Introduction

Summary

Sidonius congratulates his friend Magnus Felix, who was awarded the title of patricius, and who despite this great honour still acts as a loyal friend. In the second part of the letter, Sidonius adds three famous historical examples of men who were also promoted or otherwise successful yet still acted humbly and were therefore loved and esteemed (Quintus Fabius Maximus, Pompeius and Germanicus). Whereas the republican dictator Papirius and the emperor Tiberius were envious of the success of their rivals Quintus Fabius Maximus and Germanicus, Sidonius claims to be happy about his friend's luck.

Addressee

The addressee, Felix, is the son of Magnus, who was consul in 460. Felix was made praetorian prefect of Gaul (praefectus praetorio Galliarum) and became a patricius (the title of a person in a high office at court or in an important military function) around 469 by the emperor Anthemius. He was a friend of Sidonius from their school days (Carm. 9.330). Like Sidonius, he is a relative of the emperor Avitus; see Carm. 7.156, Anderson (1936) 130 n. 2 and the commentary on Ep. 2.2.3 nomen hoc praedio…. Felix is also the addressee of Ep. 3.4, 3.7, 4.5, 4.10 and Carm. 9, and is mentioned in Carm. 24.91. For the programmatic Carm. 9, see Condorelli (2008) 81–116. Felix is one of four addressees who receive as many as four letters (two addressees even get five letters each), and he is among the indivdiuals metioned most in Sidonius’ texts (six times); Mathisen (2020a) 41. Like Ecdicius, he is an addressee in Book 2 and Book 3; Giannotti (2016) 37. In Ep. 4.5 and 4.10.1 Sidonius complains about Felix’ long silence and attempts to resume contact with his old friend in Ep. 4.10.2. Harries (1994) 15–16, Delaplace (2014) 23–4 and Delaplace (2015) 236, 241–6 suggest that Sidonius fell out with Magnus’ family because of the Arvandus affair (see the introductions to Ep. 2.1 and 2.5) as they did not react to his pleas for help as bishop of the Auvergne later on, in 471; Mathisen (2020a) 82, Mratschek (2020a) 230, van Waarden (2020a) 22–4. Felix probably succeded Arvandus in office as praetorian prefect in 469; Stevens (1933) App. D (196–7), PLRE 2, 463–4, Harries (1994) 15, Kelly (2020a) 173–4.

Throughout this book, the phrase “ritual healing” has been used to refer collectively to options for seeking divine intervention to relieve physical ailments. People visited sacred sites, often associated with water, in the expectation of a dream or vision that would heal them. Others affixed amulets with powerful texts and images on their body to heal infirmities or to ward off diseases. In many situations, there would have been ceremonies or rituals that accompanied these forms of healing, such as preliminary sacrifices at local healing shrines or prayers recited when an amulet was first put on. In other cases, the process associated with these cures was informal, personal, and supplemented by no special rites. In this chapter, we turn to the words and actions believed to bring about a cure without the need for an inscribed amulet or a sacred site. In other words, the ceremonies themselves were the cures.

Some of the rituals discussed in this chapter may have been conducted by the individual in need of healing him- or herself, but more frequently we can imagine that the words and actions were performed by another. Although these rituals required someone to perform them, the identity of that person was somewhat irrelevant as long as they possessed the necessary knowledge and skills. This is in contrast to Chapter 6, which also considers people as agents of healing, but whose healers were understood to possess some sort of special quality that enabled them to work miracles. Among the healers of Chapter 5, two broad categories can be identified. The first are ritual practitioners who performed healing rites within Jewish and Christian communities. Typically, these individuals held some sort of an official role that gave them the requisite knowledge and authority. The second category of ritual practitioners are those whom we can call freelancers. While some of these freelancers may have held positions within the hierarchy of cults or religious communities, the healing rituals that they performed were not officially sanctioned. These practitioners used their specialized knowledge to work with clients in need of healing and were likely paid for their services. These two broad categories of practitioners relate to the context in which each worked and can be mapped onto the responses to their cures found among elite authors.

