Ausonius Grammaticus: The Christening of Philology in the Late Roman West 9781463242817

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Ausonius Grammaticus

Gorgias Studies in Early Christianity and Patristics 78

Series Editorial Board Carly Daniel-Hughes Jeanne-Nicole Mellon Saint-Lauren Adam Serfass Ilaria Ramelli Helen Rhee

Gorgias Studies in Early Christianity and Patristics is designed to advance our understanding of various aspects of early Christianity. The scope of the series is broad, with volumes addressing the historical, cultural, literary, theological and philosophical contexts of the early Church. The series, reflecting the most current scholarship, is essential to advanced students and scholars of early Christianity. Gorgias welcomes proposals from senior scholars as well as younger scholars whose dissertations have made an important contribution to the field of early Christianity.

Ausonius Grammaticus

The Christening of Philology in the Late Roman West

Lionel Yaceczko

gp 2021

Gorgias Press LLC, 954 River Road, Piscataway, NJ, 08854, USA www.gorgiaspress.com 2021 Copyright © by Gorgias Press LLC

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise without the prior written permission of Gorgias Press LLC. ‫ܚ‬

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2021

ISBN 978-1-4632-4280-0

ISSN 1935-6870

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A Cataloging-in-Publication Record is available at the Library of Congress. Printed in the United States of America

For Janet decus coniugis

But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed, Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter, I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter; I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, And in short, I was afraid. from “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” by T.S. Eliot

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TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Illustrations ................................................................... ix Preface..................................................................................... xi Chapter One. Introduction: Ausonius, Biography, and Personal Poetry in the Fourth Century .............................................. 1 Status Quaestionis ............................................................. 1 Method and Structure........................................................ 7 Ausonius Grammaticus ...................................................... 9

Chapter Two. New Wine in Old Wineskins: Grammar, Rhetoric, and the Establishment of a Christian Culture......................... 17 The Artes......................................................................... 23 The Commentarii ............................................................ 29 Classroom Methods ......................................................... 37 New Wine ....................................................................... 50 Chapter Three. Ausonius of Bordeaux: Old Wine in Old Wineskins................................................................................ 55 The Technopaegnion ....................................................... 57 Eclogues, Epigrams, and Minora ...................................... 66 The Ephemeris or Totius Diei Negotium .......................... 70

Chapter Four. Ausonius of Trier: The Mosella as Poetry of Court and Campaign ........................................................ 79 Chapter Five. Ausonius of Rome: The Cupido Cruciatus as Personal Poetry in the Classical Tradition............................ 119 The Jewelled Style ........................................................ 121 Vergil’s Personality in the Georgics? ............................... 123 Aeris in campis—In Elysium .......................................... 131 vii

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AUSONIUS GRAMMATICUS Appendix to Chapter Five: A side-by-side comparison of Vergil, Georgics 4.507–527, and Ausonius, Cupido Cruciatus 1–20. ...................................................... 151

Chapter Six. Iugum Discutimus: Ausonius, Paulinus, and Henri Irénée Marrou ............................................................... 153 Part One: “Only a civilization founded on the truth alone could merit our adherence”: Fondements d’une Culture Chrétienne ....................................................... 155 vir eloquentissimus ac doctissimus: Augustine and the Theopolis ............................................................... 166 Part Two: “We could not sacrifice the Truth to Communion”: Paulinus, Augustine, and Licentius .................. 178 Ausonius and Paulinus .................................................. 187 Conclusion. From φιλόλογοι to θεολόγοι: Word-lovers to Worshipers of the Word ....................................................... 207 “Ciceronianus es”............................................................ 207 Ausonius in his Landscape ............................................. 213 Bibliography ......................................................................... 221 Primary Texts ................................................................ 221 Secondary Sources......................................................... 223 Index .................................................................................... 235

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Figure 1: P. Mich. Inv. 41 (courtesy of the University of Michigan Library, Papyrology Collection), p. 42. Figure 2: P. Oxy. 61.4099 (courtesy of the Egypt Exploration Society and the University of Oxford Imaging Papyri Project), p. 45. Figure 3: P. Oxy. 65.4460 (courtesy of the Egypt Exploration Society and the University of Oxford Imaging Papyri Project), p. 46. Figure 4: Vindob. suppl. gr. 43 c 18r (courtesy of the Austrian National Library), p. 47. Figure 5: Vindob. suppl. gr. 43 c 12r (courtesy of the Austrian National Library), p. 48. Figure 6: Bronze follis of Valentinian I. RIC IX, p. 302, No. 52 (courtesy of James Nelson, photos by George Martin), p. 88. Figure 7: Nessos Amphora. National Archeological Museum of Athens Inv. 1002 (Zde. CC BY-SA 4.0), p. 128. Figure 8: Mosaic of Justinian in San Vitale, Ravenna (Roger Culos. CC BY-SA 3.0), p. 187.

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PREFACE Attending Peter Brown’s Kluge Prize lecture at the Library of Congress in the winter of 2008 was a life-changing event for me. It was then that I began to see late antiquity as an exciting and unexplored territory, and left behind forever the facile label— “dark”—that the Enlightenment gave to the period, and that tells us more about the Enlightenment than it tells us about it. As a simple audience member in the right place at the right time, I am grateful to him for that lecture. A few years later when he visited my alma mater to give a talk about Constantine, he offered some kinds words about my Ausonius project that have provided encouragement on more than one occasion. This book is the product of a quick decade that began on a slow, hot Washington, DC afternoon in the library of the Department of Greek and Latin at The Catholic University of America. For some years I spent as much time there as I did at home; it was one of those rare and blessed places on earth where a PhD student can thumb at leisure through a complete, 22-volume set of Brill’s New Pauly, bringing to life Vergil’s maxim from the Georgics— time flies while we flit about where love leads. It was then that I alighted (I do not remember how) on the article for Ausonius. He was the perfect combination of important and unknown. That spring I would prepare a brief introductory talk on Ausonius for William Klingshirn’s course on late antiquity. A couple of years later, under his generous guidance, encouragement, and direction, I wrote my dissertation on Ausonius. He was as much the ideal director as I could ask for: working with him I knew the freedom and security that one receives from having a teacher who is honest and expert. I am also grateful to Philip Rousseau († 2020, xi

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requiescat in pace), in whose seminar I first began to gather my thoughts on the tension between Christian laymen and monks and bishops, and who eventually served on my dissertation committee. I am also grateful to William McCarthy for helping me in the course of this research to stay tethered to the classical tradition like Zeus’s golden chain in Iliad 8. John Petruccione’s courses on hagiography and on late antique Aquitaine ambitiously opened up for a few brave students vast tracts of under-studied primary sources without which this project would be a fleshless ghost. Sarah Ferrario’s dynamic optimism and first-rate standards were a model for this young scholar. I am grateful to Frank Mantello, with whom I never took a course at CUA, but in whose office I spent more time than anyone’s. I am also grateful to my colleagues at The Heights School for their help in this project, especially David Maxham and Tom Cox, who read earlier versions of the manuscript, Tom Royals, who gave me an opportunity to give a brief presentation on Ausonius in the winter of 2015, shortly after I had defended my dissertation, Jim Nelson for his princely gift of fourth-century Roman coins (including the one featured in this book), and George Martin for giving his time and expertise to prepare the photographs for the coins. In the earlier stages of this book Janet Yaceczko read every chapter as an ideal reader, copyedited the book in the later stages, and throughout the process deployed the alchemy that turns cups of coffee into end-of-day word-count goals. I stop myself at this sketch of her contributions to this book (and, indeed, to everything that I accomplish), for fear of trivializing a gift too rich for verisimilitude. Vergil’s “time flies” admonishes brevity: amor omnibus idem.

CHAPTER ONE. INTRODUCTION: AUSONIUS, BIOGRAPHY, AND PERSONAL POETRY IN THE FOURTH CENTURY Hic ergo Ausonius: sed tu ne temne, quod ultro patronum nostris te paro carminibus. (Praefationes 1.39–40) Such, then, is Ausonius: and you, on your part, do not despise me because I ask your favour for these songs of mine, without your seeking. (translations of Ausonius, unless otherwise noted, are from Evelyn-White, 1919)

STATUS QUAESTIONIS

Who was the poet Ausonius? Who is it that is inviting us to conflate himself with the “I” of this copious corpus of poetry, enough to fill two Loeb volumes? Poets have always invited readers to conflate their own voices with the speakers of their poetry. Classical Latin poets, from Catullus to Horace to Ausonius of Bordeaux or Paulinus of Nola, at first seem simple and easy to understand in this regard, but recent scholarship tends to question facile assumptions. One example is T.P. Wiseman (1985), Catullus and his World: a Reappraisal. An older example is Eduard Fraenkel’s Horace (1957). For late antiquity Dennis Trout’s Paulinus of Nola is just such a book. There is not yet a monograph dedicated to this question for Ausonius. There are few monographs of any kind 1

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dedicated to Ausonius: Hagith Sivan’s carefully researched Ausonius of Bordeaux: Genesis of a Gallic Aristocracy (1993) for the most part treated Ausonius’s works as historical evidence, although she did point the way to the primary question driving the present volume (especially on p. 76 of her book, to which we will give more attention below). Ausonius is but one of four characters featured in Edward Watts’s lively and engaging Final Pagan Generation (2015). The trend is clear: in the twentieth century the methods of older scholars like Camille Juillan and Theodore Haarhoff gave way to a more critical approach. The present work therefore will attempt to give the older scholars’ work a grateful hearing even as it attempts to imitate the methods of the more recent. Like Gilbert Highet, we will attempt to read the poets in their landscapes: we will not permit only the poets themselves to define them. We have learned from recent experience. In modern literature the problem is more obvious and the question more complex. Flann O’Brien, William Faulkner, or Fyodor Dostoevsky will tease the reader with a first-person perspective, but when we look closer, we find that Dostoevsky’s roulette-loving gambler and the speaker of Notes from Underground are very different from each other…and yet we spontaneously identify them with the author. The chorus of a Greek tragedy speaks as if with one voice, and we are often tempted to treat it as the author’s (even though in the moment of dramatization, it is easy to see that it belongs to a group of actors).1 Faulkner’s Rose for Emily, on the other hand, combines perspectives of various townspeople, and the perspective is more complex and less unified than the Greek chorus. Flann O’Brien is the pen name of Brian Although Aristotle in the Poetics said that the chorus should be regarded as “one of the actors,” scholars have generally taken for granted that the chorus consisted of several human actors. The context of the remark makes this clear: Aristotle was explicitly distinguishing the Sophoclean chorus from the Euripidean chorus; the former interacted as characters with other characters in dialogue, while the latter were sung, as Aristotle puts it, “as mere interludes.” See Poetics 18. The secondary literature is vast. Helene Foley’s recent article summarizes major contributions and focuses on the complexity of the chorus’s role: “Choral Identity in Greek Tragedy,” Classical Philology, Vol. 98, No. 1 (January, 2003: 1–30).

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O’Nolan, so that there is an additional layer of complication as we read the first-person narrator of At Swim-Two-Birds. Modern literature has taught us to beware. But it is more than modern literature: one twentieth-century historian deserves our attention not merely as a scholar on the cutting edge of his discipline, but simultaneously as an original thinker like the novelists that populate the list above or in the reader’s imagination. He discerned the transformative influences of postwar France, Europe, and the world on the Catholic Christianity of his own time and place, and saw the ghosts of Ausonius and Paulinus all around him. A book on Ausonius the Grammaticus can not afford to ignore his work on the history of education in antiquity. Ausonius the Quaestor, the discreet and influential bureaucrat, must be found out by this scholar’s work on Augustine and the Theopolis. A book on Ausonius the Christian poet will be inspired by his work on Christian culture. Henri-Irénée Marrou and three specific aspects of his extraordinary experience—twentieth-century, Catholic, and French—will provide an angle of light that is not strictly necessary but is uniquely illuminating. For the present work Marrou will be not just a source of light but an object of attention in his own right. Critical scholarship on Ausonius has agreed that the fourth century professor, imperial tutor, administrator of empire, and poet has left in his extant writings a precious mine of historical information. Scholars have generally treated Ausonius’s works as three kinds of historical evidence: 1.) autobiographical, 2.) prosopographical, and 3.) samples in a particular time and place of truths generally presumed to hold throughout the empire and to span the broad period before and after Ausonius’s life. These uses are often justified; the poet explicitly invites them. But they are not easy. We must follow the advice of recent scholars like Scott McGill, who counsels us to discern a subtle conversation beneath the surface-meaning of Ausonius’s poetry. In sharing his poetry with self-deprecating dismissal of its art, Ausonius activated his

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reader’s memories of shared experience and shared reading.2 With echoes of Catullus, Horace, and other classical poets in the hands of a friend who had only his mind and heart to discern them, Ausonius plied the bonds of amicitia in the dangerous environment of intrigue and innuendo, where a word whispered in an emperor’s ear could be deadly. Ausonius’s poems were not trifles any more than Catullus’s were. The arriviste son of a country physician now laying his hands on the helm of empire—while courtiers who had paid for power in the coin of obsequious self-abasement looked on in hungry envy—was not merely describing a throng of fish in a river dominated by a whale in the Mosella, any more than the lover of a married woman was merely describing a sparrow’s frolics in the Passer. Twentieth-century critical scholarship on Ausonius and his world has its roots in 1892. In that year the French scholar Camille Jullian, an historian specializing in ancient Gaul, produced a two-part, sixty-four-page article called “Ausone et son temps.” Here Jullian claims that the Gaul at the time of Ausonius was, if not a “golden age” like that of the Antonines, at least a period during which tranquility, restoration, and cultural progress finally came after the long third century of barbarian incursions, internecine revolts, and religious persecution: “Ausonius is not…an exception to his time. In his life, his character and his works, he will have been in harmony with his age. He is a confident and serene soul, a calm spirit, sober, a lover of liberty and of tolerance, a man of order, wisdom, and common sense.”3 But as he does not cite textual evidence for his description of the period, Jullian seems to derive his picture from the writings and life of Ausonius himself. For example, Jullian describes the university

At present it will suffice to mention McGill’s “Ausonius at Night” (2014: especially 129–130 on friendship). We will return to this and more of McGill’s insights about Ausonius below. 3 Jullian (1892), 252: “Ausone n’est donc pas une exception dans son temps. Par sa vie, son caractère et ses œuvres, il sera bien dans le ton du siècle. C’est une âme confiant et sereine, un esprit calme, de sens rassis, amoureux de liberté et de tolérance, un homme d’ordre, de sagesse et de bon sens.” 2

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of fourth-century Gaul as “a new home, a little fatherland,” where “it is not at all rare to see the spectacle…[N]either as masters nor as students could they ever leave it, so much did they love its patriarchal monotony.”4 This describes Ausonius’s actual experience. After Ausonius had served for about thirty years at Bordeaux, the emperor Valentinian called him to tutor the prince Gratian in 364. Gratian, now emperor, would later honor his favorite teacher with a number of offices and his trust. Ausonius’s public career would then last until the end of his pupil’s reign as emperor in 383.5 We next find him back in Bordeaux composing poems on anything and everything, including the Professores, which were written about five years before his death in 395, and keeping up correspondence with such notables as St Paulinus of Nola, Q. Aurelius Symmachus, and the emperor Theodosius I (r. 379–395). Thus Jullian, using the texts of the author, tells the story.6 More recent scholars have consented to this description of Ausonius and his times, with some minor corrections, on similar grounds. Glover (1901), Hopkins (1961), Booth (1982), Green (1985), Sivan (1993), and Coşkun (2002)7 contributed, with their ibid.: “un nouveau foyer, une petite patrie,” where “il n’est point rare de voir ce spectacle…que les maîtres ni les élèves ne savent cependant jamais quitter, tant ils en aiment la patriarcale monotonie.” 5 As Jullian puts it, “Encore y passa-t-il près de quarante ans, sur les bancs des élèves ou dans la chaire du professeur.” Ausonius became rhetor at Bordeaux at about the age of 25. 6 Evelyn-White (1919: xiv–xxii) does the same in the introduction to his Loeb edition. 7 Glover, T.R. Life and Letters in the Fourth Century. New York, 1901: 109– 110. Hopkins, M.K. “Social Mobility in the Later Roman Empire: The Evidence of Ausonius.” The Classical Quarterly, New Series. Vol. 11, No. 2. Nov., 1961: 239–249. Booth, A.D. “The Academic Career of Ausonius.” Phoenix. Vol. 36, No. 4. Winter, 1982: 329–343. Green, R.P.H. “Still Waters Run Deep: A New Study of the Professores of Bordeaux.” The Classical Quarterly. New Series. Vol. 35, No. 2. 1985: 491–506. Sivan, H. Ausonius of Bordeaux: Genesis of a Gallic Aristocracy. New York: Routledge, 1993. Altay Coşkun published several articles in 2001 and 2002, cited all together in the bibliography below. 4

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important scholarship on Ausonius’s historical context, to the general sense that “the chief value of the works of Ausonius is historical.”8 Evelyn-White, who loved Ausonius’s poetry enough to publish his translations of the entire corpus, surrendered on the first page of his introduction to the judgment of his forbears. The enlightened historian of the 18th century authored the great dismissal, which is no accurate description of Ausonius’s reputation in the poet’s own time.9 All of the studies mentioned above use Ausonius’s poetry to reconstruct the cultural and social picture of the period of the “long” fourth century from the Tetrarchy to the Sack of the City: about the 280s until the early 400s. The method is no different from that which classicists have long and often used for the prosopographical reconstruction of the classical periods of Greece and Rome. Ronald Syme’s use of Cicero’s letters and speeches is an obvious example. But Ausonius was a poet and he wrote poems. The historian does not normally mine Catullus, Horace, Propertius, or the other Roman lyric poets, for foundational historical material. If he or she is going to use a poem with other evidence to derive a synthetic historical conclusion, the historian must assume and account for the conventional use of a poetic persona—the “I” of a poem. Catullan scholars—or Yeats’s at least— have worn their heads and carpet bald with working out whether and how far to conflate the speaker and poet. Eduard Fraenkel (1957) became famous for his study of the personal voice of Horace in the Roman Odes. A song extolling civic virtue Horace frames with “Odi profanum vulgus et arceo” (3.1.1) and an appeal to his simple and familiar Sabine vale. He announces that these Odes are carmina non prius audita, evoking the religious awe of a Pindar or, better yet, a traditional sacerdos, with the initial line

Evelyn-White, Hugh G. Ausonius, with an English Translation. Loeb Classical Library. New York, 1919: vii. Green (1991) later became the exception by writing a comprehensive commentary and critical edition. 9 Disdaining to name the poet in his text, the author of The Decline and Fall quipped in a famous footnote, “the poetical fame of Ausonius condemns the taste of his age”; we may follow the example, and imitate the style, if not the judgment of the eloquent historian (3.27, fn. 1). 8

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quoted above. What would follow is a series of carmina non audita because like Vergil’s Aeneid they confound the dichotomy of public versus private.10 For the difficulties of Propertius we need look no further than the paraclausithyron of the talking door.11 When the audience has read poems in which the speaker addresses the door, the audience already knows what a paraclausithyron is. Now the poet may give the door his voice, and address the excluded lover. But when we read Propertius 1.16 today, many of us fail to see at first that it is the door who is speaking. The personal voice of Ausonius calls for such attention.

METHOD AND STRUCTURE

What shall we gain by discovering a hermeneutic that guides us in the judicious conflation of speaker and poet in the case of Ausonius? When are we justified in taking him at face value, and when must his words be treated as experimental deductions of the consequences of hypotheses? How much historical context is necessary even to understand the “face value” of his words? In some cases this will be obvious. Epigraphical and textual evidence from other sources may corroborate what we read in Ausonius. Often we may discern an internal trend in a series of poems of coincidence of poet and persona. The Professores is one example of such a trend, as we will see below. Prefaces, of which Ausonius wrote many, will contribute to our method, especially in Chapter Three on the grammatical poetry. We will consider the pressures of the historical context, especially the inspirations and anxieties of life at court in Chapters Four and Five, which deal with the Mosella and the Cupido Cruciatus, respectively. Finally, in Chapter Six, we will attempt to describe the poet’s ideas about religion by contrasting them with Paulinus of Nola, his most famous student, in the light of Henri-Irénée Marrou’s work on the Christian culture of late antiquity, particularly his Fondements d’une culture chrètienne (1934). Above all, we will found our hermeneutic on Fraenkel, E. (1957: 256–7) cites F. Solmsen (1947), who also made this point about the Roman Odes. 11 On which see Nappa (2007), who shows how layers of meaning can be added below the surface. 10

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the influence of paideia, grammaticē, and rhetoricē, the tradition of classical education that prevailed in the poet’s world, together with the contrast of the succeeding generation, who were trained in the same art and devoted to the same profession, in Chapter Two. We will see the influence of this culture on Ausonius throughout the present study. At other times what we are to think of the poet’s ideas is far from obvious. The persona of one poem or series of poems will seem incompatible with that of another. The “I” of the morning prayer of the Ephemeris at least superficially cannot be the “I” of the prayer of the consul-elect. N.B. McLynn most recently has noted that “Ausonius’ Christianity has received a welcome rehabilitation, and few now doubt the sincerity of his faith,” and Green even seemed a little annoyed at having to include mention of “this unnecessarily controversial matter.”12 But even if we can take for granted Ausonius’s “sincerity” in his profession of Christianity, we can no more take for granted the object of that sincerity—all that Christianity must have meant to him—than we can take for granted, with Glover, that his intellectual position “is typical of a class which must have been very numerous.”13 Scholars have considered the problem of the poetic persona in Ausonius’s poetry neither internally nor in comparison with the literary conventions of the period across the Empire. Now we can advance the scholarly work, already put on a firm foundation by Green’s edition and commentary, of studying Ausonius’s poetry as poetry. If there is a scholarly consensus that Ausonius’s poetic persona has more in common with those of Augustine’s Confessions or Libanius’ letters or his Autobiography, than with those of Propertius and Horace, we have to answer the following question. Why can we not read a single page of his poetry

McLynn, N.B. Ambrose of Milan: Church and Court in a Christian Capital. Berkeley, 1994: 82. Green (1985): 503. Castorina, E. “Lo spirito del cristianesimo in Ausonio.” Siculorum Gymnasium 29. 1976: 85–91. See also the introduction to Green’s edition and commentary, The Works of Ausonius, Oxford, 1991, as well as the latter’s article “The Christianity of Ausonius.” Studia Patristica, 1993: 39–48. 13 Glover (1901): 109. 12

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without constantly seeing the influence of Propertius and Horace? Our theories must stand or fall on the strength of their predictive power. Our theories about a poet’s ideas need not admit of integration into a coherent philosophical system. We shall see below that this is one of Marrou’s reasons for finding Augustine attractive: “The tendency of his thought which appears most profound is the sense of unity. His interior world is constructed in such a way that he can not think in an analytical and discursive fashion, the principal conditions for an ordered composition.” And even if it were, it might not appear in his corpus of poetry. As Highet pointed out in the case of Propertius, “[c]onversion is a difficult process. It is not always explicitly recorded in poetry, or even completed in a lifetime.”14 We will attempt to read Ausonius in the context of his whole life.

AUSONIUS GRAMMATICUS

The following brief sketch is not an attempt at a comprehensive biography: the introductions of Green and of Evelyn-White continue to be useful. Here we will merely reap some of the fruits of a better understanding of the poet’s generation, before shifting our focus, in Chapter Two, to his contemporaries, students, and teachers.15 In about 310 Decimus Magnus Ausonius was born to a hardworking, intelligent physician and a quiet, virtuous mother raised in an old and respected family of Aquitaine. The region was now stable after a century in which the Roman world saw 97 emperors don the purple in 93 years (217–310), only one of whom died of natural causes in his bed. The poet would spend his childhood Marrou (1938: 73–74): La tendance de sa pensée qui apparaît la plus profonde est le sens de l’unité. Son univers intérieur est construit de telle sorte qu’il ne peut pas penser de façon analytique et discursive, conditions premières d’une composition ordonnée. Highet (1957: 112). 15 Again Watts is helpful: “Ausonius came to represent a member of the conventional elite who thrived by working within the bounds of the fourth-century imperial system.” By focusing on “the aristocratic ideals recognizably embodied by Ausonius” Watts shows the relationship between Ausonius’s Christianity and his public career (The Final Pagan Generation, 2015: 217). 14

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and the first half of his life in an empire ruled by a single family dynasty, that of Constantine, for half a century. Although the empire would have its share of disturbances from within and without, the well-established families of the oldest and most thoroughly Romanized provinces in the first half of the fourth century would enjoy the relative tranquility of father and son emperors who could between the two of them connect their reigns from 306 to 361. These years, then, had much in common with the first generation after the establishment of the principate in the 20s BC, for good and ill. Ausonius would spend his first ten years under the tutelage of his aunt, Aemilia Hilaria, a consecrated virgin, and especially his grandmother Aemilia Corinthia Maura, a strict woman about whom Ausonius uses the vocabulary of the schoolteacher: haec me…blanda sub austeris imbuit imperiis, “kindly was her early training, though hid beneath stern rule” (Parentalia 5.9–10). Corinthia may have been a Christian; Ausonius says that she was a staunch guardian of the pudicitia and the pudor of herself and those in her charge.16 He does not tell us outright that Hilaria was a Christian, although this is the most probable explanation for her 63 years of vowed virginity: crevit devotae virginitatis amor. / quae tibi septenos novies est culta per annos / quique aevi finis, ipse pudicitiae, “there grew up in you the love of consecrated maidenhood. Through three and sixty years you maintained it, and your life’s end was also a maiden’s end” (Parentalia 6.8–10). The name Hilarius, which he applies to her, deliberately using the masculine form, would soon become famous among Christians of southern Gaul for Ausonius’s senior contemporary and Doctor of the Church, who bore that name.17 Under such women, then, the boy learned the rudiments of language and mores. Hilaria and Corinthia invite further investigation about the role of women in education at this time. Because of the paucity of direct evidence for women teachers in antiquity and in the et non deliciis ignoscere prompta pudendis / ad perpendiculum seque suosque habuit, 5.7–8. 17 Parentalia 6.3–4: Aemilia, in cunis Hilari cognomen adepta, / quod laeta et pueri comis ad effigiem… 16

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fourth century specifically we might easily overlook their role in the education of the authors, who were almost always men writing about men. For example, there are no grammaticae in the Professores of Ausonius or even in Robert Kaster’s prosopography in Guardians of Language (1989). But Quintilian stressed the importance of the nurse’s level of education and especially her literacy and the quality of her speech.18 This shows both that women had access to training in grammaticē and that they were viewed not merely as potentially valuable but as essential teachers. On the other hand, Quintilian’s remark also implies that women’s value as teachers was secondary to their value as nurses. It was important for the nurse to exemplify good grammar; the person was in essence a nutrix. In the fourth and fifth centuries we see the picture in more detail. Hilaria and Corinthia were not nutrices; Ausonius says of his maternal aunt Hilaria that she was vice matris. Just as we must broaden our notions of the meaning of grammaticus—not merely the author of an Ars canonized by Keil—so may future investigations broaden our concept of the role and function of the nutrix. We can at least be sure that the nutrix was expected to do more than nurse the child. Was celibacy viewed as an asset or even essential to the concept of the female teacher? Even more remarkable to her nephew, Hilaria was more virum medicis artibus experiens, “busied in the art of healing, like a man,” (Parentalia 6.6) and known for her monita. Though we find no professional grammatistae, we do find examples such as Hilaria and Corinthia, in the early 300s, and Eudocia, from the mid-400s. Eudocia at least must have known Homer as well as Ausonius knew Vergil. Her birth was exceptional; was her education? These cases show that some women must have then (as they do today) surpassed their male contemporaries in the memorization of verses and the art of grammaticē. They may not have been paid for it, but these women were the first to train Ausonius, and presumably others of his numerous class, with the discipline of paideia. For eight years after that, until he came of age, Ausonius studied at Toulouse under his maternal uncle Aemilius Magnus 18

Institutio Oratoria 1.1.4–5, on which see more below, Chapter Two.

