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THE DEATH AND PUBLIC REHABILITATION OF APOLLINARIS THE ELDER: INTERTEXTUALITY WITH LUCAN IN SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS, EPIST. 3.12

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 April 2024

Joop van Waarden Open the ORCID record for Joop van Waarden [Opens in a new window]
Joop van Waarden*
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Abstract

Sidonius Apollinaris’ Epist. 3.12 tells how one day, while leaving Lyons, he caught a couple of gravediggers about to violate his grandfather Apollinaris’ grave, which had become unrecognizable over time. He instructs the addressee, his nephew Secundus, to restore the tomb mound and provide it with a stone for which he attaches the text. Whereas this letter is usually interpreted as a piece of self-promotion by the author for his filial piety and expert storytelling, this article suggests that there is a significant subtext to be found in Lucan's Pharsalia which makes the letter first and foremost a rehabilitation of Apollinaris while strongly suggesting that the latter was executed. There follow some rather more tentative thoughts trying to grasp the precise critical moment in time for this rehabilitation. It is argued that this could be Sidonius’ departure for Clermont, in 469/470 to take on the episcopate, after his term as City Prefect of Rome and a stay in Lyons with Bishop Patiens. The letter is aimed at bolstering family cohesion in the conflict of interests between Auvergne and Provence and at securing Sidonius’ position as incumbent bishop.

Keywords

Sidonius ApollinarisApollinaris the Elderusurpersrehabilitationfamily interestsintertextualityLucan
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Research Article
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The Classical Quarterly , First View , pp. 1 - 6
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Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association

1. CONTEXT

Sid. Apoll. Epist. 3.12 is addressed to Sidonius’ nephew Secundus. The author describes how, as he leaves Lyons on horseback heading for Clermont, he approaches the town's old, overgrown graveyard, where the tomb of his grandfather is scarcely recognizable anymore. Some gravediggers think that they have hit upon a vacant spot and have begun digging a pit. Sidonius discovers the desecration and has them punished on the spot. Patiens, the town's bishop, accepts his apologies for letting his temper flare up. Sidonius asks his nephew to take care of the restoration of the burial mound and to provide for a gravestone at his expense. He also supplies the poem to be engraved upon it. Secundus must see to it that the engraver commit no errors. This belated tribute by the third and fourth generations has august precedents in history—the author claims.

This letter is traditionally interpreted as an instance of the author's self-promotion for his filial piety and his expert storytelling.Footnote 1 It is variously dated to some point in the 460s.Footnote 2

Sidonius’ grandfather ApollinarisFootnote 3 had been involved in the surge of Gallic usurpations against Emperor Honorius in 407–413, supporting the usurper Constantine III and acting as his praefectus praetorio Galliarum in 408–409, and, possibly, after that supporting Jovinus in another coup. The rebellions were crushed and it has often been conjectured that Apollinaris fell victim to the purges of 413 carried out by Honorius’ generals and the then praefectus praetorio Galliarum, Claudius Postumus Dardanus.Footnote 4 Gaul's relationship with the central government would remain precarious, and the tensions were subsequently heightened by the Visigoths and the Burgundians carving out kingdoms of their own. Political prudence as to this vulnerable strain in his family history remained Sidonius’ policy, including his reticence about the exact cause (or perpetrator) of Apollinaris’ death.Footnote 5 As this article suggests, it took a long time and a specific occasion before he deemed fit publicly to flaunt Apollinaris’ memory and, if not to lift the veil, at least to draw an unmistakable historical parallel suggesting murder.

2. LUCAN

While this letter, for its form, harks back to Plin. Ep. 6.10 about the neglected tomb of Verginius Rufus—a letter that also contains a couplet composed for the monument,Footnote 6 for articulating its meaning it is arguably indebted to Lucan. Section 4, about restoring Apollinaris’ grave, reads:

sed ne quid in posterum casibus liceat, quos ab exemplo uitare debemus, posco, ut actutum me quoque absente tua cura sed meo sumptu resurgat in molem sparsa congeries quam leuigata pagina tegat.