Introduction

Summary

With letter 2.8 Sidonius informs his friend Desideratus that the lady Filimatia died three days ago. Sidonius praises Filimatia's qualities as a wife, mother of five children and daughter of a father who, for love of her, did not remarry after his wife died. At Filimatia's funeral, relatives, friends and strangers mourn greatly and Sidonius expresses his grief with a funeral poem which he wrote at the request of Filimatia's father, Filimatius. Sidonius asks Desideratus to evaluate the poem, which he inserts in section 3 of the letter, and he considers including it in a collection of poems. At the end of the letter he begs the addressee, Desideratus, to join the mourning family members of the late Filimatia to console them.

Addressee

Desideratus is otherwise unknown; see Kaufmann (1995) 295, PLRE 2, 355, PCBE 4, 556, Mathisen (2020a) 90.

Date

Indications for the dating are given by the mention of Filimatia's father, Filimatius, who is also mentioned in two other letters, Ep. 1.3 and 5.17. There is a general forward movement in the letters but Ep. 5.17 is surely before Sidonius’ ordination to bishop. Loyen (1970a) 61, 247 n. 8, dates Ep. 2.8 to the end of the year 469 and justifies this with Sidonius’ reference to his existing collection of epigrams (see the commentary below on Ep. 2.8.2), to which his bookseller can add new poems. Kelly (2020a) 175 n. 50 rejects Loyen's dating of Ep. 1.3 to the year 467 and instead dates Ep. 1.3 in 455 and Ep. 2.8 and 5.17 in the early 460s. Because Eriphius is presented in 5.17 as the son-in-law, Kelly (2020a) 178 also dates the epitaph of Filimatia inserted in Ep. 2.8.3 after the elegiacs on Filimatius’ face towel in Ep. 5.17.10. Eriphius could still be called the son-in-law, although his wife was dead, but it seems more natural to assume that Filimatia is still alive. On the general difficulty of dating Sidonius’ letters, see the Introduction, ‘2. The date and order of letters in Book 2’.

Major themes and further reading

Structure After a series of short letters (2.3 to 2.7) Sidonius adds a longer text combined with an inserted epigram, the first of Book 2. Like the letters before, Ep. 2.8 is also dedicated to the duty of friendship.

The four markers of identity most often noted in Byzantine primary sources, both written and visual, are gender, status, stage in the life course and ethnicity. Whether someone is a woman, man or eunuch is virtually always indicated: verbally, in the written sources; visually, in imagery. Status, too, is almost always described or portrayed, either in terms of wealth (‘a poor man’, ‘a wealthy woman’), rank (‘the patrikia’[usually named] and ‘her [usually unnamed] servant’), or vocation (‘a monk’, ‘an innkeeper’, ‘a prostitute’); and because this is not always crystal clear in a picture, the designation is usually also spelled out in an accompanying inscription. Position in the life course is indicated for those not in the normative mature adult stage, both in texts (a ‘wise old man’, ‘a maiden’) and images: an excellent example is provided by a miniature in a ninthcentury copy of the Homilies of Gregory of Nazianzos, where an old man, a mature adult male and a beardless youth (representing the three ages of man) lower Gregory into his sarcophagus (Fig. 5.1). Ethnicity is less commonly noted, though it appears in both texts (as in the sometimes despised Paphlagonians, whom Paul Magdalino has written about, or in simple notations that so-and-so is Armenian, or Vlach, or some other designation) and imagery, as in the near-ubiquitous Persian Magi and the Black Ethiopians who appear in some images of the Mission of the Apostles, being baptised by Matthew. The two markers I am interested in here are gender and status, which – in the textual sources – inflect each other: in Byzantine society, where masculinity was the normative gender, a high-status female could nonetheless rank above a medium-status male in the social hierarchy; but, at the same time, even a female of the highest status possible (such as an empress) never lost her female attributes, and her strengths, when recognised, were often identified as masculine traits. A classic example of this is provided by Prokopios, who described one of the few powerful women he admired – Amalasuntha, Theodoric's daughter, who was regent for her young son after 526 – as ‘displaying to a great extent the masculine temper‘(Wars V, ii.3, 21).

