Sidonius Montio suo Salutem}.” For the connection to Carmen 12, Stevens (1933) p. 66. The leading current analysis of dating Sidonius’s compositions states that Carmen 12 “probably” dates to 461 “or soon after.” Kelly (2020) p. 171.

Burgundians are well attested in Lyon in 457. In that year the western Roman Emperor Majorian expelled them from that city. Wood (2021) p. 119. The Visigoth military leader Ricimer arranged to have Majorian killed in 461. By 463, the Burgundian leader Gundioc was serving Rome as “Master of Soldiers {Magister Militum}” in Gaul. Id. p. 120. That suggests a return of Burgundian presence in Lyon sometime between 461 and 463. Wood described Sidonius as “carefully obscuring the extent to which he and his family worked with the Burgundian magistri militum.” Id. p. 136.

[3] Disparaging Seronatus, Sidonius declares:

He has judged it particularly beautiful to make the condemned ugly before punishing them: he makes men grow their hair long and cuts short women’s hair.

{ praecipue pulchrum arbitratus ante turpare quam punire damnandos; crinem viris nutrit, mulieribus incidit }

Sidonius, Epistola 5.13, “Sidonius to his friend Pannychius, Greetings {Sidonius Pannychio suo salutem},” Latin text and English translation (modified) from Anderson (1965).

[4] Sidonius wrote two wedding songs {epithalamia}, Carmina 11 and 15, both in hexameters. The muse Thalia, whose name means literally “flourishing,” is associated with hendecasyllable poetry of comedy and idyll. Sidonius wrote Carmen 12 in hendecasyllables.

[5] Gregory of Tours, History of the Franks {Historia Francorum} 2.22, Latin text from Krusch (1884), my English translation, benefiting from that of Thorpe (1974).

Sidonius’s wife Papianilla probably overshadowed him in family wealth and political power. They married about 452. She was a member of an aristocratic land-owning family based in Clermont. Her father was Eparchius Avitus, who ruled as the Western Roman Emperor from 455 to 456. Sidonius himself was born in Lyons to an aristocratic Roman family, but after his marriage to Papianilla he made Clermont his home. His wife’s family seems to have been more important to him than his natal family. Harries (1994) p. 174. Sidonius as a young man, about age 25, delivered to the Senate in Rome a panegyric to his father-in-law, Emperor Avitus. Papianilla and Sidonius’s marriage furthered their social and political goals. No surviving evidence indicates that they had an intimate emotional relationship. Mascoli (2016).

[6] On Alcinous, the Argonauts, and the Colchians, Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica 4.990–1225 and Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 1.9.25–26.

The reference to ten breakfasts suggests that Sidonius was hosting a contubernium (“tentful”) of Burgundian soldiers. The contubernium was a Roman, not Burgundian, military unit. The allusion to a contubernium is best understood to invoke an alternate meaning of contubernium: a marriage between a free Roman citizen and a slave.

Mratschek associated the reference to Alcinous’s kitchen to Alcinous hosting Odysseus. Mratschek (2020) pp. 23-4. But a central tension in that episode is Odysseus declining to marry the young, lovely Nausicaa. The hasty marriage of Medea and Jason after the armed, barbarian Colchians arrived Alcinous’s court seems to me a more telling allusion.

[7] Sidonius, Epistola 5.5, “Sidonius to his friend Syagrius, greetings {Sidonius Syagrio suo salutem},” Latin text and English translation (modified slightly) from Anderson (1965). For an alternate English translation, Dalton (1915). The subsequent two quotes above are similarly sourced from Epistola 5.5.

[8] Epitaph of Sidonius, Latin text from Montzamir (2017) Figure 4, English translation (modified slightly) from Wood (2021) p. 124, n. 125. On the new manuscript evidence concerning Sidonius’s epitaph, Furbetta (2015). On Sidonius giving law to the Burgundians, Wood (2021) pp. 123-5, Wood (2017) pp. 13-5.

[9] Waddell (1948) p. 21, reprinted in Waddell & Corrigan (1976) p. 87. Waddell presented this poem in the context of the sack of Troy:

Apollinaris Sidonius, Roman patrician and Bishop in Auvergne, was head and front of the Résistance when the Burgundians came, was captured by them, held a year in prison, released, and adored by them to the day of his death. But in the interval, a friend writes asking him to compose an Epithalamium for a marriage feast. Here is his reply. … It is a cartoon, in little, of the power in barbarian Europe of a conquered Rome.

Waddell (1948) pp. 20-1. Nebuchadnezzar’s sack of Jerusalem and the Jews’ Babylonian captivity fits well into Waddell’s context, but she didn’t mention it.

Few have been as effective as Helen Waddell in making medieval Latin poetry attractive to modern readers. While her English version of Sidonius’s song isn’t a faithful translation, it’s an interesting and insightful translation.

[10] The full text of Psalm 137 in the King James Version is readily available online. In the ninth century, the Germanic poet Gottschalk of Orbais more directly referred to Psalm 137 in his poem that begins:

How are you commanding me, little boy,
for what are you telling me, little son,
to sing a sweet song,
while I am far away in exile,
within this sea?
O why are you commanding me to sing?

{ Ut quid iubes, pusiole,
quare mandas, filiole,
carmen dulce me cantare,
cum sim longe exul valde
intra mare?
o cur iubes canere? }

Latin text from The Gottschalk Homepage, my English translation, benefiting from that of Godman (1985), p. 229. Perhaps Sidonius’s Carmen 12 partly inspired Gottschalk’s “Ut quid iubes, pusiole.” Sidonius’s works were known in early medieval France, but seemed to have “left little imprint on literature.” Hernández Lobato (2020) p. 666.

[11] Harries (2018).

[12] Sidonius’s “Thanksgiving {Eucharisticon}” / Carmen 16 (title from Kelly (2021) apparently was published as part of a book of minor poems in the mid-460s. Kelly (2020) p. 194. The dating of “Eucharisticon” could be from the mid-450s to the mid-460s. Kelly lists “early 460s?” Id. pp. 172, 174. Following older scholarship, Daly dates it “c. 465.” Daly (2000) p. 21.