The phrase resurgat in molem sparsa congeries (‘that the scattered heap rises up again into a shrine’) is strikingly over the top for restoring a modest earth mound.Footnote 7 Indeed, it is nothing less than a reference to Lucan's description at 8.865–9 of Pompey's paltry grave in Egypt—a fact that hitherto has gone unnoticed. The relevant lines read:

proderit hoc olim, quod non mansura futuris 865
ardua marmoreo surrexit pondere moles.
pulueris exigui sparget non longa uetustas
congeriem bustumque cadet mortisque peribunt
argumenta tuae. ueniet felicior aetas.

The words printed in bold in the above two passages are the same and in the same order. Sidonius plays on the similarity of the burials of Pompey and of his own grandfather, working out opposing elements. Whereas Pompey's lowly burial mound will disappear in the course of time (sparget … uetustas congeriem), Apollinaris’ burial mound, having initially undergone the same fate, is reconstructed. For Pompey, this is an advantage (proderit hoc olim) as a glorious rehabilitation and a stable resting place hopefully await him in Rome, as the narrator foresees in lines 835–50, which end with the words consilio iussuque deum transibis in urbem, | Magne, tuam summusque feret tua busta sacerdos. Apollinaris, on the other hand, is already buried in his native town (epitaph line 7, maerentis patriae sinu receptus), but, while the invisibility of his tomb clearly makes it vulnerable to profanation (section 4: anything might happen [casibus], as things turned out [ab exemplo]), the reconstruction is immediately (actutum) taken in hand. Paradoxically, the desecration of Pompey's grave (845 uiolare sepulchrum) with a view to reburying him is licit, whereas, in Apollinaris’ case, it is outright illicit (section 1 tumulum … paene manus profana temerauerat) and is severely punished,Footnote 8 besides sparking the tomb's restoration.

There is more. In the epitaph, the lateness of the rehabilitation is thematized from the outset: serum post patruos patremque carmen,Footnote 9 reinforced in section 6 of the letter where Sidonius reassures Secundus concerning the fact that the rehabilitation is only realized in the third and fourth generations: tibi quoque non decet tardum uideri quod heres tertius quartusque dependimus. The same motif of lateness occurs in Luc. 837–9 si saecula prima | uictoris timuere minas, nunc excipe saltem | ossa tui Magni. In both cases, the cause of this belatedness is dangerous repression at the deaths of both Pompey (initiated by the victorious Caesar) and, presumably, Apollinaris (under Emperor Honorius).

A central theme of the epitaph is Apollinaris’ exemplary (and life-threatening) courage under high-handed tyrants: 11–12 exemploque aliis periculoso | liber sub dominantibus tyrannis (‘an example for others at his own peril, a free man under high-handed tyrants’).Footnote 10 His life (and death?) played out among dangerous usurpers.Footnote 11 His patriotic collaboration,Footnote 12 first with the usurper Constantinus (and the latter's son Constans—the situation being complicated by the magister militum Gerontius)Footnote 13 from outside the Gallo-Roman circle, then with a full-blown Gallic aristocrat, Jovinus, cost him dear. The alternative, the loyalist stance towards the emperor, personified in the prefect Dardanus, turned out to be another snake pit. This chimes with Pompey falling victim to Caesar, dubbed saeuo … tyranno in Lucan (835), in an equally inextricable conflict of loyalties, murdered by an overzealous henchman.Footnote 14 Like another Pompey, it is implied, Apollinaris had fallen a tragic victim to the consequences of tyranny, but now his time has come, just as Pompey's time will come: ueniet felicior aetas (869 in the passage cited above). The parallel with Pompey strongly suggests that Apollinaris, too, was murdered, which adds a decisive argument to the existing assumption that this was the case (see page 2 above).

