Letter 3026: I am confident — and I have no doubt it is by divine gift — that our shared joy has been announced through shared...

Bishop Avitus to Bishop Apollinaris. I am fully confident, and I do not doubt, that by a divine gift our shared joy has been announced to our shared presence. For what I now suspect has already reached you as well: even those who were said to be laying waste to the frontier have turned back. For this reason, out of my anxious concern, I have sent these lines, so that you may judge whatever news may afterward reach you concerning any increase of safety; or whether by now a free way back to the city has drawn you away from your habit, or rather from your love of the siege. On that account I hope that you will order those little ointment-boxes [magdaliola] which you promised to be sent to me, together with a short note of your observations. So much in a familiar vein; from here, since it now pleases me, I shall set out what remains a little more cheerfully. The signet [signatorium], then, which your kindness deigned not so much to promise as to offer, I wish to be made in this fashion: it is to be closed by an iron ring, and a very slender one, as though by little dolphins running together into one another; and into it let there be set, turning on a twin pivot, the form of a double seal, which, as one pleases, may be changed in turn for the eyes of those who look upon it—either kept hidden or shown openly—presenting alternately the face of a glowing green stone or of pale electrum [a gold-silver alloy]. And indeed not such electrum as recently, as I myself drank in [saw with my own eyes], lay dingy upon the holy and most pure brightness of an undefiled hand—electrum in which you would believe there to be a mixture of gold corrupted rather than refined, not yet boiled down in the furnace; nor certainly that electrum which, only very lately, the king of the Goths, foreboding the ruin to follow, had ordered to be applied to the public coinage, confirming its debasement. But let its color be of such a kind that the artful charm of green—green being, as it were, the middle term—may pleasingly commend it, drawing in equal and modest measure the red blush from gold, the white sheen from silver, preciousness from both, and brilliance from the rest. If you should ask what is to be engraved upon the seal: let the sign of my monogram be read, through the circle, by the evidence of my name written there. Furthermore, the center of the ring, on the part which will lie next to the closed palm, the tails of the dolphins—whose heads I described above—will occupy. Into these let a small stone, sought out for this very purpose, be set—an oblong one, that is, shaped with pointed ends. There you have a kind of mirror, merely a model, of the commission to be carried out. Yet I do not so confine the breadth of your elegance to the aforesaid pattern as though it were not free to add what seems good. It will be permitted, moreover, for your soaring talent to exceed the bounds of the prescribed commission. But at the end of the letter, this dreggy speech demands a muddy task—without which, however, the matter will not be completed: that you send me at once a craftsman potter [artificem figulum], to be kept only a short while, who may set up for us by what measures a sifted-clay oven-chamber [cenaculum furni] is to be built, or within what space a pit of dug-out clods of earth [a clay pit], hedged round with filth from the feet of animals, may be made, so that the binding paste of baked mud [mortar] can be made pliable.

Avitus episcopus Apollinari episcopo. Confido plane nec dubito divino munere communem laetitiam communi praesentiae nuntiatam. Nam quod et ad vos iam suspicor pervenisse, etiam illi, qui vastare limi- tem dicebantur, reversi sunt. Vnde causa sollicitudinis has direxi, ut, quae ad vos postea de cuiuscumque securitatis augmento pervenerint, iudicetis: aut si iam ad civi- tatem liber recursus a consuetudine vos, immo potius ab amore obsidionis extraxit. Propterea magdaliola illa, quae promisistis, spero, ut cum observationis brevieulo dirigi iubeatis. Hactenus familiariter; hinc quod restat, quia iam libet, paulo hilarius indicabo. Signatorium igitur, quod pietas vestra non tam promittere quam offerre dignata est, in hunc modum fieri volo: anulo ferreo et admodum tenui, velut concurrentibus in se delphinulis concludendo, sigilli duplicis forma gemino cardine volubilis inseratur, quae, ut libuerit, vicissim seu latitabunda seu publica obtutibus intuentum alterna vernantis lapilli vel electri pallentis fronte mutetur. Nec quidem talis electri, quale nuper, ut egomet hausi, in sancto ac sincerissimo impollutae manus nitore sordebat, cui corrup- tam potius quam confectam auri nondum fornace decocti crederes inesse mixturam: vel illam certe, quam nuperrime rex Getarum secuturae praesagam ruinae monetis publicis adulterium firmantem mandaverat. Sed sit eiusmodi color, quem aequaliter ac modeste ruborem ab auro, ab argento candorem, pretiositatem ab utroque, a ceteris rapientem fulgorem artificiosa, siquidem medioxima, viroris commendet amoenitas. Si quaeras, quid insculpendum sigillo: signum monogrammatis mei per gyrum scripti nominis legatur indicio. Medium porro anuli ab ea parte, qua volae clausae vicina- bitur, delphinorum, quorum superius capita descripsimus, caudae tenebunt. Quibus lapisculus ob hoc ipsum quaesitus, oblongus scilicet et acutis capitibus formatus inde- tur. Ecce habes quoddam tantummodo speculum dogmatis exequendi. Nec tamen amplitudinem elegantiae tuae sic ad memoratum exemplar coarto, quasi liberum non sit addere, quod videtur. Licebit porro supercurrenti ingenio vestro terminos prae- scriptae demandationis excedere. In fine autem epistulae luteo operi, sine quo tamen non transigetur, faeculentus sermo deposcit, ut artificem figulum brevi tenendum e vestigio dirigatis, qui nobis qualibus strui mensuris cribrati cenaculum furni vel intra quod spatium fossilis glae- bae scrobis, sordibus saeptae animalium pedibus, coctilis caeni glutinum lentari possit, instituat.