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Arborius. Ausonius loved his uncle and placed him immediately after his father Julius Ausonius and his mother Aemilia Aeonia in the Parentalia. This Magnus, whom Julius and Aeonia honored by naming their son after him, might also have been a Christian. He seems, at any rate, to have lived celibate like his sister. Ausonius tells us that he was entrusted to Magnus from a young age, and that Magnus considered Ausonius to be all the son he needed: tu, postquam primis placui tibi traditus annis, dixisti nato me satis esse tibi. (Parentalia 3.19–20) You, after I was entrusted to you in my first years, and you found me to your liking, said that I was son enough for you.19

This passage suggests that Magnus never had any biological children of his own, and though Ausonius mentions a noble and richly-endowed wife of Magnus, even in the more detailed account of his domestic and professional life in the Professores we I have offered an original translation here because to use EvelynWhite’s Loeb translation (which I will prefer elsewhere throughout) would beg the question at issue. Evelyn-White translated these same lines, “[Y]ou who, when in my earliest years I was committed to your charge and pleased you well, said you needed nothing more since I was in the world.” Evelyn-White’s translation takes nato me to be an ablative absolute, making esse the verb and satis the predicate adjective of the indirect statement introduced by dixisti. But this leaves no subject for the indirect statement, unless we should try to supply the same as that of dixisti, leading to incoherency. This difficulty vanishes if we consider nato me not ablative-ablative, but rather dative-accusative. In this way dixisti introduces an indirect statement of which the subject is me [esse], nato a noun, not a participle, and is a dative of purpose, esse is the infinitive verb, satis is a predicate adjective, and tibi either complements satis or functions as the referent of nato, completing a double dative construction. The double-use of esse and the double-dative construction create a difficilior lectio, and relieve the incoherency of making an ablative absolute the subject. The difference in meaning is clear: instead of saying, “with me having been born,” the poet has said, “to consider myself your son,” or, more fully, “you said that to consider me to be your son was enough for you.” The implication is that he had no one else to consider his sons.

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hear of no children.20 We then hear of the rhetor’s premature death, in Constantinople, with his parents still alive (patribus superstitibus, Prof. 16.16), and the emperor sending his body back to Gaul, yet no mention of children there either. The probabilius here, then, is to suppose on the strength of the passage quoted above, that Magnus never had children. Ausonius, then, was like a son to the man who had tutored the brothers of Constantine at Toulouse and attained the elite teaching post of rhetor at Constantinople. As the protégé of such a renowned scholar, Ausonius, now in his early twenties, near the end of the reign of Constantine, in a climate of political stability— there had been no rival claimant to the empire since the death of Licinius in 324—and imperial patronage of Christian culture, in the year 334 claimed the chair of grammaticus at Bordeaux. He would hold this position for thirty years, enough for a whole life’s career for the men of his time. Very soon after taking this position, he married Attusia Lucana Sabina, against the advice of the Augustan poet Ovid, whose poetry Ausonius knew well and who warned against marrying a woman of higher standing or wealth.21 Sabina was both. Ausonius addressed one of the Parentalia to her father, Talisius, the first to be addressed after Ausonius’s parents, grandmother, uncles and aunt Hilaria. Talisius was a member of that old sort of landed aristocracy that held it an honor rather to exercise one’s leisure in hunting and the refined life of the country gentleman, than to spend one’s time and resources serving as a minister of the state.22 Unlike many of Ausonius’s male relatives—elders, coevals, and descendants—who occupied high posts in the government of the Latin West at the height of Ausonius’s influence, Talisius never did. In light of what we know about Ausonius’s own political career, we must consider Talisius’s eschewing of high office a conscious decision. Although Ausonius’s maternal ancestors could boast good lineage, Talisius’s people were of even better stock. Professores 16.9: nobilis et dotata uxor, domus et schola. Heroides 9.34: si qua voles apte nubere, nube pari. 22 Parentalia 8.7–8: venatu et ruris cultu victusque nitore / omne aevum peragens, publica despiciens. 20 21

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This does not seem to have kept Ausonius from marital felicity. Ausonius echoes the loyalty which he professes to his fatherin-law in the rich and heartfelt poems to and about his wife. Like his uncle Magnus and aunt Hilaria, and his sister Dryadia, whose husband died while she was adhuc iuvenis, “still young” (Parentalia 12.9), Ausonius lived celibate most of his life, after his young wife died when he himself was only thirty-three. He expressed his loyalty to her and to her family in several places, as for example in his elegy to Talisius: nam et caelebs numquam desinam et esse gener, “nor will I ever cease to be both unwed and your son-inlaw” (Parentalia 8.18). Sabina herself received thirty lines, second only to the poet’s grandfather Caecilius Agricius Arborius, among the thirty poems of the Parentalia. To Sabina Ausonius addressed as direct and untrammeled a personal poem as he did to anyone in all of his poetry (Parentalia 9). We may suppose that Ausonius wrote much of the grammatical poetry and translations from the Greek anthology during these thirty years spent teaching at Bordeaux. During this time Ausonius continued to increase his prestige, numbering among his students one Pontius Meropius Paulinus, a son of one of the wealthiest and best-connected families of Gaul and Spain.23 Ausonius attracted the notice of the emperor Valentinian, whether because of his uncle’s reputation tutoring the sons of emperors, through such families as the Meropii, or perhaps even his own family connections. The emperor summoned him to Trier, the sometime capital of the Latin West, to tutor the prince Gratian in 368. The move to Trier need not have affected Ausonius’s literary interests—at least not until 375, when Valentinian died, as Ammianus tells us, of unbridled anger.24 That Valentianian’s anger

Matthews (1975: 73) calls him “a member of the dominant family of Bordeaux, one of the biggest landowners of Aquitania and a young man of precocious literary talent.” His holdings were vast and included land in Spain, Gaul, and Italy (at least). See also PLRE Paulinus 21, and also Trout (1999). 24 For the detailed picture of Valentinian’s extraordinary apoplexy, too long to be quoted here, see Ammianus Marcellinus 30.6.3–6. 23

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was kindled by Gallic ambassadors was not lost on the Bordelais professor much in the emperor’s view. Ausonius’s survival and advancement are proof enough that he knew, or learned, the art of subtlety. The experiences of traveling in the Emperor’s entourage on the German frontier, and of social intercourse at the Court city as full of opportunity as of dangerous jealousy, would have inspired in Ausonius self-comparison with his favorite poet Vergil.25 It is possible and even likely that Paulinus, who at about the age of ten was still in the early stages of his education, might have come to Trier with Ausonius, just as Ausonius had gone with his teacher to Toulouse at the same age. Gratian was nearly the same age, about two years Paulinus’s junior. Thus we might imagine Ausonius’s life at Trier to have been similar to Augustine’s description of life at Milan when that city could boast itself the residence of an Emperor. Classes in the morning, networking in the afternoons, and cultivation of the esteem, or propitiation of the invidia, of those courtiers who by innuendo, lies, or the truth could destroy a career or a life. All this consumed the hours and the attention of the worldly grammaticus or rhetor at court.26 We may imagine Ausonius’s teaching duties to have ended about 375, when Paulinus was 18, and Gratian, at the age of 16, became Emperor. Ausonius wrote most of his poetry during the decade or so between the death of Gratian (383) and his latest dateable work, the correspondence with Paulinus (393). In the following chapters, we will treat these poems in order of the method outlined above. This order will not coincide with chronological order of the dates of publication, where these can be known. Unlike Augustine (or Ponticianus, Nebridius, or even Marius Victorinus, all of whom Augustine tells us turned for religious reasons away from worldly ambitions), Ausonius chose to trust in his canny subtlety in attaining the governorship of his home province, and the offices of quaestor and senior consul, before For Ausonius’s movements, see Mosella 2 and Ammianus Marcellinus 28.2 and 30.7.4; for Vergil’s, Hor. Sat. 1.5. 26 Cf. Augustine, Conf. 6.11.18–19; on this tension cf. also Tomlin, “Spes Saeculi: Augustine’s Worldly Ambition and Career,” (2012: especially 62– 63). 25

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returning home unscathed. In the history of the Roman Empire did a single man ever attain to such power, from such humble beginnings and relying on his talents, to retire, seemingly voluntarily, back to the place whence he had come? What sort of man, what sort of poet, was this?

CHAPTER TWO. NEW WINE IN OLD WINESKINS: GRAMMAR, RHETORIC, AND THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A CHRISTIAN CULTURE καὶ οὐδεὶς βάλλει οἶνον νέον εἰς ἀσκοὺς παλαιούς· εἰ δὲ µή γε, ῥήξει ὁ οἶνος ὁ νέος τοὺς ἀσκοὺς καὶ αὐτὸς ἐκχυθήσεται καὶ οἱ ἀσκοὶ ἀπολοῦνται· And no man putteth new wine into old bottles: otherwise the new wine will break the bottles, and it will be spilled, and the bottles will be lost. Luke 5:37 (Douay-Rheims)

Ausonius wrote his poetry within the intellectual world of classical paideia, with all of its conventions and technical vocabulary. The students and teachers of grammaticē and rhetoricē, both of which arts he himself taught in his long teaching career of about forty years, would have been sensitive to these conventions. Before we propose a hermeneutic for reading the poetry of Ausonius, we will frame the picture of his life with a brief description of the intellectual tradition into which he was born and in which he grew to adulthood and rose to mastery. Relying on the important work on ancient pedagogical methods and professional education by Raffaella Cribiore, Robert Kaster, and others, we will first describe the

17

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environment in which Ausonius lived and worked.1 We will be able to see Ausonius as a member of a profession, a nursling of the Muses first and foremost, to use a favorite term of Libanius.2 In order to become educated, and thus accepted among the free men of his society, the late antique Roman youth would pursue at least two or three grades of formal education, each with a proper teacher and subject. The first teacher was the grammaticus; the second the rhetor. Some cities had centers for the study of law (e.g., Beirut), medicine (e.g., Alexandria), or philosophy (e.g., Athens), but these studies would be undertaken after rhetoricē, if at all. Lucian’s character Hermotimus in the dialogue that bears his name described the pedagogical methods of the grammaticus and the rhetor in late antiquity in terms of a steep hill to climb. He sums up thus: νῦν δὲ ἐνάρχονται µὲν οὐκ ὀλίγοι µάλα ἐρρωµένως καὶ προσέρχονται ἐπὶ ποσόν, οἱ µὲν ἐπὶ πάνυ ὀλίγον, οἱ δὲ ἐπὶ πλέον· ἐπειδὰν δὲ κατὰ µέσην τὴν ὁδὸν γένωνται πολλοῖς τοῖς ἀπόροις καὶ δυσχερέσιν ἐντυγχάνοντες ἀποδυσπετοῦσί τε καὶ ἀναστρέφουσιν ἀσθµαίνοντες καὶ ἱδρῶτι ῥεόµενοι, οὐ φέροντες τὸν κάµατον. ὅσοι δ’ ἂν εἰς τέλος διακαρτερήσωσιν οὗτοι πρὸς τὸ ἄκρον ἀφικνοῦνται καὶ τὸ ἀπ’ ἐκείνου εὐδαιµονοῦσιν θαυµάσιόν τινα βίον τὸν λοιπὸν βιοῦντες, οἷον µύρµηκας ἀπὸ τοῦ ὕψους ἐπισκοποῦντές τινας τοὺς ἄλλους. As it is, a good number begin the climb with great confidence, and do make progress, some very little indeed, others more; but when they get half-way, they find endless difficulties and discomforts, lose heart, and turn back, panting, dripping, and Cribiore (2001), Gymnastics of the Mind, and Kaster (1988) Guardians of Language, are the two works which stand out in this regard and will continue to be useful to scholars well beyond the generation of their authors. I am indebted to Cribiore for first drawing my attention to the Hermotimus. In this brief, preliminary summary, I will leave some claims unsupported by references to the copious secondary literature which it will be more useful to cite for more specific purposes below. 2 e.g., Oratio (Autobiography) 1.225: Μουσῶν τρόφιµος. Cf. also Apuleius’s “winebowl of the Muses,” from which students of the artes liberales drink: Musarum creterra; and later in the same section: prima creterra litteratoris rudimento excitat, secunda grammatici doctrina instr[a]vit, tertia rhetoris eloquentia armat (Florida, 20). 1

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exhausted. But those who endure to the end reach the top, to be blessed thenceforth with wondrous days, looking down from their height upon the ants which are the rest of mankind. (Lucian, Hermotimus 5 trans. Fowler)

First, the young boy would learn his letters; the teacher was called a litterator, but this must not be assumed to be a professional in the same sense as a grammaticus or a rhetor (or for that matter some sort of tradesman). The teaching of the abecedarium (i.e., the ABeCedarium or the ABCs), could be done by a grammaticus, or anyone who had this very basic knowledge. Often the litterator would be a person who lived in the boy’s own house, perhaps even a nurse.3 The nurse was at least as important in her role as a teacher of morals as she was a teacher of words, and Quintilian emphasizes at the beginning that the education of a child must always mean both education in language and education in morals.4 Language was seen after all as a mos among many mores, and thus paideia was necessarily moral. In order to learn letters the boy would perform oral exercises parroting his teacher, or written drills on ostraka, slate, wax or papyrus. Quintilian even recommends the teacher to carve the shapes of the letters into wood, so that the teacher will not need to guide the student’s hand with his own.5 In order to learn letters, and then syllables, the child would also write the alphabet in order, then again backwards, on recycled odd bits of broken pottery and the backs of grocery lists. We even hear of letter-shaped Quintilian describes at length the importance, since she will be the teacher of the child’s first words, of the nurse’s correctness of speech (Institutio Oratoria, 1.1.4): ante omnia ne sit vitiosus sermo nutricibus: quas, si fieri posset, sapientes Chrysippus optavit; certe quantum res pateretur optimas eligi voluit. Above all let the nurses have speech not full of bad habits: Chrysippus wanted them even to be wise, if it could be done; certainly, as far as means allowed, he wanted the best to be chosen. 4 Quintilian, 1.1.4–5: Et morum quidem in his haud dubie prior ratio est, recte tamen etiam loquantur. Has primum audiet puer, harum verba effingere imitando conabitur…. Et haec ipsa magis pertinaciter haerent quae deteriora sunt. Nam bona facile mutantur in peius: quando in bonum verteris vitia? Non adsuescat ergo, ne dum infans quidem est, sermoni qui dediscendus sit. 5 ibid. 3

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blocks of wood or ivory. The combined literary and archaeological evidence, then, suggest a rather more loosely-defined set of conventions for the early primary school years. At about the age of five the boy, now old enough to go from home, usually under the supervision of a trusty slave—the paedagogus—would go to the grammaticus, the secondary school teacher who would drill his students in as many lines of Homeric and Vergilian hexameters and Terentian senarii as possible. Paulinus of Pella, a grandson of Ausonius and an accomplished poet in his own right, tells us in the Eucharisticon that he was five when he first went to the grammaticus, where he studied Socrates, Homer, and Vergil (vv. 72–75), and that he studied with masters of Greek and Latin until he was fifteen (v. 121). Augustine might have made himself the most famous example of this stage in the first book of his Confessions, where he describes the physical and psychological pains of the beatings of the master’s rod and learning to read Greek. Ausonius summarizes the same process in the birthday letter (Genethliacos) to one of his grandsons, also named Ausonius, where it sounds a little less like Augustine’s experience, and a little more like Hebrews 12:11: Now every education (Gk. paideia; Lat. disciplina) seems at the moment to be not for joy but for pain, but afterwards it renders a peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who are trained in it.6 As Ausonius described the process, the master handed on to the boy his first poems, so that the tongue would bring forth all the proper sounds.7 Thus would the boy learn the next step up the hill of paideia: from letters, to syllables, to words, then sentences in the form of lines of poetry. These were as likely to be poetic as prose, for the simple reason The younger Ausonius was the son of the poet’s daughter and the Euromius for whom Ausonius wrote Parentalia 14. This was the fourth Ausonius in each of four generations, not to be confused with the poet’s first son, who died an infant, and the poet’s father Julius Ausonius, the physician. This Ausonius the Fourth, then, was either the half brother, or else the cousin, of Paulinus of Pella. Hebrews 12.11: πᾶσα δὲ παιδεία πρὸς µὲν τὸ παρὸν οὐ δοκεῖ χαρᾶς εἶναι ἀλλὰ λύπης, ὕστερον δὲ καρπὸν εἰρηνικὸν τοῖς δι’ αὐτῆς γεγυµνασµένοις ἀποδίδωσιν δικαιοσύνης. 7 Genethliacos 1–5: carmina prima…cum puerilibus annis / traderet… / … / ut respondendas…voces / perferret lingua. 6

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that poetry is easier to remember. They were full of good morals, and would provide the boy with a storehouse of proper speech from which to draw and by which to judge the correctness of his thoughts to be articulated. He would learn to speak correctly now; later the rhetor would teach him to speak beautifully. The first- and second-century Roman Suetonius distinguishes between grammatistae, grammatici, and rhetores. He has little to say about the grammatistae, whom we see only in the negative image of his description of individual grammatici. For example, Marcus Valerius Probus of Beirut had read some books with a grammatista and acquired an insatiable and lifelong love of grammaticē.8 The grammatista, as Suetonius had explained in the beginning, was to the grammaticus as the litterator was to the litteratus, the difference between the two pairs being merely one of Greek to Latin, and the difference within each of the two pairs being one of polish.9 But Probus cared little for the society of others, or even of students, singlemindedly focusing on the writing of commentarii to the exclusion of the other works of grammaticē: multa exemplaria contracta emendare ac distinguere et adnotare curavit, soli huic nec ulli praeterea grammaticae parti deditus, “devoting himself to this branch of grammar to the exclusion of all others” (24.3, translation, unless otherwise noted, from Rolfe, 1914). There were then several duties imputed to the master of grammaticē, in various ways related to the teaching of the art. This answers one question about the definition of the grammaticus, and raises another. One part of grammaticē was the writing of commentarii, which Suetonius defines in his description of Probus as emending, Suet. De Gramm. et Rhet. 24.1–3: legerat in provincia quosdam veteres libellos apud grammatistam… hos cum diligentius repeteret atque alios deinceps cognoscere cuperet, quamvis omnes contemni magisque obprobrio legentibus quam gloriae et fructui esse animadverteret, nihilo minus in proposito mansit. 9 4.4–5: sunt qui litteratum a litteratore distinguant, ut Graeci γραμματικόν a γραμματίστα, et illum quidem absolute, hunc mediocriter doctum existiment. quorum opinionem Orbilius etiam exemplis confirmat; namque apud maiores ait…non temere quem litteraturm in titulo, sed litteratorem inscribi solitum esse, quasi non perfectum litteris, sed imbutum. 8

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punctuating, and glossing a text. What are the other parts? Clearly one of them was teaching, for Suetonius immediately goes on to describe Probus’s indifference to discipuli, showing that “magister” was an expected, but not necessary, additional title for a grammaticus.10 Another was the writing of an ars, for that is the next thing Suetonius tells us Probus did not do: vivus pauca et exigua de quibusdam minutis quaestiunculis edidit; reliquit autem non mediocrem silvam observationum sermonis antiqui, “he published a few slight works on divers minute points, and also left a good sized ‘Grove of Observations on our Early Language’” (24.5). Although Suetonius only uses the term ars twice in all, commentarius four times, and does not define them directly, the latter clearly means the same thing that Ausonius’s contemporaries Servius or Donatus would have meant by it (and that we therefore today tend to think when we hear the word). One example of this is his explanation for the cognomen of L. Ateius Philologus, viz., that he was considered to be a polymath, and that this is clear from his commentarii.11 Ateius describes these commentarii as “Hylē,” in Latin Silva—a forest or grove—the same term Suetonius uses to refer to the ars of Probus (24.5, quoted above as a “Grove of Observations”). There is another ambiguous use of the word at 5.1, and a clear reference to a commentarius, written by L. Crassicius, on the Zmyrna of Helvius Cinna, (the famous friend of Catullus): commentario Zmyrnae edito (18.2). Here Suetonius uses the same verb for publishing that he had used in the other instances already mentioned: edere, “to give out,” but in this context, “to publish.” From this we see that although Suetonius used the term to refer both to what later authors would call a commentarius and what they would call an ars, both types of work existed and were understood as discrete genres.

4.4: hic non tam discipulos quam sectatores aliquot habuit; nunquam enim ita docuit ut magistri personam sustineret. 11 10.5–6: multiplici variaque doctrina censebatur. quod sane ex commentariis eius adparet, quamquam paucissimi extent. Suetonius even quotes Ateius’s letter to Hermas in which Ateius mentions his own eight hundred books of commentary. 10

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THE ARTES

In its primary, abstract meaning, ars refers to grammaticē in general, but in its secondary, concrete use it refers to a formal grammar: Ars Grammatica. This is the descriptive and sometimes prescriptive rule book of the type written by Diomedes, Charisius, or the wellknown contemporary of Augustine (and Ausonius), Marius Victorinus, all fourth-century grammatici. These Artes are handbooks of the grammar of one of the languages supported by the complex of authority which Kaster describes, that derived from analogia, natura, and the more vague sermo antiquus. Additionally they would adduce the more specific exemplaria contracta, to use Suetonius’ phrase: citations of Vergil and other authoritative authors.12 Suetonius tells us that the writing of an Ars was always the province of the grammaticus and that many artes and references to artes were extant in his day: multorum de utraque arte commentarii feruntur (4.6). We may understand from Suetonius’ phrase de utraque arte commentarii (literally “commentares on both arts”), artes utriusque linguae, “Artes about both languages.” Late antique authors especially preferred this phrase (utraque lingua) to refer to Latin and Greek, but even classical authors used it in this way.13 The continuity between the grammaticus of the first century and his fourth-century counterpart proves the profession to be a very conservative one. Not all grammatici left behind artes, however. Kaster’s important prosopography testifies that for every grammaticus whose Ars or Commentarius is extant, we may suppose dozens to whose

For Kaster’s description see generally Guardians of Language (1988), especially 172–189. Suetonius uses the phrase exemplaria contracta of the work of Probus quoted above (24.3). The Artes of Diomedes, Charisius, Victorinus, etc., are collected in Keil (1874), with more recent editions in some cases. But there were dozens or hundreds of Artes in circulation in the fourth century, and Keil’s collection stretches to thousands of pages in seven volumes. 13 E.g., Hor. Odes 3.8.5; Varro, De Lingua Latina 5.10.74; Pliny the Younger, Ep. 2.14.6, 3.1.7, 7.25.4; Quint. Inst. Orat. 1.pr.1, 6.pr.11. It is a favorite term of Aulus Gellius, Ammianus Marcellinus, Augustine, Cassiodorus and Bede. 12

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existence now only inscriptions, documentary papyri and ostraka, or oblique literary references bear witness—when we have any record at all. For example, the vast majority of the names on Kaster’s list are like the grammaticus L. Terentius Iulianus Concordius, commemorated in a short inscription from the fourth-century Western capital. This Concordius was probably the Concordius mentioned by Ausonius in the Professores, who left Bordeaux for a more lucrative position.14 Even if this be true, however, and we therefore have two sources, one the actual epitaph, one an obituary, we find no mention of an Ars written by Concordius. Thus we must resist the temptation to populate the category of “grammatici” merely with those names which appear in the voluminous record of Keil. In general, we can assume that attestations of grammatici in the West, unless specified otherwise, are of Latin grammatici, and that grammatici in the East, unless specified, are of Greek grammatici. On the other hand, when the author of a source specifies the language of a grammaticus, it is the foreign one. In the West, the highest concentration of alterius linguae grammatici is attested in Bordeaux. This may tell us more about Ausonius than it does about the distribution of multilingualism in the Roman Empire. In the East the highest concentration of grammatici in the foreign language was at Constantinople. Anyone working at the eastern capital in the legal profession would still of course need Latin, and, if she was not yet the queen of the whole Mediterranean world, Constantinople was already the most important city in the east in the middle of the fourth century. Certainly it was so by the end of Ausonius’s life: he places it before Antioch and Alexandria in the Ordo Urbium Nobilium. Curiously, though, he dedicates a single poem to both Constantinople and Carthage (after Rome), saying of Carthage that she could not dare to take the second place, even though she is unwilling to yield a full step: non toto cessura gradu, quia tertia dici fastidit, non ausa locum sperare secundum, “but will not stand a full step lower, for she scorns to be counted third, yet dares not hope for the second place” (Ordo, Professores 10.19–21: qui profugus patria / mutasti sterilem / urbe alia cathedram.

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2/3. 2–3). If the matter were difficult to decide, all else being equal, we should expect Constantinople’s imperial status to decide the matter. All else, then, must not have been equal, and we may safely conclude that Ausonius saw in Carthage a more prosperous city, in Constantinople a brighter future: vetus hanc opulentia praefert, / hanc fortuna recens, “one has the advantage in her ancient wealth, the other in her new-born prosperity” (4–5). With sixteen centuries of hindsight, Constantinople might seem a more desirable destination for a cosmopolitan academic or an ambitious and intelligent youth. The futures of the two cities would have been less certain to Ausonius even as late as the 380s, when Theodosius II had not yet been born and Carthage was more populous. In addition to its rapid growth, Constantinople would have needed grammatici of both languages for the actual work of governing. At least as late as the sixth century administrators could read and write in Latin. But the educational centers were elsewhere, and Bordeaux was among the foremost. In the Professores we hear many grammatici in both languages at Bordeaux. We also read that the city sent grammatici to other cities. This confirms its reputation as an educational center.15 Whether Ausonius’s Professores describes a typical situation or an unusual one, it proves that the definition of grammaticus must include not merely those who wrote Artes, but those who were involved at any point in the process of paideia. The Ars of the grammaticus describes the arc of this process. Many of these Artes are extant, written by grammatici especially of the fourth and fifth centuries, for example Charisius, Diomedes, Donatus, and Dositheus. They typically flowed from the basics of the abecedarium and the syllabary mentioned above to the elementa (i.e., the eLeMeNta, the second half, so to speak), using whole lines of heroic verse and favorite prose authors, especially Sallust and Cicero, as memorable examples of the rules and exceptions pertaining to the parts and figures of speech. These theoretical manuals are one category of evidence witnessing to the methods of classical pedagogy. Among these fourth-century 15

On the mobility of Bordelais professors, see Hopkins (1961).