Finally, and significantly, both gravesites are decked with a stone: Pompey's with a simple piece of rock (saxo) provisionally marked with the text hic situs est Magnus in charcoal (semusto stipite, 789–93), Apollinaris’—anonymous at first—with a smooth slab of marble (section 2 leuigata pagina, 3 in marmore) meticulously inscribed (3 ut uitium non faciat … lapidicida) with a full-blown epitaph intimating that praefectus iacet hic Apollinaris (poem line 6).

Lucan is one of Sidonius’ most important intertextual anchors. His descriptions, in particular, of Caesar's march on Rome and the famine in Caesar's besieged camp at Dyrrhachium inspire Sidonius’ evocations of crucial episodes from the Visigothic onslaught on Auvergne and the desperate defence of its inhabitants (Epist. 7.1 and 7.7). The proud definition of the Arvernians as ‘brothers to Latium’ (Epist. 7.7.2) also stems from Lucan.Footnote 15 While thus defining Sidonius’ one foothold in Clermont, the presence of Lucan in Sid. Apoll. Epist. 3.12 now also appears to define the other in his native Lyons, linking his and his family's fate—as he is setting out for Clermont—to grandfather Apollinaris, a second Pompey, liber sub dominantibus tyrannis.

3. DATE AND OCCASION

3.1. Epist. 3.12 in 469/470

It is worth looking if a more specific date and occasion for this letter can be teased out, however tentatively. As late a date as possible, in 469/470, between Sidonius’ return from Rome and his consecration as bishop of Clermont, is needed because: (1) Sidonius calls himself haud indignus auo nepos (poem line 2), which is meaningful if it indicates that he, like his grandfather, had been a prefect;Footnote 16 (2) Sidonius is clearly not yet a bishop himself because of the way in which he speaks about Patiens, defining himself as one of his parishioners (section 3 nostro … sacerdoti); (3) in this connection, the surprising appearance of Gaudentius may point to the circle of Patiens c.469, in which he may have taken part as a conuersus Footnote 17 and in which Sidonius took his preparation for the episcopate, being ordained a deacon by Patiens;Footnote 18 (4) Secundus, almost certainly a son of Sidonius’ younger brother mentioned as having his virtue saved by Bishop Faustus in Carm. 16,Footnote 19 has to be adult enough to take responsibility for the tomb.

Why was Apollinaris’ public rehabilitation postponed to this particular moment and rather forced by the circumstances than fully premeditated? The following hypothesis would create a coherent picture. From a position of relative strength (his favour with Emperor Anthemius and the honour of having held the City Prefecture, also acquiring the title of patricius), but weakened by the unpalatable Arvandus affair which went at the heart of loyalties in Gaul and temporarily split the family,Footnote 20 Sidonius moves on to the insecurity of leadership in Clermont, leaving the Burgundian dominated orbit for a world where Visigothic pressure looms large. Epist. 3.12 must immediately precede his episcopate and constitutes a strategic statement aimed to realign his family in the face of other competing factions and political stakeholders. Restoring grandfather Apollinaris to the public view means adding full weight to an undivided glorious family line. It takes no wonder, given Sidonius’ new walk of life, that the decisive accolade for Apollinaris is his being the first in the family to be baptized: haec sed maxima dignitas probatur, | quod frontem cruce, membra fonte purgans | primus de numero patrum suorum | sacris sacrilegis renuntiauit (poem lines 13–16). Thus, the public rehabilitation of his grandfather is proof not only of the author's self-confidence as a responsible heir but also as an incumbent religious and political player. The voyage from Lyons to Clermont is not just any trip but a watershed, and Epist. 3.12 could be the pivotal letter in Sidonius’ career switch.

