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POETRY
the west, Sidonius was sent on a mission to the new ruler by the Gaulish
aristocracy. In 468 he delivered a panegyric upon Anthemius and was appointed
by him Praefectus urbi. The hostile demonstrations of the hungry inhabitants
of the Eternal City were not to the taste of a Gaulish magnate, and as soon as
he could Sidonius escaped to the peace of his estates in Auvergne, dignified
by the rank of patricius. Things were not going well in Gaul. The Visigothic
king Theodoric had been succeeded by his son Euric, who was eager to extend
his territory at the expense of the Romans. The great landowners governed
their own territories in virtual independence of the central government.
Peasant revolts were brewing. Sidonius now seems to have spent more and
more of his time in the company of bishops and other clerics, who offered the
hope of a kind of stability and continuity.
In 471 he was elected bishop of the Arverni, with his seat at Clermont-
Ferrand, perhaps after a few months in lower ecclesiastical orders. Several of
his kinsmen and friends entered the church at about the same time. In 472
King Euric attacked Auvergne. Although many of the Gaulish aristocracy
sided with the Visigoths in the hope of retaining their estates Sidonius headed
the resistance to the invaders. It was in vain. In 475 Auvergne was ceded to
the Goths, and Sidonius became the subject of a barbarian king. Imprisoned
for a time, he purchased his freedom at the price of a short panegyric on
Euric. In 476 he returned to Clermont, •where he devoted himself to administering
and leading his diocese until his death in 486. He was later canonized.
His surviving works consist of twenty-four poems, in an edition prepared
by the author in 469, and c. 150 letters in nine books. The poems are divided
into Panegyrici (poems 1—8) and Nugae (poems 9—24). The Panegyrici begin
with the panegyric on Anthemius in 548 hexameters (1) preceded by a preface
in elegiac metre. There follow the panegyric on Majorian in 603 hexameters
(5) preceded by two short prefatory poems, that on Avitus in 602 hexameters
(7) with its preface, and a short elegiac poem addressed to Priscus Valerius,
a kinsman of Avitus and former Praetorian Prefect of Gaul. The Nugae, in
hexameters, elegiac couplets or hendecasyllables, comprise addresses to friends,
two epithalamia, descriptions of buildings and works of art and the like. They
vary in length from 512 lines to 4. A number of further short poems - including
that in honour of King Euric — are contained in the letters. The letters are
not real items of correspondence, but rhetorical set-pieces. In his preface he
says that he imitates Pliny and Symmachus rather than Cicero, and describes
his epistles as litterae paulo politiores. They are thus full of the commonplaces
of ancient epistolography. The earliest of the letters, the description of King
Theodoric (Epist. 1.2) dates from 455—60; the remaining letters of Book 1
are connected with Sidonius' mission to Rome in 467. The book was probably
published in the following year. Thereafter there are few sure indications
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