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witnesses to the stage of paideia (education) known as grammaticē (grammar) we have also the anonymous schoolbooks, the hermeneumata (explanations), an example of which we will examine later, with a first-person narrative describing, among other things, the paedagogus and the typical schoolday.16 Although for over a century the standard collection of the works of the grammatici in antiquity has been Keil’s Grammatici Latini (1857–1880), since Keil many authors have adduced various types of evidence in synthetic studies to broaden our understanding of the profession of the grammaticus. Spanning volumes and decades, Keil’s edition still colors our encounter with Charisius, Diomedes, Donatus, Victorinus, Messius, Dositheus, and others (the list extends to dozens).17 The first three grammatici, all from the fourth century, are famous for their Artes. That of Charisius survives in mutilated form, that of Diomedes complete, and that of Donatus not only complete, but of universal currency in the fourth century empire: Donatus taught the fifth-century Church Father Jerome among others.18 The next three are more

Dionisotti (1982), “From Ausonius’ Schooldays? A Schoolbook and Its Relatives.” Dionisotti points the way to this interpretation of Ausonius’s series of poems called the Ephemeris, and Pucci (2009) places the theory on a firm footing. 17 In the case of some of these the subsequent years have seen scholarly editions which supersede and acknowledge their indebtedness to Keil’s edition. For Charisius, see Barwick (1964); Donatus, Holtz (1981); Victorinus, Mariotti (1967); Messius, Della Casa (1977). Tolkiehn (1913) produced an edition of the Ars of Dositheus, and I am not aware of a more recent edition of that of Diomedes. 18 For this fact see Jerome, Comm. In Ecclesiasten, comment on 1.9, in which he refers to his teacher Donatus: praeceptor meus Donatus; and the Chronicon (s.a. 354), in which he mentions Donatus and Victorinus together as a famous grammaticus and a famous rhetor, respectively, at Rome: Victorinus rhetor et Donatus grammaticus praeceptor meus Romae insignes habentur; and finally Apologia adversus libros Rufini, 1.16, in which he mentions his teacher Donatus among a list of likely commentators upon the works of standard authors: puto quod puer legeris Aspri in Vergilium ac Sallustium commentarios, Vulcatii in orationes Ciceronis, Victorini in dialogos eius, et in Terentii comoedias praeceptoris mei Donati, aeque in 16

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important for unique achievements than for representing grammatici through their Artes. Victorinus became a rhetor and Messius gave us the quadriga (Vergil, Sallust, Terence and Cicero).19 In addition to his Ars, Dositheus is perhaps more famous for the hermeneumata, works falsely attributed to him, which must inform any reading of Ausonius’s Ephemeris (mentioned above, with credit to the scholars Dionisotti and Pucci; we will return to the Ephemeris below). The many thousands of pages of these authors’ works are not unlike reference grammars of Latin and Greek today. Allen and Greenough’s New Latin Grammar, or Smyth’s Greek Grammar, for example, give rules and examples from ancient sources in long lists, like the grammatici of antiquity. Charisius, who taught at Rome, began his Ars with the smallest parts of the language, emphasizing distinctions, and built his way up from letters to syllables to words. For example, in Book 1 of his Ars, Charisius gives a list of monosyllables.20 He lists 86 monosyllables, sometimes with their Greek translations by way of explanation, to justify a claim that almost all monosyllables have their genitive forms ending in -is.21 Charisius does not mean this list to be exhaustive, as he tells us specifically of a few exceptions, and then generally refers to those “which break the rule.”22 He either did not wish, or was not able, to list them all. In light of the fact that he listed 86, the latter is more likely. Augustine of Hippo, with Jerome one of the most famous of the grammatici, also wrote an Ars, but it has not survived. He also left behind a wealth of other types of pedagogical literature. One Vergilium, et aliorum in alios, Plautum videlicet, Lucretium, Flaccum, Persium atque Lucanum. 19 Messius’ work Exempla Elocutionis lists these four authors, in this specific order, in the subtitle. 20 1.14, De Nominativis ad Regulam Redactis, or p. 42 vv. 4–21 in Keil’s edition. 21 Charisius, Ars 1.14, Monosyllaba quoque per is syllabam genetivos habent paene omnia, velut masculini generis, hic as assis, bos bovis, dux, ducis, dens, flos, fons, fur κλέπτης, grex, glis, lar, [etc.] 22 ex omnibus autem in monosyllabis quod ea quae singulari ablativo per e exeunt necesse est genetivo plurali per ium cadant, ut a monte montium, a ponte pontium; et alia plura sunt, exceptis his quae repugnant regulae (ibid.).

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work in particular seems to be a deliberate attempt to reinvent the genre of the Ars. One of the goals of the Ars was to equip the student to read the classics well by memorizing important examples from their poetry or speeches, especially the four authors of the Quadriga. Augustine had different goals after his conversion, so that we could certainly call the De Doctrina Christiana an Ars Grammatica Christiana, a new kind of Ars for the reading of the Scriptures instead of the classics. The magnitude of such a claim warrants a chapter all its own, and other scholars have already begun and advanced such work.23 Augustine begins by alluding to the abecedarium and the need for a litterator.24 He treats of the smallest pieces of the languages, the sounds represented by letters—grammata or litterae—and suddenly feels the need to remind us that he is not writing an ars grammatica.25 This is not because he is not doing many of the things appropriate to an ars, but as a way of returning from a digression. Could it also be because he was attempting to redefine the genre? Even the very first sentence evokes the environment of the grammaticus on his throne: sunt praecepta quaedam tractandarum Scripturarum, “there are certain precepts for the treating of the Scriptures” (Prologus 1). It is the last word that ought to surprise, for these precepts are not new, but the texts to which he is applying them are. Augustine moves to the elements necessary for Scriptural commentarii early on, See Chin (2008: 88–92), especially 88: “That De doctrina shares its basic approach with late ancient artes grammaticae should not come as a surprise: Augustine’s discussions of languages in other works also strongly recall the work of fourth- and fifth-century Latin grammarians, and Augustine’s own early De grammatica was presumably a work in the same grammatical tradition,” and she cites DDC 3.1.1. See also Chin’s chapter in Pollmann and Vessey (2007), Augustine and the Disciplines: “The grammarian’s spoils: De Doctrina Christiana and the contexts of literary education.” For an early, and still important, advancement of the idea of seeing Augustine as a grammarian first and foremost, see Marrou (1938), Augustin et la fin de la culture antique, which Vessey (1998: 399) cites as proclaiming the DDC “the ‘founding charter of a Christian culture,’ an assessment which [Marrou] never revised.” 24 Prologus 4. 25 3.87–88. 23

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when he gives a canon of the books to be included in the Sacred Scriptures: Totus autem canon Scripturarum, in quo istam considerationem versandam dicimus, his libris continetur, “now the entire canon of Scriptures, about which we say this consideration must be concerned, is contained in the following books” (2.8.13). Then he lists them all by name. This is the most salient way in which fourth century grammarians Christianized grammar: the retention of all the technical and philosophical methods of treating words, together with the movement away from the old canon—especially the quadriga26—to the new.

THE COMMENTARII

The commentarii (commentaries) of Donatus on Terence and of Servius on Vergil, to name two examples of a genre, provided to Jerome, Hilary, Augustine, Ambrose, and other Fathers of the Church the model of the genre they transformed into the biblical commentaries. Both Donatus and Servius began their commentaries with programmatic statements. Servius in the preface tells us Vergil’s intention in the Aeneid as well as his own purpose on the commentary: intentio Vergilii haec est, Homerum imitari et Augustum laudare a parentibus (This is Vergil’s intention, to imitate Homer and praise Augustus from the forefathers). His own plan he offers in the very first sentence, before even the biography of Vergil, seven objectives: in exponendis auctoribus haec consideranda sunt: [1.] poetae vita, [2.] titulus operis, [3.] qualitas carminis, [4.] scribentis intentio, [5.] numerus librorum, [6.] ordo librorum, [7.] explanatio (in commenting on authors, the following must be considered: [1.] the poet’s life, [2.] the title of the work, [3.] the genre of the poem, [4.] his intention when he wrote it, [5.] the number of books, [6.] the order of the books, [7.] the explanation).27 We find these criteria also in other authors.

Messius published his codification of the quadriga in 395; it was a reactionary work of conservation. We will see below how Ausonius had a similar reaction to the poetry of his alumnus, Paulinus. 27 Dionysius Thrax had already in the second century BC given a similar list; on which see Ars Grammatica 1.1.5–6. 26

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Without further ado he begins—Vergilii haec vita est—and by the end of the preface he has treated the vita, titulus, qualitas, intentio, numerus librorum, and ordo librorum: all but the explanatio. To this he devotes hundreds of pages, offering extensive comments line-by-line, and often word-by-word. On the first comment, merely on the word arma (not arma virumque, for that is the lemma of the second comment, even longer), Servius spends ninety-five words (for comparison’s sake the present paragraph contains ninety-five words). The commentaries valued comprehensiveness over economy. Donatus begins similarly, with a much longer Vita of Terence than that Vita of Vergil which we find in Servius, and a style of commenting from which we can easily see what Jerome told us explicitly, that Donatus was his teacher. After the Vita he gives the titles of the comedies; each receives comments in their places. The notes are less copious than Servius would be a generation later, and Donatus is able to dispose of the first four lines of the Andria in fewer than ninety words. Still, the systematic grammaticus, commenting line-by-line, shows his ideal to be comprehensiveness rather than synthesis. The commentary is a silva observationum (a forest of observations), but the focus is on the arbores—the trees.28 Donatus makes fewer and briefer comments than Servius in part because he comes earlier in time and because the writings of the grammatici grew by absorption and accretion.29 In a literary tradition in which “the opinions of the predecessors must be known,”30 and their opinions, once digested, were assimilated without a trace, the survival of the works of Donatus proves

Cf. Suetonius referring to the commentaries of Probus, De Gramm. et Rhet. 4.5, quoted above. 29 The transmission of the text of Servius and Servius Danielis attests to this. Over the decades, other grammatici anonymously added to Servius’s commentaries, so that there are today more than one version of the commentary that we call “Servius.” See Reynolds (1983: 385–8). Probus is another example. 30 As Friedrich Ritschl (Gildersleeve, 1884) said in a slightly different context. 28

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Jerome’s claim that he was held to be the grammaticus insignis at Rome.31 Jerome himself wrote his commentaries according to the same conventions as predecessors and contemporaries. But we need not go so far as Servius, Jerome’s exact contemporary (both lived ca. 350–420), to find where the Church Father seamlessly passes from the grammatical tradition into that of the biblical commentator. Donatus taught Jerome, and so Jerome’s introduction to his Commentarius in Evangelium Matthaei is precisely what we would have expected. Jerome tells us: many have written Gospels; the diversity of Gospels has led to a diversity of heresies; but the purpose of the Gospel is to transmit the truth, not merely to write a good story: plures fuisse, qui Evangelia scripserunt, et Lucas evangelista testatur…. quae a diversis edita diversarum haereseon fuere principia… sine spiritu et gratia Dei conati sunt magis ordinare narrationem, quam historiae texere veritatem. (Comm. in Evang. Matt. prol.1–4) Luke the evangelist bears witness, too, that there have been many who have written Gospels…which, published in various quarters, have been the origins of various heresies… They have tried without the Spirit and grace of God to tell a tale than to weave the truth of the history.

And here Jerome gives a comprehensive list of authors to whom gospels had been attributed, in the end listing (more likely) six or (possibly) eighteen of them, saying that it would be too long to list them all.32 The reader will recall Charisius’s list of monosyllables, above, and how he too says that he will not give an exhaustive list, and then lists eighty-six of them. And so, Jerome Chronicon s.a. 354 Victorinus rhetor et Donatus grammaticus praeceptor meus Romae insignes habentur. The rhetor Victorinus and the grammaticus Donatus, my teacher, are famous at Rome. 32 It is not clear whether he is referring to one work by the twelve apostles, or twelve works, and one work by Basilis and Apelles, or one by each of them (prol.2–3): ut est illud iuxta Aegyptios, et Thomam, et Matthiam, et Bartholomaeum, duodecim quoque Apostolorum, et Basilidis atque Apellis, ac reliquorum, quos enumerare longissimum est. 31

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continues, the following four are the true evangelists, of whom the life and circumstances of writing the Gospel were as follows, whereupon he gives their Vitae. Thus in the first three pages, of the seven essential components of a commentarius, Jerome has given us [1.]–[6.], leaving [7.], the explanatio, to be developed over the course of some hundred and thirty-seven pages. But he is not merely following Servius’s example. As we observed, he and Servius were contemporaries. Their method therefore illustrates the contemporary standards of their profession. Jerome wants to change the subject matter—traditional classics versus Scriptures—without changing the method. His commentaries are revolutionary: the genre is old, what it holds is new. In his comments to Eusebius, the dedicatee of the work, Jerome shows his penchant for comprehensiveness and his desire for his work on this text to be counted in the grammatical tradition. He complains that Eusebius asked for Jerome’s thoughts on Matthew just a few days before he was going to sail to Rome, giving Jerome only a few days to do the work of years. Satisque miror, Eusebi dilectissime, cur Romam subito navigaturus, hanc tibi a me quasi sitarciam dari volueris, ut Matthaeum breviter exponens, verbis stringerem, sensibus dilatarem. Si meminisses responsionis meae, numquam in paucis diebus rem annorum peteres. (prol. 6–7) And I find it amazing enough, my most dear Eusebius, why, when being just about to sail to Rome, you should have wanted this to be given to you by me—“one for the road,” as it were—to comment briefly on Matthew, going short on words and long on meaning. If you remembered my response, you would never be seeking the stuff of years in a few days.

The first difficulty would be to read everyone who ever said anything about Matthew’s Gospel: Jerome lists them exhaustively. Legisse me fateor ante annos plurimos in Matthaeum Origenis viginti quinque volumina, et totidem ejus Homilias, commaticumque interpretationis genus; et Theophili Antiochenae urbis episcopi Commentarios; Hippolyti quoque martyris, et Theodori Heracleotae, Apollinarisque Laodiceni, ac Didymi Alexandrini; et Latinorum Hilarii, Victorini, Fortunatiani Opuscula. (prol. 7)

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I confess that it’s been very many years since I read Origen’s twenty five volumes on Matthew, and his Homilies of that amount, and his concise commentary; and the Commentaries of Theophilus the bishop of the city of Antioch; also that of the martyr Hippolytus, and Theodore of Heraclea, and Apollinaris of Laodicea, and Didymus of Alexandria; and the Minor Works of the Latins: Hilary, Victorinus, Fortunatianus.

He confesses that he read all of those things years ago, and goes on to say that he would now, in order to write this commentary in two weeks, have to rely on his own lights, somewhere between audacia and diligentia. Jerome is legitimating his work on a text which lies outside of the grammatical tradition by placing it firmly within the old model of interpretation. He does the same in his prologue to his Commentary on the Letter to the Galatians, which he addressed to the nuns Paula and Eustochium. Jerome offers them a list of prior commentators similar to that which he gave in his prologue to Matthew: Origen, Didymus, Apollinaris of Laodicea, Theodore of Heraclea, and Victorinus. Marius Victorinus, about whom Jerome says, Romae me puero rhetoricam docuit (he taught me at Rome when I was a boy), shows the fluidity with which the grammaticus and the rhetor passed to the different works of childhood education, as well as to those of the writing of the ars or the commentarius. It also sheds more light on what we have observed in passing in Chapter One with regard to female teachers of grammaticē. In the cases of Ausonius’s grandmother and maternal aunt, the lack of positive evidence of women grammatici, in the broad sense of the term, can easily prevent us from seeing how highly trained some women were in the art. This bibliography which Jerome offers to Paula and Eustochium would be useless to anyone who does not have a grammarian’s comprehensive interest in textual questions. If they had such interest, Jerome encouraged it not only by sending them this bibliography but also by commending to them the example of Albina. Jerome considered Albina the equal of a male grammaticus, at least in terms of the quality of her mens and the depth of her reading. He begins the prologue to his commentary with a consolation to Paula and Eustochium on the recent death of Albina, in

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which he describes his relationship with the deceased. Albina, Jerome recalls, never used to visit him, no matter how briefly, without asking some question about the Scriptures.33 Nor would she ask frivolous or ill-considered questions, or be satisfied merely with “the Pythagorean response”: i.e., a “yes” or “no,” or a simple appeal to an authority.34 She pursued philological questions, he continues, with the systematic diligence of a grammaticus: examinabat omnia, et sagaci mente universa pensabat, ut me sentirem non tam discipulam habere, quam iudicem. She used to examine everything, and weigh shrewdly each point, so that I felt that I had not so much a student as a judge.

Jerome’s respect for Albina justifies us in briefly entertaining a hypothesis that she was the grammaticus known as “Albinus” that has been so difficult for scholars to identify. In the De Metris (On Poetic Meters) of another grammaticus (one Victorinus), this “Albinus” is credited with clearsighted commentary on the meter of Terence and Plautus. Several scholars have attempted to identify him with four different persons.35 Could this have been Albina publishing under a male pseudonym? Like writing Scripture commentaries within the old and acceptable forms of commentaries on the texts of the quadriga, writing under a male pseudonym has often been an effective means for women to transform the boundaries of a genre to include them, or to avoid the prejudices that would instantly be formed in the mind of a reader finding a feminine name on the title page. Modern examples include Mary Shelley (writing as Percy) or Mary Ann Evans (George Eliot). A female grammaticus would have been more likely to comment on the comedies of Terence and Plautus than most other

Comm. in Ep. ad Galatas, prol.; Col. 307B: numquam tam festina me vidit ut non de Scripturis aliquid interrogaret. 34 ibid.: Neque vero more Pythagorico quidquid responderam, rectum putabat: nec sine ratione praejudicata apud eam valebat auctoritas. Ausonius provides one example of what more Pythagorico respondere would mean in this context: in the MSS Ecloga 21 bears the title ναὶ καὶ οὔ pitagoricon, and in Ep. 21.38–44 he praises the Pythagorean brevity of “yes” and “no.” 35 Unsuccessfully, according to Kaster (1988: 382–383). 33

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authors. As a woman, Albina would have been prevented from proceeding from grammaticē to the professional training of rhetoricē, training for men to enter into public life. It must not have been unusual for a woman’s teaching domain to extend over the next stage of many children’s lives. The reader will recall the imperceptible boundaries between the early stages of education, the domains of the litterator and of the grammaticus, and the type of person most likely to fill the early role. Thus perhaps kept forever within the curriculum of the grammaticus, first as a student and then as a teacher, Albina would have as much opportunity as any man to master these authors. This goes some way to explain why the most famous female poets of the period wrote “centos” or “stitchings” of Vergil or Homer into new epic poems on new topics. In the Latin West, Proba’s Vergilian Cento is justly famous as an original work that keeps traditional forms but reinvents the genre of Latin epic by employing it to carry an entirely new substance. In dactylic hexameter with lines, half-lines, and phrases from Vergil’s poetry, Proba has constructed a narrative of salvation history. In the Greek East Eudocia, the wife of Theodosius II, deployed her mastery of Homer to create an epic on the same theme. Jerome had good reason to be on his best behavior when speaking to and about Albina. In the prologue to his commentary on Galatians, which we have been examining, he has the same reasons for citing Albina that the present work has for mentioning Robert Kaster in the previous footnote. For the same reasons Jerome apologizes for possibly duplicating some of the work of another scholar at Rome with whom he expects his audience to be familiar: Marius Victorinus. Marius Victorinus was one of the most famous converts of his day. Like Paulinus of Nola, about whom we will have much to say later, Marius was famous before his conversion. He thus had less to gain by converting than the hundreds of thousands of late Roman persons of the Latin West and the Greek East who first followed Constantine and then Constantius, their emperors, in public profession of Nicene and then Arian Christianity. Augustine made Victorinus famous in the Confessions. Augustine’s own conversion is now much more famous because of the

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subsequent of that work and the immeasurable influence of this influential Father of the Church. But at the time, Victorinus’s conversion was undoubtedly more famous. Thus through the first-person narrative of one grammaticus-turned-rhetor we learn of another more famous one’s conspicuous, public conversion to Christianity. Marius Victorinus was a grammaticus by any one of the different definitions that might be employed. With his conversion he abruptly transformed his intellectual goals into Christian ones. Unlike Jerome, who has not left any writings that could not be considered of Christian preoccupation, or Ausonius, who has hardly left behind any that could, Marius Victorinus lived a life with a dramatic and bold dividing line separating the one part from the other. This made a great impression on Augustine, who had a similar career, and whose writings reflect a similar dramatic turning point in his life. So even when he is writing speculative Christian theology, Victorinus followed the intellectual framework that the genres of grammatical literature provided. Augustine himself often slips imperceptibly into the exhaustive style of the grammaticus, for example in the De Doctrina Christiana. In his most extended treatment of a single passage and his longest quotation in the work, Augustine cites 2 Cor. 11 as an example of a rhetorically excellent use of commata. In fact, after quoting fifteen verses en bloc, Augustine offers the brief assessment that the eloquent arrangement of commata (caesa, quae commata Graeci vocant, DDC 4.36) delights even the unlearned (indocti), and then launches into a line-by-line commentary, in the style of the grammaticus, extending over twice as much space again as he had already spent. Read alongside one of Jerome’s biblical commentaries it might be thought to have been of the same author. The result is a work that can stand on the same shelf as other grammatical works. The scholar who chances to run a finger along the tags or titles of Donatus on Terence, Servius on Vergil, Augustine on Paul, Jerome on Matthew, is already under the influence of the latter two authors, who for the moment are infusing a very old genre with a new substance for the first time in centuries.

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CLASSROOM M ETHODS

The scholarship of the 19th and 20th centuries drew less on nonliterary evidence than has more recent scholarship (since about the 1970s) to deepen our understanding of the specific pedagogical methods of the grammatici in antiquity. Theodore Haarhoff, writing between the two World Wars, recognized the limits of literary evidence, especially that which did not directly describe the typical Realien of daily life for a schoolboy.36 Not that he ignores those authors who do describe the details: he cites Quintilian’s precept for the schoolmaster to cut letter-forms into wood, so that the master will not need to hold the student’s hand tracing the letter into wax;37 as well as references in Martial, Juvenal, and Horace, respectively, to the pages (chartae) on which students might write, and cases (capsae) and satchels (loculi) in which to carry them.38 But these references to material tools do not shed light for us on those transient markings which the schoolboys wrote only to erase them on wax or ostraka or slate, or on media now lost. Haarhoff relies heavily on Ausonius, especially the Professores and the Parentalia, in the same way that more recent scholars have done: for broadly historical or prosopographical

My debt to Haarhoff, who excellently digested and cited many of the primary sources, here and throughout will be obvious. No other scholar of the last hundred years seems to have known the works of Ausonius as well as he. He does, however, (like many scholars working without the convenience of computers) from time to time expose himself to that criticism which Marrou (1956) made of Grasberger: “[H]e does not always quote the original sources in support of his opinions, but refers to the works of earlier scholars, works which are today quite unknown and very difficult to come by” (353). For this reason I have sometimes treated again questions which he might have considered himself to have answered. 37 Institutio Oratoria 1.1.27: non inutile erit eos tabellae quam optime insculpi, ut per illos velut sulcos ducatur stilus […] neque egebit adiutorio manum suam manu super imposita regentis. 38 Martial, Epigr. 4.86.11; Juvenal, Sat. 10.117. The passage from Horace must be Sermo 1.6.74. 36

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purposes.39 These are at least superficially obituaries in verse. When it comes to describing methods he signals the limits of these collections of elegies: For even when we have a man like Ausonius who deals directly with education, the assumption always is that the reader is thoroughly familiar with the practical facts of the schools, and the aim is generally to impress by style or rhetorical device, and never to give a serious exposition. We must be content, therefore, to fill in the account with the known facts of Roman education. We have no lively picture of the Gallic boy going to school, such as Lucian gives us in the case of Greece.40

We must modify three points in this claim. First, Ausonius does in fact assume that we are familiar with the practical facts of the schools. We will fail, however, to appreciate his poetry if we fail to take for granted, as he did, the pedagogical context of such poems as the Grammaticomastix (The Grammaticus-Scourge) or the Technopaegnion (The Skill-Game), or the Orationes (The Prayers: that of the Ephemeris—The Daily Round—and the Oratio Versibus Rhopalicis—The Prayer in Rhopalic Verses), all models of art no less than studio masterpieces made for apprentices to copy. Thus Haarhoff correctly claims that Ausonius does not offer a detailed exposition, ostensibly designated as such, of pedagogical methods employed in the schoolroom. He accurately describes the superficial aspect of the pedagogical poetry. Secondly, Haarhoff overstates the point when he says that Ausonius’s aim in his poetry was “never to give a serious exposition.”41 Once we have identified each step of the art meant to be taken for granted, the teacher’s lesson appears as that next step forward beyond the obvious. Since we are attempting to understand the E.g., Hopkins (1961), Matthews (1975), Green (1985), Van Dam (1985), Kaster (1988), Sivan (1993), not to mention the many articles of Coşkun, as well as his book Der Gens Ausoniana an der Macht (2002). 40 Haarhoff (1920) 52. 41 Another similar comment: “He was much too vague and careless about things to make a calculation of this kind anything but extremely uncertain (105).” This might be true, but would be very difficult to prove. 39

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grammarian’s poetry, we fairly assume ex hypothesi that we may draw some conclusions from the superficial data. If we should compare the pedagogical poems of Ausonius to the actual exercises that inspired them, we would be able to draw such conclusions. This brings us to the third point, “the lively picture.” Building on the work of recent scholarship, we will show that we do in fact have a “lively picture of the Gallic boy going to school.” A.C. Dionisotti’s study of the hermeneumata Pseudodositheana, bilingual schoolbooks usually dated to the third century, discovered a clear link between the “colloquia” which she discovered in a manuscript copied by the monk Conrad Celtes in 1495, and the Ephemeris of Ausonius.42 Dionisotti’s article was titled “From Ausonius’ Schooldays?” Today Joseph Pucci (2009) has carefully and successfully taken away the question mark from Dionisotti’s title by linking the Ephemeris with the earlier manuscript. This particular colloquium is a bilingual description from the perspective of a schoolboy of his typical day. The Ephemeris is a series of poems in varied meters by the schoolmaster Ausonius describing his typical day. We therefore do now have such a description as Haarhoff wanted a century ago, not only of a lively Gallic boy, but also of his irrepressible schoolmaster who seems never to have stopped being a schoolboy at heart. We will treat these colloquia and the Ephemeris in Chapter Three, when we shall see in detail how Ausonius differed from the stars of his students’ generation, who kept old pedagogical forms, but used them as vehicles for new teachings. Recent scholars have also made better use of nonliterary evidence. In particular we now know much more about what we have in ostraka and papyrus, two forms of evidence almost always presevered by accident rather than intention. When we add inscriptions and more recently discovered non-literary manuscripts like the one just mentioned, we begin to make use of that evidence which is closest to the daily life of the schoolroom. Two scholars in particular deserve credit for their syntheses of this evidence. On the one hand, Robert Kaster (1988) in Guardians of Dionisotti (1982) “From Ausonius’ Schooldays?,” especially pp. 83; 122–125. 42

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Language has collected literary and nonliterary evidence for prosopography of grammatici on an unprecedented scale. Haarhoff made his comment about the “lively picture of the Gallic boy going to school, such as Lucian gives us in the case of Greece,” when he was referring to the Hermotimus, in which we find the metaphor of the mountain for paideia (education). This was the starting point for a study of new evidence published by Rafaella Cribiore, who selected this image for the theme of her Gymnastics of the Mind (2001). Her findings, based mainly on material and documentary evidence, agree with and fill out the picture described by the literary evidence we have already examined. Cribiore, borrowing the metaphor from Lucian, compares the course of ἐγκύκλιος παιδεία (engkúklios paideía) or orbis doctrinae to a hill or mountain. The terms are equivalent in Greek and Latin and may be translated as “curriculum” or “circuit of education.” The student would proceed up the hill not by scaling the steep slope head-on, but by many slow circles completed with painstaking regularity. Thus, Lucian’s Hermotimus says, many begin the work, but few progress far once they find themselves dripping with sweat: ἀναστρέφουσιν ἀσθµαίνοντες καὶ ἱδρῶτι ῥεόµενοι, οὐ φέροντες τὸν κάµατον (out of breath and drenched in sweat, unable to bear the work, they turn back). Some go a little of the way, becoming discouraged at the difficulty of the work, but those who come to the summit (τὸ ἄκρον) live the rest of their lives in happiness, looking from the heights upon any others as mere ants.43 This context illuminates the pedagogical poetry of Ausonius. By comparing the run of the mill, anonymous work, usually of students, with the examples furnished by the master in the workshop of letters—literally the masterpieces—we will find a new appreciation for Ausonius’s original genius. Unlike the more famous Christians of his day, he followed the other path offered by Jesus

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ὅσοι δ’ ἂν εἰς τέλος διακαρτερήσωσιν οὗτοι πρὸς τὸ ἄκρον ἀφικνοῦνται καὶ τὸ ἀπ’ ἐκείνου εὐδαιµονοῦσιν θαυµάσιόν τινα βίον τὸν λοιπὸν βιοῦντες, οἷον µύρµηκας ἀπὸ τοῦ ὕψους ἐπισκοποῦντές τινας τοὺς ἄλλους. But as many as persevere to the end, these come to the summit and are happy from that time on and life a wonderful kind of life for the rest of their lives, looking from the height upon any others as mere ants (Hermotimus 5).

