Letter 16: You prove -- and I do not deny it -- that I have been at fault, since I have not yet attached any letter bearing...

Sidonius to his friend Gelasius, greeting. 1. You judge (and I do not plead against it) that I have done wrong; I have indeed done wrong, since I have not yet joined any letter under your name to my work. But still you write that, if I send something from a precedent which you yourself may keep chanting, then my error will then be pardonable, namely because I sent to my friend Tonantius, for a like purpose, letters in two meters [bimetras] meant to be of use. Besides this, you complain that my page, if it is unbent into play [i.e., relaxed into verse], is frequented only by hendecasyllables. On this account, with the chattering trochaic measure set aside, you require some little senarii [iambic six-foot lines] in addition. I serve what is enjoined; only do you receive it with good will, whether you prefer to call this very thing an ode or an eclogue. For a meter long out of practice is woven more roughly. You bid, friend, that through our volumes the fierce iambus should ring back in swifter measures, as the trochee has done thus far, and that the spondee should add its sluggish pairs and four-fold times, (5) so that the swift-footed trimeter [trimetria] may have a little delay set within it, and that there should resound, mingled in, that swiftest foot, once well named from the pyrrhic art, to be placed always in the last position; (10) and the anapaest, about to give support [a spondee] now and then to the verse, now in the earlier part, now in the outermost, though it too is pronounced more absolutely [as a free foot], when the third syllable that follows, a long one, clings to the twin short syllables. (15) These things the common poet scarcely knows how to temper, such as you yourself perceive Sollius [Sidonius himself] to be; for me the plectrum strays, nor through the hollows of the mouth does the wandering tongue properly unfold the turned epic verse. But that man will have prepared this more fittingly, (20) Leo, son of Leo, or one who has followed his tracks in Latin song, since prior in the Attic [Greek] is he of the Consentii who survives the father, who, in faithfulness [of the lyre], in voice, in meters, at the streams of Pegasus is said to have sung a song of every form, (25) and as often as he set Greek words to verse, joined to Pindar, to have held the lofty stars, and victorious to have gone over the two-peaked mountain, second to none among the Delphic stars. But if either of these poets should fit a Latin song (30) to the poetic lyre, without the Doric, you, Flaccus [Horace], born of Venusia, would draw forth your quills clumsily, and you, swan of Apulian Aufidus, a home-bred bird, would groan, vanquished, your hoary and tuneful neck, to hear Atax [the river, i.e., the poet Varro of Atax] thunder with his own swans. (35) Nor are these alone the skilled hearts, though these are more skilled than the skilled: the rhetor Severianus would have spoken these things more loftily, Domnulus, the African and the cunning, more elegantly, and Peter the scholastic would have declaimed them more keenly (40) beneath rounder Camenae [Muses], nor would the epistolary style anywhere have forbidden the man to compose astonishing things. These things one born of the soil and people of Liguria could always have set forth more effectively, (45) Proculus, to sound out with melodious beats, so polishing whatever witty poems that he might provoke Venetian Mantua [Virgil's homeland] with men's favor, and, himself equal even to Homeric glory, pursuing Maro's [Virgil's] wheels with matching art. (50) I, rightly despicable in heart and mouth, what shall I chatter among these men at your asking, approving the shamelessness of my talkativeness and the vows of a mind destitute of letters? But what shall I deny, not terrified by shame? (55) Love does not know how to fear: hence I obeyed. 2. Forgive one who returns to things long disused, and who, on account of having fulfilled what you ordered, awaits nothing more than indulgence for its rarity. For the rest, if hereafter you enjoin like things upon me, so that I may be able to become more compliant, you will see to it that, in turn for a song, you either dictate things for me to sing or dance things for me to laugh at. Farewell.

EPISTULA XV Sidonius Gelasio suo salutem. 1. Probas (neque deprecor) me deliquisse; deliqui, quippe qui necdum nomine tuo ullas operi meo litteras iunxerim. sed tamen scribis tum quod erraverim veniabile fore, si quod et ipse decantes mittam ab exemplo, quia scilicet Tonantio meo ad parem causam futuras usui litteras bimetras miserim. praeter hoc quereris paginam meam, si resolvatur in lusum, solis hendecasyllabis frequentari. qua de re trochaica garrulitate suspensa senariolos aliquos plus requiris. servio iniunctis; tu modo placidus accipias, sive oden hanc ipsam mavis vocare sive eglogam. nam metrum diu infrequentatum durius texitur. Iubes, amice, nostra per volumina modis resultet incitatioribus ferox iambus, ut trochaeus hactenus, pigrasque bigas et quaterna tempora (5) spondeus addat, ut moram volucripes habeat parumper insitam trimetria, resonetque mixtus ille pes celerrimus, bene nuncupatus quondam ab arte pyrricha, loco locandus undecumque in ultimo; (10) spondam daturus et subinde versui, modo in priore parte, nunc in extima anapaestus, ipse quamquam et absolutius pronuntietur, cum secuta tertia geminae brevique longa adhaeret syllaba. (15) Quae temperare vix callet gregarius poeta, ut ipse cernis esse Sollium; mihi pecten errat nec per ora concava vaga lingua flexum competenter explicat epos. sed istud aptius paraverit (20) Leo Leonis aut secutus orbitas cantu in Latino, cum prior sit Attico Consentiorum qui superstes est patri, fide, voce, metris ad fluenta Pegasi cecinisse dictus omniforme canticum, (25) quotiensque verba Graia carminaverit, tenuisse celsa iunctus astra Pindaro montemque victor isse per biverticem nullis secundus inter astra Delphica. at uterque vatum si lyrae poeticae (30) Latiare carmen aptet absque Dorico, Venusina, Flacce, plectra ineptus exeras Iapygisque verna cygnus Aufidi Atacem tonare cum suis oloribus cana et canora colla victus ingemas. (35) Nec ista sola sunt perita pectora, licet et peritis haec peritiora sint: Severianus ista rhetor altius, Afer vaferque Domnulus politius, scholasticusque sub rotundioribus (40) Petrus Camenis dictitasset acrius, epistularis usquequaque nec stilus virum vetaret, ut stupenda pangeret. potuisset ista semper efficacius humo atque gente cretus in Ligustide (45) Proculus melodis insonare pulsibus limans faceta quaeque sic poemata, Venetam lacessat ut favore Mantuam Homericaeque par et ipse gloriae, rotas Maronis arte sectans compari. (50) Ego corde et ore iure despicabilis quid inter hosce te rogante garriam, loquacitatis impudentiam probans animique vota destituta litteris? sed quid negabo nec pudore territus? (55) amor timere nescit: inde parui. 2. Ignosce desueta repetenti atque ob impleta quae iusseras nihil amplius quam raritatis indulgentiam praestolaturo. ceterum mihi si similia post iniunxeris, quo queam fieri magis obsequens, curabis ad vicem carminis aut dictare quae cantem aut saltare quae rideam. vale.