Introduction

Summary

In this letter to Sagittarius (or Syagrius) Sidonius recommends Proiectus as a friend. Proiectus is engaged to be married to the daughter of the late Optantius and therefore asks for the consent of Sagittarius (or Syagrius), who is the girl's guardian.

Addressee

The addressee, Sagittarius (or Syagrius), is otherwise unknown; see PLRE 2, 971, PCBE 4, 1680, Kaufmann (1995) 345, Mathisen (2020a) 120. In Sidon. Ep. 2.3.2 he is said to be the guardian (parens) of the daughter of the late vir clarissimus Optantius, so he is probably her uncle. There are two possible addressees for this letter: most manuscripts (P, L, T, N, V, R, and M) used by Lüthojann (1887) and Loyen (1970a) have Sagittario or Sagitario, while C has siagrio and F siargio. The older editions up to Lütjohann (1887) had the letter addressed to Syagrius. Kelly (2021) shows that the manuscripts are evenly divided in terms of stemmatic weight and the variant ‘Syagrius’ needs to be taken seriously. Syagrius is also a correspondent of Sidonius (Ep. 5.5 and 8.8) and the name of a consul, his friend's distinguished greatgrandfather (Ep. 1.7.4, 5.17.4, 7.12.1). The name Sagittarius is only attested once again after Sidonius; Kelly (2021).

Date

There is no evidence for the date of this letter; see the Introduction, ‘2. The date and order of letters in Book 2’.

Major themes and further reading

Letters 2.4 and 2.5, like Ep. 3.9 and 3.10 and 6.10 and 6.11, are paired letters of recommendation (litterae commendaticiae). As many as four successive letters of recommendation are found in Ep. 6.2–6.5. For Sidonius’ letters of recommendation, see Amherdt (2001) 196 on Ep. 4.6 and Furbetta (2015a) 349–53 on Ep. 1.10, 2.4, 3.5 and 6.4. Sidonius’ letter of recommendation also contains the theme of arranging marriages, which also occurs in Pliny Ep. 1.14. For the general structure and characteristic features of ancient letters of recommendation, which survive in considerable number: for example most of the letters in Cic. Fam. 13, over twenty in Pliny’s epistles, including Plin. Ep. 2.9, 2.13, 3.2, 3.3 (see the Introduction, p. xvii), sixteen letters of Fronto, including Front. Ep. 1.3, 1.9, and a considerable number in Book 9 of Symmachus’ letters; see Cugusi (1983) 111–14, Cotton (1985), Fernández López (1994) 135–48, Rees (2007), Frass (2008), Cain (2009) 211, Furbetta (2015a), Germerodt (2015) 119–26. In the letter at hand, Sidonius recommends Proiectus, a man outside his inner circle of acquaintances.