See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/344523990 “Sidonius’ People" Chapter · October 2020 CITATIONS READS 0 58 1 author: Ralph Mathisen University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign 77 PUBLICATIONS 382 CITATIONS SEE PROFILE Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects: Romans, Barbarians, and the End of the Western Roman Empire: Emperors, Tyrants, Generals, Potentates, and Kings View project All content following this page was uploaded by Ralph Mathisen on 07 October 2020. The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file. 2 SIDONIUS’ P EOPLE Ralph Mathisen 1 Introduction N THE LATE fi fth century, in his ‘Sermon on the saintly martyr Vincent’, bishop Faustus of IRiez (c. 460-90 CE) gave his opinion on the value of being named in a saint’s life: ‘What present-day realm, what transmarine province, however far the Roman Empire or the Christian religion extends, does not rejoice to celebrate the birth of Vincentius? Who today, however, has ever heard even the name of [the praeses] Datianus, unless he has read the passion of Vincent?’1 As far as Faustus was concerned, Datianus’ appearance in a saint’s life would be his only chance for remembrance.2 The same can be said for nearly all of the people who appear in the works of Sidonius Apollinaris. Late antique Gaul was a busy place.3 A lot was happening: the rise of the Christian church as the most signifi cant social and cultural institution; the creation of barbarian kingdoms cou- pled with the fi nal precipitous decline and end of Roman authority; and a social world that was very much in fl ux, as previously unprivileged social groups gained greater opportunities and means of self-expression.4 The 24 poems, and in particular the 147 letters, of Sidonius offer an unparalleled window on the world of late antique Gaul, and provide readers with a wealth of material about the people who populated it.5 Sidonius was well positioned to gather this kind of information. He belonged to the most blue-blooded family of late Roman Gaul and moved in the most exalted circles of the senato- rial aristocracy.6 A native of Lyon, his father and grandfather had held the offi ce of praetorian prefect of Gaul, the highest imperial offi ce in Gaul. He himself was married to Papianilla, the daughter of Eparchius Avitus, a native of Clermont who, with the support of the Visigoths of Aquitania, became emperor in 455 only to fall victim to a conspiracy of two Italian gen- erals, Majorian and Ricimer, the next year.7 Sidonius’ most noteworthy early recollections are the installation of the consul Astyrius in Arles in 449 and his trip to Rome in 455 with 1 Sermo de sancto Vincentio martyre (CSEL 21.273-6): Quae hodie regio, quae provincia transmarina, quousque vel Romano- rum imperium vel Christianum nomen extenditur, natalem non gaudet celebrare Vincentii; quis autem hodie Datiani vel nomen audisset, nisi Vincentii passione legisset? 2 And it would have been a small matter to Faustus that in modern prosopographies the name of the praeses Datianus might be ‘spattered by asterisks and gasp marks’ to indicate doubt about his existence: Birley (1972) 185. See PLRE 1, 244 (‘*!P. Datianus!*’). 3 See, inter alios, Mathisen (1989, 1993). 4 See Mathisen (2003a). 5 On Sidonius’ social world, see also, in this volume, Mratschek,ch. 5. The number of 147 letters is conventional; on the question of whether there may in fact be 148 letters preserved, see ch. 3, n. 11. 6 For Sidonius, see PLRE 2, 115–18. 7 See Mathisen (1985, 1991c). 66255_Kelly255_Kelly aandnd vvanan WWaarden_Partaarden_Part 11.indd.indd 2299 119/11/199/11/19 33:07:07 PPMM 30 RALPH MATHISEN Avitus. After holding the offi ces of tribunus et notarius under Avitus and being raised to the rank of comes under, it seems, Majorian, Sidonius’ political career peaked in 468 when, in the course of an embassy to Rome, he was made prefect of Rome by the emperor Anthemius and granted the pre-eminent rank of patrician. In 469, soon after his return to Gaul, Sidonius abruptly made an increasingly common change in profession: he became bishop of Clermont, the home town of his wife’s family. In doing so, he behaved like many Gallic aristocrats of this period, who, as the Roman Empire collapsed, sought to advance their careers and expand their local infl uence in the church.8 After leading the Arvernian resistance against Visigothic expansion in the early 470s Sidonius was disappointed when the emperor Julius Nepos ceded the city to the Goths in 475. After a brief period of exile at Liviana, the second stop on the road from Narbonne to Toulouse,9 Sidonius returned and continued, in rather reduced cir- cumstances, to serve as bishop until his death, perhaps in the mid-480s.10 In the course of his career Sidonius came into contact with people from all levels of society, ranging from