Sidonius’s “Eucharisticon” is well-understood as a chapter added to Mamertus Claudianus’s About the Nature of the Soul {De statu animae}. Daly (2000) p. 23. Mamertus Claudianus, who was Sidonius’s contemporary, was a highly regarded Christian thinker in Gaul. See Sidonius, Epistola 4.11, analyzed in John (2022). Sidonius apparently had advanced to a similarly high level of Christian thought:

Internal evidence strongly suggests that his {Sidonius’s} sixteenth poem was an impressively original expansion of and commentary on insights that, in simpler, unrelated form, the friendly converse and the catechetical instruction of another close friend, Faustus of Riez, had originally shared with him. If so it must have assured Faustus that the baptism that he had adjudged Sidonius ready to receive was, by his mid-thirties, broadening and deepening its force in his life as he grew in his understanding of the Christian religion and moved toward becoming a conversus and a bishop.

Daly (2000) p. 71.

Sidonius’s grandfather Apollinaris, who served as Praetorian Praefect of Gaul under Roman Emperor Constantine III in 408, was the first in Sidonius’s male lineage to convert to Christianity. In his epitaph for Apollinaris, Sidonius called his illustrious grandfather’s conversion to Christianity his grandfather’s “greatest honor {maxima dignitas}.” Sidonius, Epistola 3.12, “Sidonius to his dear Secundus, Greetings {Sidonius secundo suo salutem}.” Sidonius’s grandfather was buried in Lyon in the Basilica of Saint-Just that Bishop Patiens of Lyon had constructed. On that major church, Epistola 2.10.

Sidonius’s Christian commitment has been devalued in the modern period. Stevens claimed that Sidonius lacked theological knowledge. Stevens (1933) pp. 132, 136. Modern historians have tended to view Sidonius as a “predominately secular figure.” Daly (2000) p. 20. “Studies of Sidonius and religion, however, have been rather lacking, especially more recently.” Mathisen (2018), which doesn’t cite Daly (2000) and omits piety-oriented verses of Sidonius’s epitaph. In modern narrative fiction drawing upon Sidonius’s life, “almost invariably, very little space is devoted in these novels to Sidonius’ role as a committed Christian, a bishop, clergyman, and future saint.” Giannotti (2020), p. 729.

[13] Sidonius, Epistola 1.9, “Sidonius to his friend Heronius, greetings {Sidonius Heronio suo salutem},” Latin text and English translation (modified) from Anderson (1936).

[14] Epitaph of Sidonius, Latin text from Montzamir (2017) Figure 4, English translation (modified slightly) from Wood (2021) p. 124, n. 125.

[15] Gregory of Tours, History of the Franks {Historia Francorum} 2.22, Latin text from Krusch (1884). For an English translation of Historia Francorum, Thorpe (1974). Sidonius’s feast day in the Roman Catholic liturgical calendar is August 21.

[16] Mratschek (2020) p. 21 (“xenophobic portrait of the Burgundians”). Cf. Galations 3:25-29. Sidonius had a particularly Roman sense of universality. He described Rome as “the one political entity in the whole world where only barbarians and slaves are foreigners {unica totius orbis civitate soli barbari et servi peregrinantur}.” Epistola 1.6, “Sidonius to his friend Eutropius, greetings {Sidonius Eutropio suo salutem},” Latin text from Anderson (1936), my English translation.

Sidonius explicitly referred to satire. His recusatio from composing an epithalamium for Catallinus ends:

But already my Muse is silent and pulls on reins
after only a few jesting hendecasyllables,
lest anyone should call even these lines satire.

{ Sed iam Musa tacet tenetque habenas
paucis hendecasyllabis iocata,
ne quisquam satiram vel hos vocaret. }

Sidonius, Carmen 12, vv. 20-2, Latin text and English translation (modified slightly) from Anderson (1936). Composing personally offensive satire was illicit. Before Emperor Majorian in Arles in 461, Paeonius falsely accused Sidonius of writing such satire. See Sidonius, Epistola 1.11, “Sidonius to his friend Montius, greetings {Sidonius Montio suo Salutem}.”

Mratschek interpreted Sidonius’s recusatio as alluding to “Ovid’s aphasia in exile in barbarous Tomis.” Mratschek (2020) p. 20. But Sidonius’s poem as a whole has little substantial contact with Ovid’s elegy. Mratschek perceived contemporary relevance of this recusatio in targeting Gundioc, the king of the Burgundians:

On the metapoetic level, what Catullinus received from Sidonius was not an innocuous wedding poem but a politically incorrect satire targeting Gundioc, king of Burgundy, who had reoccupied Lyon after the fall of Majorian and had been appointed to replace Aegidius as magister militum Galliarum. Gundioc, married to a sister of Ricimer, made Lyon his new capital and seized the provinces of Gallia Lugdunensis I, now Burgundy, and, in 463, Gallia Viennensis, the Rhône corridor. Sidonius’s twist in the last line is covertly a subversive criticism of the regime, its focus the final extinction of the genre under Majorian’s barbarian successors.

Id. p. 25 (footnotes omitted). Sidonius apparently had good relations with Gundioc and other Burgundian leaders. Wood (2021) pp. 122-6. Sidonius’s concern about writing satire seems to me better situated in relation to his allusion to Psalm 137.

[17] Early in the fifth century, the Gaul Rutilius Namatianus regarded Rome as a mother to Romans. Sidonius similarly seems to have regarded Rome as his mother. Harries argued:

A champion of Latin letters and Roman aristocratic values, Sidonius was also for most of his career an advocate of co-operation with the Goths of Aquitaine. Both a career politician and an ardent Christian, Sidonius in his writings reveals the confusion of loyalties afflicting an aristocracy under threat and the compromises necessary for survival. … For Sidonius, the conflict was not between Christianity and pagan classicism but between Roman culture, which he identified with the classical tradition, and barbarism.

Harries (1994), from book blurb and p. 3. Mratschek concluded:

On closer examination Sidonius’ references to the past are in no way as transparent as they seem to be: ‘they project everything to do with Sidonius himself and his personal experiences in a way that suggests they are viewed behind a mask or in a mirror’.

Mratschek (2013) p. 268, quoting Küppers (2005), p. 260. Sidonius was like a Jew, but one whose holy city was Rome and whose holy land included Roman Gaul. The central conflict in Carmen 12 seems to me to be between Sidonius’s exclusive love for Roman culture and his Christian faith.

Schlapbach highlighted that Sidonius is “decidedly self-conscious in more than one way.” She perceived formal tension in Sidonius’s recusatio from the Fescennine verses of epithalamium: “this poem claims to be neither a conventional wedding song nor a satire, but in some oblique way it is both.” Schlapbach (2020) pp. 45, 57. The poem is a wedding song in the sense that it depicts an unpleasant and undesired marriage between Sidonius and the Burgundians. The poem’s satire reflects upon Sidonius’s developing Christianity.