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in the parable of the wineskins: Ausonius drinking old wine did not want the new. Instead he said, “The old is better.” As we will see with the Technopaegnion, Ausonius in his grammatical poetry created works with many of the same virtues and limitations of Neoclassical paintings of the 19th century. To the modern, the tired, same few subjects become tedious, while the formal technical mastery tends to discourage new artists in its perfect congruency to the stylistic ideal. On the one hand, modern trends in art and literature away from that focus described by Aristotle on the eminent man of illustrious lineage, move toward focus upon the ordinary life of the common people.44 We can easily sympathize with a trend toward new subject matter as a reaction to a widespread sense of tedium. On the other hand, the despair realist painters or graphic artists a century ago attempting to compete with photography led to new stylistic experiments: the subjective styles of van Gogh and Matisse, or of Picasso or Dalí. No mere coincidence that Dalí, like some other Fauvist, Cubist, and Surrealist painters, was also a photographer and film artist. All those we have mentioned by name were additionally printmakers. By understanding these aspects at the beginning of our encounter with the work, instead of experiencing disappointment in discovering them as a result of the encounter, we move from them as a starting point toward the personal voice of the artist. Then the encounter with the art becomes an encounter with a person, which is often intrinsically and deeply compelling, and always more so than an encounter with a mere object. This ought to be the goal, not only of the artist whose work is an act of communication, but also of the person who attempts to understand it.

He mentions “Oedipus and Thyestes and illustrious men of that kind of lineage” in Poetics, 13: οἷον Οἰδίπους καὶ Θυέστης καὶ οἱ ἐκ τῶν τοιούτων γενῶν ἐπιφανεῖς ἄνδρες. 44

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Figure 1: P. Mich. inv. 41 We now proceed to some examples of exercises: the equivalent in Ausonius’s life of the printmaking and photography just mentioned. We can infer from papyrus fragments that teachers both in the Greek East and the Latin West practiced copy work of

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the Sayings of Diogenes. For example, P.Mich.inv. 41 (Figure 1) of the 1st century AD, shows a list of the sayings of Diogenes, each one brief (a couple of lines) and beginning with a phrase such as “The philosopher Diogenes said…” or “Diogenes, on being asked, said…” This kind of repetition suggests that the text was meant not for general reading, but to be an exemplar for students to copy and to memorize.45 One example, which we find also in Book Five of Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations (a treatise on whether virtue alone is sufficient for man’s happiness), is from the time when Alexander the Great approached Diogenes the Cynic where he sat in a public place in the heat of the day. “Name anything you want,” Alexander said in an enlightened gesture to the famous philosopher. “Move over a bit,” Diogenes replied with a gesture of his own, “you’re blocking my sun” (Cicero Tusc. 5.32). For a modern example, compare the Rules of Civility that George Washington copied out as a boy, hosted today on the Mount Vernon website (https://www.mountvernon.org/george-washington/rules-of-civility/): Rule Number 1: Every Action done in Company, ought to be with Some Sign of Respect, to those that are Present; Rule Number 2: When in Company, put not your Hands to any Part of the Body, not usualy Discovered; and so on. The prose form, together with the gnomic simplicity and universality of application, suggest that a rhetor used it. Certainly in Cicero’s and Washington’s cases they were the training for a teenage boy who would one day enter public life. Such simple exercises were not limited to one stage of the child’s education. As we saw earlier in the case of Albina, the domains of the litterator and the grammaticus may overlap. So might those of the grammaticus and the rhetor. In fact the rhetors expected the grammatici to begin the boy’s training in rhetoricē. As Suetonius put it, ne scilicet sicci omnino atque aridi pueri rhetoribus Cribiore (2001: 139 n.39) points out that a biography would incorporate these sayings into the narrative, and a gnomologium would merely list them reducing the introductory phrase to “ὁ αὐτός…” For a modern example, compare the Rules of Civility that George Washington copied out as a boy, hosted today on the Mount Vernon website: https://www.mountvernon.org/george-washington/rules-of-civility/.

45

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traderentur, “so that the boys would not be handed on to the rhetors entirely sapless, you might say, and dry.”46 These sayings of Diogenes serve the purpose. In this arrangement each saying is complete and a student could be made to copy one in isolation. They could then be deployed by a master rhetorician with apt timing, such as Cicero. The rhetor trained his boys in other exercises, one of which was called the chreia. The chreia (derived from the Greek word for “use,” we might call them “handy”) was a fuller anecdote rather than a simple saying. It will be obvious how the example of the saying of Diogenes to Alexander cited above may be compressed into one or stretched into the other. This is the original context of Ausonius’s Ludus Septem Sapientum (The Masque of the Seven Sages). These poems bring seven wise men on stage, each to recite his most famous saying. Ausonius’s authorship of these poems has been questioned, partly because of their similarity to extant papyri that prove that schoolmasters made their students write lists of the Seven Sages and their famous sayings. For example, P. Oxy. 61.4099 (Figure 2) contains a list of mythological names (the Eumenides, the Harpies, the Hesperides, vv. 10–12) and the sayings of the Seven Sages.47

Suetonius corroborates this, De Gramm. et Rhet. 4.6–7: veteres grammatici et rhetoricam docebant […] secundum quam consuetudinem posteriores quoque existimo, quamquam iam tum discretis professionibus, nihilo minus vel retinuisse vel instituisse et ipsos quaedam genera meditationum ad eloquentiam praeparandam, ut problemata, paraphrasis, adlocutiones, ethologias atque alias hoc genus; ne scilicet sicci omnino atque aridi pueri rhetoribus traderentur. 47 Huys (1996). Cribiore (2001: 208) remarks: “After first encountering mythology with the elementary teacher, a student pursued deeper knowledge in this area through mythographical texts, as is shown, for instance, by a papyrus where a student combined catalogue material with the popular maxims of the Seven Sages.” 46

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Figure 2: P. Oxy. 61.4099

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The matter of this very fragmentary papyrus from the first century AD would have been familiar to Ausonius’s boys. We may draw the same parallel between the fragmentary papyrological remains of descriptions of the heroes of the Trojan war and Ausonius’s Epitaphia, which do for the war heroes what the Ludus does for the wise men (e.g., P. Oxy. 65.4460, Figure 3). Ausonius addressed the Ludus, too, to Drepanius Pacatus, a significant point that we will recall in Chapter Three. The difference, apart from mere survival, between Ausonius and the papyri, lies in the uniquely personal voice which we hear when we take for granted the relationship of the master and student.

Figure 3: P. Oxy. 65.4460 Another type of exercise is represented by the onerously named hermeneumata Pseudodositheana, bilingual speech excercises for students of Latin and Greek. Schoolboys used these booklets, which were full of lists, morphological drills, and concordance of Latin and Greek vocabulary, to learn the languages comparatively, as seen in the sample page reproduced below (Figure 4).

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Figure 4: Vindob. suppl. gr. 43 c 18r Each long narrative section was called a colloquium. In these narrative descriptions of the typical day, the parallel Latin and Greek texts are interlinear. Ausonius, who himself wrote many macaronic poems, i.e. those in which Latin and Greek are used promiscuously as if a single language.48 As a lifelong educator, he must have been familiar with such works as these, which were widespread, many, and various. A comparison of one of the hermeneumata with the Ephemeris will show definite parallels. A sample page of the colloquium is reproduced below (Figure 5).

48

e.g., Epp. 8; 10.

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Figure 5: Vindob. suppl. gr. 43 c 12r. An analysis of Dionisotti’s exemplary schoolbook reveals that its structure is not linear and does not represent a single narrative.49 First, the preface (1–2) explains briefly the purpose of the text. The first-person narrative of the day’s events begins with a description of waking up before or after the sunrise, or even both: tempus est, hora est, ante lucem (προ ορθρου) ut manicemus ad scholam (ορθριοµεν

Pucci (2009) showed the many connections between this colloquium and Ausonius’s Ephemeris. In what follows we will begin with a summary of the colloquium itself.

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προϲ ϲχολην) (it is time, it is the hour, before light (before morning) to go in the morning to school (to go in the morning to school) (3– 4), but note that after dressing (5) he commands his slave: surge, puer, vide si iam lucet (λαµπει): aperi ostium et fenestram (arise, lad, see if it’s light yet (light): open the door and the window) (6). The coherence and logical sequence of the narrative are sacrificed to drill various points of morphology and etiquette. For example, a verb might be repeated with its number changed. This illustrates the mutability of these exercises, both with regard to one another and internally. The text is not merely a narrative, but a composite primarily used for drilling forms and vocabulary, something between a mere parallel bilingual glossary, which the hermeneumata also include, and the chreia found in the progymnasmata (preliminary exercises), the more advanced excercises done with the rhetor. The engkúklios paideía, as we saw above, was not a series of discrete concentric rings that happened to be on the same mountain, but a spiral path that returned again and again to faces already seen as it led to the top. The colloquium of this hermeneuma also teaches good morals by describing the good boy’s daily schedule in first-person narrative. After getting dressed (again), washing, and getting dressed again (7–13), the youth prays briefly: adoravimus (adoravi) deos omnes, et petivi (et petivimus) bonum processum et eventum diei totius (we have adored (I have adored) all the gods, and I have asked (and we have asked) for a good progress and outcome of the whole day) (14). The rest of the morning is taken up with going to school and having lessons, and greeting everyone imaginable (not just everyone encountered). In fact after going to school and greeting everyone along the way, the narrator goes home and greets every member of the household and then goes back to school (15–28). The lessons done, the narrator goes to the “wrestling place” to study Latin and Greek: ad ceroma (παλεστραν) ad Latina studia et ad Graeca (to the wrestling ground (wrestling ground) for Latin studies and Greek) (29). In the West this likely did not include actual wrestling, as among the ephebi of the East. Similarly today some countries, like the United States and Germany, use the terms “gymnasium” and “high school” as near-

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equivalents.50 Here with the grammatici he studies just such a text as we are reading (34), as well as the expected canon of Greek and Latin authors. At the seventh hour he is dismissed and returns home (40–42). Lunch is the subject of four more sections (43–46), and then a bite to eat after bathing (gustare a balneo / γευµα απο βαλανιου (a tase after a bath / a taste after a bath) (47), which is described in detailed lists of preparations and foods which are unlikely to have been found at one and the same meal due to geographical constraints (to say nothing of taste) (47–54). For example, at 49–52 he says: “Bring out the wine vases and the wine, oil, and fish-sauce, the beer…vinegar and unmixed wine…one pitcher of absinthe and another of spiced wine.” After this meal but before it in time (if we remember sections 43–46) comes the bath itself (55–64) and then a scolding from the slave before bed for drinking too much (65–69). Tacked on to the end (for our narrator has already gone to sleep) is a forum-scene in which the narrator observes trials (70–77). As can be seen from the examples, the chronology of the narrative’s details is jumbled, but for the most part it follows a progression of the day’s events from waking to sleeping. Details that do violence to the structure of the text as a narrative provide practice for vocabulary, morphology, and the idiom of social intercourse. The filiusfamilias is expected to know whom to greet, how to greet him or her, and what is his or her relative rank. The text is an integrated lesson for the schoolboy.

NEW WINE

In their efforts to gain a fair hearing for the Scriptures, then to establish them as normative, the Christian revolutionaries of the fourth century had at least three fronts on which to press their advantages. In the first place, they could look back to the heroics of the martyrs. Secondly, they could gesture all around at the ascetics who could stand up to the authorities, sometimes literally so on a pillar, with such confidence as to take the teeth out of the Cf. Haarhoff (1920: 100–101), as well as Marrou (105–108), who cites Inscriptiones Graecae 2.2245 in support of his claim that the ephebia in Athens ended by 266–267 at the latest. 50

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threat of martyrdom. Thirdly, far less dramatically, but perhaps most importantly, they were effecting a revolution in the school curricula, above all by changing the subject matter of the school texts from classical literature to Scripture. In so doing they were putting new wine in old wineskins, which eventually would burst, giving way to new dominant genres for instruction and for the building of Christian culture. This is why the poet of the fourth century most eminent in the estimation of contemporaries was Ausonius, not Prudentius; Augustine was better known for his De Doctrina Christiana than for his Confessions or his homilies and letters, the latter three of which are read today far more than the DDC. For every Commentarius of a Church Father that survives, and there are many, there are dozens or scores or even a hundred homilies and letters. But in the fourth century the future was neither known nor inevitable. When Jerome interpreted the Gospel precept not to put new wine in old wineskins, he cast the old wineskins as the Scribes and Pharisees. He said that the words of the Gospel could not be held by them, who were vitiated by the traditions of the elders, the maiores: Sermo igitur Evangelicus apostolis potius quam Scribis et Pharisaeis est infundendus, qui maiorum traditionibus depravati sinceritatem praeceptorum Christi non poterant custodire, “The word of the Gospel, then, is to be poured into the apostles rather than the Scribes and Pharisees, who, vitiated by the traditions of the elders, were not able to secure the purity of the precepts of Christ.”51 Ausonius, on the other hand, held precisely that in his wineskins: the mos maiorum, the custom of the ancestors, together with the morals which were after all an essential reason for the sweat and toil of paideia.52 Jerome saw that a newly reborn convert, who merely had inclination to belief, credulitas, in the Gospel, would lose even that if subjected to the excessive austerity of fasting and continence: Donec renatus quis fuerit, et […] novum hominem induerit, non potest severiora ieiunii et continentiae sustinere praecepta, ne per austeritatem nimiam, etiam credulitatem quam nunc habere videtur, amittat, “Until the man he has been has been 51 52

Comm. In Ev. Matt. 1.9.16–17 (PL 26 Col. 57D). Cf. Cribiore (2001: 250–252).

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renewed, and…he has put on the new man, he can not bear the more severe precepts of fasting and continence, lest through excessive austerity he lose even that inclination to belief which he now is seen to have.”53 But Ausonius as a conservative grammaticus among revolutionaries was not concerned with the midwifery of rebirth. He was (both metaphorically and literally) a vintner, a seller of old wine, as those who use his name now at the Château Ausone are vignerons. In Bordeaux viticulture “Second Wine” is a term that denotes less expensive wine considered inferior for a variety of reasons, especially because it comes from younger vines. Bordeaux winemakers today use the terms “Grand Vin” and “Second Wine” as Ausonius would have thought of the classics and the Scriptures. For Ausonius, the goal of his work was the goal of the grammaticus. If the student learned to play by the rules of the world into which he was born, then the teacher had succeeded. As Cribiore put it: “Education trained a male or female student to follow rules, to persevere to the end of a task, to scrutinize a text dutifully in search of clues, to repeat endless drills, and to endure long hours.”54 If the student could learn to sustain hard mental work, qualifying himself for a career of such work, then the teacher had succeeded. Libanius, writing about the same time in Greek from Antioch, as Ausonius’s equal in talent, reputation, and professional success, put it thus: “Hard work gave the crown to the athlete and the soldier, allowed the captain to save his ship and the doctor to save his patient consumed by a disease, and gave the farmer the fruits of the earth.”55 Paideia was fundamentally opposed to cultural and moral revolution because it was the means by which new members of society learned to operate within the existing structures of their culture. Cribiore’s closing remarks are happily apt to the case of Ausonius: “Inevitably [education] also showed them that the order and rules that governed the world had to be respected. But even as education taught good behavior and obedience both to rules and to those who enforced them, it ibid. (Col. 57C). Cribiore (2001: 250). 55 Or. 55.27; quoted in Cribiore (2001: 251). 53 54

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also gave people—and particularly those who reached its higher stages—arrogance, confidence, a sense of superiority with respect to the uneducated or the less educated, and the capability to rule them.”56 We will see that Ausonius inculcated in his students respect for the order and rules that governed the world, but that he also gave them, and manifested in himself, a sense of superiority, and the capability to rule. After he retired that influence would pass to his counterparts who dealt in the Scriptures—the monks and bishops.

Cribiore (2001: 252). These are the words with which she closes the book.

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CHAPTER THREE. AUSONIUS OF BORDEAUX: OLD WINE IN OLD WINESKINS καὶ οὐδεὶς πιὼν παλαιὸν θέλει νέον· λέγει γάρ· ὁ παλαιὸς χρηστός ἐστιν. And no man drinking old, hath presently a mind to new: for he saith, “The old is better.” Luke 5:39 (Douay-Rheims)

The teachers of classical paideia in late antiquity aimed and drove their students to the ideal of φιλοπονία (philoponía, love of toil). Anyone who has labored through the final stages of mastery of a technique will appreciate the special hardening of the will required to push the boundaries from functional proficiency to expertise. The work is repetitive and yields little practical fruit. The student justifies it by fixing in his mind the ideal of mastery itself, not the promise of employing the last arcana lying at the fringe of his or her study. In the days of Libanius and Ausonius, those bits of knowledge that completed paideia, the last few steps up the hill, were the ones that finally mark the boundaries of eloquence for the late antique nursling of the Muses. These were reserve and boldness: verecundia and παρρησία (parrēsía). The classically-trained gentleman, the ideal that Ausonius held up before his students, knew when to speak and when to be silent, when to spur the spirited impulse onward, and when recognition of another’s excellence would redound to his own credit. Most of our sources for 55

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the period, however, that speak directly about these ideals and aims, are the Christian voices that did so precisely in order to overturn them. For the Fathers of the Church, who became the worshipers of the Word, the public man’s moral and professional worth would be defined by something other than this complex of virtues which Plato and the orators called the art of rhetoric, or simply “the art,” (ῥητορικὴ) τέχνη (rhetoricē téchnē), which Cicero and Quintilian called eloquentia (eloquence). The Word, for men like Augustine and Jerome, was ultimately the One who was good in his simplicity. Any complicating appurtenances could in the final analysis be discarded. For Ausonius, who remained a lover of the word, the word remained a touchstone for proving what was good. They differed because they disagreed about what words, what texts ought to be held as the center of paideia: the Fathers were moving on to a new canon. Having examined the pedagogical methods of the grammaticus and the rhetor in late antiquity, we will now be able to see new answers to the questions that scholars raise about many of the collections of poems in the Ausonian corpus. Some poems, for example the Oratio Versibus Rhopalicis, posterity has dismissed as “unworthy of even an unfinished work of Ausonius.”1 Scholars have at various times doubted the authenticity of the translations of Greek epigrams, the Ludus Septem Sapientum, and the De Rosis Nascentibus, formerly part of the Appendix Vergiliana, all of which have been transmitted in the manuscripts of Ausonius. Similarly scholars have disagreed whether to dismiss as spurious, or merely unimportant, the Epitaphia on the heroes of the Trojan war, and the summaries (Periochae) of Homer, the former admitted to the corpus and the latter rejected.2 The middle ages have been kinder than the moderns to the Eclogae (Eclogues or Selections). The Venerable Bede read these short poems on mundane topics like the days of the week and the labors of Hercules, or the sayings of Diogenes the Cynic. Today the title, which had also been used by a famous predecessor of Ausonius, has been called “ordinary” and Green (1991: 667), summarizing the opinions of Scaliger (1574), Brandes (1895), Mohrmann (1928), Langlois (1969), and Martin (1972). 2 Green (1991) 677. 1

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“unlikely to derive from Ausonius himself.”3 They may seem to us mundane and uninspired, yet Ausonius wrote all of this poetry in the same natural, fresh voice that he brought to his students, who were his audience and motivation. We will call it the “grammatical” poetry because we will see that it was inspired by and written for his own students and fellow cultivators of grammaticē. The characteristic feature of the grammaticus, his dedication to his art—grammaticē—influenced Ausonius more than any other pressures or enthusiasms. The primary goal, then, not always obvious because the secondary goal, that of memorizing the canonical texts, had not for centuries been disputed, was moral. It was the ideal of philoponía.

THE TECHNOPAEGNION

In the Technopaegnion, Ausonius made a list similar to those of other grammatici in their Artes, for example, that of Charisius mentioned in Chapter Two.4 In this series of 16 poems, which Ausonius addresses in a preface to the Proconsul Pacatus, the famous orator and likely editor of the Panegyrici Latini,5 each hexameter line ends in a monosyllable. In the first poem of the series the poet also begins each line with the last word of the previous line, and ends the poem with a repetition of the first word: res. With 161 lines in all the poems together, in this one, which bears no title, Ausonius selected those sixteen monosyllables which he could subordinate to a philosophical or moralizing theme: res (thing, affiar, matter), fors (chance), spes (hope), mors (death), nox (night), lux (light), Sol (Sun), Mars, gens (race, nation), fas (divine right), mos (custom), lex (law), ius (law, right), mens (mind, heart), cor (heart), vis (force, violence), res. From these he fashions a typically Roman commentary on the powers of fortune over the affairs of men (vv. 1–2), the indomitability of hope (vv. 2–3), the progression from natural phenomena to their personifications in the Roman pantheon (vv. 5–8), the superiority of the Roman’s faculty for government to that of the warlike and uncivilized alien Green (1991) 421. Ars 1.14. 5 See Matthews (1975), 227–229. 3 4

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nations, in this case the “Thracians” (vv. 8–10). He discerns the natural law subsisting in the mind of god, to which man has access by virtue of his own mind, through which he participates in deity (vv. 10–15). In the last line Ausonius reasserts the modest self-deprecation of his preface: vis tamen hic nulla est, tantum iocus et nihili res, “strength, however, there is none in this: ’tis but a jest and a worthless thing” (16). Many have preferred to take Ausonius at his word. Finally, however, the judgment of the last few centuries was overturned by critical scholarship of the last few decades.6 In Ausonius’s world, especially after his political career began, literary speech was dangerous. Sometimes the best place to hide is in public: by inviting an obvious and superficial meaning Ausonius could make subtle comments in relative safety. We will return to this later when we discuss the Cupid Crucified and the Mosel in detail. Ausonius aimed at that Alexandrian ideal which Ovid articulated in the story of Pygmalion: ars adeo latet arte sua, “so far does art by its art lie hidden” (Metamorphoses 10.252). R.P.H. Green, who ingeniously has found seven monosyllables that Ausonius did not use, so judges the Technopaegnion.7 Green also claims on the basis of the address to Pacatus that Ausonius must have been about eighty when he wrote the poems, which therefore “should not be dismissed as puerile (594).” Perhaps Green meant only to refer ironically to Ausonius’s age, but Pacatus was so renowned for his oratorical skill that Theodosius had promptly awarded him for his panegyric with a governorship of the lucrative and relatively calm province of Africa.8 If Ausonius sent this In this case it was Green’s critical edition and commentary in English of the whole corpus (1991), followed by Giovine’s critical edition and commentary in Italian on the Technopaegnion (1996). In his review of the latter, Green was able to use the phrase “this no longer obscure theme.” 7 Green (1991), 583–596, especially 593–594. Two of Green’s monosyllables are homonyms to words Ausonius used, viz., frons (frondis instead of frontis) and vas (vasis instead of vadis), the rest are daps, gryps, lynx, par, and splen. Charisius, to his credit, had vas (the neuter noun, not the masculine, which Ausonius had), and par, which he explains with the parenthetical remark “ἴσος.” 8 Matthews (1975), 228–229. 6

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to Pacatus before he gave the speech which launched his career, then the schoolmaster deserves some credit for the success of his pupil. If on the other hand he sent it after Pacatus had validated his skill in a probatio (test) on the biggest stage, then Ausonius would have been extending a serious invitation in his usual language to a respected fellow man of letters, to publish his poetry. We will see in his correspondence with Symmachus how the poet could publish his work by addressing it in a letter to a highly placed friend, to the great credit of the publisher if it was a good poem.9 Whichever of these is true, we can be sure that Ausonius took these poems much more seriously than nugae (trifles). He used this term in prefaces, but he must have expected his reader to take it as ironically as Catullus had meant it when he used it (Technopegnion 4.1; Catullus 4.1). Ausonius wanted to be identified with Catullus, and he considered his poetry to be important. Both of these facts are necessary for us to understand why he wrote the way that he did.10 But there was a danger in identifying with a salacious pagan poet in a world falling under the spell of chaste preachers, just as there was a danger in speaking too directly about others in the world of the emperor’s court. Ausonius believed that art flourished at the boundaries. The limits at which he dwelled as a poet were the threats of violence and of censorship. It would not be the only time Ausonius recalled Catullus’s famous preface: he used it to begin his Eclogues as well.11 There

Symmachus, Ep. 1.14; we will return to this subject in Chapter Four. Scott McGill (in Elsner and Hernández-Lobato, 2017) makes a similar point (on pp. 272–275): “This is to adopt the familiar, modest pose… At the same time, the word ineptiae suggests that Ausonius is playing a more involved game… While the affected modesty is emphatic, there is within it an indication of a different design: to relate that Ausonius writes similar “trifles” to those of Catullus, which is a way of elevating Ausonius’s poetry” (273). 11 Green removes it from the Eclogues on the grounds that they are too “serious and sometimes sophisticated” for this preface. Praef. 4.1, addressed to Latinus Pacatus Drepanius (Drepanio filio): Cui dono novum lepidum libellum? Cf. Ep. 9.a.3, the preface addressed to Sextus Petronius 9

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too he was addressing the same man, Pacatus, with his favorite title for his students: filius. Characteristically of Ausonius and of the period, the preface speaks too subtlely to be taken at face value. Today we read the Technopaegnion more seriously than Ausonius told us to. His deliberate echo of Catullus invites comparison with a poet who often spoke of living persons, spoke of them in superficially “trifling” tones, and spoke through disguises and innuendo that guaranteed the ability to deny the words as evidence to convict him of personal opinion or belief.12 Then, by verbally echoing Catullus to Pacatus, thereby recalling his earlier similar preface to the same person, Ausonius invokes the teacherstudent relationship between them. This relationship guarantees well-understood boundaries within which the liberally educated could exercise that parrēsía which might in other circumstances be dangerous. The liberally educated were permitted boldness of speech (parrēsía): it was even a mark of one’s own education to permit it to another. Macrobius in the Saturnalia provides an example at 1.1.1–4. In this section he first observes the circumstances favorable to conversation: it is the Saturnalia, when roles may be reversed and boundaries transgressed. Moreover we are met at the house of a cultured man, Vettius Agorius Praetextatus, wherefore we can expect colloquium liberale and comitas: Romanae nobilitatis proceres doctique alii congregantur et tempus sollemniter feriatum deputant colloquio liberali, convivia quoque sibi mutua comitate praebentes, “the leading members of the Roman nobility and other learned men are gathered and devoting the time of the customary religious observance to cultured conversation, sharing meals with good fellowship all around” (Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.1.1). Macrobius mentions Probus, the consul of 371 (Probo praefecto praetorio), as well as the poem which follows (Ep. 9.b), which also recalls Catullus 1. 12 Haarhoff (1920: 81), “We instinctively agree with a commentator [Peuch (1887)] who regards him as ‘tritis et vulgivagis sententiis ex usu scholastico ditatus’. His philosophical verses [Eclogue 2] in the Eclogues are translations and only the first part strikes a deeper moral note; the rest, like the ΝΑΙ ΚΑΙ ΟΥ ΠΥΘΑΓΟΡΙΚΟΝ, is all more or less trifling.” McGill, quoted above, shows how attitudes have changed in a century.

