Epistolae

Claudianus Mamertus, two letters. The first letter. Claudianus to Sidonius the Pope, greetings. If it were possible for me to meet with you, my lord, even occasionally and for a short time, I would not inquire here and there into the wishes or needs of any persons whatsoever, but into those things which could be of use to me in the matter of my duty. Indeed, the power of revisiting is cut off by many and wretched causes. On the other hand, the ability to write either rarely presents itself as suitable, or does not present itself at all. Whether these same things are to be forgiven or not, you yourself will judge. Moreover, indeed, that your writings are often imparted to others, who neither seek that same thing as I do, nor perhaps deserve it more, I do not think is committed with impunity against the laws of friendship. I will also now pass over in silence, with grief, that those little books, which you do not refuse to have ennobled by your name, you have never honored with any reply. But perhaps suitable time is lacking, which you, though moderate, might spend on a great friendship. For who is ever so occupied or entangled anywhere that this does not redound to the advantage of others? When you placate God with prayer, you reconcile him not only to friends but also to strangers. When you examine the mysteries of the holy scriptures, the more diligently you imbue yourself, the more copiously you pour forth doctrine to others. When you lavish your wealth on the needs of the poor, you provide for yourself indeed most of all, but also for others.

Therefore, clearly, nothing at all of all your actions is so unfruitful that it bears a richer harvest for you alone and not also for many others with you. No occasion of any hindrance, therefore, can be alleged, even falsely, why I, a special and intimate friend, should bear no fruit from my special friend, from whom even many unknown persons gain much. But, as I reckon, according to the pattern of the evangelical giver, what you do not give to a hungry friend, you will give to an importunate knocker. Moreover, if you still persist in your usual hardness, I myself will do something that will make you repent: for if you sin further by keeping silent, I will forthwith avenge myself by writing. For it is beyond doubt that you are to be punished by my writing, just as I am punished by your silence. Farewell. Sidonius to his Claudianus, greetings. You declare, my lord and superior, that I transgress against the rights of our relationship, because, with regard to the greeting due to you, I have long refrained from pen and tablets, and because thereafter no traveler's hands have burdened my papyrus with letters that might convey to you the cultivation of constant well-being.

Beyond what is fair you surmise this, if you think that any mortal (to whom, nevertheless, it is a concern to speak in Latin) would not tremble when a composition, indeed written, is brought to the test of your ears—your ears, I say, whose expertise, if the prerogative of the times that have run down to this age does not overwhelm me, I would not equal to the gravity of a Fronto or the flood of an Apuleius, before which the Varros, whether Atacinus or Terentius, the Plinys, whether the uncle or the Second, would, if brought into the present, be accounted rustic. That volume which you yourself, most rich in knowledge of things and words, have published concerning the state of the soul supports my judgment; in it, while you preface in my name, I have received this gift especially, that the fame of my person, which it was not worth the effort to make illustrious by the titles of its own books, should be perpetuated by your kindness. But what a great work that is, O great God, and how vast it is, closed in its subject matter, conspicuous in its declamation, obstructed in its proposition, unlocked by its disputation, and although thorny because of the hooked points of its syllogisms, yet sweetened with the flower of blooming eloquence. There are new words there, because they are old, by comparison with which even the style of ancient literature would deservedly become antiquated, and, what is more precious, that entire diction, so concise in its clauses yet flowing, you perceive to teach more than it says, ample in its subjects and tight in its sentences.

