ecided
to cede the whole territory to Euric, apparently without
condition.

The despair of Sidonius knew no bounds and he writes a nobly indignant
letter to a bishop who had been concerned in the negotiations:

The state of our unhappy region is miserable indeed. Everyone
declares that things were better in wartime than they are now
after peace has been concluded. Our enslavement was made the
price of security for a third party; the enslavement, ah--the
shame of it!, of those Avernians ... who in our own time
stood forth alone to stay the advance of the common enemy....
These are the men whose common soldiers were as good as
captains, but who never reaped the benefit of their
victories: that was handed over for your consolation, while
all the crushing burden of defeat they had to bear
themselves.... This is to be our reward for braving
destitution, fire, sword and pestilence, for fleshing our
swords in the enemy's blood and going ourselves starved into
battle. This is the famous peace we dreamed of, when we tore
the grass from the crannies in the walls to eat.... For all
these proofs of our devotion, it would seem that we are to be
made a sacrifice. If it be so, may you live to blush for a
peace without either honour or advantage.

Auvergne had been sacrificed to save Rome. But Rome was not to enjoy her
peace with honour for long. These things took place in 475; and in 476
the last emperor was desposed by his barbarian bear-leader, and the
empire in the west came to an end. As for Sidonius, the Goths imprisoned
him for a time and before he could recover his estate he had to write a
panegyric for King Euric (he who had written panegyrics for three Roman
emperors). It is clear that the old country house life went on as
before, though the men who exchanged letters and epigrams were now under
barbarian rule. But in one letter shortly before his death there breaks
from Sidonius a single line in which he unpacks his heart. _O
neccessitas abjecta nascendi, vivendi misera dura moriendi._ 'O
humiliating necessity of birth, sad necessity of living, hard necessity
of dying.' Shortly after 479 he died and within twenty years Clovis had
embarked upon his career of conquest and Theodoric was ruler of Italy.

4. FORTUNATUS AND GREGORY OF TOURS

Going, going, gone.... There is only the time and only the heart to look
for a moment