3.2. Epist. 3.12 in 474/478

As a corollary, in the economy of Book 3 as published some five years later,Footnote 21 this letter is also a very personal one. Sidonius leaves the care for the grave and all it stands for in the hands of his nephew Secundus rather than in the hands of his own son, another Apollinaris. The next letter, Epist. 3.13 to this Apollinaris, suggests why, going beyond the obvious supposition that, whereas Secundus lived in Lyons, Apollinaris stayed in Clermont. Epist. 3.13 is about the infamous typical rascal ‘Gnatho’, in every respect the opposite of what Sidonius stands for. Sidonius feels compelled to warn his son (of all people) to avoid such bad company.Footnote 22 ‘Secundus’ would seem to be the ‘next’ generation Sidonius can rely on rather than the younger Apollinaris.Footnote 23

Footnotes

This article originates in a paper given at the international conference ‘Authors, Addressees, and Audiences in Roman Letters’, held on 20 February 2023 in Edinburgh and organized by Gavin Kelly, Giulia Marolla, Janja Soldo and me. I would like to thank the participants, and in particular Gavin Kelly, for their encouraging feedback. I am also grateful to both readers of CQ for making me clarify and finetune the argument.

References

1 See Giannotti, F., ‘Levigata pagina. Riconsiderando l'epitaffio di Sidonio per il nonno Apollinare (Ep. III 12)’, in F. Giannotti, Scrinia Arverna. Studi su Sidonio Apollinare (Pisa, 2021), 41–57Google Scholar, at 43. Apollinaris’ epitaph contained in the letter is further studied in Condorelli, S., Il poeta doctus nel V secolo D. C. Aspetti della poetica di Sidonio Apollinare (Naples, 2008), 198–200Google Scholar (incorporated in Condorelli, S., ‘Gli epigrammi funerari di Sidonio Apollinare’, in M.-F. Guipponi-Gineste and C. Urlacher-Becht [edd.], La renaissance de l’épigramme dans la latinité tardive [Paris, 2013], 261–82Google Scholar, at 268–70) and in Stein, C., ‘Épigraphie et mise en scène de la domination sociale dans la Gaule méridionale tardive (IVe–VIe s.). À propos de la tombe du grand-père de Sidoine Apollinaire’, in S. Agusta-Boularot and E. Rosso (edd.), Signa et tituli. Monuments et espaces de représentation en Gaule Méridionale sous le regard croisé de la sculpture et de l’épigraphie (Paris, 2015), 191–205Google Scholar, at 199–203. For the letter's artful storytelling, see Henke, R., ‘Der Brief 3,12 des Sidonius Apollinaris an Secundus. Eine Novelle in einer Epistel?’, Hermes 140 (2012), 121–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hanaghan, M.P., Reading Sidonius’ Epistles (Cambridge, 2019), 69–72Google Scholar. A full commentary on Book 3 is provided by F. Giannotti, Sperare meliora. Il terzo libro delle Epistulae di Sidonio Apollinare. Introduzione, traduzione e commento (Pisa, 2016).

2 See Stevens, C.E., Sidonius Apollinaris and his Age (Oxford, 1933), 170Google Scholar (‘461/7’); Stroheker, K.F., Der senatorische Adel im spätantiken Gallien (Reutlingen, 1948)Google Scholar, 215 (‘vor 470’); Loyen, A., Sidoine Apollinaire. Lettres, vol. 2 (Paris, 1970)Google Scholar, 250 n. 12 (‘469’), followed by Giannotti (n. 1 [2016]), 214–15; Mathisen, R.W., ‘Dating the letters of Sidonius’, in J.A. van Waarden and G. Kelly (edd.), New Approaches to Sidonius Apollinaris (Leuven, 2013), 221–48Google Scholar, at 239–40 (‘465/9’); Mathisen, R.W., ‘A prosopography of Sidonius’, in G. Kelly and J. van Waarden (edd.), The Edinburgh Companion to Sidonius Apollinaris (Edinburgh, 2020), 76–154Google Scholar, at 120 (places Secundus in the 460s).

3 See Martindale, J.R., The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, vol. 2 (Cambridge, 1980), 113Google Scholar, ‘Apollinaris 1’; Mascoli, P., Gli Apollinari. Per la storia di una famiglia tardoantica (Bari, 2010), 11–17Google Scholar.

