Ausonius

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Decimius Magnus Ausonius
)
This article is about the Roman poet. For the Swedish murderer, see John Ausonius.
Decimius Magnus Ausonius
Monument to Ausonius in Milan
Bornc. 310
Burdigala
Diedc. 395
NationalityRoman
Occupation(s)poet, teacher
Relatives

Decimius Magnus Ausonius

meter
.

Biography

Decimius Magnus Ausonius was born c. 310 in

Greek was unsatisfactory. In 328 Arborius was summoned to Constantinople to become tutor to Constans
, the youngest son of Constantine the Great, whereupon Ausonius returned to Bordeaux to complete his education under the rhetorician Minervius Alcimus.

Having completed his studies, he trained for some time as an advocate, but he preferred teaching. In 334 he became a grammaticus (instructor) at a school of rhetoric in Bordeaux and afterwards a rhetor or professor. His teaching attracted many pupils, some of whom became eminent in public life. His most famous pupil was the poet

Bishop of Nola
.

After thirty years of that work, Ausonius was summoned by Emperor

Gratian, the heir-apparent. When Valentinian took Gratian on the German campaigns of 368–369, Ausonius accompanied them. Ausonius turned literary skill into political capital. In recognition of his services emperor Valentinian bestowed on Ausonius the rank of quaestor. His presence at court gave Ausonius the opportunity to connect with a number of influential people. In 369, he met Quintus Aurelius Symmachus; their friendship proved mutually beneficial.[4]

Gratian liked and respected his tutor, and when he became emperor in 375, he began bestowing on Ausonius and his family the highest civil honors. That year Ausonius was made Praetorian Prefect of Gaul, campaigned against the Alemanni and received as part of his booty a slave girl, Bissula (to whom he addressed a poem), and his father, though nearly ninety years old, was given the rank of prefect of Illyricum.

In 376 Ausonius's son, Hesperius, was made proconsul of Africa. In 379 Ausonius was awarded the consulate, the highest Roman honour.[5]

In 383, the army of Britain, led by

Burdigala (now Bordeaux), in Gaul.[5] Magnus Maximus was overthrown by Emperor Theodosius I in 388, but Ausonius did not leave his country estates. They were, he says, his nidus senectutis, the "nest of his old age", and there, he spent the rest of his days, composing poetry and writing to many eminent contemporaries, several of whom had been his pupils. His estates supposedly included the land now owned by Château Ausone
, which takes its name from him.

Ausonius appears to have been a late and perhaps not very enthusiastic convert to Christianity.[5] He died about 395.[5]

His grandson, Paulinus of Pella, was also a poet. His works attest to the devastation that Ausonius's Gaul would face soon after his death.

List of works

  • Epigrammata Ausonii de diversis rebus. About 120 epigrams on various topics.
  • Ephemeris. A description of the occupations of the day from morning to evening, in various meters, composed before 367. Only the beginning and the end are preserved.
  • Parentalia. 30 poems of various lengths, mostly in elegiac meter, on deceased relations that were composed after his consulate, when he had already been a widower for 36 years.
  • Commemoratio professorum Burdigalensium or Professores. A continuation of the Parentalia, dealing with the famous teachers of his native Bordeaux whom he had known.
  • Epitaphia. 26 epitaphs of heroes from the Trojan War translated from Greek
  • Caesares. On the 12 emperors described by Suetonius.
  • Ordo urbium nobilium. 14 pieces, dealing with 17 towns (Rome to Bordeaux), in hexameters, and composed after the downfall of Maximus in 388.
  • Ludus VII Sapientium.[6] A kind of puppet play in which the seven wise men appear successively and have their say.
  • The so-called Idyllia. 20 pieces are grouped under this arbitrary title, the most famous of which is the Mosella.[7] It also includes:
    • Griphus ternarii numeri
    • De aetatibus Hesiodon
    • Monosticha de aerumnis Herculis
    • De ambiguitate eligendae vitae
    • De viro bono
    • EST et NON
    • De rosis nascentibus (dubious)
    • Versus paschales
    • Epicedion in patrem
    • Technopaegnion
    • Cento nuptialis, composed of lines and half-lines of Vergil.
    • Bissula
    • Protrepticus
    • Genethliacon
  • Eglogarum liber. A collection of all kinds of astronomical and astrological versifications in epic and elegiac meter.
  • Epistolarum liber. 25 verse letters in various meters.
  • Ad Gratianum gratiarum actio pro consulatu. Prose speech of thanks to the emperor
    Treves
    in 379.
  • Periochae Homeri Iliadis et Odyssiae. A prose summary of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, attributed to but probably not written by Ausonius.
  • Praefatiunculae. Prefaces by the poet to various collections of his poems, including a response to the emperor Theodosius I's request for his poems.

