TWO YOUNG LOVERS: AN ABDUCTION MARRIAGE AND ITS CONSEQUENCES IN FIFTH-CENTURY GAUL

Some time, probably in the late 460s or 470s C. E., a Gallo-Roman landowner named Sidonius Apollinaris wrote a letter to a fellow landowner named Pudens. The text is preserved in a nine-book collection of letters, self-consciously modelled on those of the younger Pliny and Symmachus. While the literary conceit that this exercise entailed has raised legitimate concerns about the veracity of his letters, nevertheless this collection provides a wealth of information for scholars interested in the political and social transformations of late Roman Gaul, and the responses of local aristocrats to these transformations.