This edited volume, the fruit of two international conferences in Clermont-Ferrand in 2009 and 2010, is a major event in the burgeoning field of Sidonius scholarship. It sets out to explore Sidonius' ties with the past, his relationship to his own time and his reception up to the present, examined from a variety of angles: philology, linguistics, metrics, literature, rhetoric, history and anthropology. What we get is a highly interesting collection of essays which, despite its multidisciplinary objective, relies mainly on textual analysis.
The book consists of six main sections: ‘Sidoine et son temps’, ‘Histoire, poétique et politique: les Panégyriques’, ‘Poétique’, ‘Intertextualité’, ‘Culture antique et chrétienne’ and ‘Sidoine Apollinaire au miroir des autres’, framed by an introduction, plurilingual abstracts, a bibliography and an index locorum. It comprises 32 articles whose authors include many leading specialists in the field.
In the first section, C. Delaplace intelligently argues in favour of deconstructing Sidonius’ picture of the Visigothic ‘conquest’ of the Auvergne. Rather than taking advantage of a power vacuum, Euric remained loyal to his obligations to Anthemius in the conflict between the latter and Ricimer. It was Sidonius who, in 470/71, changed sides from the Visigoths to the Burgundians. In an original contribution, É. Faure and N. Jacquemard, taking Sidonius’ fit of – presumably – malaria as their starting point, analyse the deteriorating health situation from the fifth into the sixth century. The remaining items in this section, on the women in the Apollinares family by P. Mascoli and on the bishop's function according to Sidonius by D. Viellard, might have had a greater edge, beyond the useful descriptions they offer, by elaborating on their conceptual framework.
In the second section, all contributions somehow consider the construction of images. While one of the editors, S.-M., offers a beautifully conceived, in-depth analysis of the figure of Fabricius as a blueprint for Avitus, J.-C. Jolivet cleverly displays an array of Virgilian intertexts for this monarch's portrayal, en passant doing away with the outdated notion of Sidonius' ‘preciosité’. In a balanced piece by A. Delattre, the utterly negative portrayal of Genseric and the Vandals is put in opposition to the emperors' heroisation, in an interplay of panegyric and epic, which makes sense of the ambiguous role of Africa as both hereditary enemy and cherished part of the empire. In a preliminary study for her forthcoming commentary on the Panegyric of Avitus, L. Furbetta carefully dissects a number of literary models. Similarly, for her commentary on the Panegyric of Majorian, L. Brolli analyses Sidonius' use of myth and intertexts in describing the Roman relationship with the Franks. Finally, F.E. Consolino writes a richly detailed and illuminating account of the goddess Roma's representation, different in every Panegyric, which Sidonius brings about by combining an obvious primary hypotext with hints of a second one.
The third section takes a rather more technical approach to Sidonius' poetry. C. Longobardi tries to elicit a metaphorical sense from his use of memoratus, not quite convincingly and without mentioning TLL. M. Squillante takes the reader on an interesting tour of Sidonius' water world, which appears to oscillate between live observation and literary filtering. Literary types are among Sidonius' stock in trade for throwing light on contemporary society, as S. Condorelli demonstrates in an extensive paraphrase of the Gnatho passage in Letter 3.13. M.-F. Guipponi-Gineste brilliantly argues that the inscription for Queen Ragnahilda's cup, inserted in Letter 4.8, is a symbol for the cautious transfer of the Roman cultural treasure to the Visigoths. Sidonius' virtuoso deployment of spondaic sequences in dactylic verse, suited to the occasion, whether official or private, is illustrated by C. Fry. There is one drawback: the lavishly adduced percentages are not statistically tested for the reliability of their sample sizes. Quite differently, R. Mathisen's important contribution focuses on Sidonius' possible use of dossiers in organising his books of letters.
Intertextuality again permeates the fourth section, especially with Ovid, Statius and Martial. In a close reading of Poem 6, A. Bruzzone comes up with a wealth of suggestions for the Ovidian roots of this programmatic poem. The harvest is so disparate that this paper is a good example of the permeable border between interpreting a poem and free association on the scholar's part. By now, the chapter on Ovid's presence in Poem 11 by S. Filosini has merged into her book on the subject. Her claim that the Phaeton episode is the poem's structural backbone is daring because the tendencies of the two stories run counter to each other. In A.-M. Taisne's piece, Statius' long-acknowledged exemplarity for Sidonius is rehearsed in a sympathetic inventory. Next, Martial and his influence on Sidonius, including the idea of epigramma, receive a careful treatment from É. Wolff. Drawing on Sidonius' indebtedness to Statius and Claudian, S. Santelia's instructive chapter on the self-assertion of the Gallo-Roman aristocracy, as apparent in Poem 11, leads up to the next thematic unit.
Section 5 treats ‘antique’ and ‘Christian’ culture. After a long and clever discussion of difficult passages in the two dedicatory poems on churches, in Letters 2.10 and 4.18, G. Viard construes an opposition between Sidonius' gusto for describing villas and his scarce attention to church buildings. She supposes that he preferred classical to Christian culture in the turmoil that surrounded him. I doubt whether this opposition, which is also characteristic of several other pieces in this collection, is still helpful, and should not be replaced by É. Rebillard's understanding of the fluid and situational nature of religious and social allegiances (Christians and Their Many Identities in Late Antiquity [2012]). Both J. Hernández Lobato and D. Amherdt occupy themselves in neat counterpoint with Poem 16. Whereas Hernández Lobato reads it as a sweeping statement of the death of pagan and the resurrection of Christian poetry, Amherdt soberly analyses its mixture of classical and biblical elements, portraying Sidonius as an artist rather than a theologian. N. Brocca, on the other hand, thinks she can detect traces of Ambrose's and Chromatius' theology in Sidonius' allegorical interpretation of the return of the Magi.
Section 6 contains some very welcome contributions to the still largely virgin territory of Sidonius' reception. They range from N. Hecquet-Noti on Avitus of Vienne's reversal of Sidonius' poetical priorities, from pagan to Christian, to D. Aranjo who presents recent poems by Tristan Derème and Georges Saint-Clair. In between come G. Viard on Venantius Fortunatus' description of the castellum of Nizier, which mirrors Sidonius' burgus Poem 22; S. Gioanni on Sidonius' significance for medieval scholastics and the role played by anthologies in the transmission of Late Antiquity; J.-L. Charlet on Giambattista Pio and the enduring importance of his stylistic affinity with Sidonius; S. Baudoin on Chateaubriand's assimilation of his example; and M.-F. de Palacio on both the fascination and the aversion to Sidonius in the fin de siècle.
Not to be missed on account of the variety and the generally high level of its contributions, and carefully edited, this volume suffers a little from the imprecise chronology of its components, due to the long gestation of its publication. Some chapters seem to have been updated, but most have not (precise indications are lacking). Parts have been published elsewhere since then and, inevitably, discussions and documentation are sometimes not entirely up to date. These, however, are small matters compared with the importance of this milestone in Sidonius research.
