Coronis Sidoniana

SIDONIAN CORONIS. On the Prerogative of Place: what is called the interior and what the exterior; what it means to cover the side; or whether the right is more honorable than the left. I have purposely deferred to this point two lines in which Sidonius, during his Gothic embassy, says that he walked between King Theoderic and the king's brother Frideric. Then, with the king's brother on one side and the king on the other, he entered Tolosa with Palladia, their hands clasped. Not that it needs to be demonstrated to many that this was done for the sake of honor, since no one doubts that when three are together, the middle place is the most honorable; but so that I may range more freely in the remaining space of the book, and set forth somewhat more fully what I once commented upon concerning the notion of interior and exterior place, the protection of the side, and the distinction in the prerogative of honor between right and left, and add these notes at least in the place of a coronis. This is perhaps a *parergon*, and I do not deny it. But I shall not regret the effort if I say something, even outside the main line, that can win the approval of philologists and shed some light on good writers.

Therefore, it is not because, for example, in a circus game—to keep to our author—he called the horse on the right, which was urged on, the "exterior" one, and the chariot driven inward, which was driven to the left side; for this reason it should immediately be inferred from similar passages that it is remarkable that learned men have been mistaken, that the interior is everywhere the left, or the exterior always the right: since it is certain that the interior, as circumstances dictate, is sometimes right, sometimes left, and likewise the exterior. In the circus, indeed, the interior was left, but because the turning-posts were to the left for the runners, and the turns were to the left. If, on the contrary, the turn were made to the right, everything would be reversed: then the interior would be right, and the left exterior: as must have happened in that four-horse chariot which Solinus relates in chapter 46, where, after the charioteer was thrown out, the team abandoned the race, leaped to the Capitol, circled Tarpeian Jupiter three times in a rightward turn, and in the daily motion of the sky and stars, which themselves revolve the pole in a rightward circuit, as if in a perpetual rightward turn, Cynosura is interior to Helice, and yet more to the right. Nor otherwise in this verse from Cicero's *Aratus*, "For in a short orbit it turns in an inner course," can you take "inner course" to mean anything other than "more to the right." Why say more? For daily we see in two-horse chariots, when they turn at street corners, or in oxen, when they plow and draw alternate furrows, of the two oxen or horses, the interior one in the turn is now the right, now the left.

And what we see in these matters, we may likewise judge in the walking and sitting of men. For it is rarely the case that the same reasoning applies to the names. Just as in the circus and the turning of the meta, the one who turns more closely between his opponent and the meta is called the "interior"; so too in walking, if two walk together, the one who walks in the inner place will be the "interior"—that is, between his outer companion and a building, or whatever else closes off his other side. Therefore, in my opinion at least, the notion of "interior" is no different in the very well-known verses of Ovid in the Fasti, when he writes that this honor was paid by younger men to an old man: if there were two companions, the old man would walk in the middle; if only one, he would walk on the inside. And he would take the middle of the young men, with them not objecting, and the interior if there was only one companion. Nor is the notion of "exterior" different, and of the one who is said to "take the side," in Horace, Satire 5, Book II: "But do not refuse, if he orders, to go as his exterior companion, so that I may not cover the filthy Dama's side?" For what occurred to that man of supreme genius, Justus Lipsius—that he wanted the "interior" to be called the one whom the other preceded lightly and equally, for the sake of honor; or who himself (for he later preferred to interpret it thus) preceded the other—I fear it is more cleverly and ingeniously invented than true.

For I will not say that it seems quite remarkable or nearly ridiculous, if there are three, all walking with equal step; if one of the companions withdraws, the other immediately leaps from his own pace, so as to precede or follow the old man slightly, it is clear that in that opinion neither is the side properly covered by the one who is called the outer, nor is there any reason why the inner should be called anterior rather than interior. But in our interpretation everything is clear, certain, and straightforward. The interior is truly the one who walks in the middle between his companion and the buildings; the exterior is plainly the one in the outer place; and the same is rightly said to cover the side of the interior, as the one who closes that side which would otherwise be uncovered and bare, while the other side is protected by the buildings. In this sense Seneca in his letters: "Will the side be bare? The litter unaccompanied?" He said "bare side" because no outer companion covers it; and Minucius Felix, on the contrary, wrote in the Octavius that the one who sits in the middle between two is protected on both sides. "And with that said," he says, "we sat down, so that I, as the middle of the three, would be protected on both sides by the ambition of the flank." Nor indeed should we ask whether the interior always keeps the right side, as Lipsius and others thought, or the left, as Nebrissensis held, since it is sufficiently established that the interior in walking, just as in other matters, is now on the right, now on the left; and neither pertains to the force of the name, but happens by chance, according to which side, right or left, is the one to which the person called interior is nearer.

What then, someone will say, if it happens that the one who walks on the inside is on the left, will you say that he walks in the more honorable place? Certainly, I say, since the interior is the place of honor; since the other is the exterior, and covers his side, which is that of the inferior and the one deferring honor. And finally, to sum up briefly, I think thus. Among the ancient Romans, as today among our Gauls and most nations, in walking and in sitting the principal place of honor was always the interior, even if it was not always the right. This is clear and without exception, from Ovid and Horace, so that those who wish to argue for the left only, or for the left, are mistaken. Yet I would not detract from the prerogative of the right. It is clear that honor was given to the right. First, when there was nothing adjacent, from which one interior could be said to cover the side of the other, then the right was always preferred to the left: as in Suetonius, in the chapter on Tiberius, Marcellus, who in the procession of the triumph of Actium rode on the right-hand horse, while Tiberius rode on the left-hand one, was undoubtedly on the more honorable side? Then, in the very observance of the interior place, they would strive, as far as possible, to have the honor of the right joined together with that place, so that the same place would be both right and interior.

With this in view, Helenius Acro explained the outer side as the left in a verse of Horace; and Eutropius interpreted "walking on the left" in what Suetonius had written about the emperor Claudius—that he covered Plautius as he was going to the Capitol—not because these are necessarily always joined, but because it was generally the custom. For the rest, when the matter did not require that the inner side be the right, then, in exactly the manner we are accustomed to in Gaul, the inner side was considered the more important: so that they would assign the place of honor to the left rather than to the right on the outside. Thus the left also sometimes had its honor, but then, of course, when it was the inner side; just as the right was never not preferred, except when it could not be the inner side. The inner place, however, always and perpetually had the chief dignity—not because it was right or left, but because it was higher, because it was first, because it was in some way central: central, I say, between the companion and whatever it is that encloses the other side. For the Greeks also speak thus, even of two persons, when one is received in the inner place: as Plutarch, in his life of Cato the Younger, says that Philostratus, when they were walking together, walked on the outside out of honor for philosophy. And the old commentator on Juvenal, explaining a verse of the satire—"The rich man's slave closes the sides of the freeborn son"—says: "Either he places the slave in the middle, or he walks on the left." With these words he also wonderfully confirms our entire opinion.

For the discussion concerns two persons, as in Horace, whose shadow Juvenal here follows. Therefore he distinguishes these two in such a way that he places the inner person in the middle: when one gives way, whether on the left or on the right, to walk on the left—that is, of course, when neither place is the inner one—and only the honor of the right remains, which is to be accorded to the more important person.