Companions of classical authors are anything but scarce in our days. In the past decade so many reams of paper have been produced that one cannot but wonder whether publishers had any purpose for printing them other than commercial profit. This comes with the risk of losing sight of the general objectives – that is, to provide auxiliary aids to students and early career researchers. The focus of much recent scholarship, Sidonius is a fitting example of this current fashion. Nonetheless, no one could ever think that this Edinburgh Companion is part of this trend. Kelly and van Waarden's collection is a well-structured and accessible text that does what older friends should do: to assist the non-specialist or less-experienced scholar. Eighteen different authors contribute to the volume in a contentious rather than conventional way, sometimes with true passion. It suffices to browse the editors’ introduction, which lists and summarises the book's chapters and highlights (pp. 4–9). I will only touch on a few points here: a complete index of contents, with its subdivision into six parts and list of 24 contributions (in addition to a preface and an epilogue by both editors) is available online (https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-the-edinburgh-companion-to-sidonius-apollinaris.html).
Redeeming the Alvernian bishop's figure is a noble aim, shared widely by all contributors. This reviewer's impartiality (or maybe lack of sympathy) towards the author leads him to say that Sidonius is taken too seriously as a writer, as a man and as an ecclesiastic. His biography is helpful for understanding the passage of the Gallo-Roman aristocracy from military, social and financial security guaranteed by strong imperial stability to a stern necessity to co-exist with the German invaders. A selected class of people, who were used to holding cultural and political authority even beyond their border, suddenly suffered many physical and moral offences, simply unimaginable a few decades before: Ausonius’ work allows us to establish a direct comparison between behaviours and life experiences of people who lived one century apart. I dare to doubt that Sidonius would have undergone his ‘conversion’ if he had not realised that there were no alternatives. Roman control over Gaul was over: every previous ambition or chance to access civil offices precluded; future exercises of power were possible only within Church-related structures.
The contributions of three leading Sidonian scholars open the volume. While van Waarden (Chapter 1) paints a clear and detailed biography (and it is a good idea to identify and explore sources other than Sidonius), R. Mathisen (Chapter 2) presents a full prosopographical register embracing the social-historical reality and political geography surrounding the author (with truly excellent tables, pp. 155–65). Just one remark: in some lists one can note a certain trend to apply quietly the category of ‘Nicene Christian’ to persons whose religious affiliation is unknown. The Roman comes Litorius (p. 105) was a pagan, since he made use of soothsayers (Prosper Tiro s.a. 439) before being defeated by the Visigoths; certainly Salvianus (gub. 7.39) saw the fate of Litorius as proof of God's will. Kelly's ‘Dating the Works’ (Chapter 3) gives further, well-documented proposals about the publication date of the panegyrics and minor poems. The political scenario traced by M. Kulikowski (Chapter 4) tends to generalise some aspects and thus risks appearing superficial; once the scholar goes into detail (for instance as regards the date of Majorian's rise to power, p. 208: a tricky issue, since the sources fluctuate between 1 April and 28 December 457), he ignores the conclusions reached by F. Oppedisano 2013 (cited in footnote 71). They are also ignored in S. Mratschek's two contributions to the book (Chapters 5–6), dedicated to the social and cultural climate. The attempt to exonerate Sidonius’ conversion from negative moral judgements is a widespread practice today, the result of a hidden reaction against E. Gibbon's enlightenment and anti-clerical tendencies. I am not referring to the balanced report by L. Bailey (Chapter 7, ‘Sidonius and Religion’): such an attitude emerges here and there in Part 3, primarily dedicated to the poet's work in its literary relations, through an overestimation of the influence of Christianity. According to Mratschek (p. 257) the theme of senectus mundi, in particular the wording in Epist. 8.6.3 (uirtutes … per aetatem mundi iam senescentis … ostentant), derives from Prudentius (Ham. praef. 17–18: mundum … iam senescentem). In fact, this topic is common among the Fathers (e.g. Cyprian, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine) and also appears earlier in Gellius (3.10.11): nunc quasi iam mundo senescente rerum atque hominum decrementa sunt; it goes back to a long-standing ancient tradition and major thinkers of Roman pessimism (Lucretius and Sallust).
