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 affairs, Ecdicius, his wife's brother, held the chief place in the district (Greg. Tur. ii. 21). Fully aware of his own deficiencies, he accepted the office unwillingly, begging his friends, among them Fonteius bp. of Vaison, Euphronius bp. of Autun, Leontius bp. of Arles, and Lupus bp. of Troyes, who wrote to congratulate him on his appointment, to pray for him (Epp. v. 3; vi. 1, 3, 7; vii. 8, 9; ix. 2). From this time he gave up writing verses of a light kind, as ill-suited to his time of life and the gravity of his office (Ep. ix. 12). But at his friends' requests he criticized compositions and wrote hymns in honour of martyrs. With his wife Papianilla, though there is no doubt of his undiminished affection for her, he probably, as is assumed by Sirmond, Tillemont, and others, lived on terms not of connubial but of fraternal intimacy; no evidence of this appears from his own writings. That they continued to live together is plain from the story told by Gregory of Tours, that she found fault with him for parting with his plate to give to the poor (Greg. Tur. ii. 22). He became a diligent student of Scripture, though disclaiming earnestly any ability as a commentator, and also of ecclesiastical writers, as Augustine, Jerome, Origen, etc. (Epp. viii. 4; ix. 2).

From 471 until 474, when Auvergne was first attacked formally by the Visigoth, it is not easy to fix accurately all the dates of events or of letters.

After he came to the throne of Toulouse in 466 Euric lost no opportunity of increasing his dominions by aggression upon the Roman. During 473, or early in 474, the province of Berry fell to him, and he took advantage of the weakness of the Roman empire after the death of Anthemius to extend his dominion towards the Rhone and the Loire; Auvergne being now the only province remaining to the Romans W. of the Rhone and in constant danger of invasion. No formal attack, however, took place until the autumn of 474. At some time in 474, as it seems, Avitus, brother-in-law of Sidonius, endowed the see of Clermont with a farm called Cuticiacum (Cunhiae), not far from the city, and in the letter mentioning this Sidonius speaks also of the threatened invasion and of his confidence in Avitus in case of negotiation (Ep. iii. 1). Meanwhile, as the autumn advanced, the Visigoths entered the territory of Auvergne, and communication with distant places became more difficult. In preparations to resist the enemy Sidonius acted as a leader of the people, and was greatly assisted by his brother-in-law Ecdicius, who with a handful of cavalry attacked and defeated a large force of the enemy. They retired at the end of 474 or beginning of 475, but not so completely as to remove the apprehension of future attack or the necessity for watch to be kept on the walls during the snowy days and dark nights of winter (Ep. iii. 7). A brief truce with the Visigothic king appears to have been arranged early in 475, perhaps through the agency of Epiphanius, bp. of Pavia. During this temporary cessation of hostilities a report became current that Euric had invaded the Roman territory of Auvergne, and Sidonius summoned his people to join in acts of fasting and prayer conducted like the Rogations instituted, or rather revived and reorganized, some years previously by Mamertus, bp. of Vienne, and of which, in a letter to him, he recounts the history. He also begs the prayers of the bishop and his flock for the people of Auvergne, and as a claim upon their attention mentions the transfer to Vienne at some previous time of the remains of Ferreolus and the head of Julian, both of them martyrs and natives of Auvergne. He also wrote to his friend Aper, entreating him as a citizen of Clermont to leave his warm baths at Aquae Calidae and come to Clermont to take part in the solemn service (Epp. v. 14; vii. 1; Greg. Tur. Hist. Fr. ii. 11, de Mirac. ii. 1, 2; "Rogation Days," D. C. A. vol. ii. p. 1809; Baron. ann. 475, xii.–xxi.; Tillem. vol. xvi. pp. 247, 248). No actual invasion of Auvergne appears to have occurred, and negotiations, in which bps. Basilius of Aix, Faustus of Riez, Graecus of Marseilles, and Leontius of Arles, were among the acting counsellors, ultimately resulted in the surrender of Auvergne to the Visigoths. It was probably during these negotiations that Euric, a zealous partisan of the Arian heresy, whose hostility in this direction, Sidonius says, he feared more than his attacks on Roman fortifications, deprived of their sees and in many cases put to death or banished many bishops in the regions subject to him, allowing no successors to be appointed. Churches were overthrown, their sites overrun by animals, Christian discipline destroyed; and writing to Basilius, Sidonius implores him, as in touch with the political negotiators, to obtain permission for the exercise of episcopal ordination (Ep. vii. 6).

The surrender of Auvergne, marking as it did the utter prostration of Roman influence, was a heavy blow to Sidonius, and he wrote to Graecus, bp. of Marseilles, recounting the unswerving loyalty of the Auvergnians and their sufferings during the siege, and inveighing bitterly against the selfish policy which, to secure for a time only the districts in which the negotiators were interested, had handed over the faithful province of Auvergne for punishment to the enemy. The remonstrance was fruitless, and Auvergne passed to the Visigoth. It was placed under a governor named Victorius, with the title of Count, who appears at first to have behaved with real or affected moderation (Greg. Tur. Hist. Fr. ii. 20; Sid. Ep. vii. 17; Chaix, ii. 290).

Third Period, 475–489.—Sidonius was soon banished for a time to a fort named Livia, probably Capendu, about ten miles from Carcassonne on the road to Narbonne (Epp. viii. 3; ix. 3; Vaissette, Hist. de Languedoc, V. vol. i. p. 501). Some of the inconveniences he suffered there are described in his letters to Faustus, bp. of Riez, and to a friend, Leo, a native of Narbonne and of Roman origin, but filling a high office under Euric. They consisted chiefly in the annoyance caused by his neighbours, two quarrelsome drunken old Gothic women (Ep. viii. 3). Through Leo's influence he soon obtained release from confinement, but his return to Clermont was delayed by an enforced sojourn at Bordeaux, whither he went to seek from Euric authority for recovering the inheritance belonging to