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two separate groups of persons, the Romanae nobilitatis proceres and also the docti. The two groups, which he identifies separately, show the effect of paideia in society by dramatizing the interplay between verecundia and parrēsía. Peter Brown in Power and Persuasion (1988) explained the parrēsía accorded to the speaker, as well as the indulgence of the social superior, which increased his own standing among his peers: “to give way to such persuasion, indeed, heightened his authority in Athens… Charis and hémerotés, graciousness and gentle courtesy, with their all-important accompaniment, a willingness to grant favors to men of similar background, were the hallmark of the educated person.”13 This custom, like large boulders in a river, signified a safe depth for navigating. By contrast, as smaller rocks portend dangers just beneath the surface, so also the lack of eloquence and polish, the interplay between verecundia and parrēsía could be dangerous and even deadly. “So much alert attention to deportment betrays a fact almost too big to be seen. We are in a world characterized by a chilling absence of legal restraints on violence in the exercise of power.”14 Robert Kaster, writing at the same time as his future Princeton colleague, describes the other side of the same coin: “Verecundia is the virtue of knowing one’s place, the virtue par excellence of the status quo, an abundantly social virtue, regulating the behavior of men in groups.”15 The two virtues served to balance each other in the cultivated late-antique gentleman with hopes for a public career. They were constantly being modeled and imitated in the classroom. The boundaries of the paideutic relationship provided both a safe space for freedom of speech and set limits to the range of that speech. Ausonius could address Pacatus in the moralizing tones of a schoolmaster to a schoolboy, as for example he does in the third poem of the collection, or in the sixth. This poem, titled De Membris, describes the course of development of a boy at the beginning stages of puberty, when he grows adult teeth, feels his voice deepen, and learns to subject the heart and the senses, now growing warm, to the mind’s mastery: palpitat irrequies vegetum Brown (1988: 45; see also p. 61). ibid. p. 50. 15 Kaster (1988: 60–61). 13 14

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teres acre calens cor, / unde vigent sensus, dominatrix quos vegetat mens, “restless, full of life, round, eager, warm throbs the heart, wherefrom the feelings have their strength: they are enlivened by their mistress, Mind” (Technopaegnion 6.5–6). This period sees the mens become dominatrix (v. 6) over the body, throughout the poem described in concrete visceral terms—frons (3), os (4, 7), cor (5), viscera (4), crus (9), corporea moles (9)—through the boy’s learning to repeat and recite verses: in verba refert modulata lege loquax os (v. 7). This line must refer to the practice, in the early years of a boy’s education, of carefully following along and reading aloud verses with the grammaticus, of Vergil or Terence. We see it across the empire through the centuries in the authors who learned under grammatici or even became grammatici themselves, for example St. Augustine,16 Dionysius Thrax,17 or their predecessor Quintilian,18 or even elsewhere in Ausonius himself. Because texts were written in scriptio continua, streams of letters without spaces or punctuation, understanding must precede reading aloud. In the Protrepticus to his grandson, he described at length the complex process of picking out and correctly pronouncing words in the stream of scriptio continua that the boy would have seen on his page, wax or ostrakon: tu flexu et acumine vocis innumeros numeros doctis accentibus effer adfectusque impone legens. Distinctio sensum De Doctrina Christiana, Praef.9: Qui legit audientibus litteras, utique quas agnoscit enuntiat; qui autem ipsas litteras tradit, hoc agit ut alii quoque legere noverint: uterque tamen id insinuat quod accepit, etc., in his description of the dangers of unsystematic or unmethodical exegesis. 17 Ars Grammatica 1.1.5–6: ΠΕΡΙ ΓΡΑΜΜΑΤΙΚΗΣ· Γραµµατική ἐϲτιν ἐµπειρία τῶν παρὰ ποιηταῖϲ τε καὶ ϲυγγραφεῦϲιν ὡϲ ἐπὶ τὸ πολὺ λεγοµένων. Μέρη δὲ αὐτῆϲ ἐϲτιν ἕξ· πρῶτον ἀνάγνωϲιϲ ἐντριβὴϲ κατὰ προϲῳδίαν, δεύτερον ἐξήγηϲιϲ […], κτλ., with specific instructions on reading, intonation, punctuation, etc. 18 Institutio Oratoria, 1.8.1: superest lectio: in qua puer ut sciat ubi suspendere spiritum debeat, quo loco versum distinguere, ubi cludatur sensus, unde incipiat, quando attollenda vel summittenda sit vox, quid quoque flexu, quid lentius celerius concitatius lenius dicendum, demonstrari nisi in opere ipso non potest, etc., with specific instructions about pronunciation. 16

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auget, et ignavis dant intervalla vigorem. (Protrepticus 47–50) …with modulation and with stress of voice bring out the “measureless measures” with a scholar’s accent, and infuse expression as you read. Punctuation enforces the meaning, and pauses give strength even to dull passages. (trans. H.G. Evelyn-White)

The title of the sixth poem, On the Body (De Membris), mentioned above, declares its content; the seventh disavows a theme: De Inconexis. With two exceptions, the other poems in the Technopaegnion are grouped according to a simple superficial theme, e.g., De dis; De cibis; De vere primo; De litteris. The third poem, which we have already discussed, lacks a title; Ausonius adheres to a common practice in the fifth poem, which seems to be a preface in verse.19 The title which Evelyn-White gave this poem, On Things which have no Connexion, more aptly describes its theme than Green’s Miscellaneous Matters.20 Peiper (1886) did not offer a translation in his edition, although he identifies literary allusions as Green does. The poem invokes the image of a kind of bond in each of what we may consider its sections, and describes what contributes to the health of or poses a danger to these bonds. nimia dos (too much dowry) poses a threat to coniugium (marriage) (v. 1), recte facere (doing things right) makes a good rex (king) (v. 3), lis (strife or litigation) threatens amicitia (friendship or alliance) or foedera (federations or alliances) (v. 4). These last evoke for Ausonius the urbs (city), at the center of which lies the arx (citadel) (7–8), all images of bonds between persons. All of these terms are political buzzwords. The reference to dowries and hence marriage is not obviously political, unless we remember the Roman idea of marriage. Wiseman in Catullus and his World explains the political importance of Roman marriage, as well as its at-will contract: “the legalistic Roman attitude to marriage is spelt out with disconcerting clarity: what matters is the contract” (1985: 111). Wiseman makes this observation in the context of a larger point about Ep. 17 to Paulinus, the Eclogues, the Ludus, and the Professores are a few more examples. 20 Evelyn-White (1919: 295); Green (1991: 587). 19

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Catullus. Like Ausonius, Catullus used traditional forms and subject matter to teach his own morals. Wiseman here uses the example of the marriage hymn. Our generation, Wiseman observed in 1985, has shut its eyes to Catullus’ sentimentality, just as Victorian scholars of a hundred years ago closed theirs to his obscenity. “We have missed something, just as they did.”21 This sentimentality—“commitments of the emotional life” (115–116)—is what was unusual about Catullus. For Catullus, “groom and bride have the duty of fidelity” (ibid.). Such a claim carried implicit criticism of his audience. Even those parts of Ausonius’s poem which do not feature a strong central image of a type of bond between persons describe, at the middle and at the end of the poem, the works of men and the importance of their divisions. First Ausonius recalls an old adage. He may have been thinking of Lucian’s attribution of the maxim, “the beginning is half the whole,” to Hesiod, or Hesiod’s own saying, that “the half is more than the whole,” or more likely Aristotle’s metaphysically significant assertion that the beginning seems to be more than half the whole, since the ἀρχή (archḗ, beginning) must contain the τέλος (télos, end): δοκεῖ γὰρ πλεῖον ἢ ἥµισυ τοῦ παντὸς εἶναι ἡ ἀρχή (for it seems that the beginning is more than half of the whole).22 Ausonius himself says that the first part of the work is tantamount to the whole: incipe: quidquid agas, pro toto prima operis pars, “whatever you are about, begin it: good as the whole is a task’s first half” (7.5).23 If he does mean to invoke Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, his following lines about the rewards for virtue and vice, and their ubiquity in the city, are apt. If on the other hand, or in addition, he means to evoke Hesiod, who focuses more on the appropriateness of time in his division of the parts of a work, we will see the end of the poem in a

Wiseman (1985: 116). Evelyn-White (ibid.) notices the similarity to Lucian, Hermotimus 3, Ἀλλὰ τήν γε ἀρχὴν ὁ αὐτὸς οὗτος Ἡσίοδος ἥµισυ τοῦ παντὸς ἔφη εἶναι; and to Hesiod, Works and Days 40, ὅσῳ πλέον ἥµισυ παντός. The passage from Aristotle lies in the beginning of the Nichomachean Ethics, 1098b7. 23 Cf. Epigr. 92: Incipe: dimidium est facti coepisse. superfit / dimidium: rursum hoc incipe et efficies. 21 22

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new light. The last three lines recall the middle section with an echo in dies operosa (10–12) of prima pars operis (5). In this section Ausonius balances his admonition to the reader not to procrastinate (incipe, 5), to fix his eyes on the goal (insinuit caelo…laus, praise makes its way to heaven, 6), and to persevere in little things (auri pretium…est aes, the price of gold is copper, 9), with a lesson on the importance of tempering the different parts of the day with work and leisure: longa dies operosa viro, sed temperies nox (10). This final lesson he adorns with an elaborate reference to the Ethiopians, who know no such thing as night, a fate even worse than those “whose sweaty haste,” as Hamlet’s Horatio put it, “doth make the night joint-labourer with the day”: …nox / qua caret Aethiopum plaga, pervigil, irrequies gens, / semper ubi aeterna vertigine clara manet lux. (Technopaegnion 6.10– 12) …night, / which never falls on the realms of the Ethiopians— a sleepless, restless tribe; / for there, moving in unbroken circle through the sky, shines ever the bright light. (trans. H.G. Evelyn-White)

Perhaps Ausonius is simply deducing the eternal day of the Ethiopians from the darkness of their skin and the nature of their climate, or a misunderstanding of Lucan’s Pharsalia,24 but a simpler explanation may lie in Odyssey 1.22–25, in which we are told that the Ethiopians are a people divided in two (διχθά), some where Hyperion sets and some where he rises: οἱ µὲν δυσοµένου Ὑπερίονος οἱ δ’ ἀνιόντος (1.24). By invoking this passage, Ausonius would set the seal on a poem about bonds, the conditions for their destruction and preservation, and especially on this final section, about the nomadic people who, under the Homeric description, can hardly be a single people at all. As it did for Horatio’s countrymen preparing for war with Norway, the lack of natural boundaries signified a lack of society. But if the poet may have been mindful of any one of these, then we must expect that he would have known this as well as we. Through all of these allusions to On which see Pharsalia 2.587; so Green ad loc., who includes Bentley’s astrological interpretation.

24

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Aristotle, Hesiod, and Homer, Ausonius the grammaticus enriches a catalogue of monosyllables with the mores for which more than anything else the schoolboy had to strive. “Technopaegnion”—the compound word that makes up the title—represents no mere plaything of skill, but a deliberate choice by Ausonius to represent his personal innovation on the grammatical tradition. The parts of the word represent the parts of paideia: first the art of grammaticē, which the grammarian would normally set down in an Ars, the literal Latin equivalent of the Greek téchnē. The other part points to the rhetorical stage of paideia by recalling such works as the Encomium of Helen of Gorgias of Leontini, perhaps the earliest antecedent of the progymnasmata, which the author himself called a παίγνιον (paégnion, plaything).25 Though it was easier to take Ausonius at his word and dismiss these poems as mere frivolities, close reading and recent scholarship warns against it. Through original poetry Ausonius achieved an economy, a mnemonic advantage, and a moral tone which traditional prosaic presentations of the elements of grammar lack.

E CLOGUES, E PIGRAMS, AND MINORA

Ausonius wrote three poems about Diogenes in the collection of Epigrams, with which we may compare the papyrus fragments mentioned above in Chapter Two.26 These poems are all in elegiac couplets, the first a dialogue presented as the inscription on the tomb of Diogenes: dic, canis, hic cuius tumulus? “Tell me, dog, whose tomb is this?” (Epigr. 54.1). Ausonius took an anonymous Greek epigram from the Palatine Anthology for his model here, but—like Catullus with his Ille mi par esse deo videtur, an imitation of Sappho—Ausonius has modified, expanded, and Romanized

Gorgias, Helenae Encomium, frag. 11.132. They are transmitted among the Epitaphia of the heroes of the Trojan War, but Green (1999) places them among the epigrams. For an example of the papyrus fragments, see the section above on P.Mich.inv. 41, and Cribiore’s comments (2001: 139) on these and similar gnomologia.

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it.27 The older poem tells that this is the tomb of Diogenes, that he used to live in the ancient equivalent of a cardboard box, literally a large storage jar for wine or oil (πίθος, 3), and that he has gone to heaven (ἀστέρας οἶκον ἔχει, 4). Ausonius has introduced the manes and Cerberus, and tells us that the reason why Diogenes has gone to make his abode among the stars, which he describes by naming Leo and Erigone,28 is because Cerberus would not let him in: Cerberus inde vetat (4). Why not? Presumably Diogenes could not pay his way, since, as we learn in line three, he could carry all his possessions in his bag and he slept in a wine tub. If we consider them alongside the lists on papyrus fragments that we saw in Chapter Two, these elegiac couplets represent an effort of a schoolmaster not unlike that of a master artist for his apprentices. We also find in the Eclogues constant reminders of the goal of paideia: not merely to make the student sweat, but to make him a vir bonus, a man of good mores. Several of the poems contain lists of the months, the Ides and Nones and the calendar generally, the days of the week, or the units of measurement.29 In elegiac couplets or dactylic hexameter, these poems are easier to remember than the lists found in an Ars, a Commentarius, or a Colloquium, and with good morals, like the Technopaegnion and other poems, they make a timeless claim to intrinsic value. The labors of Hercules and the Pythagorean “Y” (also pertaining to Hercules), of which the primary value is already moral, look ahead to the progymnasmata of the next level, rhetoricē.30 Cribiore is again the principal scholar to whom we are indebted for collecting and describing the place of these exercises in the ancient pedagogical traditions.31 These poems taught eloquence and verecundia by The Greek poem (Anth. Pal. 7.64) runs thus: “Εἰπὲ, κύον, τίνος ἀνδρὸς ἐφεστὼς σῆµα φυλάσσεις;” / “τοῦ Κυνός.” “ἀλλὰ τίς ἦν οὗτος ἀνὴρ ὁ Κύων;” / “Διογένης.” “γένος εἰπέ.” “Σινωπεύς.” “ὃς πίθον ᾤκει;” / “καὶ µάλα· νῦν δὲ θανὼν ἀστέρας οἶκον ἔχει.” 28 clari flagrat qua stella Leonis, / additus est iustae nunc canis Erigonae, 5–6. 29 Ecl. 2–11; 1; and 24, respectively. 30 Ecl. 17; 19–21. 31 Cribiore (1996), Writing, Teachers, and Students in Graeco-Roman Egypt; and more recently Megan Hale Williams (2006: 7–8) The Monk and the 27

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offering examples for imitation, in verses more easily remembered than prose. With all this in mind, Ausonius addressed and sent the Eclogues to be edited and published by his former student, now a vir bonus peritus dicendi of some stature in society, Drepanius Pacatus. In the Ludus Septem Sapientum Ausonius makes a programmatic statement connecting his grammatical poems to memorization and school exercises. Ausonius addressed the preface to Drepanius Pacatus, proconsul of North Africa in 389. This would have been after Ausonius’s political career had passed its point of greatest influence. His son Hesperius, having been the predecessor of Pacatus in governing North Africa, was then praetorian prefect of Italy, Illyricum, and Africa, soon to be succeeded by Ausonius’s son-in-law Thalassius. Paulinus (not yet of Nola) had finished a term as suffect consul, during which time Ausonius himself had been prefect of the Gallic provinces. After all these things had come and gone, Ausonius sent the Ludus to Pacatus in Africa, encouraging him to edit and publish it freely. Why was he still in communication with his friends and high places? Had he discovered a way to direct the power of the word to influence the affairs of state? When Ausonius describes the theater with its cuneata inmanitas (Ludus 2.2.39), we may easily imagine him writing from within the walls of Trier, in which was incorporated one of the famous amphitheaters of late antiquity.32 Unlike the Greeks, Ausonius relates in the Prologue, the Romans did not have one big theater for multiple uses ranging from entertainment to debates of public policy. At first he says that the theater served in the place of a Senate, a custom of which a Roman would be ashamed: nobis pudendum hoc, non et Atticis quoque: / quibus theatrum curiae

Book: Jerome and the Making of Christian Scholarship and Cribiore (2007) The School of Libanius in Late Antique Antioch, together with the massive collection of progymnasmata in the works of Libanius, and others. More recently Blossom Stefaniw (2019) began the story of Christian teachers actually using Scripture to make their classroom exercises in the late 300s, just as Ausonius’s story is ending. 32 For the theater built into the walls, cf. Ludus 2.43–44.

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praebet vicem, “with us this is a disgrace, but is not so also with men of Greece, whose theatre serves them in place of a Senate House” (Ludus 2.24–25). But later he uses a more ambiguous word for the purpose of the Roman theater built of stone with wedge-shaped banks of seats: ludi. As we have already seen, ludus can mean “school,” and as we will see below (in Chapter Four) Ausonius considered the various types of ludi essential proofs of the greatness of Trier. We must not therefore merely think of the venatio when Ausonius imagines the constructa moles saxeo fundamine / in omne tempus…ludis [locus], “a massy structure on stone foundations to be a place for shows to all time” (Ludus 2.38); we ought also think of the Trier of the poet’s day. The character whom Ausonius brings first on stage establishes the link between performance, the poem, and memory. The “Chorus” (as Evelyn-White translates the word) Ausonius chooses to represent with the term ludius. This term, rare but not exceedingly so in the extant literature, is susceptible of the same semantic range, from actor to gladiator, and now with the hint of teacher.33 The task of the ludius will be to assist the student, i.e. the reader, where memory and understanding fail: set si memoria / rebus vetustis claudit, veniet ludius / edissertator harum, quas teneo minus, “but if Memory limps among ancient matters, Chorus will come fully to explain these sayings on which I have too slight a grip” (2.49–51). Elsewhere Ausonius used the term chorus when he wanted to evoke the image of a group. For example he introduces the catalogue of fish in the Mosella with a reference to the group as a chorus, and later he calls the midday dances of nymphs and satyrs by the same name.34 There too Ausonius evokes the pomp and spectacle of ludi, not only theatrales, but of the whole range of meanings of that word. Though Ausonius uses the term chorus often enough, and here would have been a literal correspondence, in this case he chose ludius. This time, Ausonius wanted to emphasize the connection between the ludius and Livy (7.2.6) offers the primary definition of actor, implied by the usage of Cicero (Pro Sestio 116), Ovid (Ars Amatoria 1.111) and Plautus (Curculio 147), and Juvenal uses it to mean gladiator (6.82). 34 Mosella 82 and 178. 33

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memoria. Again, as we have seen before, he passes over the obvious superficial connection, which need not be spelled out, in favor of the more subtle point, in the process achieving greater economy of expression. As we saw above, the Ludus Septem Sapientum has its own parallels in the grammatical papyri. P.Oxy. 61.4099 contained lists of mythological names in addition to the sayings of the seven sages, and we can see the same motivations in the poems of the Ausonian corpus which began with the same idea and ended in subtly modified, mnemonically easier and morally more useful poems. Similar papyri shed the same light on the poems on the calendar and the labors of Hercules. We see this on a much larger scale in the Ephemeris.

THE EPHEMERIS OR TOTIUS DIEI NEGOTIUM

The Ephemeris or Totius Diei Negotium (the MSS give the latter as a subtitle), or The Daily Round,35 contains the most overt personal profession of Christian faith of any of the poems of Ausonius. As a matter of fact it includes a profession in the technical sense: the prayer, the third of eight poems in this collection, contains a clear allusion to the Nicene Creed as well as a challenge to one of the tenets of Arianism.36 But the Ephemeris is not only remarkable for its theology. As we saw above, there are many parallels between this highly artistic work of Ausonius the schoolmaster and the late antique schoolbooks known as hermeneumata. It would be easy to consider Ausonius’s Ephemeris just another versification from the insuppressible pen that would write the Technopaegnion or the Oratio Versibus Rhopalicis.37 The Prayer in

Evelyn-White (1919: 13). 82 and 9–10, respectively: filius ex vero verus, de lumine lumen (82); ipse dei verbum, verbum deus, anticipator mundi quem facturus erat (9–10). Of course, Ausonius avoids making this a theological polemic against Arianism by adding “filius” to v. 82. But the poem as it stands, while avoiding a settled position on one theological distinction, is clearly a profession of faith. 37 Cf. the comments of Sivan (1993: 76): “A number of Ausonius’ poems are closely linked with his views and experience as a teacher. They tell 35 36

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Rhopalic Verse is another metrical feat: each hexameter line is a series of words each one syllable longer than the previous.38 Scholars a century ago dismissed these displays of metrical facility as the tedious game of a bored schoolmaster.39 But we, who lack the metrical facility, or the knowledge of Vergil, of the author of the Ephemeris, may not dismiss the poems in this way. Here as elsewhere Ausonius shows his intimate familiarity with the highly conventional Latin poetry of the classical tradition. Each poem a different meter, Ausonius progresses through Sapphic stanzas (1), Archilochean iambic dimeter (2; 4; 7), dactylic hexameter (3; 8), First Asclepiad (5), elegiac couplets (6): all meters used by the Augustan poets, especially Horace. A consummate formalist, Ausonius makes these poems his own in his variations upon his models. For Ausonius the day consists of a similar morning, combined with details from the end of the day that we read about in the colloquium in Chapter 2. Mane iam clarum reserat fenestras, iam strepit nidis vigilax hirundo: tu velut primam mediamque noctem, us something of the methods used to develop and improve the pupil’s faculty of memory and his vocabulary. They also reflect the teacher’s idiosyncrasies and individual preferences. Both as a teacher and a poet Ausonius certainly displayed a taste for the rare, the archaic and the unusual.” Haarhoff saw this too (1920: 90–93, especially p. 90): “A question that comes into one’s mind on reading Ausonius is whether, in the methods of the Gallic master, mnemonics did not play an important part. We find in the Eclogues verses which, on the face of them, suggest special composition for school use.” 38 For a discussion of the authenticity of these two works, see Green (1991), 667; or Martin, J. “La Prière d’Ausone: text, essai de traduction, esquisse de commentaire.” BAGB 31 (1972), 503–12. The authenticity of the Ephemeris is not in question. 39 So for example Haarhoff, who said of the Cento, “Ausonius, by writing the Cento Nuptialis, proved only one good thing: that he knew the whole of Vergil by heart (92).” No doubt this is true, and it is perhaps this very fact that has elicited the loudest protestations of scorn, often from the greatest of modern scholars, who could not and can not prove the same of themselves.

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The images of opening the window to find the morning sun, the talkative swallow in her nest, and of the scolding for immoderate eating and drinking are familiar, not only from the school exercise, but also from that poet whom Ausonius knew by heart.40 Here, however, personified morning opens the window, the talkative swallow is the vigilax one to wake the sleeper, and the scolding—here occurring in the morning—lashes the slave out of bed. Two of these elements are common, but modified; one is entirely original to the Ephemeris. The elements common to the colloquium quoted above frame the reference to the swallow which Ausonius’s student Paulinus of Nola likely knew. If Ausonius wanted his student to memorize some stanzas in meter and vocabulary similar to those of Horace, he succeeded. The relatively simple word order, compared to Horatian Odes in Sapphic stanza, would be more appropriate to a poem meant as a step in the steep ascent from the elements to Horace’s poetry.41 Here again we see the difference between Ausonius and the Fathers of the Church. St. Paul described the ascent of scriptural paideia with a metaphor of milk and meat. Ausonius, who did not teach his students to read the Scriptures, thus fed them a graduated diet of Horace and the For antecedents of the talkative swallow in her nest, cf. Vergil, Aen. 12.473–4; Georg. 4.305; cf. also Ausonius’s student Paulinus’s description of the swallow as herald of day, Carm. 23.6–7. 41 Indeed, vv. 18–19 contain a quotation of Horace Odes 3.11.38–9: surge, ne longus tibi somnus, unde / non times, detur. 40

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other classical authors. Thus the young and talented Paulinus memorized this poem with its own kind of charm, which he kept into his adulthood.42 The second poem of the Ephemeris recalls the routine of the filiusfamilias in that it describes Ausonius bidding his servant bring his clothes, which are itemized by article, and water for washing, then declaring his intention to pray.43 Here we notice that the poet includes a list of nouns thematically associated like the one we found in the colloquium. But instead of simply saying that he will pray to God (or even simply launching into his prayer), Ausonius points out that he will not pray to pagan gods: foculumque vivi caespitis / vanis relinquo altaribus, “hearths of green turf I leave for the altars of vain gods” (Ephem. 2.13–14). Rather, he will pray to the one God: deus precandus est mihi / ac filius summi dei, “I must pray to God and to the Son of God most high” (15–16). The hermeneumata, on the other hand, are pagan. The tone of the colloquium suggests a world devoid of religious anxiety, secure and confident in the validity of its culture and assurance of its uninterrupted future. It is not merely that prayer to the gods is mentioned: the polemical tone of Ausonius’s poem is completely lacking in them.44 Here is the voice of a man ascendant in his time and place, a personal voice unafraid of conflict. As with the Artes of the grammatici, which evolved slowly by absorption from one author to the next, the contributions of the earlier often indistinguishable from those of the later, retaining some parts for centuries, parts of these colloquia may have been written centuries before others. Ausonius shares other characteristics with the filiusfamilias in his typical day, namely the salutatio (Ephem. 4; 5), Theodosius the First implied that he had memorized some of Ausonius’s grammatical poetry as a boy. Green (1991) prints the letter, which is transmitted with Ausonius’s works, in Appendix B: olim mihi cognita et iam per tempus oblita rursum desidero (1.5–6). 43 Ephem. 2.1–7: surge et calceos / et linteam da sindonem; / da, quicquid est, amictui / … da rore fontano abluam / manus et os et lumina. / pateatque, fac, sacrarium… 44 Dionisotti (1982: 123): “[The hermeneumata] are thoroughly pagan…there is no hint of Christianity; on the contrary, the boy prays to deos omnes (14).” 42

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the lunch (6), and, instead of the schoolroom scene, the professor’s praise of his ready writer (7). Again Ausonius diverges from the model in verses adorned but guileless, and avoids a dissonance between the voice of the poem and his personal voice. He invites the reader to identify the two. If the first two poems in their divergence from the model suggested the identification of the speaker with the poet, the third one, which as an entire poem has no precedent in the colloquia, proclaims it. The speaker of the model considers the mere fact of the prayer, not the prayer itself, important, whereas Ausonius includes the words of the prayer itself; this importation of new substance into the old forms of expression is highly unusual for him. This prayer is both the most important poem for understanding the Ephemeris and the one which most sharply diverges from the conventions of the genre in its demonstration of Ausonius’s Christian faith. At 85 lines, the Oratio is the centerpiece of the series, occupying the most space and the stateliest meter.45 The poem is full of the redefinition of pietas which we will observe below in other poems and in the Gratiarum Actio. It begins with an invocation of God as all-powerful, immaterial, and purely good: Omnipotens, solo mentis mihi cognite cultu, / ignorate malis et nulli ignote piorum, “Almighty one, whom through the worship of my heart alone I know, to the wicked unknown” (1–2). Any Roman could have expressed all of these sentiments under the word pietas. Firstly, the claim of omnipotence is as old as Homer’s Zeus, who could win a game of tug-o-war on a golden rope against all the other gods put together.46 A contemporary Platonist, a gnostic, or If we accept that Ephem. 8 is not part of the collection, as some have done (Green, 1991: 263), the Oratio is the only poem in dactylic hexameter. It would then be flanked by forty-five lines (with lacunae) of lyric meters on the one side, and on the other with sixty lines (with lacunae) of lyric meters, and framed immediately by brief poems in iambic dimeter. 46 The episode is in the first 27 lines of Book 8 of the Iliad, especially vv. 19–20: σειρὴν χρυσείην ἐξ οὐρανόθεν κρεµάσαντες / πάντες τ’ ἐξάπτεσθε θεοὶ πᾶσαί τε θέαιναι. Cf. also Lucian, Hermotimus 3, where Lycinus makes a humorous comparison to the effort of the διδάσκαλος in drawing Hermotimus up the hill of ἐγκύκλιος παιδεία. 45

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a Stoic could all have uttered the other two claims about God. Ausonius establishes pietas as a specifically Christian virtue in the same way that we have seen and will see him to emphasize particular ideas in his poetry in general: by associating it with another text. In this case he explicitly invokes Elias and Enoch of the first book of Kings (or, more likely as he might have known it, the third book of Kings): [via] qua proceres abiere pii quaque integer olim / raptus quadriiugo penetrat super aera curru / Elias et solido cum corpore praevius Enoch, “that road by which the holy men of old departed from the earth; by which Elias, caught up in the chariot, once made his way alive above our lower air; and Enoch, too, who went before his end without a change of body” (40–43). Elijah did heap a holocaust on his altar; this is the course rejected by Ephem. 2.11–14, noticed above. But Elijah’s fire came from God himself, and his demonstration was to prove the vanity of the prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18). Green’s comments on the Oratio are worth noting at length: This poem, which stands out in the extant Ephemeris by virtue of its length and elaboration, was doubtless intended as an emphatic statement of faith and the most important part of Ausonius’ self-presentation… This prayer, then, gives undeniable evidence of Ausonius’ deep and varied religious knowledge…and of his aspirations to live a Christian life, which are expressed with typical modesty… He is the first poet, as far as we know, to compose a non-liturgical Christian prayer, and it is obvious that this powerful composition influenced subsequent Christian writers (250).