[18] van Waarden observed:

Elements of satire and invective as well as a broad array of all kinds of humour play an important role in Sidonius’ work. … Often, a critical (political) message seems to lurk below the innocent surface

van Waarden (2022) p. 1022. The political matter of fifth-century Roman imperial collapse was also a Christian matter.

[images] (1) Sidonius Apollinaris writing. Illumination at the beginning of a twelfth-century manuscript of Sidonius’s works. From folio 1r of Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, MS. Plutei 45.26. (2) Jews in captivity in Babylon. Illumination for Psalm 137 on folio 78v of the mid-ninth-century Chludov Psalter. Preserved as Moscow, Hist. Mus. MS. D.129. Via Wikimedia Commons. (3) Jewish family in Babylonian exile. Painting on a dome in the library of the Palais-Bourbon in Paris. Painted by Eugène Delacroix between about 1837 to 1848. Via Wikimedia Commons. (4) Jews in exile by a river in Babylon. Painted by Gebhard Fugel c. 1920. Via Wikimedia Commons.

References:

Anderson, W.B, ed. and trans. 1936 / 1965. Sidonius. Poems and Letters. With an English translation, introduction, and notes. 2 vols. Loeb Classical Library 296 and 420. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Vol. 1, Vol. 2.

Dalton, O.M. 1915. The Letters of Sidonius. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Vol. 1, Vol. 2. Both volumes in web-native form.

Daly, William M. 2000. “An Adverse Consensus Questioned: Does Sidonius’s Euchariston (Carmen XVI) Show That He Was Scripturally Naïve?” Traditio. 55: 19–71.

Dolveck, Franz. 2020. “The Manuscript Tradition of Sidonius.” Chapter 16 (pp. 479-507) in Kelly & van Waarden (2020). Addendum.

Furbetta, Luciana. 2015. “L’epitaffio di Sidonio Apollinare in un nuovo testimone manoscritto.” Euphrosyne: Revista de Filologia Classica. 43: 243-254.

Godman, Peter. 1985. Poetry of the Carolingian Renaissance. London: Duckworth.

Giannotti. Filomena. 2020. “Sidonius Reception: Late Nineteenth to Twenty-First Centuries.” Chapter 24 (pp. 705-729) in Kelly & van Waarden (2020).

Harries, Jill. 1994. Sidonius Apollinaris and the Fall of Rome, AD 407-485. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Harries, Jill. 2018. “Sidonius Apollinaris (c. 430 – c. 489).” Entry in The Oxford Dictionary of Late Antiquity. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Hernández Lobato, Jesús. 2020. “Sidonius in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.” Chapter 22 (pp. 665-685) in Kelly & van Waarden (2020).

John, Alison. 2022. “(Mis)Identifying Teachers in Late Antique Gaul: Sidonius’ Ep. 4.11, Mamertus Claudianus and Classical vs. Christian Education.” Mnemosyne. 75: 996-1020.

Kelly, Gavin. 2020. “Dating the Works of Sidonius.” Chapter 3 (pp. 166-194) in Kelly & van Waarden (2020).

Kelly, Gavin. 2021. “An Edition of the Paratexts of Sidonius’ Poems.” Posted online March 27, 2021 at sidonapl.org.

Kelly, Gavin, and Joop van Waarden. 2020. The Edinburgh Companion to Sidonius Apollinaris. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Reviews by Tabea L. Meurer and by Lena Walhgren-Smith.

Krusch, Bruno, ed. 1884. Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores rerum Merovingiciarum 1.1, Gregorii Episcopi Turonensis Historiarum Libri X. Hannover: Hahn.

Küppers, Jochem. 2005. “Autobiographisches in den Briefen des Apollinaris Sidonius.” Pp. 251-277 in Michael Reichel, ed. Antike Autobiographien. Werke – Epochen – Gattungen, Europäische Geschichtsdarstellungen 5. Cologne: Böhlau.

Mascoli, Patrizia. 2016. “Sidonio Marito e Vescovo: Matrimonio e Interesse Nella Gallia del V Secolo.” Classica et Christiana. 11: 193-199.

Mathisen, Ralph W. 2018. “Sidonius Apollinaris.” Entry in David G. Hunter, Paul J.J. van Geest, Bert Jan Lietaert Peerbolte, eds. Brill Encyclopedia of Early Christianity. Online.

Montzamir, Patrice. 2017. “Du nouveau sur l’épitaphe attribuée à Sidoine Apollinaire.” XXXIXe Réunion Association pour l’Antiquité Tardive, Jun 2017, Clermont-Ferrand, France. halshs-02275957.

Mratschek, Sigrid. 2013. “Creating Identity from the Past: The Construction of History in the Letters of Sidonius.” Chapter 13 (pp. 249-271) in Joop van Waarden and Gavin Kelly, eds. New Approaches to Sidonius Apollinaris. Leuven: Peeters. Another online instance.

Mratschek, Sigrid. 2020. “The Silence of the Muses in Sidonius Apollinaris (Carm. 12–13, Ep. 8.11): Aphasia and the Timelessness of Poetic Inspiration.” Journal of Late Antiquity. 13 (1):10–43.

Schlapbach, Karin. 2020. “Veriora Nomina Camenarum: Erudition Uncertainty and Cognitive Displacement As Poetic Strategies in Sidonius Apollinaris.” Journal of Late Antiquity. 13 (1): 44–61.

Stevens, Courtenay Edward. 1933. Sidonius Apollinaris and His Age. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Thorpe, Lewis, trans. 1974. Gregory of Tours: The History of the Franks. Harmondsworth Middlesex England: Penguin Books.

van Waarden, Joop. 2022. “Leafing through Pliny with Sidonius: Sidon. Ep. 1.1, Plin. Ep. 1.1, 1.2, and 1.5, and Satire.” Mnemosyne. 75: 1021-1043.

Waddell, Helen. 1948. Poetry in the Dark Ages: The Eighth W.P. Ker Memorial Lecture Delivered in the University of Glasgow 28th October 1947. Glasgow: Jackson.

Waddell Helen, trans. and Felicitas Corrigan, ed. 1976. More Latin Lyrics from Virgil to Milton. London: Gollancz.

Wood, Ian. 2017. “Burgundian Law-Making, 451-534.” Italian Review of Legal History. 3 (15): 1-27.

Wood, Ian. 2021. ‘The Making of “the Burgundian kingdom.”‘ Reti Medievali Rivista. 22 (2): 111-140.

