Of the writings of Sidonius, Hodgkin speaks as follows: “A careful perusal of the three volumes of the Letters and Poems of Sidonius (written between the years 455 and 490) reveals to us the fact that in Gaul the air still teems with intellectual life, that authors were still writing, amanuenses transcribing, friends complimenting or criticising, and all the cares and pleasures of literature filling the minds of large classes of men just as when no empires were sinking and no strange nationalities suddenly arising around them.... A long list of forgotten philosophers did exist in that age, and their works, produced in lavish abundance, seem to have had no lack of eager students.” As an example of the literary interests of a country gentleman in Gaul, Hodgkin quotes a letter of Sidonius, written about 469: “Here too [_i. e._ in a country house in Gaul] were books in plenty; you might fancy you were looking at the breast-high book-shelves (_plantei_) of the grammarians, or the wedge-shaped cases (_cunei_) of the Athenæum, or the well-filled cupboards (_armaria_) of the booksellers. I observed, however, that if one found a manuscript beside the chair of one of the ladies of the house, it was sure to be on a religious subject, while those which lay by the seats of the fathers of the family were full of the loftiest strains of Latin eloquence. In making this distinction, I do not forget that there are some writings of equal literary excellence in both branches, that Augustine may be paired off against Varro, and Prudentius against Horace. Among these books, the works of Origen, the Adamantine, were frequently perused by readers holding our faith. I cannot understand why some of our arch-divines should stigmatise him as a dangerous and heterodox author.”[5] 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.”