As a “non-liturgical prayer” the Oratio is remarkable for its originality. But the appellation must be nuanced, for it may give a misleading impression as to the various and idiosyncratic forms of worship that developed in the countryside of southern Gaul in this period.47 Ausonius and his fellow country squires were Christian pioneers. “Bishops were still largely creatures of the city… The seigniorial elite initiated and energized the Christianization See Bowes, K. Private Worship, Public Values, and Religious Change in Late Antiquity. New York, 2008. For her discussion of Ausonius in particular see Ch. 3: “Christianizing” the Countryside: Rural Estates and Private Cult.

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of the countryside, without the bishops or even in opposition to them.”48 Ausonius gives us a glimpse of the daily piety of the country estate in his description of his chapel and morning prayer. This piety, albeit “non-liturgical” in the strict sense of the word, was above all the Christian piety of Ausonius’s time and place. It was the piety of family chapels and daily devotion. The layman’s regular prayer in this first generation of legal Christianity was a forerunner of the monk’s regular Hours of the monastic explosion that both west and east would witness in the succeeding few generations from Paulinus to Benedict.49 Ausonius’s was the piety of the first generation of legal Christianity in southern Gaul. Placed prominently at the center of the Ephemeris, among his poems modeled upon and intended for classroom usage, the Oratio shines no less brightly for its meter, matter, and freshness of personal expression. As we saw in our reading of the Ludus Septem Sapientum, Ausonius could be frank and open within conventional boundaries. In that case he is able to do this because he is speaking as pater to filius, both terms meant in the broad sense that includes teacher and student, which is usually more than the words “father” and “son” mean in English. As we saw above, by his mastery over the word Ausonius was able to establish a lifelong relationship of suble influence that respected freedom and yet was real, effective, and even forceful. Through the universality of grammaticē, he is able to assume this same voice with his larger audience. The contrast between this voice and that of the courtier addressing the emperor, and thus the whole court, is nowhere more evident than in the stark difference in the blunt honesty of the Professores or this prayer, and the subtle tapestries of the Mosella and the

Bowes (2008), 187. Recall Green’s comments, (1991) 250, on Ausonius’s prayer in Ephem. 3: “Clear signs of Ausonius’ structure and diction appear in the prayers of Prudentius (Ham. 931–66), Victorius (Alithia, praef.), Sedulius (CP 1.60–102), and Merobaudes (De Christo), as well as in the compositions of his pupil Paulinus of Nola.” Prudentius in particular wrote his own Ephemeris for a monastic lifestyle, based on the Ephemeris of Ausonius. 48 49

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Cupido. For this reason we will devote much more time to our treatment of those two longer poems. The prayer was an exception. As the rest of the grammatical poetry shows, Ausonius was unusual among the grammaticustrained Christian ruling elite in that he did not attempt to use the old forms of teaching to hold and convey substantially new and moral theological doctrine. His was the old wine, the old canonical texts, not the Scriptures. Ausonius’s pedagogical poems show that rhetores and grammatici were using the same methods they had always used in the Latin West, and that, in spite of the trend of others filling them with the new wine of the Scriptures, he at least was content to use them in the service of the same morals, grounded in traditional notions of Pythagoreanism, Platonism, Cynicism, the virtues affirmed in the topsy-turvydom of Terence and in the straight-talking moralizing of Sallust, and above all philoponía, that cardinal virtue which his fellow men could rate concretely in the number of verses he had memorized. Ausonius in the grammatical poetry was openly ambitious, striving for the highest prestige of his profession, but according to conventional criteria. Bordeaux, for Ausonius at the top of the heap, was a comfortable place where the poet need fear neither to cherish those norms which brought him to the top, nor to confess to a change in his thinking that might somehow separate him from his peers. He could say of his best friend’s younger brother that he was unworthy of his academic position. Leontius he addresses as tu meae semper socius iuventae, “you were the constant companion of my youth” (Prof. 7.13); of Iucundus, the brother of Leontius he says, te cathedram temere usurpasse locuntur / nomen grammatici nec meruisse putant, “men say you had rashly assumed your chair, and think you did not deserve to be called a grammarian” (Prof. 9.1– 2). With a voice confident in its own superiority, yet balancing criticism and appreciation, he closes the poem to Iucundus with acknowledgement of his earnest sincerity: quamvis impar, nomen tam nobile amasti, / es meritos inter commemorande viros, “since you loved so honourable a title, although unequal to it, I must commemorate you here among men of worth” (Prof. 9.5–6). The reader familiar with the poet’s habit of self-deprecatory prefaces

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will raise his eyebrows at the absence of such at the beginning of the Professores. Nowhere, not even in the last poem, about himself, does the poet abjure the right to his place among the professors of Bordeaux. Yet neither does he boast a brave prediction of flitting about alive on men’s lips or erecting a monument more lasting than bronze. His only prediction for his literary afterlife he speaks with honest, economical simplicity: fors erit, ut nostros manes sic adserat olim, / exemplo cupiet qui pius esse meo, “perchance one day another in the same way may make my shade his theme, and after my example will seek to do a pious deed” (Prof. praef.5–6). It is difficult to imagine a more balanced embodiment of the grammarian’s ideals of boldness and reserve (parrēsía and verecundia) than that which Ausonius showed in his poetry. The trajectory of his career, the height of his influence, his sticking of the landing when his patron died and he must return to Bordeaux, all prove that he had learned the rules and the power that the word could exert in the fourth century. He wrote with the voice of the grammaticus. We will now take a closer look at that period of greatest influence and risk, when Ausonius had entered a world in which the prestigious must defend against the sudden strike of the jealous by discretion and subtlety, where the Gospel precept about serpents and doves was half-followed. We will turn our ear to the voice of a courtier at the Imperial Court.

CHAPTER FOUR. AUSONIUS OF TRIER: THE MOSELLA AS POETRY OF COURT AND CAMPAIGN auro magnus honos, auri pretium tamen est aes. Gold is in high esteem; and yet gold has its price in bronze. Ausonius, Technopaegnion 7.9 (trans. H.G. Evelyn-White)

Ausonius wrote the Mosella, a poem about the German frontier, at a time when that frontier demanded the constant vigilance of such soldier emperors as the Pannonian provinces had provided to the empire in the Valentinian dynasty. The fear and anxiety with which the Rhine frontier afflicted the Romans, and the efficacy of Valentinian’s efforts to allay them, the many forts on both banks attested, especially the one at Bingen, with which Ausonius begins his poem.1 A poem, therefore, built out of the raw materials of Vergil’s Georgics and Aeneid, and over which the specter of those poems must always loom, tamed the wilderness of the frontier for the civilized Roman reader even as it betrayed, like the Georgics, in its reluctance to speak directly about human persons, the anxiety of a minister at the court of an emperor who was

addita…veteri nova moenia Vingo (Mos. 2). For the success of Valentinian’s fortifications against the Alamanni, see Ammianus Marcellinus 28.2 and 30.7.4.

1

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called cruel, greedy, envious and anxious.2 Just as the voice of the author of the Georgics (as well as the Eclogues and Aeneid) has alternately been described as optimistic and pessimistic for decades, Ausonius, by establishing a superficial verbal link to those poems, invites us to hypothesize about his complex attitude toward the regimes under which he served.3 By speaking in these optimistic and pessimistic voices about life on the frontier at the court of Valentinian, Ausonius created in the Mosella a human reflection of reality more profound than the merely superficial mirror images with which he has sometimes justly been accused of contenting himself.4 In juxtaposing the images of the river itself with the girl and her mirror, Ausonius warned us against contenting ourselves with a shallow reading of the poem.5 The Roman optimist and the cynical courtier speak with the same voice. Ausonius, at the time when he had the experiences that inspired the Mosella, the Cupido, and the Bissula, was at the court of Valentinian I (r. 364–375). As a father Valentinian employed Ausonius to tutor the young prince Gratian (359–383) while the emperor spent most of his regnal years securing the Rhine and Danube frontiers. As a member of Valentinian’s household with a daily function, Ausonius would have accompanied the imperial family at Trier and abroad. This experience provided Ausonius with the

Ammianus uses these and similar words in his post mortem assessment of Valentinian’s character: saevitia, avaritia, invidia, timor (30.8). On the poem’s debt to the Georgics see, e.g., Green (1991) 458–9. 3 On the “optimistic” or Oxford School and the “pessimistic” or Harvard school of Vergilian criticism, see Lee (1996) and more below in Chapter Five. 4 I will refrain here from mentioning by name, only to reject, those dismissive quips which nowadays are only quoted, and whose persistence in human memory is only perpetuated, in footnotes of protest such as these. 5 Taylor (2009: 203) recently asserted the importance of the girl and the mirror for understanding the Mosella. He concludes, “Ausonius’s brand of speculation likewise is no journey of pure symmetry…. Whereas the young maiden sees herself in a speculum explorans, a probing mirror, the poem is a speculum explorandum, a mirror to be probed.” 2

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superficial subject matter of what I have called “poetry of court and campaign.” The Mosella is unique among Ausonius’s poems for its length and goals. It has no self-deprecating prose preface but begins with a first-person declaration: I had just crossed the Nahe, admiring the fortifications of Bingen at the confluence of that river with the Rhine and barbarian land.6 The first word is programmatic: Transieram, I had crossed over. The first thing he saw was peace and natural beauty—and newly-built walls (nova moenia). Evidence of invisible enemies. Apostrophizing the reader, Ausonius purports to give a description of the sights and sounds of a journey, mainly if not entirely on land, up one of the great scenic rivers of Europe, one that curls tightly around the interlocking teeth of steep, vineclad slopes and flows past us as we travel our way up to the Porta Nigra, the main attraction of Trier today. This fortification, begun in the late second century, was already a centuries-old symbol of Roman power when Valentinian’s party approached the city from the right bank of the Mosel in the late fourth century, probably in the late 370s.7 There is no reason to doubt Ausonius’s claims of and allusions to having seen firsthand what he describes in the Mosella.8 Ausonius wrote the Cupido Cruciatus after admiring a fresco (tabulam pictam in pariete)9 in the triclinium of one Zoilus. This Ausonius tells his dedicatee Gregorius, with whom he had dined there on more than one occasion. Ausonius’s use of the word “admire”—for it is his term—in the preface to the Cupido recalls the opening of the Mosella. “I admired this picture’s beauty and what it had to say,”10 he tells Gregorius, and then reiterates the progression from admiring to “poetizing” that had occurred in the

Transieram celerem nebuloso flumine Navam, / addita miratus veteri nova moenia Vingo (Mos. 1–2). 7 For the date of the poem, see Green (1991), 456, who, however, adds that “[t]he journey described in the opening lines should not be treated as a historical event.” 8 vidi egomet, v. 270, and vidi ego, v. 341. 9 Cup. praef.1. 10 hanc ego imaginem specie et argumento miratus sum, praef.6. 6

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real or imagined journey from Bingen to Trier.11 Ausonius also wants us to understand the Cupido, at least on a superficial level, as the product of an experience that began in wonder and ended in poetizing. We will not be the first to consider certain poems as a coherent group. While the Mosella in antiquity and the middle ages tended to travel its own meandering path to survive to the modern period, the Cupido, the Bissula, the Cento Nuptialis, the Gratiarum Actio, and many of the epigrams were often grouped together.12 Manuscripts X (ninth century) and R (twelfth) include the Mosella and little else, while V, the Leiden manuscript of about AD 800, and Z, the family of over twenty manuscripts, the most important of which are C (15th c.), K (15th c.), M (14th c.), and T (15th c.), contain the vast majority of the rest of the surviving poetry of Ausonius. Significantly, although V is by far the oldest MS and the one which includes the most of Ausonius’s poetry, V does not include the Cupido, Bissula, Cento Nuptialis, or Gratiarum Actio, all of which are included in Z. Even in antiquity and the middle ages, then, readers of Ausonius recognized the unity of the poems I have proposed to treat as a group, as well as the unique aims and ambition of the Mosella, which set it apart from the other poems of his corpus. As we will see in our reading of the Cupido, the key to understanding the Mosella lies in the self-contradicting conceit of the Georgics.13 This poem provides the blueprint for talking about persons or subjects on more than one level, allowing for multiple and even contradictory simultaneous responses. The poet who wrote the Cupido stood somewhere between the intolerance of Diocletian and that of Theodosius, the emperors who bookended that period of the fourth century when both paganism and Christianity

denique mirandi stuporem transtuli ad ineptiam poetandi, praef.7. Here as elsewhere I follow the sigla of Green (1991), who gives his reasons for departing in some ways from Schenkl and Peiper (see his introduction, especially xlii–xlvii), whom he nevertheless considered to be “on the whole very accurate” (ix). 13 As Judith Haber called it: Pastoral and the Poetics of Self-Contradiction. Cambridge, 1995. 11 12

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were legal. Ausonius exemplified the provincial Roman arriviste whose respect and admiration for the world he sought to enter shaped and directed his ambition to become fully a part of it. He had already proved that he belonged, and was hired to teach a prince to live that way. But this is an inherently conservative project, one that resisted the Christianization that insisted on reading outside of the traditional curriculum. Like the world he entered, Ausonius stood in the middle of a cultural spectrum between pagan and Christian. Here however, at least in worldly terms, the stakes were much higher. For even if late fourth-century persons could not be certain whether they would see the day of a Theodosius, which might happen, or of another Julian, which had already, persecutors of religion like the two just mentioned were less common than the brooding suspicion and unpredictable violence of the Pannonian court, which struck off the head, not only of the suspected magician, but even of a well-behaved provincial governor, like Ausonius and members of his network, who sought to progress in his career.14 Against the sudden and arbitrary use of lethal force there was no sure defense, but Ausonius steered the safest path through what many call the Pannonian period by a combination of subtlety and anonymity that only ended with the accession of Gratian and a new order.15 As we will see in our

For examples of the two crimes see Ammianus Marcellinus 29.3.5 and 6, respectively, and contrast with Julian’s dry response, according to Ammianus, to a denouncer of another man’s ambition, 22.9.10–11. 15 For the opposition between the senatorial aristocracy and the military bureaucracy, see Alföldi (1952) 2: “Our conclusion may be set out in advance. Deep, very deep in the past lay events and prejudices that raised an impassable barrier between the two opposed parties.… On the one side is the Emperor, with his beloved companions in arms…and others who are his blind tools. On the other side stand the descendants of the great Roman families, an oligarchy of birth and wealth at once.” See also p. 58 of Alföldi. For later confirmation of this theory, and a more detailed description of the transition from Pannonian military men to cultured provincial aristocrats, see Matthews (1975) 65–68, and passim, especially 80: “The Gauls of this class who acquired public office did not do so in quest of careers or, directly or materially, of social advancement. They 14

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treatment of the Cupido Cruciatus in Chapter Five, the Mosella avoids the direct characterization of human persons while imagining scenes evocative not only of real persons, but of contemporary ones. Green in his introduction to the poem claims that Valentinian did not influence Ausonius more than any other prior emperor, and in fact less than some.16 For example, Green claims “there are only two direct allusions to Valentinian (422, 450), and few indirect ones.”17 We will restrict our use of the terms “reference” to the meaning “explicit or direct mention” and “allusion” to the meaning “indirect reference.” In subdividing “allusions” to direct ones and indirect ones, Green means allusions about which we can be certain, and those about which we cannot, as his commentary on lines 422 and 450, which both refer to pater et natus, i.e., Valentinian and Gratian, suggests. He observes that Ausonius evokes Constantine twice, once at the beginning when Ausonius mentions Neumagen and Constantine explicitly (11), and once at the end when he mentions the duplex urbs, Arles, through which the Rhône passes, a favorite of Constantine and his descendants.18 Constantine was emperor when Ausonius was born, and throughout his formative years. As we saw in Chapter One, Ausonius not only grew up during Constantine’s reign, but in all likelihood studied alongside his brothers and other members of his family when Ausonius studied grammaticē at Toulouse and rhetoricē at Constantinople with his uncle Magnus. The Emperor Julian built the nova moenia of Bingen (2); various other imperial successes in settling and securing the Rhineland frontier Green ascribes to Valentinian’s predecessors, crediting “the poet’s paymaster” only with “maintain[ing] the peace which others had established.”19

did so on their own terms and for their own purposes—for prestige and titles to enhance an already established social position.” 16 See Green’s (1991) introduction to his commentary, pp. 456–463, especially 456–458. 17 Green (1991) 457. 18 duplicemque per urbem / qui meat et dextrae Rhodanus dat nomina ripae, 480–481. 19 Green (1991) 457.

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But we must not minimize the presence of Valentinian in the poem. Not that there is not good reason to do so. Green minimizes Valentinian’s influence, partially in opposition to the opinion of Marx (1931), which was followed by Ternes (1970), and partially to support his own view, which he points out is one which had been “scornfully dismissed by Marx.”20 The latter had claimed that it would be a mistake to read the Mosella as a meditation on the beauty of nature by an idle poet for sentimental friends, but rather that every verse of Ausonius’s poem had to be submitted for Valentinian’s approval, and that to displease him might have cost Ausonius his position.21 Splitting Marx’s sentence into its negative and positive parts and citing only the former, Green claims that Marx “scornfully dismissed” the view of the poem that Green would espouse. But Marx substantiated his point, that the poem is not merely entertainment for his friends (“Kurzweil bestimmt für sentimentale Freunde der Dichtkunst”) but rather an idealization of a dangerous country. Green adduces valid archaeological evidence to support his claim that in the 270s and in the 470s the Mosel valley was a dangerous place, but he argues from lack of evidence that it must not have been so in the 370s.22 Marx on the other hand infers from Ausonius’s mention of the emperor’s son and others a large party; the reader must be struck by the contrast of the quiet, tranquil picture and the strong military retinue

Green (1991) 458. Marx (1931: 376–377). Green cites Marx in two separate places, but the two quotations come from the same sentence, which in its original form reads as follows: Es wäre ein Irrtum zu glauben, die Mosella des Ausonius sei ein Erzeugnis poetischer Kurzweil, bestimmt für sentimentale Freunde der Dichtkunst und der ländlichen Natur, sie war vielmehr eine hochpolitische Auslassung aus der nächsten Nähe des Kaisers selbst, dem jeder Vers vor der Veröffentlichung zur Begutachtung vorgelegen hat, und dessen Missfallen oder gar Zorn zu erregen Besitz und Leben kosten konnte. 22 Green (1991:457) adduces Wightman (1970) for his contradiction of Ternes (1970). 20 21

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surrounding the author.23 We will take Green’s prudent advice not to follow Marx’s claim that every single line had to be submitted to the emperor for editing and approval—a claim which would be difficult if not impossible to prove (even if we must, however, expect that the emperor read Ausonius’s poetry). This is not to say that Valentinian’s presence can not be detected in the poem. In fact he looms over it like a prodigy almost too big to fit inside. We will see that in the end the world of the Mosella holds a monster. Green alleges that the visual impact of the river was Ausonius’s principal concern based on a line that “seems to be programmatic.”24 The theme of marveling that we saw in the first two lines has returned. To Green the poem is almost a hymn to the Mosel, but in the end does not fit standard genres. He favors Heinen’s opinion that the Mosella is no rude propaganda piece, but a poem rich in spirituality; so that he tacitly resists the dichotomy between the sincere and the propagandistic which we will see challenged even more in Chapter Five.25 Green observes many hymnic features in the poem, especially vocatives and imperatives (e.g. 31, 381, 382–8, 477–8), but says that they are not numerous enough. He says that the river is seldom regarded as divine—except in the last thirty lines of the poem. If not a hymn, then what? A victory parade for Valentinian, made in verse. Without becoming tendentious or argumentative, Ausonius shows the reader a reflection of reality from a human Marx (1931) 377: “Dass der Verfasser unter starkem militärischen Schutz gereist war, dass das Land unsicher war von Räuberbanden, war zur Mitteilung ganz ungeeignet; erwähnte aber Ausonius den kaiserlichen Sohn und Begleiter, so war ein grosses Gefolge selbstverständlich.” 24 Green (1991) 458: “The visual impact of the river and its gorge is obviously the poet’s principal concern; his purpose is well summed up by the words naturae mirabor opus (51), a phrase which seems to be programmatic.” 25 Heinen (1985) 357: “Die Mosella ist kein Produkt grobschlächtiger Propaganda, sondern ein feinsinniges, facettenreiches Kunstwerk spätantiker Spiritualität.” On the disputed dichotomy of “sincere” and “propagandistic” poetry, see Morgan (1999: 6) against Wilkinson (1969: 54–5), treated above. 23

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perspective which communicates the same feelings of awe, sympathy and anxiety which he himself experienced. At line 422, Green comments that Ausonius might be referring to a triumph of the traditional kind, but that there seems to be little evidence of triumphs, in the technical sense of the term, outside of Rome or Constantinople. Why would there be? The primary purpose of the triumph is to advertise the success of the triumphator, so that the most appropriate place for such a drama was the largest stage in the empire. But by describing the Mosel valley itself and an imagined journey down its stream in terms evocative of the triumph, Ausonius created a poem which was itself a triumph and could accomplish some of the same goals as a parade down the streets of old (or new) Rome. In a poem he could represent the images in any urbs nobilis of the empire. This imagery appears throughout the poem. We will propose a reading of the poem according to such motifs of images. First we will show how Ausonius makes the poem a triumph in verse, beginning with the parade and the spectators. Next we will see the entertainments: the theater, the games of circus and amphitheater. Then we will read the catalogue of fish as commentary on the challenges of life at court. Throughout all this, Ausonius is careful to avoid any language that can be proven to refer to any of his contemporaries at the emperor’s court. But what was an ancient Roman triumph? The triumph was a traditional celebration of a Roman general’s signal victory, voted to his honor by the S.P.Q.R. and celebrated upon his return to the city. The general would lead a victory parade, driving a four-horse chariot. His face would be painted and his head would be crowned with laurel, the most common image on the obverse of Roman coins, especially in the fourth century. An example of a bronze follis of Valentinian I, pictured below, shows the laureate head of the emperor on the obverse. On the reverse we find the remnant of the common legend GLORIA ROMANORUM, with the image of the triumphant emperor with a legionary standard in his left hand and with his right hand on a kneeling captive. Leaders of the defeated might walk in the parade to be humiliated and executed before a popular audience. Games (ludi) might be celebrated to honor the deities that

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delivered the general’s success. With the spoils he would fund lavish entertainments for all: everything from public banquets to theatrical performances of every kind, to cash bonuses.

Figure 6: Bronze follis of Valentinian I Ausonius uses the word pompa to evoke the triumphus. Immediately after the catalogue of the fish, Ausonius tells us that he will introduce another pompa, implicating the first group with the image as well (152). This is the word often used for a triumphal procession.26 Ausonius had signaled the beginning of the catalogue of the fish with the phrases examina lubrica pisces, “the fishes in slippery shoals” (76) and fluitantes catervas, “throngs which glide” (84), and now to signal the end of that section he returns to these phrases: iam liquidas spectasse vias et lubrica pisces / agmina multiplicesque satis numerasse catervas, “now ’tis enough to have viewed the watery paths and to have told o’er the fishes in their glistening hosts and legions manifold” (150–151). Ausonius repeats catervae, a word Vergil often uses to signify soldiers, or as a synonym for agmen which, along with its cognate examen, reinforces this framing.27 Thus the fish are linked to the pompa by See, e.g., Ammianus Marcellinus 16.10.2, and that whole chapter, in which Ammianus describes Constantius’ triumphal procession at Rome. 27 See, e.g., Aen. 8.593, where it denotes barbarians as opposed to Romans, and 7.804 and 11.433, where it denotes foot-soldiers as opposed to cavalry. 26

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the images of those who go on foot in the parade: the prisoners and the soldiers, each ordered in his place. Ausonius labels the fish with the word used for the solemn procession of a triumph, and shows both the potential danger of the frontier and the Roman’s success in mastering it. In the next section Ausonius fills out the picture of the pompa. This section also begins and ends with verbal signals: inducant aliam spectacula vitea pompam, “let show of vines lead on another pageant” (152) introduces a section as long as the catalogue of fish. The latter, which began on line 85 and ended on 149 according to Green and Prete, ran to 65 lines; the former, vv. 150–199, consists of 50, ending on line 200 with spectacula pompas.28 Here we see the sideshows of the triumph, but also the luxuries of a proper and Romanized city endowed with all the prospects of peace and imperial favor. Ausonius first mentions the grape vines, a memorable sight to anyone who has traveled along the picturesque Mosel valley today and looked up to see the pliant wood clinging to steep slopes. The line already cited above would have been enough, but Ausonius repeats the syntax of line 152 to describe the scene with more triumphal language: sollicitentque vagos Baccheia munera visus, “and let Bacchus’ gifts attract our wandering gaze” (153). He calls the vines munera, literally the gifts of Bacchus, but munera signifies anything from races, to games or theatrical spectacles, to gladiatorial contests or beast hunts, or even to cash bonuses for soldiers.29 In these senses, John (1932) considered this section, extending all the way through the various spectacula up to and including the scene of the fisherman and the dying fish (i.e., vv. 150–282), to be the high point of the whole poem: “Die Szenen, die Ausonius jetzt folgen läßt (bis Vers 282), bilden wohl den Höhepunkt des ganzen Gedichtes: die zu beiden Seiten der sich dahinschlängelnden Mosel hoch aufsteigenden Ufer erwecken den Eindruck eines Theaterraumes, und wie dort die in weiten Kreisen sich hoch hinaufziehenden Sitzreihen den Zuschauerraum straff gliedern, so rufen hier die in langen Reihen bis oben hin gepflanzten Weinreben dieselbe Wirkung hervor…” (90). 29 For the theater, see Velleius Paterculus on the theater of Pompey, 2.130; for gladiatorial contests, see Cic. Pro Sest. 58.124; for beast hunts, see Lactantius Div. Inst. 6.20, where he also discusses the other 28

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munera confirms the reader in the expectations raised by spectacula and pompa above. A triumphal procession would not be complete without a crowd of spectators to validate it. As we pass along the central thoroughfare, we are surrounded by the dull roar of an assembled multitude: the plebes (163), the coloni (163),30 the viator (165), the navita (166), and the cultores (167). Though Ausonius unflatteringly describes the plebs as shouting stupidly (certantes stolidis clamoribus, “exchanging shouts in boisterous rivalry” 165), we must not think of these folk as outside his view of Romanitas, which has power to extend from old Italy to enclose the wild Orphic haunts of Thrace and his own Aquitaine, as well as this frontier. We ought rather to think of Ammianus’ description of the shouts surrounding Constantius from hills and shores, while the emperor held his face immovable, just as if here were in the provinces.31 In this section, vv. 157–168, Ausonius inducts the vineclad slopes of the Moseltal into the Roman world by comparing them favorably to mountains of well-established literary convention, to which he bridges them with mountains added by more recent conquest and incorporation into the empire. He mentions the mountains of Gaurus (157), Rhodope (158), Pangaea (158), Ismarus (159), and the river Garonne (160), located respectively in Campania, Thrace, the border between Thrace and Macedonia, Thrace again, and Ausonius’s own Aquitaine. All except the Garonne had been mentioned by earlier poets, the Thracian mountains coming to Ausonius’s poetry, as we have learned to expect, from Vergil’s Eclogues and Georgics. Ausonius echoes some of the verbal images of viticulture found in Vergil’s mention of the Ismarus, Georg. possibilities as well, using the terms spectacula, ludi, and munera; for cash bonuses, see Ammianus 16.10.4, referred to already above. 30 Bieler (1937: 286) saw here the presence of dependent persons, and wanted to emend diem (206) to cliens, which would resolve the problem on account of which Green posited a lacuna, and which would support the present reading of the passage. 31 Augustus itaque faustis vocibus appellatus, non montium litorumque intonante fragore cohorruit, talem se tamque immobilem, qualis in provinciis suis visebatur, ostendens, Ammianus Marcellinus 16.10.9. Constantius after his parade sat down to games (ludi) and contests (certamina) (16.10.13).