Characteristics of works

Although admired by his contemporaries, the writings of Ausonius have not since been ranked among

Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire that "the poetical fame of Ausonius condemns the taste of his age".[8]
However, Ausonius's works have several points of interest:

  • His somewhat unique Cento Nuptialis,
    Vergil
    :

Saw mill

Asia Minor. The 3rd-century mill is the earliest known machine to incorporate a crank and connecting rod mechanism.[11]

His writings are also remarkable for mentioning in passing the working of a

water mill sawing marble on a tributary of the Moselle
:

....renowned is Celbis for glorious fish, and that other, as he turns his mill-stones in furious revolutions and drives the shrieking saws through smooth blocks of marble, hears from either bank a ceaseless din...

Modern reconstruction of Sutter's Mill, a water-powered 19th-century California sawmill.

The excerpt sheds new light on the development of

Barbegal, in southern France, are famous for their application of water power to grinding grain to make flour and were built in the 1st century AD. They consisted of 16 mills in a parallel sequence on a hill near Arles
.

The construction of a saw mill is even simpler than a flour or grinding mill since no gearing is needed, and the rotary saw blade can be driven directly from the water wheel axle, as the example of

Asia Minor
, involving a frame saw that is operated by a crank and connecting rod.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Olli Salomies, "The Nomenclature of the Poet Ausonius", Arctos 50 (2016), pp. 133–142
  2. ^ Harvard Magazine, Harvard Alumni Association, University of Michigan, p.2
  3. ^ a b The Cambridge History of Classical Literature, Edward John Kenney, Cambridge University Press, p.16
  4. ISBN 9780520922327
  5. ^ a b c d Chisholm 1911.
  6. ^ "Ausonius: Ludus Septem Sapientum".
  7. ^ "Ausonius Mosella". dickinson.edu. Archived from the original on 2023-04-17. Retrieved 2008-11-22.
  8. ^ Note 1 to chapter XXVII
  9. ^ translated as A Nuptial Cento by H.G. Evelyn-White for Loeb Classical Library
  10. ^ See, for example, the discussion in Ausonius and Proba on “love is war” and brutalizing men’s sexuality (retrieved, 1 July 2020).
  11. ^ Ritti, Grewe & Kessener 2007, p. 161

References

Further reading

  • Booth, Alan D. 1982. "The Academic Career of Ausonius." Phoenix 36: 329–343.
  • Brown, Peter. 2014. In Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350-550 AD Princeton: Princeton University Press, 185–207.
  • Della Corte, Francesco. 1977. “Bissula.” Romanobarbarica 2:17–25.
  • Dill, Samuel. 1898. "The Society Of Aquitaine In The Time Of Ausonius." In Roman Society In The Last Century Of The Western Empire. London: Macmillan, 167–186.
  • Green, R. P. H. 1999. "Ausonius’ Fasti and Caesares Revisited." Classical Quarterly 49:573–578.
  • Kay, N. M. 2001. Ausonius: Epigrams. London: Duckworth.
  • Knight, Gillian R. 2005. "Friendship and Erotics in the Late Antique Verse-Epistle: Ausonius to Paulinus Revisited." Rheinisches Museum 148:361–403.
  • Shanzer, Danuta. 1998. "The Date and Literary Context of Ausonius's Mosella: Valentinian I's Alemannic Campaigns and an unnamed office-holder." Historia 47.2: 204–233.
  • Sivan, Hagith. 1993. Ausonius of Bordeaux: Genesis of a Gallic Aristocracy. London and New York: Routledge.
  • Sivan, Hagith. 1992. "The Dedicatory Presentation in Late Antiquity: The Example of Ausonius." Illinois Classical Studies 17.1: 83–101.
  • Sowers, Brian P. 2016. "Amicitia and Late Antique Nugae: Reading Ausonius' Reading Community." American Journal of Philology. 137.3: 511–540.
  • Taylor, Rabun. 2009. "Death, the Maiden, and the Mirror: Ausonius's Water World." Arethusa 42.2: 181-205
  • Yaceczko, Lionel. 2021. Ausonius Grammaticus: the Christening of Philology in the Late Roman West. Gorgias Press.

External links

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Library resources about
Ausonius
By Ausonius
Political offices
Preceded by Roman consul
379
with Q. Clodius Hermogenianus Olybrius 		Succeeded by
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