Resultados25 letters/passages
sidonius_apollinaris · c. 467 · score 0.02
But if verses devoid of ease and happiness cannot win approval, you too will find nothing pleasing on the page I append below. [The poem that follows describes the barbarian peoples gathered at the court of Euric in Bordeaux:] Why do you try to rouse the Muses now, Lampridius, glory of our poetry, and force me to compo …
sidonius_apollinaris · c. 467 · score 0.02
To the Lord Bishop Graecus [Bishop of Marseille]. Here once again our Amantius — that gossipmonger of ours — returns to his Marseille, doubtless planning to bring home some profit from the city's markets, if only a favorable cargo-ship should arrive. Through him I would chatter at length in a lighter vein, if my heart …
sidonius_apollinaris · c. 467 · score 0.02
This is the character that favorable report has brought us. Send word quickly if the reports match reality, so that those on perpetual guard duty — whom neither snowy days nor moonless, stormy nights persuade to sound the retreat from the walls — may catch their breath. For even when the barbarian withdraws to winter q …
sidonius_apollinaris · c. 457 · score 0.02
Sidonius to his lord Bishop Faustus, greetings. 1. Your eloquence and your devotion alike maintain their accustomed standard, and for this reason we admire your speech all the more because you write so finely, and your affection because you write so willingly. For the present, however, with your permission first sought …
sidonius_apollinaris · c. 467 · score 0.02
For the sake of the hope of this glorious peace, we tore herbs from the cracks in the city walls for food, often poisoned by unfamiliar plants whose undistinguished leaves and green juices were gathered by hands as pale as famine itself. And for all these proofs of devotion, we are told that our people have been sacrif …
sidonius_apollinaris · c. 467 · score 0.02
To Thaumastus [brother of Apollinaris, a kinsman of Sidonius]. We have finally tracked down the men who have been slandering your brother's friendships at the court of our tetrarch [the Burgundian king Chilperic] — and equally those of the new emperor's faction — if indeed the careful detective work of our friends has …
sidonius_apollinaris · c. 467 · score 0.01
4. He was being held in custody on the Capitoline, under the guard of his host Flavius Asellus, Count of the Sacred Largesses, who still revered in him the half-extinguished dignity of a prefecture so recently torn away. Meanwhile the envoys of the province of Gaul -- Tonantius Ferreolus, a former prefect and grandson …
sidonius_apollinaris · c. 467 · score 0.01
Drunk on new wealth — and here you see their character even in small things — their very extravagance in spending betrays their inexperience in possessing. They cheerfully appear armed at dinner parties, in white at funerals, in furs at church, in black at weddings, and in beaver-skin cloaks at religious processions. N …
sidonius_apollinaris · c. 467 · score 0.01
Sidonius to his friend Leo. I have sent you the Life of Apollonius of Tyana [the famous 1st-century Pythagorean philosopher and wonder-worker] — not as Nicomachus the elder transcribed it from Philostratus's text, but as Tascius Victorianus copied it from Nicomachus's draft. Since you ordered it, I sent it, but in my h …
sidonius_apollinaris · c. 467 · score 0.01
Sidonius to his dear Vincentius, greetings. 1. The fate of Arvandus [the Praetorian Prefect of Gaul, tried for treason in Rome around 469 AD] distresses me, and I do not pretend otherwise. For this too redounds to the emperor's credit: that one may openly love even those condemned to death. I was a friend to the man, a …
sidonius_apollinaris · c. 467 · score 0.01
This color comes not from anger but from modesty. His shoulders are rounded, his upper arms powerful, his forearms hard, his hands broad. His chest juts out beyond a receding belly. A spine that sits lower than the ridge of his ribs divides the plain of his back. On either side, the flanks are knotted with prominent mu …
sidonius_apollinaris · c. 467 · score 0.01
Set aside for a little while those widely acclaimed speeches you compose in the voice of the king [Euric, King of the Visigoths], by which that illustrious ruler now strikes terror into the hearts of peoples beyond the sea, now seals a victor's treaty on favorable terms with the trembling barbarians along the Waal [riv …
sidonius_apollinaris · c. 467 · score 0.01
