Research on the wealthy and influential senator, poet, diplomat and bishop Sidonius Apollinaris and his oeuvre is flourishing. This can be seen not only in recent translation activities and individual studies on single aspects of his work, but also in companions and anthologies, in which Sidonius serves as a focal point for the analysis of late antique Gaul together with its networks of political power and literary culture.[1] In her present German publication, Veronika Egetenmeyr deals with the fascinating and highly relevant figure as well. When studying his letters, she focuses on his perception of “barbarian others”, thereby simultaneously reflecting on his lifeworld (“Lebenswelt”), including his cultural, social and political environments and networks in Gaul. In doing so, she successfully presents answers to three main research questions (pp. 4-5), i.e. (1) “How does Sidonius portray barbarians in his letters?”, (2) “What are his intentions and goals regarding literary discourses about barbarians and their behavior?” and (3) “To what extent can his perception of barbarian others be used to make statements about his self-perception, self-identification and self-construction?”
The rich analysis is presented as a revised version of the author’s doctoral thesis, which she defended in 2018 at the Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel (Germany). Her study pays attention to concepts of alterity and otherness as literary constructs, which were created with respect to classical traditions and helped to solidify social, cultural and political identities. Against this backdrop, Egetenmeyr invites her readers to perceive writing about barbarian others as part of the construed discourses with which Sidonius Apollinaris not only revealed his own self-conception as an aristocrat, politician, church leader and man of letters, but simultaneously negotiated identities of various communities of Gaul. He thereby deliberately emphasized personal virtues and vices of outstanding individuals of his time and, following Plutarch, staged them as positive or negative exempla for his readership regarding the continuation of Roman ideals and habits (mores).
In her introduction, the author first examines terminologies, followed by deliberations about alterity, identity and the role of socio-political and cultural traditions, about methodical approaches—especially with regard to the potential of discourse analysis—and focuses on the history and impact of classical barbarian discourses for the creation of individual and collective identities. In doing so, Egetenmeyr succeeds in making various concepts, particularly from the fields of sociology and philosophy, highly useful for her own historical investigation.
Chapter 2 (“Gallien im 5. Jahrhundert”) presents a source-related and critical overview over historical developments in Gaul, thereby contextualizing the literary production of Sidonius Apollinaris. In addition to the well-founded and very readable overview of the history of events, the author pays particular attention to the mentalities and cultural status-markers of representatives of Gaul’s elites, characterized by their noble origins, their wealth, their socio-political networks and especially by their education: artistic and tasteful letters served as inclusive media to create and connect members of this elite as part of a community, that shared a similar lifeworld (“lebensweltliche Gemeinschaft”).
Chapter 3 (“Sidonius Apollinaris: Leben, Werk und Identifikationsstrategien”) is dedicated to the protagonist of Egetenmeyr’s publication. Starting with a concise overview of recent research on the man and his oeuvre, the author presents her readership with an overview over Sidonius’ youth and education, his family ties and political duties and his activities as a Christian bishop against the backdrop of contemporary upheavals in Gaul, and then focuses on his literary output. In doing so, the author answers questions regarding contents and structures of individual texts as well as the dating of the preserved body of sources. As becomes clear, Sidonius Apollinaris applied a variety of sometimes overlapping self-identification strategies in his letters to adequately present himself as a Roman senator upholding the traditional values of the mos maiorum, as a caring and influential Christian bishop or as a highly-educated intellectual, depending on circumstances, addressees or situational goals.
Egetenmeyr continues to examine the literary construction of “the barbarian other” in Sidonius’ letters. Part 4 (“Die ‘Anderen’ in den Briefen des Sidonius”) first presents a convincing distinction between various groups of others, i.e., (1) the intended recipients of letters, (2) others, who were not considered as “barbarians”, such as Jews, slaves or servants, and (3) actual barbarians in a narrow sense. The last category is then carefully studied in chapter 5 (“Die ‘barbarischen Anderen’ in den Briefen des Sidonius”), where the author confronts her readership with a detailed, source-based and clear analysis of Sidonius’ letters, thereby taking methodological approaches of history and philology into account. Sidonius depicted perceived barbarians in a stereotypical manner, thereby repeating well-known literary forms of classical antiquity, for instance, when he mockingly depicts the use, non-use or even abuse of language and education by perceived barbarians, their offensive appearances and looks or their repulsive behavior and character. His literary strategies of distinguishing himself from barbaric others also included criticizing heretics and Arians. Egetenmeyr then continues to draw attention to allusions to contemporary developments concealed in Sidonius’ letters (obscuritas), usually tied to the transformation of the contemporary natural, political and cultural landscapes.[2] The comprehensive analysis demonstrates that the interpretation of allusions is not easy as it was often deliberately left open, consequently allowing for very different interpretations. In many cases, “correct” explanations were strongly tied to contexts and exclusive contemporary knowledge, that perhaps only Sidonius and his recipients shared.