And indeed, this was once considered no injury to principal eloquence, which, by compressing much into few words, took care to fill the case rather than the page. But in your books, what of that quality, that they admit tenderness even though continuous maturity, and interweave timely censure with sweetness, so that the reader's attention, wearied through the ventilated limbs of the disciplines of philosophy, is suddenly refreshed by voluptuous digressions as if by the harbors of their own sea? O book, powerful in many ways! O eloquence, not of a thin but of a subtle intellect, which neither swells through hyperbolic gushings nor is thinned by depressed understatements. To this is added a unique and singular learning, demonstrable in the assertion of diverse matters, whose custom it is to philosophize about each art with each artisan, and which, if necessity demands, does not refuse to hold the plectrum with Orpheus, the staff with Aesculapius, the beam with Archimedes, the horoscope with Euphrates, the compass with Perdix, the plumb line with Vitruvius, and which has never ceased to investigate with Thales the seasons, with Atlas the stars, with Zetus the weights, with Chrysippus the numbers, with Euclid the measures. Finally, no one in my age has been able to affirm what he wished so effectively, since, while exerting himself against the one he speaks against, he rightly claims for himself the symbol of the morals, studies, and language of both sides.

He feels like Pythagoras, divides like Socrates, explains like Plato, involves like Aristotle, flatters like Aeschines, grows angry like Demosthenes, blooms like Hortensius, burns like Cethegus, incites like Curio, delays like Fabius, feigns like Crassus, dissembles like Caesar, persuades like Cato, dissuades like Appius, convinces like Tullius. Now if we come to the most holy Fathers for comparison, he instructs like Jerome, destroys like Lactantius, builds up like Augustine, is exalted like Hilary, is humble like John, rebukes like Basil, consoles like Gregory, flows like Orosius, is compressed like Rufinus, narrates like Eusebius, urges like Eucherius, provokes like Paulinus, perseveres like Ambrose. Now if you ask what I think about your hymn, it is commatic, copious, sweet, elevated, and surpasses any lyric dithyrambs whatsoever in poetic charm and historical truth, and that is your special quality in it, that with the meters' feet, the feet' syllables, and the syllables' natures preserved, within the limit of its own space, rich words enclose a poor verse, nor does the brevity of the constrained poem eliminate the length of the adorned speech. Thus it is easy for you with small trochees and even smaller pyrrhics not only to overtake the ternary combinations of molossics and anapaests, but also the quaternary joinings of epitrites and paeons.

The amplitude of the discourse exceeds the narrow confines of the rules, and like a great gem scarcely contained by a small amount of gold, it flashes forth, like the spirit of a powerful horse, which, if it is held back by the law of the bit amid thickets or rough places while it rages, you understand that it is not so much the course that is lacking as the field. Why say more? In my judgment, in each type of speaking, neither will Athens be so Attic nor the Muses so musical, if only the long idleness has not taken from me the capacity for judging. For while, under the pretext of an unassailed profession, I gradually seek a new manner of writing and unlearn the old one by fits and starts, I have nothing more of a good orator than that I have begun to be more of a bad poet. Therefore, I beg you, grant me pardon for this fault, that, remembering myself for a little while, I more rarely mingle my dry little stream with your river. Your trumpet will rightly be venerated throughout the whole world that lies open, which it is agreed has sounded with a double happiness, since it has found neither a rival nor an equal, when it was already being carried about through the ears and mouths of peoples, even with me as its bearer. But for me it is great audacity if I prattle even before municipal and chair-bound orators or forensic brawlers, who, even when they finish their speeches, with due respect to their betters, a more numerous crowd is idle with the most illiterate of letters. For you, to whom it is permitted to alternate speech whether free or bound, to thunder in both ways, few, whom a just Jupiter has loved, will imitate. Farewell.

To the Most Learned Man, Sapaudus the Rhetor, Claudianus. Greece, the mistress of all disciplines and arts, was advanced in noble studies and embraced nearly the whole world with its manifold teachings chiefly because there was no one there who bore any fruit of good quality to whom an equal honor was not given. Hence some mortals, having almost surpassed the nature of mortals, with the stretched and everywhere extended powers of excellent minds, with indefatigable cares, searching out the hidden things of things, and grasping by investigation and art the fixed causes of original beginnings and the predetermined limits in time of temporally flowing substances, entered not only within the worldly, but also into the supercelestial secret. It has been my purpose to say this at present, because from the times of our ancestors there has been a loss of the good arts, and the mind, despising cultivation, by which alone the human race surpasses the beast, serving pleasures and riches, has given itself over utterly to the servitude of idleness and ignorance, together with learning and virtue. For that no one except you alone aspires to any noble discipline, either to innovate anything or even to unlearn anything, shall we ascribe this to human negligence or to nature?