emper- ors, consuls, and prefects, to cooks, slaves, and ne’er-do-wells. He enjoyed recounting these encounters in his poems and letters and thus provides us with a survey of the kinds of people who lived in late antique Gaul.11 2 Understanding Sidonius’ People: Prosopography The people who populated Sidonius’ world can be analysed and understood using several different methodologies. First, they can be discussed, and usually have been discussed, by cit- ing representative passages in a qualitative and impressionistic manner in order to construct a picture of aristocratic society.12 They also can be analysed in a quantitative manner by utilis- ing prosopography, a methodological approach that studies how people interact in groups by constructing datasets of persons who have shared characteristics – such as all the people who appear in the works of Sidonius. In the same way, prosopographical databases can be analysed using statistical methods.13 And fi nally, the relationships among the people in Sidonius’ world can be depicted visually by using social network analysis. These methodologies permit one to approach Sidonius’ social world from several different directions. One might begin with a discussion of the most commonly used quantitative method, prosopography, which relates to the study of groups of people and how they interact with and relate to each other.14 As defi ned by Lawrence Stone, Prosopography is the investigation of the common background characteristics of a group of actors in history by means of a collective study of their lives. The method employed is to establish a universe to be studied, and then to ask a set of uniform questions – about birth and death, marriage and family, social origins and inherited economic position, place of residence, education, amount and source of personal wealth, occupation, religion, experi- ence of offi ce and so on. The various types of information about the individuals in the 8 See Mathisen (1993). 9 Sidon. Ep. 8.3.1 moenium Livianorum; see Mathisen (2000) map 25. 10 See below, sect. 10.7. 11 For Sidonius’ biography ‘in photo negative’, see in this volume van Waarden, ch. 1. 12 E.g. Stevens (1933), Harries (1994). 13 E.g. Jarausch and Hardy (1991), Barnes (1995). 14 E.g. Carney (1973), Graham (1974), Maurin (1982), Barnish (1994), Eck (2002, 2010), Smythe (2008). 66255_Kelly255_Kelly aandnd vvanan WWaarden_Partaarden_Part 11.indd.indd 3300 119/11/199/11/19 33:07:07 PPMM SIDONIUS’ PEOPLE 31 universe are then juxtaposed and combined, and are examined for signifi cant variables. They are tested both for internal correlations and for correlations with other forms of behaviour or action.15 Prosopography subsumes elements of onomastics, genealogy, demography, and, in particular, biography.16 It has similarities to ‘biography’, insofar as both are concerned with the personal histories and careers of individual people; but whereas biography focuses on single individuals, prosopography is more concerned with looking at career patterns among groups of people and at how people relate to each other collectively. In this sense, prosopography builds on biogra- phy, for to do prosopography effectively, one must make use of the building blocks provided by biography: a person’s family background, career trajectory, and, in particular, interactions with other individuals. Whereas a ‘biography’ as a discrete literary work will be about a single person, a ‘prosopography’ as a discrete literary work, such as the three volumes of the Proso- pography of the Later Roman Empire – affectionately known as PLRE – will include thumbnail biographical sketches of thousands of individuals.17 It is up to the user to arrange this informa- tion to construct the career patterns of particular persons and the connections among smaller or larger numbers of persons, ranging from small groups, or factions, or coteries, to the nature of society as a whole. Prosopographical information is exceptionally well suited to computer analysis.18 All the people who have lived during any period of history have associated with them, potentially at least, recurrent categories of information, such as name, sex, religion, marital status, social and economic class, date of birth and death, offi ces held, and so on.19 If such information is converted to computer format, it permits the creation of groups of individuals who meet any number of criteria. In the early days of computer technology, one was limited to 80-column cards and had to be very imaginative when it came to reducing data to computer format.20 Not until the 1980s and the introduction of PCs and programmable database software did it become possible to create serious multi-purpose computerised prosopographical databases.21 Databases with any number of data fi elds (categories) of any length dealing with any conceiv- able type of information could be created.