In mid-fifth-century Gaul, Araneola and Polemius planned to marry. Araneola was a strong, independent woman descended from leading Roman officials. Polemius, a descendant of the eminent Roman historian Tacitus, was a Platonic philosopher. Polemius asked his friend Sidonius Apollinaris, a noted poet, to provide a wedding song (epithalamium). The eminent church father Jerome under the name of Aristotle’s most-favored student Theophrastus had urged women to recognize men’s difficulties in marriage. With classical myth and philosophy, Sidonius playfully amplified Theophrastus’s teachings to warn Polemius about marrying Araneola.

Sidonius associated marriage with bodily pleasure and procreation. He wrote to a bishop about a young man, apparently a priest, who had lived with a sexually attractive slave-woman. According to Sidonius, “the extravagant costliness of that domestic Charybdis {sumptuositas domesticae Charybdis}” had swallowed the young man’s modest inheritance and reduced him to indigence.[1] The young man finally came to good sense. He ended his relationship with the sexually attractive slave-woman and married a wealthy woman of good character and birth. That wasn’t a pleasureless marriage. Sidonius declares:

It would indeed be glorious if he had renounced his life of pleasure so completely as to not even have a wife. But while one might perhaps move from error to a good way of life, few begin by moving to the best. For most, who have long indulged themselves in all pleasures with women, it’s impossible to eliminate all immediately and simultaneously.

{ haec quidem gloria, si voluptates sic reliquisset, ut nec uxori coniugaretur; sed, etsi forte contingat ad bonos mores ab errore migrare, paucorum est incipere de maxumis, et eos, qui diu totum indulserint sibi, protinus totum et pariter incidere. }

Sidonius thus urges the bishop to pray that this young priest follow a moderate way:

Therefore your duty is by sedulous prayer to obtain for the couple as soon as possible the hope of children, such that after a son or two being born (and I have said too much) he who has presumed to do what is unlawful will abstain from what is lawful.

{ quocirca vestrum est copulatis obtinere quam primum prece sedula spem liberorum; consequens erit, ut filio uno alterove susceptis (et nimis dixi) abstineat de cetero licitis, qui inlicita praesumpsit. }

Sidonius, himself a married bishop, recognized the joy of sex and the blessing of children. But he evidently thought it best for priests to abstain from sex and focus on other forms of Christian service.

Like the disconsolate Boethius, Sidonius privileged above marriage public service to the Roman Empire. He castigates his friend and relative Eutropius for being happy at home, plowing and seeding:

Granted, your vats will foam from your multiple vineyards, barns will be given innumerous piles of collected crops until bursting, and your well-fed shepherd will drive a crowded flock with full udders to the milking-pail through the odorous entrances of your sheep-folds. Yet what use is it to have increased your inheritance by so dirty an economy and at the same time to have remained in obscurity, not only amid such surroundings, but even more shamefully, for the sake of them?

{ esto, multiplicatis tibi spumabunt musta vinetis, innumeros quoque cumulos frugibus rupta congestis horrea dabunt, densum pecus gravidis uberibus in mulctram per antra olida caularum pinguis tibi pastor includet: quo spectat tam faeculento patrimonium promovisse compendio et non solum inter ista sed, quod est turpius, propter ista latuisse? }[2]

While Eutropius engages in sensuous, earthly cultivating, he also studies the philosophy of Plotinus and his school of third-century Platonists. Sidonius wants Eutropius to travel to Rome and take up public office. Sidonius bluntly concludes his letter by threatening Eutropius about following Epicurus’s doctrines:

Well, what more? If you submit to these exhortations, I’m ready to be your comrade and helper, a guide and partner of your efforts. But if you let yourself be entangled in the tempting snares of luxury so, as they say, to be coupled with the dogmas of Epicurus, who has admitted virtue’s rejection and defines the supreme good in terms of bodily pleasure alone, then here and now I call our ancestors and our posterity to witness that I have nothing to do with such wickedness. Farewell.

{ sed quid plura? si pateris hortantem, conatuum tuorum socius adiutor, praevius particeps ero, sin autem inlecebrosis deliciarum cassibus involutus mavis, ut aiunt, Epicuri dogmatibus copulari, qui iactura virtutis admissa summum bonum sola corporis voluptate determinat, testor ecce maiores, testor posteros nostros huic me noxae non esse confinem. vale. }

The philosophy of Plotinus differs considerably from that of Epicurus. Sidonius’s point is merely to browbeat Eutropius into leaving his farm in Gaul and traveling to Rome to acquire a public office. Eutropius evidently did that. He became Praetorian Prefect of Gaul about 470.

In writing an epithalamium for the Platonist Polemius, Sidonius more comprehensively mocks philosophy. He explains to Polemius:

More influential on me has been the system of your learning than the occasion of your marriage. I have omitted therefore the tenderness of epithalamium and pulled my pen over the most bitter and rough teachings of philosophy.

{ valet magis me doctrinae quam causae tuae habuisse rationem. omissa itaque epithalamii teneritudine per asperrimas philosophiae et salebrosissimas regulas stilum traxi }[3]

Polemius apparently honors the traditional Roman gods. Sidonius, who is a Christian, twists Polemius’s non-Christian learning back at him:

Since my attention to your love-endeavor has led me, a man of Gaul, to introduce matter of a sophisticated school into your epithalamium, I require from you prayerful intercession for my deed. Let Venus and all the false colorings of love be bestowed on one who would lack the ability to be so lauded. Farewell.

{ quoniam tui amoris studio inductus homo Gallus scholae sophisticae intromisi materiam, vel te potissimum facti mei deprecatorem requiro. illi Venus vel Amorum commenticia pigmenta tribuantur cui defuerit sic posse laudari, vale. }[4]

Christians favor in marriage fleshly love like that which the Roman love-goddess Venus promotes. Sidonius, however, torments Polemius with the classical myth and philosophy that Martianus Capella had used to delay interminably the fleshly marriage of Philology and Mercury.

