Sidonius greets his dear Hesperius

• 1. I love it about you that you love literature, and I strive on every occasion to praise with the highest commendation the nobility of your great dedication, with which you not only recommend to us your own first attempts, but also my efforts. When I see the talents of the young prospering in fields of this sort, on account of which I too ‘have pulled my hand away from the rod’; then I receive the richest reward for my work. Consider too that the multitude of idle people has so increased that, if there were not at least a very few people like you defending the pure and correct Latin language from the rust of everyday barbarisms, we would soon have to bewail its destruction and death. Thus all the purple of this noble language will lose its colour because of the people's negligence.

• 2. But let us talk another time about this. Meanwhile, you should get what you ask for. You ask that if some verses have flowed out of me since we last parted from each other, I should account them to you as payment for my tardiness. I obey your command: because even though you are still a young man, your mind is endowed with such maturity that even those of us who are older than you want to oblige you. Not long ago a church was built in Lyon, and the work begun came to the point of completion through the efforts of bishop Patiens, a man pious but active, stern but compassionate, who also, with his abundant generosity towards the poor and with his kindly nature, builds the not less lofty edifice of a good conscience.

• 3. In the most remote part of this building I had this hasty poem inscribed, which I composed at the request of the aforementioned bishop in the triple trochees that have been familiar to me up to now and soon will be to you too. For the walls of the basilica near the altar are already distinguished with the hexameters of the illustrious poets Constantius and Secundinus – my modesty vehemently forbids me to include them in this letter, because the comparison with better poems puts my modesty under pressure, as I only nervously publish the products of my leisure time.