In summing up the work of Sidonius, Hodgkin points out the noteworthy opportunities for making a literary reputation which were missed by him. “He might have been the Herodotus of mediæval Europe. He could have given authentic pictures of the laws and customs of the Goths, Franks, and Burgundians ... a full portraiture of the great apostle of the Germanic races, Ulfilas, and the secret causes of his and their devotion to the Arian form of Christianity; and he could have recorded the Gothic equivalents of the mythological tales in the Scandinavian Edda and the story of the old Runes and their relation to the Mœso-Gothic alphabet. All these details and a hundred more, full of interest to science, to art, to literature, Sidonius might have preserved for us had his mind been as open as was that of Herodotus to the manifold impressions made by picturesque and strange nationalities.”
It was doubtless fortunate for the literary reputation of Sidonius that his father-in-law, Avitus, came to be emperor. The reign of Avitus was short, but he had time to give to his brilliant son-in-law a position as Court poet or poet-laureate, while it was probably due to the imperial influence that the Senate decreed the erection (during the lifetime of the poet) of the brass statue of Sidonius, which was placed between the two libraries of Trajan. These libraries, containing the one Greek and the other Latin authors, stood between the column of Trajan and the Basilica Ulpia. Sidonius describes his statue as follows:
Cum meis poni statuam perennem
Nerva Trajanus titulis videret,
Inter auctores utriusque fixam Bibliothecæ.
(Sidonius, Ex., ix., 16.)
Nil vatum prodest adjectum laudibus illud
Ulpia quod rutilat porticus ære meo.
(Sidonius, Carm., viii., 7, 8.)[6]
(Since Nerva Trajanus decreed the erection of a permanent statue, which is inscribed with the records of my honours, and is placed between the authors of the two libraries.