A letter from Fortunatus (after 567)

Translated letter:

[About a banquet] By an act of piety through who piously rules the stars, through what the mother loves and the brother desires, that while we take food, whatever you might speak: which if you do it, I shall be twice satisfied. [About the same thing] With various delights I stretched my swollen stomach, taking everything: milk, vegetable, eggs, butter. Now ordered courses are given to me with new feasts, and the food mixed together pleases more sweetly. For with the milk they put butter before me: whence what had been before, the fat is recalled.

Original letter:

[De convivio] Per pietatis opus, per qui pius imperat astris, per quod mater amat, frater et ipse cupit, ut, dum nos escam capimus, quodcumque loquaris: quod si tu facias, bis satiabor ego. [Item de eadem re] Deliciis variis tumido me ventre tetendi, omnia sumendo: (lac holus ova butur.) nunc instructa novis epulis mihi fercula dantur, et permixta simul dulcius esca placet. nam cum lacte mihi posuerunt inde buturum: unde prius fuerat, huc revocatur adeps.

Historical context:

Bishop Venantius Fortunatus met Agnes and her patron Radegund when he visited Poitiers. They became good friends and exchanged epistolary poems and small gifts until the women died.

Printed source:

Venanti Fortunati Opera Poetica, ed. Fridericus Leo (Berlin: Weidmann, 1881), 267, Librum XI, xxii and xxiia.

Date:

after 567