4 Exceptionally, Mathisen (n. 2 [2020]), 80 sees a case for Apollinaris’ being actively involved in, and surviving, the purges in Greg. Tur. Hist. 2.9. The text, however, rather seems to suggest the opposite; see Giannotti (n. 1 [2016]), 213 and Giannotti (n. 1 [2021]), 47 n. 26.

5 See, for the various aspects mentioned here, Harries, J.D., ‘Sidonius Apollinaris, Rome and the barbarians: a climate of treason?’, in J. Drinkwater and H. Elton (edd.), Fifth-Century Gaul: A Crisis of Identity (Cambridge, 1992), 298–308Google Scholar, at 303–4; Waarden, J. van, ‘Sidonius’ biography in photo negative’, in G. Kelly and J. van Waarden (edd.), The Edinburgh Companion to Sidonius Apollinaris (Edinburgh, 2020), 13–28Google Scholar, at 19; Kulikowski, M., ‘Sidonius’ political world’, in G. Kelly and J. van Waarden (edd.), The Edinburgh Companion to Sidonius Apollinaris (Edinburgh, 2020), 197–213Google Scholar, at 198–203. As to political prudence, in private correspondence Sidonius mentions his grandfather for his high office as early as the 450s (Epist. 1.3.1) and, in the 470s (Epist. 5.9; see also n. 11 below), offsets his presumed loyalty to the Theodosian dynasty against his loathing for the usurpers and Dardanus. However, public rehabilitation in the form of a conspicuous and representative tomb evidently was quite another matter.

6 See Henke (n. 1), 122.

7 Colafrancesco, P., ‘Sidon. epist. 3, 12: note a margine’, Invigilata Lucernis 35–36 (2013–2014), 71–6Google Scholar, at 71–2 already pointed out that molem is normally said of sizeable stone structures—e.g. Cic. Phil. 14.33, Verg. Aen. 6.233—and suggested that resurgat may hint at the ‘renaissance’ of the deceased and his family.

8 The gravediggers are most probably flogged—although a killing is not to be excluded: the text is ambiguous (section 2 supplicia, torsi, 3 caesos). Jurisprudence had varied over time, but the contemporaneous Novell. 23 (447 c.e., also incorporated in the law of the Visigothic and Burgundian successor kingdoms in Gaul) is severe for slaves and plebeians: eorum qui sepulcra uiolassent capita persequendos. Section 3 suggests that capital punishment would have been in line with the mos maiorum, but the fact that the desecration was not fully perpetrated (section 1 paene) was no doubt a mitigating circumstance (for the episode, cf. Mathisen, R.W., ‘Sidonius’ people’, in G. Kelly and J. van Waarden [edd.], The Edinburgh Companion to Sidonius Apollinaris [Edinburgh, 2020], 29–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 65). Sidonius wants to keep the ambiguity, and with it the atmosphere of violence, which arguably has a parallel in the ambiguity about what had happened to Apollinaris.

9 That is, it was not carried out by the second generation, Sidonius’ father and uncles. Thus correctly Wolff, É., ‘Sidoine Apollinaire et la poésie épigraphique’, in A. Pistellato (ed.), Memoria poetica e poesia della memoria (Venice, 2014), 207–18Google Scholar, at 210 n. 7 (although I think that Sidonius conveys a sense of understanding rather than of embarrassment [‘gêne’], as Wolff supposes), and Mathisen (n. 8), 58. Loyen (n. 2), 224 n. 38 takes it to mean than Sidonius’ father and uncles, too, had dedicated a poem to Apollinaris, contrary to what Epist. 3.12 tells the reader. Giannotti (n. 1 [2021]), 51–2 would have post patruos patremque qualify haud indignus in the next line (Sidonius being worthy of Apollinaris just as his father and uncles had been). This seems to go linguistically contrary to the strong and natural bond between post patruos patremque and serum created by the hyperbaton serum … carmen.

