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.