Western Civilization

Apollinaris Sidonius    page 7 of 7

VIII: Some General Observations

1: The career of Sidonius suggests a cause for the fall of the Roman Empire which is not generally emphasized: that the empire trained a noble class superbly well to compete in an artificial fashion for a series of empty honors. Their education blunted their creativity, and their energy was dissipated in meaningless pursuits. The late Roman noble was brave and honorable; talented and dogged, as Sidonius and Ecdicius proved during the siege of Auvergne. Such men could have saved the empire if they had not been so finely trained to waste their time. Sidonius had every opportunity to see the sham and waste; he lived to learn of the deposition of the boy emperor Romulus Augustulus, the last Roman Emperor in the West and yet seemed unable to comprehend that it was all over. His last letter to his wife closed with the words,

... I pray in our common name that just as we of this generation were born into prefectorian families, and have been enabled by divine favor to elevate them to patrician rank, so (our children) in turn may exalt the patrician to the consular' dignity. V, xvi