Sidonius begins his epithalamium for Araneola and Polemius atypically. He begins with the Roman goddess Athena’s revenge on the Greek warrior Ajax for raping the Trojan prophetess Casandra after the Greeks destroyed Troy. Cassandra received her prophetic powers from the god Apollo. Apollo offered to give her the gift of prophecy if she would have sex with him. When Cassandra accepted Apollo’s proposal and gift, but then reneged on her promise to have sex with him, he was enraged. He cursed Cassandra’s prophecies so that, although true, they would not be believed. Cassandra subsequently prophesied that if Paris were to elope with Helen, the Greeks would destroy Troy. Cassandra was ignored. Paris married Helen, and the Greeks sacked Troy. Amid that horror, Cassandra sought refuge in the temple of Athena. Locrian Ajax desecrated Athena’s temple in raping Cassandra. Athena in revenge hurled a thunderbolt at Ajax’s ship heading home from Troy. He drowned in the wreckage. Horrific violence ensuing from true prophecy not believed is a shocking beginning to Sidonius’s very unusual wedding song.[5]

Continuing his epithalamium, Sidonius describes Athena from her head downwards. That’s the classical pattern for describing a beautiful young woman (descriptio puellae). In the most important mythic beauty pageant, Athena lost to Venus. Athena’s loss surely is at least partly attributable to her propensity to adorn her chest with a Gorgon’s head. In fact, in describing Athena, Sidonius describes at length her chest adornment:

A Gorgon covers the middle of her chest, acting in beholding
without delays, though beheaded. Proudly shines that dangerous
image. Its loveliness lives with its spirit perishing.
The gloomy head makes fierce its piles of horn-headed vipers
with towering spirals. The biting hair twists its spotted
coils and its angry locks utter horrible hisses.

{ Gorgo tenet pectus medium, factura videnti
et truncata moras; nitet insidiosa superbum
effigies vivitque anima pereunte venustas;
alta cerastarum spiris caput asperat atrum
congeries, torquet maculosa volumina mordax
crinis, et irati dant sibila taetra capilli }[6]

What man would want to marry such a woman, or even merely direct his male gaze toward Athena? Athena herself is warrior-woman. She wears steel armor, carries a spear in her right hand, and a shield in her left. Her shield is decorated with scenes as tumultuous as a field of volcanoes. The giant Enceladus, who fought at length against Athena, launches to the heavens a spiny Pindus mountain like a giant spear. Typhoeus hurls the high mountain Ossa like a missile. Athena throws a spear at her name-matched Pallas, a giant. He’s petrified by her Gorgoneion before her spear strikes his body. Within the fray Briareus is fighting with all his hands. Athena’s shield thus depicts a panorama of brutality like a nightmare marriage.

After introducing Athena into his epithalamium, Sidonius depicts two temples: one for weaving speculative thoughts in philosophy and another for weaving useful clothes. The temple of philosophy contains only men. The temple of weaving contains only women. The woman-goddess Athena, with whom the epithalamium begins, is known for both wisdom and weaving. Athena symbolizes the gynocentric order that encompasses both women and men and all aspects of human life.

Within the temple of philosopy reside the “seven sages {septem sapientes}.” According to Sidonius, those seven sages are “the origins of innumerous philosophers {innumerabilium primordia philosophorum}.” He gives the names of the seven sages and popular slogans associated with them. That’s far from serious philosophy. In fact, by Sidonius’s day the seven sages had long been the subject of latrine humor.

Sidonius then discusses at length the teachings of Samian Pythagoras on music and astrology. He discusses at length the teachings of Thales of Miletus, one of the seven sages that he had previously cited. He traces Thales’s students across seven generations to the Socratic school of Plato. Sidonius credits Plato with being the first to establish by how much “the first essence would be distant / from the highest and sixth good {prima essentia distet / a summo sextoque bono}.” That’s pseudo-philosophical blather. Nonetheless, Sidonius pretends to explain it at length.

Sidonius concludes his pompous and ridiculous discussion of philosophy with a mock-laudatory invocation of Polemius. Polemius, unlike Christians, denies truth in his school of philosophy:

In this school, science cultivates the life
of Polemius and fosters him attached to her Plato.
Although the Academy opposes all sects
and denies truth, it adorns him with true lauds.

{ hoc in gymnasio Polemi sapientia vitam
excolit adiunctumque suo fovet ipsa Platoni;
obviet et quamquam totis Academia sectis
atque neget verum, veris hunc laudibus ornat. }[7]

Sidonius surely means for the phrase “true lauds” to ring ironically. He also notes, “As for the Epicureans, virtue ejects them from every part of the temple {ast Epicureos eliminat undique Virtus}.”[8] In Sidonius’s writings, Epicureans are associated with bodily pleasure, including sexual pleasure. Polemius apparently should not think that he would have bodily pleasure in his marriage to Araneola.

The temple for weaving clothes provides an equally daunting perspective on marriage. The robe of Jupiter, the leading god in cuckolding husbands, was woven there. Another of its garments displays the likeness of Glaucus, who disastrously fell in love with Scylla, a woman just as perilous as Charybdis. A third garment depicts Amphitryon’s putative son Hercules unknowingly killing two serpents with his strong grip. Jupiter cuckolded Amphitryon to engender Hercules with Amphitryon’s wife Alcmene. Jupiter’s wife Juno, furious at her husband’s philandering, had sent those two serpents to kill Hercules.

Araneola herself is working in the temple of weaving. She is weaving an imperial robe for her father. He has risen to be a Roman consul like her grandfather and her great-grandfather.[9] She had already woven a robe for her father to use in touring the cities of Spain when he was appointed Praetorian Prefect of Gaul. Would Polemius measure up to his wife’s father, grandfather, and great-grandfather? Athena attempts to compete with Araneola in weaving and then resigns in defeat. Polemius likewise probably couldn’t successfully compete with his wife or his wife’s family.

High up on her father’s consular robe Araneola embroidered famous marriages from ancient times. She depicted Penelope duping her suitors by weaving and unweaving a burial shroud as her husband Odysseus delayed in returning home. She also depicted Orpheus. Lacking trust that his wife Eurydice was following him out of Hell, he lost her to Hell again. Even more chillingly, she in addition depicted the Danaids. Among those fifty young women, forty-nine slaughtered their sleeping husbands. She wove in Jupiter having sex with Mnemosyne, Europa, Semele, Leda, and Cynosura by transforming himself into a serpent, bull, lightning, swan, and nymph, respectively. What husband could be safe from such a god?

Araneola sees Athena looking with more pleasure upon the temple of philosophy than upon the temple of weaving. Araneola responds defiantly, just as did Arachne to claims of Athena’s superior weaving skill. Araneola recalcitrantly weaves the courtesan Lais dominating the philosopher Diogenes the Cynic:

Araneola began to depict Lais, the philosopher’s vanquisher,
who over the chin and neck of the boorish Cynic
severed his smelly beard with her fragrant scissors.

