Sidonius Apollinaris is a central figure in the literature and history
of fifth-century Gaul. But he still awaits sustained debate in modern
scholarship. This integrated and international collection of essays
explores the potential for a complete commentary on his works, starting
with a retrospective on Sidonius scholarship up to the present, and then
focusing in turn on his verse and his prose. The strangeness of his
poetry triggers a critical contemporary assessment and a proposal for
better understanding through the theory of Cultural Memory; there follow
case studies of the panegyrics and of poems within the letters, and
examinations of his intertextuality with Horace and Claudian. Research
into Sidonius' prose is represented by two contrasting essays on the
composition of the letter collection, by a demonstration of how Sidonius
constructs history to create contemporary identity, and by a
groundbreaking chapter applying text linguistics to the letters. An
appendix fills a significant scholarly lacuna with Helga Koehler's
indices to her commentary on Letters, Book 1 (Heidelberg, 1995).





The present volume will be important for both literary and historical
scholars of the late Roman world, for both Classicists and Medievalists.