Letter 22: The Magnificent Hesperius, jewel of friends and of letters, when he recently returned from the city of Toulouse,...

Sidonius to his friend Leo, greeting. 1. The magnificent gentleman Hesperius, the jewel of friends and of letters, when he lately returned to the city from the country of the Tolosates [Toulouse], told me that you direct us, now that the books of our correspondence are finished, to turn our attention from the care of letters to the pen of history. With the deepest reverence, and with the deepest affection, I embrace so weighty and so great a recommendation; for you pronounce him fit for greater works whom you judge bound to abandon the lesser. But, to confess the truth, I more easily venture to look up to a judgment of this kind than to take up the counsel. 2. It is indeed a task worthy of your enjoining, but no less worthy of your performing. For in antiquity too, when Gaius Cornelius [Tacitus] had urged the like upon Gaius Secundus [Pliny the Younger], he himself afterward took up the very thing he had enjoined; and you now approach the same by a better precedent, since I rise up to Pliny as a pupil, while you by your old-fashioned manner of narrating rightly surpass Cornelius - who, if he were to come back to life in our age and were to behold what you are reckoned to be in letters and how great, would now more truly be a Tacitus [a play on Tacitus, "the silent one"]. 3. And so you rightly take in hand the mass of the theme that has been sent you, you for whom, besides singular eloquence, there is great opportunity for vast knowledge. For daily, through the counsels of the most powerful king, you come to know, anxious for the whole world alike, both its affairs and its laws, its treaties and its wars, its places, distances, and merits. Wherefore who could more justly gird himself to these matters than he who is known to have learned the movements of nations, the diversities of embassies, the deeds of leaders, the pacts of those who reign, and in short all the secrets of public affairs - and who, placed on a surpassing height, has no need either to suppress the truth or to patch together a lie? 4. But our condition is far different, for us to whom new travel is a grief and old reading is of no use; then religion is our profession, humility our desire, mediocrity our obscurity, nor is so much placed in present advantage as in future hope; finally, weariness is our hindrance, and now, even if late, on account of this very thing sloth is dear to our heart; certainly no praise of our zeal in studies is now ours while we live, nor indeed any after death. 5. Above all, it is fixed in us to seek but small glory from history, because through men of clerical office our own matters are told rashly, others' boastfully, things past unprofitably, things present by halves, things false shamefully, things true dangerously. For the theme [or work] is of such a kind that, in it, if you make mention of good men, scant gratitude is secured, but if of notable men, the greatest offense. So at once a satiric color and odor mingles itself with that composition. Therefore: historical writing seems to recoil greatly from our order [the clergy], a writing whose beginning is ill-will, whose continuation is toil, whose end is hatred. 6. But these things turn out so when something is dictated with clerics for its authors; for, pinned by the serpent-like molars of the snarlers, if we publish anything simply, we are called madmen, if anything precisely, presumptuous. But if you yourself, to whom it has been granted to be able to trample, with the bounds of glory, the necks of slanderers, or to outrun them, were willingly to obtain the province of this subject by lot, no one would write more loftily than you, no one more in the ancient manner, even if it pleased you to speak of recent matters; since, having been filled before with abundance of words, you have not now left yourself any reason why you should be cut off by a venomed bite. And therefore for you, in time to come, it will be a profit to be consulted, a pleasure to be heard, an authority to be read. Farewell.

EPISTULA XXII Sidonius Leoni suo salutem. 1. Vir magnificus Hesperius, gemma amicorum litterarumque, nuper urbe cum rediit e Tolosatium, praecipere te dixit, ut epistularum curam iam terminatis libris earum converteremus ad stilum historiae. reverentia summa, summo et affectu talem atque tantam sententiam amplector; idoneum quippe pronuntias ad opera maiora quem mediocria putas deserere debere. sed, quod fatendum est, facilius audeo huiusmodi suspicere iudicium quam suscipere consilium. 2. res quidem digna quam tu iuberes sed non minus digna quam faceres. mamque et antiquitus, cum Gaius Cornelius Gaio Secundo paria suasisset, ipse postmodum quod iniunxit arripuit, idque ab exemplo nunc melius aggrederis, quia et ego Plinio ut discipulus assurgo et tu vetusto genere narrandi iure Cornelium antevenis, qui saeculo nostro si revivisceret teque qualis in litteris et quantus habeare conspicaretur, modo verius Tacitus esset. 3. itaque tu molem thematis missi recte capessis, cui praeter eloquentiam singularem scientiae ingentis magna opportunitas. cotidie namque per potentissimi consilia regis totius sollicitus orbis pariter [eius] negotia et iura, foedera et bella, loca spatia merita cognoscis. unde quis iustius sese ad ista succinxerit, quam ille, quem constat gentium motus legationum varietates, facta ducum pacta regnantum, tota denique publicarum rerum secreta didicisse, quique praestanti positus in culmine non necesse habet vel supprimere verum vel concinnare mendacium? 4. at nostra longe condicio dispar, quibus dolori peregrinatio nova nec usui lectio vetus, tum religio professioni est, humilitas appetitui, mediocritas obscuritati, nec in praesentibus rei tantum, quantum in futuris spei locatum, postremo languor impedimento iamque vel sero propter hunc ipsum desidia cordi; aequaeva certe iam super studiis nulla laus curae, sed ne postuma quidem. 5. praecipue gloriam nobis parvam ab historia petere fixum, quia per homines clericalis officii temerarie nostra iactanter aliena, praeterita infructuose praesentia semiplene, turpiter falsa periculose vera dicuntur. est enim huiusmodi thema [vel opus], in quo bonorum si facias mentionem, modica gratia paratur, si notabilium, maxuma offensa. sic se illi protinus dictioni color odorque satiricus admiscet. ilicet: scriptio historica videtur ordine a nostro multum abhorrere, cuius inchoatio invidia, continuatio labor, finis est odium. 6. sed tunc ista proveniunt, clericis si aliquid dictetur auctoribus; qui colubrinis oblatratorum molaribus fixi, si quid simpliciter edamus, insani, si quid exacte, praesumptiosi vocamur. at si tu ipse, cui datum est saltibus gloriae proterere posse cervices vituperonum seu supercurrere, materiae istius libens provinciam sortiare, nemo te celsius scripserit, nemo et antiquius, etiamsi placeat recentia loqui; quandoquidem sermonum copia impletus ante, nunc rerum non reliquisti, cur venenato morsu secere. atque ideo te in posterum consuli utilitas, audiri voluptas, legi auctoritas erit. vale.