There are many strands, subcategories and highly debated taxonomies within Judaism – governed by theology, doxology, jurisprudence, language and descent. The differences between the two main branches of Judaic communities, Sephardim (and Mizrahim) and Ashkenazim, are well known: they emerged from Judaic communities in the Islamic ummah and Christian oikoumene, respectively – with attendant geographical subcategories. Judaic communities also survived for centuries further south, east and beyond the Abrahamic worlds, such as Beta Israel and the Teimanim (Eastern Africa and Southern Arabia), Kaifeng Jews (western China) and Kochinim (southern India). All these communities date back centuries and their origins remain the subject of many discussions. However, one of the most contentious debates is about the origin of the Ashkenazim – or as typically described, the Jewish populations of Central and Eastern Europe.

There are two schematic theories about the origin of the Ashkenazim: that they settled in Central and Eastern Europe via a western route through Western Europe and/or via an eastern route through Caucasia and Khazaria. The former, termed the ‘Rhineland hypothesis’, is the most commonly accepted theory for Ashkenazi origins: according to this theory, following the diaspora in the wake of the Roman suppression of the second-century Bar Kokhba Revolt, Jewish communities emerged in second- to fifth-century Western Roman imperial provinces like Hispania, Gaul, Britannia and Italy, which remained until various thirteenth- to fourteenth-century anti-Jewish expulsions and Crusader violence, leading to eastward migrations towards Piast-ruled lands due to simultaneous legal protections granted by Piast kings.

The prefect of Judaea, Pontius Pilate, was looking out at an angry mob below, and I have been watching him again and again now for several years, as he assesses the situation in the streets and is deciding how he must respond. In the end, Pilate will talk to those to whom he is predetermined to talk (to the crowd, to the high priests, to his wife, to Jesus) and do that which he is predetermined to do (to display the beaten Jesus, to release Barabbas, to dispatch Jesus to the cross, to wash his hands). It has been a chore, at times, to watch Jesus condemned to the cross again and again, and to watch prefect after prefect come to terms with the decision he has made, from tortured indecision to malicious self-justification to casual dismissal of another person’s life. There are times I have suffered under Pontius Pilate, to be sure. Each time he speaks and acts, however, although I have known how it would all turn out, I have been fascinated to see how it would unfold. What expression would there be in his face, what catch in his voice, what unexpected glance or gesture? There is a constancy from production to production in the portrayal of Jesus that verges on monotony – there he is, as always, in his robe and sandals, with beard and hair of a certain length and a steadfast look in his eye. Pilate, however, has always been allowed a far wider range of appearances on stage and screen.

This chapter examines the rituals and ceremonies that took place in court spaces, especially the salutatio, and state ceremonial involving the court, such as the rituals that grew up surrounding imperial accessions. Particular attention is given to the development of the salutatio, to the spaces in which this ritual was staged, and to the management and ordering of courtiers during it. Also examined are the forms of greeting given to the emperor: the imperial kiss in the Principate, and adoratio in the Tetrarchic period. The chapter argues that ceremonial involving the imperial court functioned as a performance of the socio-political hierarchy of the Roman state and an acknowledgement of that hierarchy by its participants. Although grounded in routine and tradition, these ceremonies were subject to negotiation by emperor and subject, and this process of negotiation was sometimes responsible for long-term developments in ceremonial practices.

The Roman imperial court was not confined to the palaces of Rome. Emperors owned lavish villas in rural and seaside areas of Italy, at which they and members of their court would often sojourn. This chapter examines the imperial villas for which there are substantial archaeological remains, including Tiberius’ Villa Iovis on Capreae, Domitian’s villa at Lacus Albanus, Hadrian’s villa at Tibur, and the Antonine Villa Magna near Anagnia. The remains of these complexes suggest that they were simultaneously places of luxurious leisure (otium) for emperors and their courtiers, but also locations where the serious business of running an empire could take place. A powerful ideological statement about the emperor’s power to transform nature itself was also encoded in the architecture of some of these villas.