Sidonius to his friend Agricola. You have asked me many times — since Theodoric, King of the Goths [Theodoric II, r. 453-466], has a reputation among the peoples for his civilized conduct — to describe in a letter what he looks like and how he lives. I am happy to oblige, as far as the limits of a letter allow, and I c …
sidonius_apollinaris · c. 467 · score 0.01
Sidonius to his lord, Bishop Julianus. Though we find ourselves separated by a somewhat greater distance than our shared affection would wish, the obstacle of the intervening journey would not have prevented my diligence from discharging its duty — were it not that, divided as we are between different kingdoms, we are …
sidonius_apollinaris · c. 467 · score 0.01
They were called and admitted. The parties, as is customary, took their positions on opposite sides. The former prefects were offered the right to sit before the opening of the case. Arvandus, with his characteristic unlucky impudence, strode forward and virtually thrust himself into the very laps of the judges. Ferreo …
sidonius_apollinaris · c. 467 · score 0.01
When he rises, the palace guard begins its nighttime watches. Armed men take their posts at the entrances to the royal residence, where they will keep vigil through the first hours of sleep. But why should I go on? I promised you a brief portrait of the man, not an account of his kingdom. Besides, it is time to end thi …
sidonius_apollinaris · c. 475 · score 0.01
Sidonius to his dear Pastor, greetings. 1. The fact that yesterday you were absent from the council meeting of the city is taken by the better part of the assembly to have been done deliberately. They suspected that you were taking care lest the burden of the forthcoming embassy be laid upon your shoulders. I congratul …
sidonius_apollinaris · c. 467 · score 0.01
To Felix. You have been abstaining from correspondence for a long time. So each of us maintains his usual habit: I chatter, you stay silent. Indeed, my distinguished friend, I consider it a kind of virtue — however remarkable in other matters of faithful duty — that you are never wearied by such prolonged inactivity. W …
sidonius_apollinaris · c. 467 · score 0.01
But — and this is the chief comfort of the afflicted — our Lucumo [the Burgundian king, compared to the Etruscan king Tarquin] is tempered by his Tanaquil [the queen, compared to Tarquin's wise wife], who has been wisely cleaning her husband's ears of the poisonous filth poured in by whisperers, using well-timed and wi …
sidonius_apollinaris · c. 477 · score 0.01
4. But my own condition is far different: for me, exile is a source of grief, not of information; old reading, not current knowledge. My religion is my profession, humility my aspiration, obscurity my mediocrity. My hope is placed not so much in the present as in the future. Sickness is my obstacle, and even now -- or …
sidonius_apollinaris · c. 477 · score 0.01
Sidonius to his dear Leo, greetings. 1. The Magnificent Hesperius, jewel of friends and of letters, when he recently returned from the city of Toulouse, said that you had directed me to turn my attention from the now-completed books of letters to the pen of history. With the deepest reverence and the deepest affection, …
sidonius_apollinaris · c. 467 · score 0.01
He thinks it childish to carry the bow in its case, and womanish to receive it already strung. So he takes it unstrung, and now with the tips of the bow pushed inward he bends and strings it, now he turns the knotted end downward and runs his finger along the slack string to find the loop. Then instantly he takes his a …
sidonius_apollinaris · c. 467 · score 0.01
We told him what we and our closest friends thought safe. We urged him to admit nothing as trivial if anything were demanded by his enemies, however slight their charge might seem -- that even this pretense of unconcern would be most perilous, making it easier for them to shake loose his careless confidence through cro …
sidonius_apollinaris · c. 467 · score 0.01
To Lampridius [a poet and rhetor of Bordeaux, friend of Sidonius]. When I first arrived in Bordeaux, your letter-carrier presented me with a letter full of nectar, flowers, and pearls. In it you scold my silence and demand some of my verses — those verses which, you say, pour from me in musical tones through the resona …
sidonius_apollinaris · c. 467 · score 0.01
On good rolls he says nothing; on bad ones he laughs. In neither case does he lose his temper; in both he plays the philosopher. He disdains second chances — refuses both to fear them and to inflict them, ignoring opportunities offered and brushing past obstacles. You would think that even in dice he is handling weapon …