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2.37–8: iuvat Ismara Baccho / conserere atque olea magnum vestire Taburnum, “good it is to plant Ismarus thick with vines and clothe mighty Taburnus in olive” (trans. MacKail). For Rhodope and Ismarus again, Ausonius recalls the sixth Eclogue, where we also see much of the inspiration for the following section of the Mosella, Silenus caught by the playful Naiads and Fauns, but, as we will see below, with a significant difference. The passage begins with Silenus speaking to the Fauns: “solvite me, pueri; satis est potuisse videri. carmina quae vultis cognoscite; carmina vobis, huic aliud mercedis erit.” simul incipit ipse. tum vero in numerum Faunosque ferasque videres ludere, tum rigidas motare cacumina quercus; nec tantum Phoebo gaudet Parnasia rupes, nec tantum Rhodope miratur et Ismarus Orphea. (Ecl. 6.24–30) “Release me, boys; enough that you fancied that you were so strong. Mark the songs you desire: for you songs, for her shall be another payment.” And with that he begins. Then indeed thou mightest see Fauns and wild creatures sporting in measure, then massy oaks swaying their tops: nor so much does the Parnassian cliff rejoice in Phoebus, nor so much Rhodope and Ismarus marvel at Orpheus. (trans. MacKail)

Ausonius modifies Vergil’s tum videres ludere (then would you see them play) to a more reserved hic ego… / credam (here, I should believe…170–171), and later: dicitur et…ludere Nymphas (it is said too that the Nymphs play, 178…182). The Thracian mountains were famously wild places connected with stories of Orpheus, and the emperors had, with the founding and building up of Constantinople, drawn them into the civilized world.32 Ausonius has made both the shouting plebs and the slopes on which they stand worthy and necessary parts of the Roman triumph. The next part of the triumph is the scaena locorum, “the scenery of this region” (169), or rather the show put on there. As Green noted, Statius clearly inspired this section (169–88) with

32

So Green observes in his commentary on these lines.

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his description of the villa of Felix: “it transports us,” he says, “to a different world.”33 Still it is an integral part of what Ausonius is constructing. If we read the Mosella as a triumph, then we will see that Ausonius fully integrated this theatrical part of the poem into the triumphal procession. It seems to transport us to a different world because it is a theater, as Ausonius tells us explicitly, and that is what a theater is meant to do. There will be no cash bonuses here, but Ausonius does tell us that the grape vines arise in a natural theater (assurgunt naturalique theatro, “rise in a natural theatre,” 156). Nor will Ausonius leave his theater empty. In the following lines he populates the scaena locorum (169) with Fauns (177), satyrs (170, 179, 183), and nymphs (171, 176, 182), using ambiguous language. As Green points out in his note to v. 177, the phrase paganica numina Faunos is derived from Vergil’s praesentia numina Fauni (Georg. 1.10) and was probably the model for Claudian’s rustica numina Faunos (28.200), but the word that is unique to Ausonius is paganica. Ausonius achieves an ambiguity with the word. By speaking in conventional terms he activates the training and the memories of his audience to establish his position as master: teacher and father. He is able to dance around paganica numina without revealing his interior religious convictions. We will see the same ambiguity when we come to the Cupido Cruciatus. Even as he avoids the standard condemnation of such mythology that we find in the Fathers of the Church, Ausonius will not permit us to pin him down as “pagan.” The adjective paganicus was used by Varro to refer to the countryside, with no necessary religious overtone, and by Martial to refer to a kind of ball, again

See Green on vv. 169–88, although his reference to Silvae 2.2.100–106 ought to be expanded to include vv. 98–9, in which Statius mentions the rocks wet with Bacchic nectar (madidas Baccheo nectare rupes 99), clearly an influence on Ausonius’s vagos Baccheia munera visus (153). In the same note, however, Green implies that this section is a departure from what precedes: “this section transports us to a different world […] the tone is essentially playful, and the passage functions as a light diversion from detailed description.” We will take another view presently. 33

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without religious overtones, but never before this period in the sense the word “pagan” has today.34 Salvian of Marseilles may have been the first to use the word paganicus in this way, although of course paganus was always more common and had already been used to mean “not Christian” by Tertullian and Marius Victorinus.35 But if we accept Ausonius’s usage here as ambiguous, he would be earlier than Salvian. In his extant works Ausonius used this word three times, each time in metrically the same position, making up the second half of a hexameter line with a third declension neuter noun in -men in apposition to a disyllabic noun which ends the line.36 Metrically the present usage is the same, but semantically it differs from the other two. In the other two passages paganicus merely means “of the countryside.” Theon, the country bailiff, is called paganus in this sense in the beginning of the Ep. 13, and in the Ordo it is the geographical remoteness of the Belcae, not their religion, which adds to the prestige of the Rhône and therefore of Narbo. Furthermore in the letter to Theon it is the type of light (lumina), in the Ordo the name and therefore language of the Belcae (nomina), that are called rustic or paganica. Here, on the other hand, paganicus is susceptible of the new, Christian sense of the term, as Ausonius applies it to the deities Pan, Naiads, Oreiads, Fauns, and satyrs. At the same time, Fauns are of course paganici in the older sense of the word, but to call Varro, De Ling. Lat. 6.3; Martial, Epigr. 7.32.7. For the usage of the term “pagan” and the interminable debate about the meaning of the term in antiquity, Cameron (2011) is now indispensable, especially pp. 14–32, his apology for the terminology, with extensive bibliography there. In fact I hope that my debt and my gratitude to Cameron’s Last Pagans of Rome—and likewise to Green, Kaster, and Cribiore—will be apparent throughout this book. 35 Salv. Mass. De Gubernatione Dei 1.1.1: incredulitatis paganicae; also 3.1.5, 4.11.53, 4.16.76, and in Ad Ecclesiam sive Adversus Avaritiam 1.5.23 and 3.7.31. See Tertullian, who uses it both ways, in the earlier sense in De Pallio 4, in the later sense three times in De Corona 11; and Marius Victorinus, who uses it in the later sense in the first section of De Homoousio Recipiendo. 36 Ordo 110: paganica nomina Belcas; Ep. 13.21: paganica lumina taedas; Mos. 177: paganica numina Faunos. 34

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them paganica numina evokes the religious overtones of the epithet. But Ausonius will be equally careful in distancing himself from even the possibility of these Fauns existing. The poet brings these paganica numina onto the stage of his theatrum in something resembling an “Atellan farce,” or mimeshow.37 Cicero frequently used the mime to illustrate by counterexample what was appropriate for the orator, not only in Cicero’s prescriptive theoretical treatises, but in the speeches themselves and in his letters as well. Indeed Cicero tells us of the typical ending for a mimic farce in the Pro Caelio, and it is very like what we see here in vv. 169–188. Cicero compares the narrative of Licinius and the poison to the end of a farce: Mimi ergo est iam exitus, non fabulae; in quo cum clausula non invenitur, fugit aliquis e manibus, deinde scabilla concrepant, aulaeum tollitur, “This is rather the end of a farce than a regular comedy; in which, when a regular end cannot be invented for it, some one escapes out of some one else’s hands, the whistle sounds, and the curtain drops” (Pro Caelio 65, trans. Yonge). Licinius, Cicero is incredulous to relate, was caught with the poison in his hand, and escaped from the hands of the witnesses. Just so does Ausonius present the nymphs and satyrs sporting in the river at midday, the nymphs’ slipping through the satyrs’ fingers and the sudden falling of the curtain: tunc insultantes sua per freta ludere Nymphas / et Satyros mersare vadis rudibusque natandi / per medias exire manus…, “then, wantonly frolicking amid their native waters, the nymphs duck the satyrs in the waves, and slip away right through the hands of those unskilful swimmers” (182–184). It is not necessary to suppose that Ausonius was thinking of Cicero to see the similarities between Cicero’s description of the typical end of a farce and Ausonius’s description of his scaena locorum situated in a naturale theatrum. Just as Cicero’s farce ends with a falling (or rather a drawing) of a curtain after the improbable escape (aulaeum tollitur), Ausonius will quickly drop the curtain before our eyes to signal the end of his show: non haec spectata… / fas mihi sit pro parte loqui; secreta Cicero (Ad Fam. 9.16) mentions Atellan farce and mime show together: tu secundum Oenomaum Acci non, ut olim solebat, Atellanam sed, ut nunc fit, mimum introduxisti.

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tegatur; et commissa suis lateat reverentia rivis, “of these things which no man has looked upon…be it no sin for me to speak in part: let things secret be kept hid, and let Reverence dwell unspied upon in the safe-keeping of her native streams” (186–188). The paganica numina of the theater are not real, and neither are those of the Mosella. We turn then from the theater as the parade nears its end: the grand finale is about to begin, but first we see another spectacle. Ausonius begins the next section, which concludes the pompa, with the words illa fruenda palam species (189), confirming the reader in the expectation of more spectacula. In this last section, vv. 189–221, we see such a such a naumachia (218) as the residents of Trier might have seen at the amphitheater there, or, as Ausonius tells us explicitly, the residents of Rome saw after Actium.38 In these spectacularly labor-intensive events the residents of the most favored cities of the empire could see an amphitheater flooded and filled with ships enacting mock sea battles. Ausonius mentions them by name. Just as he had mentioned the agmina lubrica (150–151; with the examina lubrica of 76) progressing like a pompa through the stream, the plebs (163) lining the path of the procession, and the theatrum naturale (156) with its entertainments, Ausonius mentions the naumachia openly (palam), with explicit use of the same word that would be used to describe the event on a real festival day. The public spectacles have run their course. Now in the slanting rays of evening we find ourselves at the emperor’s private banquet for invited guests. In this last section of the poem, as we return to the secret places of the river (penetrali flumine 242), Ausonius finally uses the word triumph (triumphis 211) as he describes his grand finale. He opens the section with all the notes to recall the public holiday: haec quoque quam dulces celebrant spectacula pompas, “how pleasing is the pageant which this sight affords” (200). In the previous section we saw sailors on lembi, fast-sailing, sharp-prowed boats often associated with piracy, especially common in late

cum Venus Actiacis Augusti laeta triumphis / ludere lascivos fera proelia iussit Amores 211–212. 38

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antiquity.39 Here they are recalled in the next line, which begins the long description of the traffic on the river in terms of a mocknaval battle.40 That the poet means to evoke a mock battle, we see from the clear reminiscence in the following lines (202–205) of the ludi to Vergil’s aetiology of the Ludi Troiani in Aeneid 582– 603, in which Ascanius leads the Trojan youth in cavalry maneuvers. The starting point for comparison is that between Ausonius’s varios ineunt flexus viridesque per oras (202) and Vergil’s inde alios ineunt cursus aliosque recursus (583),41 but the young troop (impubemque manum 205), the appearance of youth upon the lascivious youngsters (speciem petulantibus addit ephebis / pubertas 220–221), and the ship-worthy youth (nautica pubes 238) in their mock-battles (pugnasque iocantes 217) point the way to Vergil’s Trojan youth (Troia pubes 599) in rank-and-file (Troianum agmen 602) celebrating with contests (celebrata…certamina 603), mockfighting (pugnae…simulacra 585), and sporting battles (texunt…proelia ludo 593). Right in the middle of it all, Ausonius proclaims that the Mosel valley is as elated as Rome was when that first Augustus pacified the world: Venus Actiacis Augusti laeta triumphis / ludere lascivos fera proelia iussit Amores, “Venus, glad at Augustus’ victory at Actium, bade the pert Loves enact in mimicry such fierce combats” (211–212). He recalls to the reader the expensive elation of laetaque iacturis (52), the military sports mentioned above, and the dizzy heights of the Golden Age all at once in his effort to weave his own time and place into the already vast texture of Vergil’s “Rome”—then for the first time no longer merely the city, but the cosmopolitan expanse of Italy and

For associations with piracy, see Plautus, Menaechmi 2.3.87 and Curtius Rufus, 4.5.18. The three authors who used this word most, according to the frequency list of Logeion (logeion.uchicago.edu accessed in 2021), are Sidonius Apollinaris, Curtius Rufus, and Ammianus Marcellinus, in that order. 40 remipedes medio certant cum flumine lembi 201. Cf. Verg. Georg. 1.201 and Livy 24.40.2, which Ausonius must have had in mind. 41 Noted by Green ad loc. 39

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beyond.42 Here one can come and feel as if at the heart of the Roman world. This was an important message for the civil servants of Ausonius’s time to hear. Like modern career civil servants, who establish themselves in a civil bureaucracy for an indefinite period, and the partisan employees of appointed officials whose authority comes and goes with the periodic change of administration, the Roman bureaucrat of the days of the Pannonian dynasty was a technician skilled at operating the cumbrous ad hoc machinery of the imperial offices.43 These civil servants, men in some cases who had spent their entire careers in the military, rose and fell at the pleasure of the emperor. Ammianus Marcellinus gives several accounts of the unpredictable but irrevocable decisions of which Valentinian was capable. For example, when the governor Africanus aspired to a second governorship, even though he was supported by then magister equitum Theodosius, Valentinian peremptorily ordered his execution, as Ammianus reports, with the following words: abi, comes, et muta ei caput, qui sibi mutari provinciam cupit, “Go, general, and change his head for him, since he wants a change in his province” (29.3.6). Ammianus, who had commented in other places on Valentinian’s hatred of cultivated aristocrats, immediately observes ironically that the emperor condemned, by means of an elogium, an eloquent man who, like many others, sought advancement.44 At the Here I am following Toll’s (1997) view on a major goal of the Aeneid being the full integration of all of Italy into the Roman state, and Syme’s (1939: 88 and 286, to give two salient examples) view on the timing of this expansion of the civic definition of “Roman.” 43 Here and in the following section I am indebted to the arguments of Alföldi (1952), Matthews (1975), and Brown (1992). Kelly (2004) describes in detail the progression from “a relatively low level of centralized authority and a high degree of local autonomy,” in the first two centuries of the Empire, to a movement beginning in the third toward “a centrally organized and greatly expanded imperial bureaucracy.” Kelly provides detailed examples which tend to support the type of social and economic narrative of Dawson (1932: 26–28), who in his turn was following Rostovtzeff (1926: chapters 10 and 11). 44 hoc elogio perit homo disertus, ad potiora festinans, ut multi 29.3.6. Ammianus gives other examples at 27.7. 42

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risk of oversimplification, we may consider the career path of an imperial functionary during the reign of Valentinian to have passed through the military, and almost as likely to have ended in sudden death as retirement. Ausonius must have known this when he came to Trier. If there was a safe way back out again, it was not clear in the days when more and more doors kept opening for him; he would have to rely on the talents that got him there, and find a way home, if there was one, as he went. When he finally did return home, he had proven that he was one of the courtiers more interested in prestige than power. In the later fourth century literate persons increasingly learned to persuade and to be persuaded in order to validate their status as elite members of society: Ausonius was a typical example of this trend. Its chief fruit was restraint. The influence of paideia put new restraints on the exercise of lethal force. Lettered men sought modes by which to address, assuage, and even change the mind of an autocratic emperor.45 During his quaestorship Ausonius left a humane mark upon the acts and edicts emanating from the court, improving the position of teachers, physicians, and others associated with the schools. At the same time he cultivated anew the ties between the court and the traditional nobility at Rome; his friendship with Symmachus is one example.46 As tutor to the prince that became emperor, Ausonius formed the man who ushered in a new, more open regime that drew its functionaries more from the established aristocracies of Gaul than strictly from So Brown (1991: 50): “So much alert attention to deportment betrays a fact almost too big to be seen. We are in a world characterized by a chilling absence of legal restraints on violence in the exercise of power.” He comments on the delicate business of changing the minds of the powerful on p. 58. 46 Matthews (1975: 87) goes so far, and hints at vast long-term consequences: “in extending his friendship and influence to the society of Symmachus, Ausonius heralds, and to some extent himself initiates, a new intimacy between the court and the traditional nobility of Rome, which would have a great and continuing effect upon the course of the political and social history of the Roman west.” Hagith Sivan (1993) tells the story compellingly. Symmachus wrote thirty letters to Ausonius: Epp. 1.14–43 in Seeck’s edition (1883). 45

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the ranks of the army, and based its judgments of fitness for office more on cultivation of the liberal arts than mastery of technical skills.47 As a poet Ausonius strove to retain his characteristic honesty while recommending life at the court on the edge of the Roman world. In Bordeaux this was easy; writing poems that belittled one’s fellow professors hardly carried the same risk as comparing the emperor to a monster. Still, Ausonius wrote the Professores as late as 388, very likely when he had retired home having held the reins of power over an emperor, and nearly a decade after his consulship. When he first arrived he had no such security: the sixty-yearold comes had just begun to serve Valentinian when he and his charge (Gratian) accompanied the emperor on the expedition against the Germans and then settled down to the schoolday routine at Trier. Just as we saw how the surface and the banks resemble the public square, we will now see how the penetrale flumen resembles the court. We proceed to the catalogue of the fish, and the undertones will now sound more clearly. Next we will consider Ausonius’s description of the fish caught by hidden deceit and exposed to the lethal shafts of dazzling day (luciferi letalia tela diei 260). These sections of the Mosella, which more than any others reflect and evoke images of fear and death, epitomize the complexity of which the poet is capable and the subtlety which his circumstances demanded. The catalogue of the fish (vv. 75–149) is remarkable for its thoroughness, but commentators, who have never failed to note this, have generally not seen anything deeper. Hosius (1894) dismisses the passage as an exasperating example of Ausonius’s typical modus operandi: a patchwork with hardly one or two original examples, the vast majority of which was worked up later and

On the Pannonian system, Matthews (1975: 43) comments on the establishment of cities as military foundations, which then elevated their own veterans and became the model for new men to ascend through the ranks of local, regional, and even imperial government. For the last claim, see the examples of Ausonius and his associates from Bordeaux, detailed by Hopkins (1961), Booth (1982) and Green (1985), and summarized by Matthews (pp. 81–85).

47

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stuffed in to the poem as filler.48 Newlands (1988), who comments extensively on fish and fishing throughout her essay, only mentions the catalogue briefly in a footnote to tell us that it prepares us for the scene in which Ausonius describes the caught fish. After noting the usual ancient sources which commentators consider Ausonius to have known, she observes the contrast between those sources’ emphasis on the fish’s ability to defend themselves, and Ausonius’s avoidance of mention of the same. She does not draw a connection between the catalogue and the catch. Korzeniewski (1963), on the other hand, saw themes he deemed important for structural analysis, of tension and release, imprisonment and freedom, in Ausonius’s depiction of fish in the Mosella.49 Green (1991), notes that it is “perhaps the best-known feature of the poem,” but the commentary focuses entirely on literary precedent and natural history.50 Green called Korzeniewski’s overall purpose an “unconvincing attempt to detect more or less ingenious patterns,” but Korzeniewski was trying to place the whole poem in

ad v. 77: “Diese Worte lehren trefflich, wie Auson zuweilen arbeitet; kaum ein oder zwei Ausdrücke sind sein ausschliessliches Eigentum; der Rest ist ein aus Reminiscenzen an antike Muster zusammengestoppeltes Flickwerk” (34). He puts paid to the rest thus: “Die ganze Partie von 82 bis etwa 151 macht den Eindruck, als sei sie erst nachträglich hereingearbeitet worden, vermutlich nach einer Vorlage, die Auson in die Hand fiel” (35). Nevertheless the commentator completes the task of nine more pages of Quellenforschung. Nor will the poet escape notice masking his thefts: when Ausonius’s borrowings fail to match the Quelle, the commentator exposes the cover-up: “Auch überträgt der Dichter Eigenschaften des einen Fisches auf den andern, vielleicht um die Entlehnung zu vertuschen” (ibid.). In another context Scott McGill calls this “develop[ment of] a conventional theme to an extreme degree,” a typical tendency of Ausonius, “his rhetorical maximalism” (Elsner and Lobato (eds.), The Poetics of Late Latin Literature, 2017: 256). But in Ausonius’s rhetorical maximalism McGill saw the poet at his most influential. 49 “Spannung und Lösung bauen auf dem Gegensatz des Gefangenseins und Sterbens des Fisches und des Sich-Befreiens und Wiederauflebens eines anderen Fisches, der ermüdenden Hitze der Bäder und der belebenden Frische des Flusses auf” (89). 50 ad vv. 75–149. 48

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an overarching structural framework. Shanzer (1998), who was attempting to answer more securely the question of the date of the poem and therefore not focused so much on interpretation, refers briefly to the catalogue’s discordant mock-epic overtones, but does not return to the subject. Taylor (2009) called the passage “well-known” and sees it as a “pendent and preface” to the later section on the fisherman, and also noticed the motif of triumph language which we have treated more thoroughly above, but ultimately only commits two sentences to it: “it will not detain us here.”51 Perhaps national pride drew the interest of quite a lot of German and French commentators—vastly more than English ones—on this, the most studied of Ausonius’s poems. Their disappointment often shows. As soon as we read the first line of the catalogue of fish, we become alert to an incongruity. The previous passage (vv. 55–74) had vividly brought to life the arresting sight of the river from the perspective of a traveler passing by. First the poet, apostrophizing the river itself, implies that the water is clear (spectaris vitreo…profundo / secreti nihil amnis habens, “thou…showest all the treasures of thy crystal depths—a river keeping naught concealed” 55–56), and then he brings us with him to peer inside: arcanique patet penetrale profundi, “and the recesses of thy secret depth lie open” (60). We will see this phrase again after the parade, when the poet wants to draw our attention back to the fish.52 We are just able to pick out the iridescent pebbles below (lucetque latetque / calculus et viridem distinguit glarea muscum, “pebbles gleam and are hid, and gravel picks out patches of green moss,” 67), and then he reveals them fully to our view: placidae subter vada laeta Mosellae / detegit admixtos non concolor herba lapillos, “beneath the glad waters of still Moselle weeds of different hue

Taylor (2009: 188). In the same place Taylor says that Ausonius describes the fish “as if they were passing before him in military review,” and notes that “[i]t is the first in a series of spectacle entertainments.” See also Roberts (1984: 343), Kenney (1984), and especially Taylor (2009: 202, fn. 31). 52 heu male defensos penetrali flumine pisces (fish—alas!—badly defended in their river-haunt, 242). 51

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reveal the pebbles scattered amidst them” (73–74). Twice we have a pair of images emphasizing the clarity of the river and what can be seen. The whole is framed by repitition of the image of the eyes themselves. Framing the passages just quoted is the line nec placidi prohibent oculos per inania venti, “and the stilled winds do not forbid the sight to travel through the void” (58). We are fortunate for the moment: there is no wind to stir up the water, which therefore may be described in the terms Lucretius preferred to express “the void”: inania.53 When the sight of the bottom is obscured, Ausonius will remind us of this line, but it will not be the wind that comes at the end. The catalogue of fish begins with the other end of the bracket mentioned above, and thus emphasizes the contrast between the natural clarity of the place and the effect of the fish. As we have already stressed, this is the high point, fully integrated, of a larger section, and not a mere “zusammengestoppeltes Flickwerk.”54 Watching the swaying weeds, we will no longer be able to see: intentos tamen usque oculos errore fatigant / interludentes, examina lubrica, pisces, “howbeit, though fixed upon the depths, the eyes grow weary with straying after fishes who in slippery shoals sport midway between” (75–76). At the appearance of tamen…oculos we are surprised, and waiting to hear at the end of the sentence the cause: pisces.55 The fish, whose names Ausonius is not allowed to name, by slanting ways ascend against the current of the river: per adversum succedunt agmina flumen, “companies which ascend up against the stream” (78).56 This verb, of which we will note the subject is the significant agmen, can mean “to succeed” in the E.g., De Rerum Natura 1.223, 356, just to name two. Ovid uses the same phrase, and in metrically the same position, with a form of ventus, a likely echo: sustulit et partiter raptos per inania vento (Met. 2.506). 54 As Hosius called it. Cf. Gruber (2013), against Marx (1931) and Deubner (1934), ad vv. 85–149: “Der Katalog ist Höhepunkt und Abschluß des Themas „Die Wasser der Mosel“ und sollte daher nicht, wie von Marx und Deubner, als selbständige Einheit gesehen werden.” 55 Korzeniewski (1969) noticed this: “Man kann die Fische trotz der Klarheit des Wassers schlecht erkennen.” 56 He professes discretion in the same passage: neque tot species…nominaque…edere fas (77–80). 53

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political sense: here, to ascend. It is a word with strong military connotations, often used by Caesar of troops approaching a hill, mountain, oppidum, or other strategic high ground. The capito (chub) is stuffed to the gills with bones (aristis)—a word which also means the beard of grain and by metonymy the grain itself. He appears among herbosas harenas, a phrase found in [Ovid] Halieutica 118,57 but both aristis and harenas appear in metrically the same position in Vergil, Georgics 111–114; add to that the image of tener in both this passage and that, and we may see another echo of the Georgics. In that passage Vergil explains how grain, which may become too top-heavy and bend the stalk, ought to be cut down before it is too late (by the sheep, as Mynors commented), when it is still tener—especially if the river comes along and makes the mud too weak to hold the plant.58 The moral implication for an ambitious courtier will have been obvious, even if he did not know his Herodotus. Next we see, but only for a moment, the ostentatious salar (trout) and the reserved rhedo (difficult to identify).59 The one is spotted on the back with that color dangerous to wear at court (or anywhere else): purpureisque salar stellatus tergora guttis, “the Trout, too, whose back is starred with purple spots” (88). In the Late Antique sources we find many examples of men with high hopes cut off even by a fictitious report that they have worn purple in their homes. The other fish is harmless and quick to get out of sight: nullo spinae nociturus acumine rhedo, / effugiensque oculos celeri levis umbra natatu, “the Roach without pointed bones to do mischief, and the swift Grayling darting out of sight with his swift stroke” (89). Ausonius contrasts the rhedo not only with the salar which appears right before it, but also with the passage of Oppian

As Hosius noted ad loc. praesertim incertis si mensibus amnis abundans / exit et obducto late tenet omnia limo, / unde cavae tepido sudant umore lacunae 115–117. 59 Hosius (1894) cites the opinions of others that it might be a burbot or a lamprey; Evelyn-White (1919) translated it “roach.” Green (1991), who admits that the description is vague, rejects Evelyn-White’s interpretation and allows the possibility of those mentioned above, in addition to the rudd. 57 58

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which Ausonius echoes here, in which the fish is spiny and dangerous.60 Neither too fat for its own good, nor ostentatiously threatening, the rhedo is another lesson in discretion for the discerning courtier. Thus the first set of descriptions pairs two examples of what not to do, with one example, as long as the other two combined, of the courtly virtue of discretion. Ausonius now describes a fish in terms strongly evocative of himself. The barbus (barbel) is the only fish that improves with age.61 The elder professor from the banks of the Garonne who wrote these lines shows rueful sincerity in describing the outsider from a tributary who comes to the greater river. Here associations with barba and barbarus, and therefore with the beards of both the foreigner and the old man, play with the traditional notion of being big fish in a small pond. Ausonius himself, as any reader of the Professores can attest, will have found that coming to the river of greater fame (cum defluxisti famae maioris in amnem, “when thou hast been carried down into a stream of greater note” 93) can mean more space, more opportunities, and more freedom to move within his profession (liberior laxos exerces, barbe, natatus, “O Barbel, dost more freely ply an easy stroke” 94). This is no guarantee, however, of escape from the schoolmaster’s eternal condition: training others in, and not necessarily being treated with, good manners. The salmo (salmon) creditably represents Ausonius’s homeland: Aquitaine. As today, the salmon was among the most preferred freshwater fish as far back as Pliny, and Ausonius evokes a line of Terence to place it at a “doubtful banquet” (dubia cena), not a poor meal, but one in which the guest does not know which of the enticing dishes to eat first.62 Pliny had already associated it with Ausonius’s beloved Aquitaine.63 This fish though hidden below the surface (occultus) betrays its great influence with far-ranging

et captus diro nociturus scorpios ictu (Hal. 116). tu melior peiore aevo, tibi contigit omni / spirantum ex numero non illaudata senectus 95–96. 62 Terence, Phormio 342: dubites quid sumas potissimum. Horace (Satire 2.2.77) shows that the phrase had passed into idiom. 63 9.18.68: in Aquitania salmo fluviatilis marinis omnibus praefertur. 60 61

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ripples, and is able to be stored for a long time without spoiling. The implications of the first fact, in light of Ausonius’s career as tutor and as quaestor, and his influence even from retirement, will be obvious. As for the second, the same words may describe the man who may stay long without becoming corrupt: tempora longarum fers incorrupte morarum, “endurest untainted through seasons of long delay” (103). This meaning of incorruptus was already current in the classical period, when Tacitus used it to describe a prince uncorrupted by flatterers: adversus blandientis incorruptus (Hist. 1.35). Here the courtier, whom Tacitus smears with the name of speculator, proudly boasts his deed, his sword dripping with the blood of Galba’s rival. The emperor earns the praise of Tacitus— incorruptus but also insigni animo ad coercendam militarem licentiam, minantibus intrepidus—by responding, “quis iussit?” The adjective, then, could already carry these implications, but later authors use it with this sense with increasing frequency. These are the secrets of Ausonius’s success where so many others would kill or be killed: to be subtle without scheming, to pass unnoticed without failing or transgressing his proper boundaries or goals. Again the poet recommends the courtier’s virtues by praising them in the fish. The mustela, literally “weasel,” begins a series of eight more species of fish, itself another testament to the wide attraction of the Mosel. Walther John, who as we saw above considered this to be the most important section of the poem, saw a subtle but impenetrable allusion to courtly life in Ausonius’s description of the salmon, and interpreted the description of the mustela as a flattery of Valentinian.64 The fish themselves, here as elsewhere, need not John (1932: 88–89) identified the mustela as the burbot, though opinions among scholars vary (see Green ad v. 107): “Hier hat sich Ausonius offenbar auf gut unterrichtete Gewährsmänner, die vielleicht auch am Hofe von Trier wirkten, stützen können, und wenn die Notiz V. 108 über die Quappe nach einer ansprechenden Vermutung so zu verstehen ist, daß dieser wohlschmeckende Fisch damals auf Betreiben Valentinians— der in Pannonien beheimatet war—aus der Donau in die Mosel verpflanzt worden wäre, um die Bedürfnisse der kaiserlichen Küche zu befriedigen, so würde das eine fein versteckte Schmeichelei für den Kaiser sein. Vielleicht steckt auch in den Versen 91 ff. eine derartige Anspielung, deren Gegenstand uns aber nicht recht kenntlich ist.”