10 For the collocation, cf. Sen. Ep. 28.8 in quantalibet turba dominantium liber.

11 For tyrannus as the usual late Latin term for usurper, see Bond, S.E., ‘Usurpers’, in O. Nicholson (ed.), The Oxford Dictionary of Late Antiquity (Oxford, 2018), 1543Google Scholar. Cf. the wording of this episode in Greg. Tur. Hist. 2.56, citing Renatus Profuturus Frigeridus. As Harries, J., Sidonius Apollinaris and the Fall of Rome (Oxford, 1994), 29Google Scholar points out: ‘For the main players in the drama of 407–13 [Sidonius] had nothing but contempt: Apollinaris [… ] had hated “in Constantine his unreliability, in Jovinus his shiftiness, in Gerontius his treachery, […] in Dardanus all combined together”’ (Epist. 5.9.1 in Constantino inconstantiam, in Iouino facultatem, in Gerontio perfidiam, … omnia in Dardano crimina simul).

12 See Delaplace, C., La fin de l'Empire romain d'Occident. Rome et les Wisigoths de 382 à 531 (Rennes, 2015), 152CrossRefGoogle Scholar: ‘L'aristocratie auvergnate était au coeur de la rébellion.’

13 See Delaplace (n. 12), 135–8.

14 Caesar as such does not concern Sidonius here: he is introduced in the final section in connection with the theme of belatedness.

15 For Sidonius’ intertextuality with Lucan, see Gualandri, I., ‘Sidonius’ intertextuality’, in G. Kelly and J. van Waarden (edd.), The Edinburgh Companion to Sidonius Apollinaris (Edinburgh, 2020), 279–316Google Scholar, at 309–10. In section 1 of the present letter, the phrase sidentibus aceruis (of the original burial mounds being flattened over time) could be another trace of Lucan (7.791 sidentes … aceruos; Giannotti [n. 1 (2016)], 216), thus unobtrusively introducing the main allusion.

16 See Loyen (n. 2), 250 n. 12.

17 In Sidonius’ idiom, the adjective uenerabilis (section 4 uenerabili Gaudentio) is usually connected with someone being a Christian (cf. e.g. 3.2.3 religione uenerabilis). It could here point to a conuersio, the switch to a more spiritual lifestyle after a secular career (see Martindale [n. 3], 495).

18 The data are elusive. This reconstruction follows Loyen (n. 2), xxviii–xxix and Harries (n. 11), 176.

19 See Mathisen (n. 2 [2020]), 138, ‘Anonymus 35’.

20 For this affair, see Harries (n. 11), 159–66; Delaplace (n. 12), 241–6.

21 See Mathisen (n. 2 [2013]), 239–40 and Kelly, G., ‘Dating the works of Sidonius’, in G. Kelly and J. van Waarden (edd.), The Edinburgh Companion to Sidonius Apollinaris (Edinburgh, 2020), 166–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 185–6. While my argument in section 3.1 suggests that the letter circulated widely at an initial stage, a subsequent separate circulation of Book 3 as a whole perhaps also gains plausibility.

22 Epist. 3.13.11 igitur ex uoto meo feceris si talium sodalitati ne congressu quidem primore sociere. For an alternative positive appraisal of Apollinaris, see Prévot, F., ‘Faut-il réhabiliter le fils de Sidoine Apollinaire? Shall we clear the name of Sidonius Apollinaris’ son?’, in C. Balmelle, P. Chevalier, G. Ripoll (edd.), Mélanges d'Antiquité tardive. Studiola in honorem Noël Duval (Turnhout, 2004), 251–60Google Scholar; see also Mascoli (n. 3), 23–33.

23 The importance attached by Sidonius to the next generation ultimately is a counterpoint to his own struggle in the present. This theme comes to dominate the correspondence's closure in Epist. 9.16, where the ‘winter’ of his discontent is only resolved by the ‘spring’ of his youthful correspondents (see my analysis in Sidonius Apollinaris: Selected Letters [Cambridge, expected 2025]).