If we attribute this evil to a defect of nature, can it then be said that the human race differs from the human race, or that the same talents are not what they once were, or that Cicero, the supreme orator of his age, did not receive the goods born with him as a gift, and did he not, rather, setting little store by domestic and civic affairs, travel all the way to Greece for the sake of acquiring a richer knowledge, or that Plato, the peak and summit of philosophy, content with the natural good proper to him, and believing Greece too narrow for doctrines after the teachings of Socrates, did not, as an indefatigable seeker of truth, go all the way to Egypt and to the Brahmans of the Indians and to the heirs of the Pythagorean teachings? I pass over the rest in silence, because neither time nor the present work is capable of this matter. I would say this one thing, without any doubt: it is not talents that are lacking in our age, but studies. And I myself would be burying these studies with a kind of mournful epitaph, as if they were a sort of death, had you not revived them by your venerable profession, your praiseworthy skill, your keen talent, and your fluent eloquence. This good is all the more admirable to me, the more hopeless it was.

I see that the Roman tongue is not only a matter of neglect for Romans but even of shame, that grammar is driven off like some barbarous thing with fist and heel for barbarism and solecism, that dialectic is feared as if it were an Amazon about to do battle with drawn sword, that rhetoric is not received in a narrow space as if it were a great lady, that music, geometry, and arithmetic are spat upon like three Furies, and that thereafter philosophy is counted as if it were some ill-omened beast. But these things I have suggested in your praise, because if there were many who shared your pursuits, you would indeed be, even if not superior to all, one among many. As it is, however, far from any injury to the rest, you are the one and only peer of your profession in our Gaul, and let this statement be attributed neither to flattery nor to adulation. For I certainly cannot flatter, nor do you need to be falsely praised. But the sweetness of your declamations, mingled with virtue in the manner of Attic honey, cannot be rooted out and plucked from my mind, a sweetness to which nature has imparted healing, strength, and sweetness. Just as on the Hyblaean heights the winged and industrious little bee, divinely taking up the falling dew, pours it into the crafted dwellings of flowering plants and, as the fabricator of her offspring, nourishes and imbues the brood of her virginity with the abundance of the honeycombs, so you, clearly, from the highest authors as from great mountains, gather the more learned things like fragrant thyme and the more fruitful things like certain flowers.

a swarm of those whom you fill with the honey of genius, you fashion the honeycombs of eloquence, from which in turn a beloved multitude of disciples is formed for you, like sons, who, imbued with the nectar of Greek disciplines as if fed on Attic honey, as soon as they begin to rustle with the wings of knowledge, will themselves fashion honeycombs of eloquence. Only see to it that you remember that the duty of teaching is yours by inheritance from your ancestors and beyond, and that you ought to apply yourself all the more abundantly to knowledge, the more manifold the learning that has flowed into you from your forebears. You must also be reminded of the nobility of the ancient city of Vienna, whose citizen and teacher you are; you will discharge a double debt not at leisure, from which you are required in two ways: either to answer to the fathers or to the fatherland. That I now ask at the end of my speech most familiarly: that you spurn the puerile trifles of novel little reasonings, and spend no time in reading them—those which whirl about certain bull-roarers of resounding little speeches and unman oratorical strength with applauding harmonies. Let Naevius and Plautus be of use to you for elegance, Cato for gravity, Varro for expertise, Gracchus for sharpness, Chrysippus for discipline, Fronto for pomp, Cicero for attaining eloquence. For whoever among the more recent writers has written anything worthy of memory has himself read not the novices. Therefore those are to be fanned back to life and committed to memory, from whom those we admire were able to make progress.

Nevertheless, I have perhaps somewhat too familiarly brought this forth as a testimony of friendship, but the pardon of your goodwill will grant pardon to the boldness of love.