Sidonius Apollinaris (C. Sollius Apollinaris Sidonius, 430/1 - nach 480 u.Z.) stammte aus Lugdunum (Lyon) und war während der Auflösung der römischen Macht in Gallien durch die Westgoten ein hoher Beamter und Bischof, letzteres allerdings ohne tiefere Glaubensüberzeugung.

Eutropius war zeitweilig praefectus praetorio Galliarum.

Avitus war weströmischer Kaiser 455-456 u.Z., wurde von Ricimer in der Schlacht bei Placentia besiegt und war dann bis zu seinem baldigen Tode ca. 457 Bischof dieser Stadt.

1. Briefe I, 6, 2

SIDONIVS EVTROPIO SVO SALUTEM

[...] Besides all this, you are by the favour of heaven in the prime of life, and possess strength of body and mind to correspond; then you are well furnished with horses, armour, raiment, money and servants, and (unless I am wrong) you only dread beginning, and though you have an energetic spirit at home, and unenterprising nervousness makes you alarmed about attempting foreign travel (1) - if indeed a man of senatorial descent, who every day rubs shoulders with the figures of his ancestors arrayed in robes of state [qui cotidie trabeatis proavorum imaginibus ingeritur] (2), can fairly say that he has travelled to foreign parts, when once he has seen – and seen with the eyes of youth – the home of laws, the training-school of letters, the assembly-hall of high dignitaries, the head of the universe, the mother-city of liberty, the one community in the whole world in which only slaves and barbarians are foreigners [domicilium legum, gymnasium litterarum, curiam dignitatum, verticem mundi, patriam libertatis, in qua unica totius orbis civitate soli barbari et servi peregrinantur]. [...]

(Sidonius: Poems and Letters I. Ed. by. W. B. Anderson. Cambridge (Mass.)/London 1980, pp. 362-365)

(1) von Gallien nach Rom
(2) Eutrop war ein Nachkomme des Sabinus, Konsul im Jahre 316 u.Z.