APOLLINARIS SIDONIUS, GAIUS SOLLIUS (c. 487 or 488), Christian writer and bishop, was born in Lyons about A.D. 43o. He married (about 452) Papiania, the daughter of Avitus, who was consul and afterwards emperor. He enjoyed the favour of Majorianus and Anthemius, and in 472, more for his political than for his theological abilities, he was made bishop of Arverna (Clermont). On the capture of that city by the Goths in 474 he was imprisoned; but he was afterwards restored to his bishopric by Euric, king of the Goths. He died in A.D. 487 or 488. His extant works are his Panegyrics on different emperors (in which he draws largely upon Statius, Ausonius and Claudian) ; and nine books of Letters and Poems, whose chief value consists in the light they shed on the political and literary history of the 5th century. The Letters, which are very stilted, reveal Apolli naris as a man of genial temper, fond of good living and of pleas ure. The best edition is that in the Monumenta Germaniae His torica (Berlin, 1887), which gives a survey of the manuscripts.
Apollinaris Sidonius (the names are commonly inverted by the French) is the subject of numerous monographs, historical and literary. S. Dill, Roman Society in the Last Century of the Western Empire (1899), and T. Hodgkin, Italy and Her Invaders, vol. vii. (2nd ed. 1899), contain interesting sections on Apollinaris.