F.E. Consolino (pp. 367–9), in particular, insists on this point. Sidonius closes his epistolary (9.16.3) recalling in verses the stages of his literary career, saying goodbye to the ‘ludic’ production: from now on the contents of his poetry will be exclusively sacred or hagiographic. ‘The influence of Horace is perceptible in the (admittedly common) nautical metaphor at the beginning’ and recognised in the poem's finale: ‘the concluding word sonabunt echoes canemus at the end of Horace's last ode (4.15)’; this applies also to the very last lines of the prose conclusion, ‘where Sidonius cites Ars 21–2 to argue for the coherence of this poem and of the letter collection as a whole’. Nevertheless, ‘the major point of reference’ would be Prudentius, because this allows Sidonius to outline the new identity that he wishes to create for himself. The poem in this way would no longer be an epilogue, but serve as a prologue to a new stage of artistic activity. I cannot agree with the idea that the Alvernian bishop wished to position himself as a potential successor to Prudentius. Even composing a Passio Saturnini, Sidonius intended to show that he had the gifts to tackle any literary genre. But the recusatio of secular poetry was only a facade; otherwise he would not have included in the epistolary his Carmina written many years earlier. Throughout his life there remained two constant aims: the search for honores and the cult of litterae; we never hear that true auto-da-fé, which consists in the so-called ‘rejection of the Muses’ (E.R. Curtius). A small demonstration can come from an unpublished comparison of texts. In a polemic reaction to Avienus’ Aratea, beginning Carminis incentor mihi Iuppiter, Paulinus of Nola proclaimed (Carm. 15.30–2): Non ego Castalidas, uatum phantasmata, Musas / nec surdum Aonia Phoebum de rupe ciebo. / Carminis incentor Christus mihi etc. Bucking the times, Sidonius will still ‘seriously’ call into question the Muses, invoking them under the same name in the exact metrical location (Carm. 2.314–16; no further examples in Latin poetry): Vos quoque, Castalides, paucis, quo numine nobis / uenerit Anthemius gemini cum foedere regni, / pandite: pax rerum misit qui bella gubernet. It is not the grand genre that requires obligatory tributes to mythology: the panegyric in honour of Avitus, an observant Christian, is more parsimonious than that thirteen years later pronounced for Anthemius, a sympathiser of late pagan Hellenism.
Rather than a spiritual testament (I. Gualandri), Sidonius’ piece seems to express a literary will (A. Loyen) and intends to evoke the most ‘classic’ of models. The last item of the epistolary concludes with this quotation: secundum regulas Flacci, ubi amphora coepit institui, urceus potius exisse uideatur (= Ars poetica 21–2: amphora coepit / institui: currente rota cur urceus exit?). According to Consolino (and G. Ravenna 2004, cited in footnote 128), in lines 83–4 quos tamen chordae nequeunt sonare, / corda sonabunt, Sidonius is echoing Horace, Carm. 4.15.32: progeniem Veneris canemus; but an ear sensitive to παρήχησις could capture the further relationship with Ars 348–9: nam neque chorda sonum reddit quem uolt manus et mens, / poscentique grauem persaepe remittit acutum. In short, Sidonius seems to adhere to the words spoken by the ‘liar poet’ (Epist. 2.1.111–13): ipse ego, qui nullos me adfirmo scribere uersus, / inuenior Parthis mendacior et prius orto / sole uigil calamum et chartas et scrinia posco.
In the last few years studies on intertextuality have continued to stimulate much theoretical discussion. The goal is not only to detect which books Sidonius had on his desk (that is: what ‘Roman aristocrats in barbarian Gaul’ still read), but also to pursue the last phase of transmission of some ancient texts before a long darkness. I will limit myself to providing just one example. We find no sign of Ennius, not a single quotation from Annales in 22 pages of a very accurate index locorum; but it is certain that fragment Inc. 15 Skutsch auium uolgus, preserved by Servius auctus (on Verg. Aen. 1.190: tvm vvlgvs bene ‘uulgus’ ductoribus interemptis. Ennius ‘auium uulgus’ et alibi ‘hastarum’, id est multitudinem hastarum et auium) finds an identical match only once in Latin literature, at Sidon. Carm. 2.353–6 (Avitus guides other peoples as well as the phoenix calls to itself all birds: Sic cinnama busto / collis Erythraei portans Phoebeius ales / concitat omne auium uulgus; famulantia currunt / agmina etc.). These connections have never been studied, yet are quite frequent (Enn. Ann. 80: spectat ad carceris oras ≈ Sidon. 2.494: spectet de carcere circi; Enn. Ann. 89: locis dant ≈ Sidon. 11.17: locis dans; Enn. Ann. 203: tum – rex / effatur = Sidon. 7.489; Enn. Ann. 514: unus homo = Sidon. 2.381). Time will come to investigate Ennius’ presence in Sidonius, which mostly can be detected by indirect relationships with ‘intermediary’ poets, such as Silius Italicus or Ilias Latina. However, it is fair to suspect that behind many concordances with authors who imitate/parody epic language (elegists, epigrammatists, satirists) there is a common but independent familiarity with the archaic text.
Parts 4 and 5, ‘Language and Style’ and ‘The Manuscript Tradition and the History of Scholarship’, are perhaps the less unexpected, with a couple of exceptions. Authored by van Waarden and Kelly, Chapter 15 concerns a hyper-specialised field of studies: late Latin prose rhythm. The choice to analyse, regardless of standard types, the period's final clauses in Books 1, 7 and 9 of the letters, must be considered effective, especially since it shows how Sidonius modifies his personal style depending on his correspondents. F. Dolveck's 60-page Chapter 16 offers a fundamental contribution to the advancement of Sidonian studies through a census of the manuscripts leading to new arrangements; the two editors (‘Epilogue’, p. 730) rightly point out that this ‘will make an enormous difference to future research on the text by making possible a simple stemmatic selection between variant readings’. Likewise, the concluding Part of the volume, ‘Readers of Sidonius from Antiquity to the Present’, holds some fascinating surprises in store.
