Tag: Avitus

Tittse on Sidonius’ Network

Celis Tittse (BA student in Medieval History at Radboud University Nijmegen) contributes a paper entitled ‘A Changing Roman World and Its Networks’ in which he makes an attempt at comparing the networks of Sidonius and Avitus in evidence in their correspondences, applying Social Network Analysis and statistical methods. To this end, Ralph Mathisen kindly made available the Sidonius database that is also at the basis of his chapters ‘Sidonius’ People’ and ‘A Prosopography of Sidonius’ in the Companion (pp. 29-165).

Download Celis’ paper from the Contributions page. On the same page, there is a link to the fully scalable graphs and figures.

Kovács on Avitus in Pannonia

Péter Kovács examines, and refutes, Avitus’ presumed expedition to Pannonia in Acta Archaeologica 71 (2020) 661-68: ‘Emperor Avitus in Pannonia?’

Abstract. In his paper the author examines the sources of the supposed Western Roman military expedition of Emperor Avitus in Pannonia in 455 that was thought to be the last Roman military action in the territory of the former Roman province. Analizing the sources, he comes to the conclusion that during his short reign, Avitus had no time to visit the province and his route (iter) mentioned by Sidonius Apollinaris must be identified with his journey from Arelate to Rome. The Roman military action in Pannonia can probably be identified with a short demonstrative campaign in the SW region of the dioecesis (i.e. Savia) or with a legation of the Pannonian Barbarians to the emperor in Northern Italy.

Sidonius for Creative Writing

A brand-new historical novel on Sidonius is forthcoming. Annabelle Grierson (in arte J A Grierson) has recently got her Creative Writing Master degree at Auckland University of Technology with a two-part novel breathing life into fifth-century history, with Sidonius among its protagonists. She was inspired by his letters, and the novels actually quote them, including the famous letter to Bishop Graecus (Ep. 7.7), which is cited almost in full. The first volume, entitled The Wars with Attila, centred around a fictionalised Avitus, is expected to be published next Spring. The second volume, centred around Sidonius, will be called The Last Roman.
For information, go here.