Chapter 6 (“Wanderer zwischen den Welten: ‘römische Barbaren’ und ‘barbarische Römer’”) focuses on remarkable individuals who oscillated between clear-cut categories, either because they surprisingly behaved in a civilized manner as barbarians or because they acted like barbarians, although they formally were considered as Romans. Among them features the Visigothic ruler Theoderic II (453-466), who is depicted rather favorably by Sidonius Apollinars as a possible ally for the preservation of Roman values, as well his successor Euric (466-484), who received a less favorable depiction because of political disagreements between him and Sidonius, together with Burgundian rulers, the Breton Riothamus, the senator Arbogast, the military leader Syagrius as well as the aristocrat Seronatus.
The study’s results are synthesized in chapter 7 (“Schlussbetrachtungen”): Barbarians as foreigners, with whom Sidonius Apollinaris usually had no personal contact, mostly remained stereotypical entities in his letters, usually in accordance with traditional literary conventions. While earlier scholarship at times depicted Sidonius as a “hater of barbarians” due to his statement that he actively avoided such groups (understood as “Germanic tribes”, such as Goths, Burgundians, Franks or Saxons), Egetenmeyr now emphasizes that such a view is in need of a critical revision: Although Sidonius despised everything barbarian, he did so regardless of ethnic affiliation. Following traditional literary barbarian discourses, non-Roman communities are described in a stereotypical manner, as are individuals who, from the author’s point of view, behaved in an incorrect or uneducated manner, thus betraying Roman ideals. The term “barbarian” was therefore used when Sidonius wrote about “the others” from whom he wanted to distance himself. Discourses about barbarians were therefore a useful tool for creating specific images—not only of the “other”, but also primarily of the literary “self”. Not least against the backdrop of the political, social and cultural transformations in Gaul during the fifth century, Sidonius reflected and negotiated his own environment, his own culture and his own identities through the depiction of “others”.
In sum, Veronika Egetenmeyr succeeds in presenting a clear and comprehensible study, which not only convincingly uses the corpus of letters by Sidonius Apollinaris as a historical source for understanding wide-ranging historical developments in Gaul, but also provides insights into the self-image of an influential aristocrat and his socio-political networks. Her study will surely serve as an important foundation for future studies on Sidonius Apollinaris and his oeuvre. Additionally, it will inform analyses of the history of the Western Roman Empire in general and of literary strategies for dealing with the “barbarian other” in time. It is to be expected that future works on the image of the barbarians in late antiquity will take up the methodological considerations presented here in particular—possibly also in connection with prosopographical deliberations—to gain further insight not only into the understanding of the notion of the ”barbarian”, but also into the changing modes of the functioning literary strategies of self-presentation and the transformation of associated mentalities of aristocratic circles. This meritorious study closes with a list of sources, a bibliography and a helpful register for locations, people and used source passages.
Notes
[1] See, for instance, Sigrid Mratschek, The letter collection of Sidonius Apollinaris, in: Cristiana Sogno, Bradley K. Storin and Edward J. Watts (eds.), Late Antique Letter Collections, Oakland: University of California Press 2017, pp. 309-336; Johannes A. van Waarden and Gavin Kelly (eds.), The Edinburgh Companion to Sidonius Apollinaris, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020; Judith Hindermann, Sidonius Apollinaris, Letters, Book 2. Text, Translation, and Commentary, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 2022.
[2] The author took methodical inspirations from Raphael Schwitter, Umbrosa lux. Obscuritas in der lateinischen Epistolographie der Spätantike, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag 2015 in particular.