This book deals with the poetic style and language, metric and composition of Sidonius Apollinaris, who is currently in vogue among literary scholars and critics. Following in the steps of Ovid, the first great ‘epigonal’ poet of Latin literature, Sidonius Apollinaris inherits from the Classics a treasure of materials that he reuses, having crumbled it into mosaic tesserae. He self-consciously resorts to every traditional verbal combination, knowing to be writing at the end of a declining centuries-long cultural heritage.
In a brief preface, O. declares his debt to previous works, in particular to M. Roberts's The Jeweled Style (1989), which might have inspired the title ‘The Gem and its Setting’. Nonetheless, he soon expresses a personal interpretation, based on the idea that Sidonius elaborates a peculiar technique: ‘su un fondo comune a letterati e artisti dell'epoca, innesta elementi nuovi, prodotto di un'istanza poetica e ideologica responsabile di un'esuberanza espressiva tenacemente coltivata non per puro narcisismo ma anche per protesta contro il declino della cultura romana nella Gallia tardoantica stretta nella morsa dei barbari’ (p. 9; several other formulations are developed passim, the best pp. 143–4). O. disagrees with the common belief that Sidonius’ formative years at school provided him with a narrow artistic vision and inability to overview, while making him indifferent towards the tormented social and cultural context of the time. Opposing this view, O. tries to demonstrate that all Sidonius’ rhetoric and stylistic (if not ideological) choices were conscious. In this effort, O. reveals that ill-concealed fondness which scholars often have for the subject of their study, hence a certain decadent lateness – see B. Hutchinson's Lateness and Modern European Literature (2016). He also uses some terms typical of a Huysmanian langue (sometimes hard to read, even for italophone readers) imitating the poet's literary taste; for example, regarding the adj. perflabilis, O. speaks of ‘permeabilità del vessillo alle correnti eoliche’ (p. 39), just to signify that the air, as today in small airports’ windsocks, entered the jaws of the dracones – the serpentiform military banners.
The volume is divided in two sections, ‘La tecnica diairetica’ and ‘Alchimie lessicali’, each partitioned in several chapters. O. starts by addressing the organisation of the material (pp. 15–85: ‘Amplificazione e sfaccettatura di topoi’), exploring the structural device and the rhetoric-stylistic features of some hexametric pieces from the panegyrics for Avitus (7.171–206) and Antemius (2.102–33, 138–92) and from the epithalamium for Polemius and Araneola (15.36–125). The analysis reveals the poet's tendency to use practices of fragmentation and amplification that originally reformulate subjects dear to the encomiastic tradition. In ‘Ekphrasis e manierismo’ O. lists the passages in which Sidonius gives his best descriptive writing: the portrait of Rome in Majorian's panegyric (5.13–39, with special focus on the shield's ecphrasis, 21–31) compared with Antemius’ (2.391–404) and many other images from Carmina minora (22.25–40 and 67–82, Bacchus’ and Apollo's processions; 11.14–33, materials used by Vulcanus to build Venus’ temple; 15.126–43, textrinum Minervae; 150–78, Araneola family's celebration). It is quite interesting to see the contrast between two barbarian populations, the Huns in 2.243–69 and the Franks in 5.237–53. The chapter ‘Frammentazione pervasiva e variatio capillare’ focuses on Carm. 9, in which Sidonius lists the praiseworthy subjects of high poetry. Historical, mythological and religious themes are excluded from the nugae in order to satisfy a need for novitas rather than for a fear of inadequacy. In ‘Matrici culturali’ O. investigates the reasons that led the poet to systematically use the diairetic technique.
A few minor observations on bibliographical references. At the beginning of his discussion (pp. 33, 39 etc.), O. deals with some laudatory comparisons between a mythological figure and a modern real personality who surpasses the ancient exemplum: the mechanism has been catalogued within the trope called ‘outdoing’ (Überbietung) and masterly analysed by E.R. Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages (transl. 1979, pp. 162–5); on p. 29 n. 30, about Carm. 13 regarding Martial, see A. Canobbio, Lexis 31 (2013), 366–90; on p. 228 n. 119, see F. Oppedisano, L'impero d'Occidente negli anni di Maioriano (2013).
The second section, ‘Gemme da incastonare’, addresses the issue of the absolute hapax legomena used by Sidonius. The analysis covers 41 words, categorised into nouns, adjectives and verbs, completed with an indication of the place where they occur (see Table 1, pp. 276–7) and their frequency (Table 2). O.’s discussion of the high frequency of hapax in Carmina 9 and 23 is very relevant (Table 3); the percentage of neo-formations is twice as high in the phalaecian hendecasyllables as in the dactylic hexameters, which shows the close relationship between metrical constraints and linguistic creativity. Of such words, the morphological mechanisms of composition and derivation (equally distributed 21:20) are also described (Tables 4–5). In the last chapter ‘Hapax e cornice: un rapporto strategico’ O. studies the correlation between a single word and the context, both in the phalaecians (in which the isosyllabism prevents the addition of neo-formations) and in the hexameters (in which there is more freedom). However, it is clear that Sidonius aims to insert the hapax into contexts that both exalt their originality and demonstrate the author's fine art. Lists of verses with similar occurrences of prosodic segments have inflated the footnotes (see e.g. pp. 428–30): since such lists can now be easily retrieved through electronic tools (http://www.pedecerto.eu/), a soberer selection would have been sufficient. The volume ends with a bibliography and an index locorum.