{ pingere philosophi victricem Laida coepit,
quae Cynici per menta feri rugosaque colla
rupit odoratam redolenti forcipe barbam }

Like Aristotle in relation to Phyllis, Diogenes wasn’t cynical enough about women to ward off his own humiliation at a woman’s hands. Araneola wouldn’t yield to the goddess Athena. Surely she would also dominate the philosopher Polemius in her marriage with him.[10]

Sidonius imagines that Polemius, a rational thinker, is hesitant to marry. Athena urges Araneola and Polemius to move forward with their marriage

No more shall you laugh at our dogmas, you young woman
who shall marry my philosopher. Put on your bridal veil.
Allow a mother to weave this work. Rise, Polemius,
distinguished ornament of sages, and now finally your Stoic
frown dismiss. And imitating Cynics as lovers,
undertake to make for me a second little Plato.

{ non nostra ulterius ridebis dogmata, virgo
philosopho nuptura meo; mage flammea sumens
hoc mater sine texat opus. consurge, sophorum
egregium Polemi decus, ac nunc Stoica tandem
pone supercilia et Cynicos imitatus amantes
incipies iterum parvum mihi ferre Platona }

Polemius hesitates, perhaps not wanting to find himself like Diogenes the Cynic in love with Lais. Then Polemius hears the words of his master Plato:

Press on willingly! You could not possibly reject marriage,
which our old teacher Socrates commands. Not reluctant, he drank
poison while contemplating gods, with Anytus his executioner turning pale.

{ perge libens, neu tu damnes fortasse iugari,
quod noster iubet ille senex qui non piger hausit
numina contemplans Anyto pallente venenum. }

Socrates was married to the harridan Xanthippe. He had good reason to drink poison willingly. One might hope that a wedding song would sing not about drinking poison, but about performing the rites “of the love-goddesses {Venerum}.” Alas for the meter, not so went Sidonius’s epithalamium for Polemius and Araneola.

The marriage ceremony moves forward. Polemius modestly removes his threadbare philosopher’s cloak and consigns it to Plato. Athena ties an olive branch, a symbol of peace, onto each of the spouses’ heads. She joins their right hands. Then their golden life-threads are woven together. Perhaps Araneola herself had spun those threads.

Sidonius didn’t actually regard serious study of philosophy and literature as inconsistent with marriage. In a letter to a young literary friend, Sidonius declares:

That you would be able to read more easily and more pleasurably, it is necessary that you read without faking and without limit to your reading. Don’t tolerate the thought that you will soon be at home happily married to deflect you from this proposition. Always fully remember that time when Marcia, Terentia, Calpurnia, Pudentilla, and Rusticiana held candles and candelabra while their husbands, respectfully Hortensius, Tullius, Pliny, Apuleius, and Symmachus, were reading and thinking. Certainly, moreover, if you are complaining that your oratory and poetical skill, and the edge of your tongue, sharpened with the whetstone of frequent study, are blunted by a houseful of women, remember that Corinna often helped her Naso to complete a verse, and so it was with Lesbia and Catullus, Caesennia and Gaetulicus, Argentaria and Lucan, Cynthia and Propertius, and Delia and Tibullus. Hence one should have clarity that the studious perceive marriage to bestow opportunity, while idlers perceive it as an excuse.

{ quoque id facilius possis voluptuosiusque, opus est ut sine dissimulatione lectites, sine fine lecturias; neque patiaris ut te ab hoc proposito propediem coniunx domum feliciter ducenda deflectat, sisque oppido meminens quod olim Marcia Hortensio, Terentia Tullio, Calpurnia Plinio, Pudentilla Apuleio, Rusticiana Symmacho legentibus meditantibusque candelas et candelabra tenuerunt. certe si praeter oratoriam contubernio feminarum poeticum ingenium et oris tui limam frequentium studiorum cotibus expolitam querens obtundi, reminiscere quod saepe versum Corinna cum suo Nasone complevit, Lesbia cum Catullo, Caesennia cum Gaetulico, Argentaria cum Lucano, Cynthia cum Propertio, Delia cum Tibullo. proinde liquido daret studentibus discendi per nuptias occasionem tribui, desidibus excusationem }[11]

Sidonius perceived Polemius’s marriage as an occasion for mocking philosophy and humorously invoking themes from literature of men’s sexed protest. While filled with classical learning, Sidonius’s epithalamium for Araneola and Polemius isn’t meant to be taken seriously.

Sidonius wryly indicated that Polemius resented this epithalamium. Measuring up to Araneola’s forefathers, Polemius became Praetorian Prefect of Gaul about 471. Sidonius included in his disseminated letter-collection a letter that he wrote to Polemius about two years later.[12] In that letter, Sidonius hints that he has repented of a crime he committed against Polemius and complains that Polemius has long ignored him. Perhaps that crime was his epithalamium. Sidonius begs to receive a letter from his long-time friend Polemius. Sidonius also suggests that high office, not marriage, has blunted Polemius’s appreciation for philosophy. That’s an important insight. Nominally leading men in gynocentric society tend to be the ones most offended by frankly comical depictions of gender relations.

* * * * *

Read more:

• Martianus Capella, updated: the marriage of Gynecology and Hercules
• celebrating marriage: Ausonius loved his wife Sabina
• marriage encomium in dialog with Lidia in Chaucer’s Merchant’s Tale

Notes:

[1] Sidonius Apollinaris, Letter {Epistola} 9.6, “Sidonius to the Lord Bishop Ambrosius, greetings {Sidonius Domino Papae Ambrosio salutem},” Latin text from Anderson (1965), my English translation, benefiting from that of id. The subsequent two quotes above are similarly from Epistola 9.6. Attractive women threatening men as do Scylla and Charybdis is a motif in men’s sexed protest.

[2] Sidonius, Epistola 1.6, “Sidonius to his friend Eutropius, greetings {Sidonius Eutropio suo salutem},” Latin text from Anderson (1936), my English translation, benefiting from that of id. The subsequent quote above is similarly from Epistola 1.6.

In Epistola 3.6 to Eutropius, Sidonius congratulates Eutropius on his recent elevation (c. 470) to Praetorian Prefect of Gaul. Sidonius also refers to “your master Plotinus {vester Plotinus}” and associates Eutropius with the “school of Platonists {palaestra Platonicorum}.” Plotinus lived from 204 to 270 GC. He was an influential philosopher now regarded as the leading Neoplatonist.

Sidonius’s disparagement of Epicurean pleasure contrasts sharply with Epicurus in the earlier but related work of Martianus Capella. Martianus placed Epicurus among immortals and declared: “Epicurus indeed was carrying violets and roses mixed with all allurements of pleasure {Epicurus vero mixtas violis rosas et totas apportabat illecebras voluptatum}.” Martianus Capella, About the Marriage of Philology and Mercury {De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii} 213 (from Book 2), Latin text from Willis (1983), my English translation. Martianus apparently wrote De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii early in the fifth century (before 439). On Martianus’s view of Epicurus, Brown (1982).

[3] Sidonius, Song {Carmen} 14, “Sidonius to his friend Polemius, greetings {Sidonius Polemio suo salutem},” Latin text from Anderson (1936), my English translation, benefiting from that of id. The subsequent quote above is similarly from Carmen 14. Carmina 14 and 15 seem to date to “461, or else very soon after.” Kelly (2020) p. 172. For a commentary (not available to me) on these works, Ravenna (1990).

Carmen 14 isn’t actually a poem, but a prose letter. It precedes Sidonius’s epithalamium for Araneola and Polemius among Sidonius’s poems in the manuscript tradition. Kelly (2021).

[4] Sidonius seems to be taunting Polemius as a follower of traditional Roman gods and goddesses. Traditional Roman religion didn’t regard Venus as a false coloring of love. Sidonius implies that Polemius regards philosophers as gods. Christians, in contrast, pray to Christian saints for help.

[5] The name Polemius suggests the ancient Greek word “war {πόλεμος}.” Polemius’s name thus resonates with the violent beginning of the epithalamium for him. Roberts (1989) p. 342. On knowledge of Greek in fifth-century Gaul, John (2020).

War is institutionally structured as violence against men. Sidonius, however, like Prudentius, seems to have deliberately reversed the gender polarity of war. The goddess Athena represents war, while Polemius is a hesitant, modest, and unwarlike man.

The name Polemius is elsewhere attested by Polemius Silvius, a fifth-century Christian imperial official. Polemius Silvius devised a calendar integrating traditional Roman festivals with Christian holy days.

[6] Sidonius Carmen 15, “Epithalamium of Sidonius spoken to Polemius and Araneola {Sidonii epithalamium dictum Polemio et Araneolae},” vv. 7-12, Latin text from Anderson (1936), my English translation, benefiting from that of id. The epithalamium title used here is from Kelly (2021). Roberts noted that except for the last six verses of this epithalamium, it contains “little of the conventional epithalamium.” Roberts (1989) p. 341.

Subsequent quotes above from Carmen 15 are similarly sourced. They are vv. 42 (seven sages), 43 (the origins of innumerous philosophers), 102-3 (the first essence would be…), 117-21 (In this school, science cultivates the life…), 125 (As for the Epicureans…), 182-4 (Araneola began to depict Lais…), 186-91 (No more shall you laugh at our dogmas…), 193-5 (Press on willingly! …).

[7] In the verse Carmen 15.121, the pronoun “him {hunc}” is probably best interpreted to refer to Polemius. Early Christians distinguished themselves from others, whom they came to call pagans, in insisting on the absolute truth of Christianity. On that distinctive Christian epistemological stance, O’Donnell (1979).

Sidonius credited his friend Bishop Faustus with having Christianized philosophy. Jerome interpreted the captive maiden of Deuteronomy as modeling Christianization of Greco-Roman classics. Through Jerome’s figure of the captive maiden, Sidonius elaborately represented both his own action and Bishop Faustus’s learning . With respect to Bishop Faustus, Sidonius declared:

An artist then endowed with all these intellectual and literary excellences, you have joined to yourself a beautiful woman. She has married you in the ritual prescribed by Deuteronomy, my Lord Bishop. You had seen her, while still in your youth, among the hordes of the enemy. There in the midst of the hostile ranks you fell in love with her and, defying the attempts of the opposing warriors to drive you back, you carried her off with the conquering arm of desire. Her name was Philosophy. Rescued by force from the crowd of blasphemous sciences, she shaved off the locks that betokened false religion. She shaved off the disdainful eyebrows of worldly knowledge and cut away the folds of her old former raiment — and by folds I mean the twists and turns of sinister dialectic screening wrong and unlawful behavior. Then, when cleansed in every part, she united herself with you in a mystic embrace.

She has long been your attendant, even from your early years. She is your inseparable companion whether you are exercising yourself in the hard school of the city or wearing yourself out in hidden solitudes. She is your partner in the Athenaeum and in the monastery. With you she renounces worldly studies, and with you she proclaims heavenly doctrine. If anyone assails you now that you are wed to this spiritual bride, he will learn that Plato’s Academy is now enlisted in the cause of Christ’s church and that you practice philosophy in a nobler sense.

{ artifex igitur his animi litterarumque dotibus praeditus mulierem pulchram sed illam deuternomio astipulante nubentem, domine papa, tibi iugasti; quam tu adhuc iuvenis inter hostiles conspicatus catervas, atque illic in acie contrariae partis adamatam, nil per obstantes repulsus proeliatores, desiderii brachio vincente rapuisti, philosophiam scilicet, quae violenter e numero sacrilegarum artium exempta raso capillo superfluae religionis ac supercilio scientiae saecularis amputatisque pervetustarum vestium rugis, id est tristis dialecticae flexibus falsa morum et illicita velantibus, mystico amplexu iam defaecata tecum membra coniunxit.

haec ab annis vestra iamdudum pedisequa primoribus, haec tuo lateri comes inseparabilis, sive in palaestris exerceris urbanis sive in abstrusis macerare solitudinibus, haec Athenaei consors, haec monasterii, tecum mundanas abdicat, tecum supernas praedicat disciplinas. huic copulatum te matrimonio qui lacessiverit, sentiet ecclesiae Christi Platonis Academiam militare teque nobilius philosophari }

Sidonius, Epistola 9.9.12-3, “Sidonius to the Lord Bishop Faustus, greetings {Sidonius Domino Papae Fausto salutem},” Latin text and English translation (modified slightly) from Anderson (1965). For an alternate perspective on the classical heritage in fifth-century Gaul, Stevens (1933) pp. 15-8; John (2021).

[8] Sidonius evocatively refers to paintings on the Areopagus in Athens that show “Epicurus with unwrinkled skin {Epicurus cute distenta}.” Sidonius, Epistola 9.9.14, “Sidonius to the Lord Bishop Faustus, greetings {Sidonius Domino Papae Fausto salutem},” Latin text and English translation from Anderson (1965). Bishop Faustus became Bishop of Riez about 460. See Epistola 9.3.

[9] Araneola’s grandfather was Flavius Constantinus Felix, Consul of Rome in 428. Her father was the eminent Gallo-Roman noble Flavius Magnus of Narbonne. He was a Roman senator. Emperor Majorian appointed him Magister Officiorum, Consul of Rome in 460, and Praetorian Prefect of Gaul in 469. Araneola’s brother was Magnus Felix. He rose to be Praetorian Praefect of Gaul and Patrician. He was Sidonius’s schoolfriend. On this and other aristocratic Gallo-Roman families, Mathisen (2003).