This book is a wide-ranging critical study, a valuable work teeming with ideas and rich insights, never afraid to confront the major topics ancient poets dealt with. Sidonius’ loci examined and put in relation with previous literature are innumerable; arguments are always conducted rigorously, with excellent knowledge of linguistic and philological problems, and with self-confident intelligence and genuine enthusiasm. Misprints are few and negligible. Errors of fact are hard to find: the Ennian sapientipotens looks bad in a (un-epic) list on p. 349 n. 235, while on p. 296 (speaking of ronchisonus) O. writes ‘il ricorso al morfema verbale son- come seconda parte del composto è un unicum nella produzione in versi del Lugdunense’; but see the compound terrisonus in the archaic sonority of 5.408 at tuba terrisono strepuit graue rauca fragore. The distinction (p. 327 and passim) between epicising and solemnising epithets is subtle and sharp, but, I am afraid, not effective enough in the field of late-antique literary criticism.
Some of O.’s choices risk making the book accessible only to a very specialised audience, in as much as running commentaries of almost all Sidonius’ poems are still desiderata. Excesses in identifying ‘allusions’ are latent: a too high sensitivity may lead to overestimating the results of passive memory in the poet's mind, spontaneous phenomena without any stylistic, phonic or rhetorical reason. Regarding Carm. 2.105 (p. 71), ‘l'accostamento di flumina e melle è fonte di una duplice allitterazione consonantica con compresente scarto vocalico (mi – me; lu – le)’, but the sound figure seems very weak, also because the first liquid in flumina is part of the consonantal cluster fl-. Similarly, in Carm. 2.108 (… undantem segetem sine semine), ‘l’-em di segetem crea un nesso omoteleutico con undantem e funge da collante sonoro con semine’; but the phonemes e and m belong to different syllables and are internal to semine; so it is difficult to consider them involved in alliteration with undantem and segetem. With regard to te nascente ferunt exorto flumina melle / dulcatis cunctata vadis oleique liquores / isse: ‘ancor più esasperato il caso di olei (v. 106), i cui fonemi ritornano tutti – in diverso ordine – all'interno del successivo liquores ’. I would rather associate the clause with Lucretius 2.398 huc accedit uti mellis lactisque liquores (mel is in Sidonius too, v. 105), and it comes most likely from involuntary memory. Of course, it is not easy to choose between intentional reuses and mere verbal coincidences, but a systematic search of databases makes the task less arbitrary. For example, at p. 89 n. 5, O. ventures linking circite laevum (Carm. 5.21) with Juvenc. Evang. 1.680, quam lata et spatiosa via est, quae limite laevo , because both are ‘costituite da un ablativo singolare in -ite e da una forma dell'aggettivo laevus:’; but the same phonic pattern is traceable in Ovid (Met. 9.298, dextroque a poplite laeuum ) and in a Senecan anapaestic context (Phaedr. 16, vos qua Marathon tramite laeuo); if anything, it is the concurrent presence of spatiosus that acts in defence of Juvencus.
It might likewise be fortuitous (p. 77) ‘l'allitterazione apofonica che interessa i lessemi conclusivi degli emistichi (venit … flagrat )’ in Carm. 2.120, Iulius in lucem uenit, dum laurea flagrat; regarding the hendecasyllables of poem 9, it is an overstatement to define ‘enjambements allitterativi in modulazione progressiva’ the metric-verbal sequences (p. 205 n. 76: underlined in the original) 154–5 fluenta tractas / ereptam , or 163–4 (Sirenas) pereuntibus placentes, / vitatas tenebras? At p. 208, I cannot perceive ‘enjambement fonico’ in the association nec quae fulmine Tuscus expiato / saeptum numina quaerit ad bidental (lines 192–3). At pp. 373–5, O. expatiates upon the coinage of Byrsicus in Epist. 7.17.2.18, spernis Elisseae Byrsica tecta domus, whose origin we could infer from ‘i numerosi pentametri elegiaci il cui secondo emistichio risulta aperto da trisillabo dattilico in -ica’. A model of Byrsica tecta might rather be the widespread epicism formed by tecta + toponymic-ethnic, witnessed from Ovid (Met. 12.417, Lapitheia tecta) to Lucan (5.406, Minoia), Statius (Silv. 2.3.14, Caelica), Valerius Flaccus (4.504, Phineia) and Sidonius the panegyrist himself (5.86, Romanaque tecta). A special case is Silius Italicus, in which the connection appears very frequently; see the occurrences of Sidonia tecta (1.444, 6.85) and 15.308, Oeneasque domos, Curetica tecta, subibat, a hexameter that has the word domus and displays a typical verse-clause of traditional epic. In similar cases, it is wise to go beyond Silius and look at the main source, Ennius, whose Annales were still studied in fifth- and sixth-century schools. The same might be said about Brennica signa (pp. 370–3, line 561), of which various phonic parallelisms exist, with isosyllabic adjectives like bellica, publica, Pontica, Parthica, but above all Punica.
On a final note, in Sidonius’ poems O. is tirelessly searching for an architectonic strategy (p. 401), for an overall logic of innovation. I am not sure whether the Gallo-Roman author's grounds were that strong, methodical and coherent. It is no less true that many single arguments and assumptions in the book – for example (p. 392) about the reasons that induced Sidonius to prefer the coinage of a neologism like vertilis, instead of taking the pre-existent versilis from Servius – are often more than ingenious, and rather fascinating.