[10] The unusual name Araneola is a diminutive of the Latin word “spider {aranea},” from the ancient Greek ἀράχνη. According to Ovid, the young woman Arachne of Maeonia, an outstanding weaver, would not acknowledge Athena as preeminent weaver. Ovid, Metamorphoses 6.5-7. After Athena challenged Arachne to a weaving contest and lost, Athena transformed Arachne into a spider. In Sidonius’s revision of that myth, Athena challenges Araneola to a weaving contest and Araneola wins. Then Araneola asserts the superiority of women’s beauty and guile (Lais) over men’s thinking (the philosopher Diogenes). On Sidonius’s recasting of the myth of Arachne competing with Athena, Rosati (2004).

According to Roberts, Sidonius through Araneola indicates “scepticism about the superiority of male virtus.” Araneola undercuts “the male perspective” in her weaving of mythic scenes. Araneola’s depictions of Penelope, who deceived her suitors; Alcestis, for whom Admestus was required to undertake a deadly quest; and Hypermestra, sister to the husband-killing Danaids, “suggest some criticism of the comparative value of male and female worlds.” Moreover, “Orpheus seems entirely ineffectual by comparison with the heroic female figures with whom he’s surrounded.” In addition, “Araneola’s irreverence makes a charming contrast” with the self-important posing of academicians. The mythic end of this epithalamium is “the sublation of the opposition between male and female in an image of equality.” Roberts (1989) pp. 342-3. Indeed, could academics today read this epithalamium in any other way?

[11] Sidonius, Epistola 2.10, “Sidonius to his friend Hesperius, greetings {Sidonius Hesperio suo salutem},” Latin text from Anderson (1936), my English translation, benefiting from that of id.

[12] Sidonius, Epistola 4.14, “Sidonius to his friend Polemius, greetings {Sidonius Polemio suo salutem}.” In this letter, Sidonius also refers to Tacitus as being Polemius’s ancestor. Sidonius again positions Polemius as not being a Christian:

I would like that you would know that being before the forum’s high priest is not like being before the judge of the world. For you, the man who doesn’t keep silent about his disgraces is damned, yet for us one who makes confession of them to God is absolved.

{ noveris volo non, ut est apud praesulem fori, sic esse apud iudicem mundi, namque ut is, qui propria vobis non tacuerit flagitia, damnatur, ita nobiscum qui eadem deo fuerit confessus absolvitur. }

Sidonius seems to mock Roman religious belief as well as Roman marriage. Inter-personal forgiveness is a central value in Christian societies.

Mratschek interprets Epistola 4.14 more narrowly as expressing Sidonius’s pain for Polemius’s silence across two years. She observed:

In his letter (Ep. 4.14.1), the bishop {Sidonius} reproduced almost word for word the speech attributed in Tacitus’ Histories (5.26.2) to the rebel leader Iulius Civilis, who stayed true to his friendship with Vespasian even during the Batavian war, in which the two fought on opposite sides.

Mratschek (2020 p. 245. Polemius might have felt that Sidonius didn’t stay true to their friendship in his epithalamium. In any case, this letter is the only letter to Polemius (other than Carmen 14) that Sidonius included in his collection. That suggests that it was included for its poignancy (whether real or contrived) in relation to Carmen 15.

[images] (1) Cassandra imploring Athena for vengeance after Ajax desecrated Athena’s temple and raped Cassandra. Painted by Jérôme-Martin Langlois in 1810. Via Wikimedia Commons. (2) Glaucus importuning Scylla. Painted by Bartholomeus Spranger between 1580 and 1582. Preserved as accession # GG_2615 in the Kunsthistorisches Museum (Vienna, Austria). Via Wikimedia Commons. (3) Metamorphosis of Arachne into a spider. From an instance of the Ovide moralisé, illustrated by the Master of Fauvel about 1330. From folio 78r of Paris, Arsenal, Ms-5069 réserve. Also available via BnF Mandragore and Wikimedia Commons.

References:

Anderson, W.B, ed. and trans. 1936 / 1965. Sidonius. Poems and Letters. With an English translation, introduction, and notes. 2 vols. Loeb Classical Library 296 and 420. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Vol. 1, Vol. 2.

Brown, Emerson. 1982. “Epicurus and Voluptas in Late Antiquity: The Curious Testimony of Martianus Capella.” Traditio. 38: 75–106.

John, Alison. 2020. “Learning Greek in Late Antique Gaul.” Classical Quarterly. 70 (2): 846-864.

John, Alison. 2021. “Cultural Memory and Classical Education in Late Antique Gaul.” In Martine De Marre and Rajiv K. Bhola, eds. Making and Unmaking Ancient Memory. London: Routledge.

Kelly, Gavin. 2020. “Dating the Works of Sidonius.” Chapter 3 (pp. 166-194) in Kelly & van Waarden (2020).

Kelly, Gavin. 2021. “An Edition of the Paratexts of Sidonius’ Poems.” Posted online March 27, 2021 at sidonapl.org.

Kelly, Gavin, and Joop van Waarden. 2020. The Edinburgh Companion to Sidonius Apollinaris. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Reviews by Tabea L. Meurer and by Lena Walhgren-Smith.

Mathisen, Ralph W. 2003. ‘“Qui Genus Unde Patres?” the Case of Arcadius Placidus Magnus Felix.‘ Medieval Prosopography. 24 (1): 55–71.

Mratschek, Sigrid. 2020. “Creating Culture and Presenting the Self in Sidonius.” Chapter 6 (pp. 237-260) in Kelly & van Waarden (2020).

O’Donnell, James J. 1979. “The Demise of Paganism.” Traditio. 35: 45–88.

Ravenna, Giovanni. 1990. Le Nozze di Polemio e Araneola: Sidonio Apollinare Carmina XIV-XV. Bologna: Pàtron.

Roberts, Michael. 1989. “The Use of Myth in Latin Epithalamia from Statius to Venantius Fortunatus.” Transactions of the American Philological Association. 119: 321–348.

Rosati, Gianpiero. 2004. “La strategia del ragno, ovvero la rivincita di Aracne. Fortuna tardo-antica (Sidonio Apollinare, Claudiano) di un mito Ovidiano.” Dictynna. 1: 1-14. Online at https://doi.org/10.4000/dictynna.174

Stevens, Courtenay Edward. 1933. Sidonius Apollinaris and His Age. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Willis, James, ed. 1983. Martianus Capella. Leipzig: B.G. Teubner Verlagsgesellschaft.