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be simple one-to-one allegories to stir reactions from targeted individuals at court. Ausonius would have stirred the sympathies of the professional bureaucrat, who hailed from the Pannonian provinces and controlled access to the emperor when Ausonius arrived on the scene, far more by calling this fish a celeber alumnus (109) than by brief allusion to Illyricum and the Ister (106). By allowing the courtier to make the connection himself, rather than argumentatively demonstrating the connection of an obvious allegory, Ausonius communicates in a way too subtle, and yet sincere, merely to be called flattery. He also stays safely in his element: they would not pin him down. Now Ausonius progresses through the ancient equivalent of fast-food fish. The pike (lucius 122), with its Latin name (Latio risus praenomine 120), and smoky odor (fervet fumosis olido nidore popinis, “is fried in cookshops rank with the fumes of his greasy flavour” 124), recalls the South, Rome, and the common people. He dwells in the low places (cultor stagnorum 121–122) and is unfit to be served at table (hic nullos mensarum lectus ad usus 123). But it may be that, unlike the three varieties that follow, Ausonius’s pike will have evoked memories of those subtle but dangerous men at court who lurked in shadowy places, could be deadly to the ambitious, and might have been considered foreign by persons who considered themselves to be more Roman. For the pike, in spite of his Latin name which he seems to bear ironically (risus 120), infests defiles covered in sedge and slime: lucius obscuras ulva caenoque lacunas obsidet, “the Pike besets pools dim with sedge and ooze” (122–123). The image of lying hidden in sedge and slime will have reminded Ausonius’s audience of Dolon telling Priam how he escaped the Greeks by hiding in sedge (ulva), and of his successful deception. In another context Vergil tells us that ulva is a swamp-weed unfit for eating.65 Ausonius confirms the hint of menace which lies in the verb (obsidet, besiege) when he tells us that this fish is most dangerous to frogs: querulis vis infestissima ranis, “most deadly enemy to plaintive frogs” (122). Aen. 2.134–136: eripui, fateor, leto me, et vincula rupi, / limosoque lacu per noctem obscurus in ulva / delitui; Georg. 3.175: nec vescas salicum frontes ulvamque palustrem.

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This word (infestissima) in classical authors very often modifies gens or hostis, and takes a dative complement in Romanis, populo Romano, or rei publicae.66 The many examples of its use in a wide variety of authors show the word to have distinct political connotations, and in fact Ausonius is the first author to use it with a non-human complement, all previous authors using either named individuals, or groups of persons. Why frogs then? The significance of frogs may lie in proverbs. Petronius has Trimalchio use “frog” thus: inflat se tamquam rana (he inflates himself like a frog, 74), connecting frogs with self-importance. A little later he has Trimalchio say: qui fuit rana, nunc est rex (he that was just a frog is now a king, 74), adding a political assocation to the image of ambition. The pike, then, is no noble fish that swims in the open for all to see and admire, nor is he worthy of the table. Are we to see here the professional bureaucrat of the Pannonian government through the eyes of a late antique novus homo? Ausonius was now a grandee from the old and respectable province of Gaul entering into the stream of Roman history through the proper and established channels: the medium of classical paideia. Who were these greasy opportunists hiding in the weeds? Ausonius groups the next three varieties, the tench (tinca 125), bleak (alburnus 126), and shad (alausa 127), for their association with the tables of the commonest persons: some are vulgi solacia (125) and obsonia plebis (127); others are the prey of boys’ hooks (praedam puerilibus hamis 126). Although scholars have See, e.g., Livy 8.31.1: rem publicam ab infestissimis hostibus defendissent; 28.18.6, 29.3.14: hostem infestissimum; 38.47.9: de immanitate gentis Gallorum, de infestissimo odio in nomen Romanum; 40.57.6: gens infestissima; 42.11.5: infestissimum Romanis; Sallust Cat. 52.24: Gallorum gentem infestissumi nomini Romano; Cicero, In Verrem 2.5.76: hostem infestissimum populi Romani; In Cat. 4.21: duas urbis huic imperio infestissimas; Tacitus, Agricola 1.4: tam saeva et infesta virtutibus tempora; Velleius Paterculus 2.27.1: Romano nomini infestissimus; Val. Max. 5.1.9: infestissimum urbi nostrae Mitridatem; Script. Hist. Aug. 22.3.3: gentes orbis terrarum infestissimas. Augustine would take up the same usage in the service of the city of God, De Civ. Dei 2.3: nobis turbas infestissimas; and Ep. 191.2: christiano infestissimum nomini. 66

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differed in the identification of these fish, we will base our reading not on a priori knowledge, but on Ausonius’s characterizations.67 Thus Ausonius leads up to the stunning contrast of a veritable whale (nostrae mitis ballena Mosellae, “this gentle whale of our Moselle” 148) somehow making its way between the banks of a river, a monster of a fish able to exist among the lesser, much to its own credit, without destroying their orderly peace (flumineas…cohortes 131). Ausonius draws our attention to this last fish both by contrasting it with the lesser ones just mentioned, and by placing it at the end of the catalogue. Saving the most spectacular for last, Ausonius nearly breaks his character of realism by placing an actual whale in the river. The silurus is a large freshwater catfish which Ausonius calls a dolphin of the river (amnicola delphina, 137) and likens to a whale whose massive body displaces so much water that waves splash up on the river bank (144–149).68 If the other fish evoke in their descriptions the various characteristics of courtiers and courtly life, here we see its finest and greatest representative, the emperor himself. The fish, too big for the river’s banks, is drawn in lines that would stir fear and anxiety in the mind of the reader, and Ausonius anticipates these emotions and attempts to assure us that this awesome force can stay within its boundaries. There were reasons to fear a potentially violent and unpredictable regime. As several scholars have noted, Valentinian initiated a new period of imperial politics: the long and relatively stable dynastic period of Constantine and his successors came to an end with the death of Julian and Jovian in 363 and 364, and Valentinian’s rise to power exposed a new divergence of purpose between the family that had produced emperors for half a century, on the one hand, and the officers on the other.69 Whereas the officers had selected Jovian to succeed Julian at least partly

The commentaries in English and German cited above offer several possible identifications. 68 Green (1991) 479–480. 69 Matthews (1975: 32–100), Errington (1996: 438–53), Potter (2004: 533–51) and Mitchell (2007: 77–84). 67

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because of his relation to Constantius,70 Valentinian and Valens could not legitimize their selection as Augusti by pointing to their connection to the established ruling dynasty. The usurper Procopius, on the other hand, could. Thus it was natural that when he began his rebellion he did so at Constantinople and attempted to win popular support by carrying about the daughter of Constantius in public for all to see.71 Valentinian, then, from the perspective of the regional dynastic aristocracies, was a strange beast indeed. Recent years had taught the attachés of the court to be wary of making strong committments or public expressions of loyalties or personal convictions. In the brief period from 361 to 364, the Roman world had seen imperial patronage of Christian churches change to forcible promotion of state-funded pagan sacrifices and priesthoods, leading to the alienation of Antioch, and the Emperor Julian’s Misopogon, a sarcastic diatribe against his Christian Antiochene subjects who did not sympathize with his cultural and religious reforms. Then Julian died and state support swung back again to a new edict of toleration of Christianity. Jovian, Julian’s successor, reinstated Athanasius, the exiled bishop of Alexandria, back to the see from which he had been driven in the climate of state-sponsored Arianism under Constantius (d. 361). All these changes in a few years. It was during this time of constantly-shifting state patronage of three competing religions—Nicene Christianity, Arian Christianity, and state cults and priesthoods—that Ambrose was born in 340. His life highlights the uncertainty. He was the son of the praetorian prefect of Gaul under the Arian Constantius, raised at Trier, then moved to Rome when he was a teenager, where he lived when Julian was attempting to reform the grammatici. Finally the Catholic Ambrose was chosen by Valentinian the First in 374 to replace the Arian Auxentius as bishop of Milan, only to find himself opposing the second emperor of that name—another Arian. When we consider both factors—the unpredictability of a new dynasty resting its claim on the thinly veiled violence of the Mitchell (2007: 77) makes this plausible claim; I have been unable to find its basis in an ancient source. 71 Ammianus Marcellinus 26.7. 70

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army, and the exaggerated influence of the competing forms of religion that could not be reduced to the dichotomy of “pagan” and “Christian”—we well understand why Ausonius might take such pains to reassure his readers about the mildness of the emperor. More importantly, Valentinian was the emperor who would become famous for dying in a fit of anger while yelling at incommodius ambassadors from the Quadi, a nation to the north of the Danube. Ad haec imperator ira vehementi perculsus, et inter exordia respondendi tumidior, increpabat verborum obiurgatorio sonu nationem omnem ut beneficiorum inmemorem et ingratam. Paulatimque lenitus et ad molliora propensior, tamquam ictus e caelo vitalique via voceque simul obstructa, suffectus igneo lamine cernebatur; et repente cohibito sanguine, letali sudore perfusus. At this the emperor burst into a mighty fit of wrath, and being particularly incensed during the first part of his reply, he railed at the whole nation in noisy and abusive language, as ungrateful and forgetful of acts of kindness. Then he gradually calmed himself and seemed more inclined to mildness, when, as if struck by a bolt from the sky, he was seen to be speechless and suffocating, and his face was tinged with a fiery flush. On a sudden his blood was checked and the sweat of death broke out upon him. (Ammianus Marcellinus, 30.6.3–6, trans. Rolfe, 1939)

Ausonius would have to be careful what kind of fish he was going to describe, and how he was going to describe it, if he wanted to keep to his sincere opinions without risking too much. Ausonius links the silurus to the images of the pompa listed above, concealing a critique in glorification. He apostrophizes the silurus directly: nunc, pecus aequoreum, celebrabere, magne silure, “now, creature of the surface, shall thy praise be sung, O mighty Sheat-fish” (135). We recall the uses of this verb at lines 200 and 603 treated above, and especially that at line 109, already linked to Valentinian. The banks and depth of water can hardly hold the great fish (vix 138), which somehow passes along, the ripples of its wake announcing its presence before and after as far as the banks (diffunditur alveo / aestus et extremo procurrunt margine

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fluctus, “in the channel a tide is rolled abroad on either hand, and the ends of the waves drive onward at the marge” 142–143), though its movements themselves need not betoken violence (cum tranquillos moliris in amne meatus, “but when thou urgest thy peaceful course in the stream” 140). Green notes the hymnic effect of the anaphoric address to the fish itself, recalling the stately invocation of the river at the beginning of the poem: te…te…te (141–142; with tu…tu…tu, vv. 33, 39, 45, and Green’s notes there). Ausonius repeats the association at the end of the poem, when he tells us that the Augusti will send him home to Bordeaux (sc., Burdigala; cum me in patriam…Augustus pater et nati…mittent, “when the Emperor and his sons…shall dispatch me…to my native land” 449–452), then closes with the same anaphoric apostrophe. First he invokes the river by name as he had with the silurus: externas celebrande Mosella per oras, “worthy to be renowned throughout foreign lands” (470). Finally he repeats te seven times to close the poem (477–483). Thus he glorifies the silurus by linking it to the emperor and the river itself, the objects of highest praise in the poem. But he is not just a catfish, the biggest fish one may find in a river: he is also called a whale, making it impossible for us to read the passage as a mere description of what he saw or could have seen. Such a large and powerful fish as a whale, which belongs in the sea, also terrifies. Ausonius anticipates and mitigates this fear. He tells us that our whale is a gentle one that adds honor to the river: hic tamen, hic nostrae mitis ballena Mosellae / exitio procul est magnoque honor additus amni, “yet this—this gentle whale of our Moselle is far from havoc and brings glory to the mighty stream” (148–149). He is not actually a whale, after all, but merely the “gentle whale of the Mosella,” called so not becuase of his destructive power, but because of the honor his presence bestows. Symmachus in a letter observed that Ausonius was up to something fishy in the Mosella, and we now turn to that same letter, where wonder once again leads to writing.72 As Ausonius at the beginning of the Mosella, and also in the Cupido Cruciatus (on which more below in Chapter Five), and Theodosius 72

Ep. 1.14 in the editions of Seeck (1883) and Callu (1972).

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requesting a copy of a poem, Symmachus alleges admiratio to be his stimulus.73 He complains that seemingly everyone except himself has received a copy of the Mosella: volitat tuus Mosella per manus sinusque multorum divinis a te versibus consecratus sed tantum nostra ora praelabitur, “Your Moselle—that poem which has immortalized a river in heavenly verse—flits from hand to hand and from bosom to bosom of many” (1.14). We have already noted the fact of their friendship and correspondence. This letter stands out among the thirty Symmachus wrote to Ausonius, most of which were recommendations of third parties, or requests for Ausonius to promote careers of certain persons. This letter is unusual in that it makes no mention of a third party. Symmachus merely expresses his admiration for Ausonius’s work and wants to be associated with it himself. In fact, with an air of mock-injury at not having received the dedication of the work, which was now growing famous among their mutual literate associates, Symmachus describes his admiratio as an insuppressible force which overcomes his urge to take revenge on Ausonius by remaining silent about the poem: velim iusto de te silentio vindicari; sed admiratio scriptorum sensum frangit iniuriae, “I would like to get my just revenge on you through silence; but my amazement at your writing cracks my sense of injury” (ibid.). Symmachus explains his high opinion of the poem by citing his favorite parts. This is why he catches our attention when he gently accuses Ausonius of saying something more than the poem seems to mean on the surface. In the space of two sentences, Symmachus wonders aloud where Ausonius came up with so many different types of fish immediately after observing that Ausonius does not lie even in his poetry: nequaquam tibi crederem…ni scirem quod nec in poemate mentiaris, There’s no way I could believe you…except that I know you don’t lie in your poetry (ibid.). Already in the fourth century to accuse a poet of lying was an ancient and venerable practice, Plato being one famous author of the sentiment eight hundred years earlier, to say nothing of the self-accusation which Hesiod

Cupido, praef.6–7; Mos. 2; Theodosius begins and ends his letter with mention of his admiratio ingenii (Green, App. B.1).

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places in the mouths of the Muses themselves in the Theogony.74 But these accusations of deceit by poets are not what Symmachus is talking about. As most of his poetic compositions testify, Ausonius took any and every personal experience for the subject matter of his poetry, proving or attempting to prove himself a master of that rhetorical technique which it was his professional duty to inculcate in others: making the unremarkable into something fascinating by eloquent presentation. This literary tradition was already centuries old, and Ausonius could spin out a macrologia upon a statue of Bacchus in the backyard, a bilingual schoolbook, a painting of a lion slain by Gratian, or a bushel of oysters sent as a gift from a friend in Médoc.75 Moreover, in the vast majority of his poems Ausonius spoke much more commonly and directly about his own experience and acquaintances. But Ausonius could not possibly have seen all these fish.76 Knowing that Ausonius so often in his poetry directly described his own personal experience, Symmachus raised his eyebrows at this elaboration which not only could have no basis in Ausonius’s personal experience, but perhaps was not even theoretically possible. If he had not seen them all on the table, then where? Symmachus has not been the only critic to wonder at the catalogue of fish. In recent years critics have often addressed it directly, or at least felt the need to excuse themselves from doing so.77 Usually they say little about the silurus or sheatfish (or See, e.g., Plato, Rep. 2, 3, and especially 10; Hesiod, Theogony 27–28. See Epigr. 32 on Bacchus, Dionisotti (1982) on the schoolbook; on the lion Epigr. 6, on the bushel of oysters see Ep. 14. 76 Ep. 1.14. Even as he catches Ausonius out for his fictitious fish, Symmachus is eager to validate his and Ausonius’s status as lettered men: cur me istius libelli, quaeso, exortem esse voluisti? aut ἀμουσότερος tibi videbar, qui iudicare non possem, aut certe malignus, qui laudare nescirem. Why did you want to leave me without a share in your book there? I either seemed too unlettered to you to be able to judge it, or surely so unsympathetic as to be unable to praise it. For “unlettered” Symmachus uses the Greek term amousóteros, too-lacking-in-the-muses, like a modern person apologizing for his (or her) gaucherie. 77 See Roberts (1984: 343), Kenney (1984), and especially Taylor (2009: 188 and 202, fn. 31). 74 75

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catfish), or any other in particular, except to identify it with later or modern names. Some have shown a sense of the appropriateness of reading the fish on a metaphorical level. The present reading is not the first time the catalogue of the fish has been seen as a metaphor for the social strata of Ausonius’s time and place. Gruber, mentioned already for his view of the catalogue as an integrated part of the surrounding structure, had seen in the catalogue a humanizing part of the poem, preparing the reader for the appearance of man as colonus: “Remarkable in the description of the fish and their manner is the humanizing and “social differentiation” of the account…Martin goes even further…, who sees in the fish population that has been described a reflection of an ideal social structure of the Roman Empire.”78 Our reading is similar, except that Ausonius is not offering a metaphor for an ideal social structure, but rather a secret history of his real life. If we may see in the underwater population a metaphor for courtly life, then the sun’s rays are all the more deadly. We have already noticed how Ausonius emphasized the tendencies of some fish to lurk in the shadows, for example in his description of the pike (lucius) beginning at v. 120. Now the most pathetic scene of the poem, even if we restrict ourselves to a superficial reading, will become an admonition to the courtier. Beware the fate of the fish dragged out into the open. In vv. 240–282 Ausonius describes a fish caught by a boy fisherman, and two possible fates. First the fish caught by the hidden hook dies, gasping like a blacksmith’s bellows valve. Next, the poet tells us that he has seen a fish, on the point of death, desperately flapping itself into the air and back down to the water. In the first case the fisher boy catches the fish by deceiving it. In a well-balanced line we read that the boy uses a baited hook: “Bemerkenswert bei der Beschreibung der Fische und ihres Verhaltens ist die Humanisierung und „social differentiation“ der Aufzählung… Noch weiter geht Martin…, der in der geschilderten Fischpopulation ein Abbild einer idealen Sozialstruktur des römischen Imperiums sieht” (2013: 145). He also finds significant the lack of description of the fish’s natural self-defense mechanisms: “Die in antiken Fischdarstellungen hervorgehobene Eigenschaft der Selbstverteidigung (Ov. hal. passim; Plin. nat. 32,1,ff.) fehlt hier…” Newlands (1988) also noticed this. 78

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inductos escis iaciens letalibus hamos, “casting hooks baited with deadly food” (249). The first and last words, inductos and hamos; the next pair of agreeing words forms another concentric circle: escis and letalibus. In the middle we find the verb, here a participle: iaciens, casting. This is one of the forms of balance in a line of Latin hexameter often called a “golden” or “silver” line. Then the fish fails to notice the trick (ignara doli…turba natantum, the crowd of swimmers…oblivious to the trick 250), finally feeling instead of seeing the hook, when it is too late for him to avoid it: patulaeque per intima fauces sera occultati senserunt vulnera ferri, “too late!—their opened gullets feel the concealed barbs pierce deep within” (251–252). Thus the fisher boy plucks out one of the turba natantum, the crowd of swimmers. The poet had already identified these fish as the populatrix turba (241) that hides in the secret places of the river (penetrali flumine 242). At the beginning Ausonius had invited us to think of courtly movements: accessus faciles qua ripa ministrat, “where the bank supplies easy approaches” (240). This is the place where the bank offers easy access to the penetrale flumen, the places by nature obscure (122)79 and difficult to reach. By these verbal echoes Ausonius recalls the beginning of the poem and the catalogue of fish, noted above (cernimus arcanique patet penetrale profundi 60). We are now ready to see the dangers of accessus faciles and of ministri. Here Ausonius, in describing the dangers to which the hidden fish might be exposed by the fisherman, and the last desperate attempt to escape the deadly light of day, could have been describing life at the court of Valentinian. But Ammianus actually did describe the court of Valentianian's co-Augustus, Valens. The passage spans several sentences, and is well worth reproducing here in its entirety: Adulescebat autem obstinatum eius propositum, admovente stimulos avaritia et sua et eorum, qui tunc in regia versabantur, novos hiatus aperientium, et, siqua humanitatis fuisset mentio rara, hanc appellantium tarditatem: qui cruentis adulationibus institutum hominis, mortem in acie linguae portantis, ad partem pessimam depravantes, omnia turbine intempestivo 79

Cf. Aen. 2.135, cited above.

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AUSONIUS GRAMMATICUS perflabant, eversum ire funditus domus opulentissimas festinantes. Erat enim expositus accessu insidiantium et reclusus, vitio gemino perniciose inplicitus, quod intoleranter irascebatur tunc magis, cum eum puderet irasci, et quae facilitate privati opertis susurris audierat, an vera essent, excutere tumore principis supersidens pro veris accipiebat et certis. Inde factum est, ut clementiae specie penatibus multi protruderentur insontes, praecipites in exilium acti, quorum in aerario bona coacta et ipse ad quaestus proprios redigebat, ut damnati cibo precario victitarent, angustiis formidandae paupertatis adtriti… Ammianus Marcellinus 29.1.19–21. This persistent purpose of his increased, spurred on as it was both by his own greed and that of persons who frequented the court at that time, and opened the way to fresh desires, and if any mention of mercy was made—which rarely happened— called it slackness. These men through their bloodthirsty flatteries perverted in the worst possible direction the character of a man who carried death at the tip of his tongue, and blew everything down with an untimely hurricane, hastening to overturn utterly the richest houses. For he was exposed and open to the approach of plotters through his dangerous tendency to two faults: first, he was more prone to intolerable anger, when to be angry at all was shameful; secondly, in his princely pride he did not condescend to sift the truth of what, with the readiness of access of a man in private life, he had heard in secret whispers, but accepted as true and certain. The result was that many innocent persons under the appearance of mercy were thrust forth from their homes, and driven headlong into exile; and their property, which was consigned to the treasury, the emperor himself turned to his own profit, while the condemned, worn out by the privations of fearful poverty, were reduced to beggary… (trans. Rolfe, emphasis added).

First Ammianus describes the dangers of courtiers with easy access to the emperor’s ear. The courtiers (qui tunc in regia versabantur, men who at that time were employed at [or dwelled in] the palace) had found that part of the bank which offered easy access to their sudden attack: Valens was “exposed and open to the approach of flatterers” (expositus accessu insidiantium et reclusus). The courtier targeted by these machinations was plucked

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suddenly out of his element, and driven headlong (praecipites), like the fish who desperately heaves himself into the air in his effort to regain the water (praeceps dare corpora in amnem 272). It already seems probable that Ausonius consciously or unconsciously echoed the terms of this passage of Ammianus when he described the letalia tela diei (the lethal shafts of day, v. 260) to which the caught fish was exposed. What Ammianus says next, however, confirms it. The last sentence quoted above ends with a precept for the courtier caught by the maneuverings of his competitors for the emperor’s ear: to cast himself desperately away from danger, come what may. After describing how great and wealthy men were reduced and crushed by poverty (angustiis formidandae paupertatis adtriti) Ammianus once again uses that image which Ausonius echoed, but this time using it of the same action, [paupertas] cuius metu vel in mare nos ire praecipites suadet Theognis poeta vetus et prudens (29.1.21). Whereas before it was the courtier driven out of his element (praecipites in exilium), here we see the fish out of water, as it were, throwing himself in desperation away from destruction (praeceps dare corpora). Ausonius may even have been thinking of the original passage of Theognis, in which the poet advises escape from paupertas (πενίη) by throwing oneself off a steep cliff into the sea.80 Ausonius so constantly conversed mentally with the authors of his deep and broad reading that he could hardly write a poem without entering into dialogue with those men whose words he knew by heart. Conversely, any remarkable phrase or word might trigger recollection of one of the flowers of his mental florilegium. This experience is common to any who have committed to memory a great number of verses. It may be tedious to friends and acquaintences, but it is often irresistible to the individual. Thus Ausonius constantly heard and spoke on more than one level simultaneously: that of the superficial meaning, and that of the mnemonically-triggered subtext. At the same time he was beset, while at the court of Valentinian, with all the dangers of courtly Theog. 1.172–175, especially 174–175: ἣν δὴ χρὴ φεύγοντα καὶ ἐς βαθυκήτεα πόντον / ῥιπτεῖν καὶ πετρέων, Κύρνε, κατ᾽ ἠλιβάτων.

80

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life. To represent reality began to be dangerous any time that reality involved persons, and not only persons, but persons with power to destroy a man’s career or life itself. Ausonius not only survived, but achieved the height of success in this environment, and his most powerful resource was his ability with words. Not only that, but he found a way back again. Such a happy ending was not guaranteed, and Ausonius, who had seen the ends of other men (we observed a few in Valentinian’s reign), was sensitive of his own good luck, as we noted above when we cited vv. 449–452, about his being sent home. If we are tempted to see in his poetry works of art merely superficial and occasional, then he would have had nothing to fear from us. His poetic gambit was successful. When we begin with the hypothesis that Ausonius, now well past middle age, an eminent rhetorician, and an old hand at court, with his intellectual powers as strong as they would ever be, chose his words with deliberation and, when he spoke of the most powerful, with the utmost deliberation, the text opens up. We can read the whole Mosella.

CHAPTER FIVE. AUSONIUS OF ROME: THE CUPIDO CRUCIATUS AS PERSONAL POETRY IN THE CLASSICAL TRADITION “Strange that…as heart-felt a poem as was ever written should rest in a way on a foundation of makebelieve. A keen eye for nature, for light and shade, mountain and river, beast and bird and tree; a mind which found the work of earlier poets as rich a source of stimuli as things seen and felt; a passionate love of country and hope for its future, not untinged with deeper questions about what we might call the value and destiny of the individual—how did those things assume the mask (which proves to be no mask, but an essential element in the result)…which might have been intended to mislead?” (R.A.B. Mynors, quoted below, p. 121)

The Mosella, the Cupido Cruciatus, and the Bissula all share with the pedagogical poetry a tendency to strict formalism. The poet at the outset states clearly in prefaces and in the poems themselves his inspiration and purpose for the work at hand, and restricts his use of didactic, tendentious, or moralizing apostrophes to the reader. This realist tendency together with constant echoes, references, and quotations of Vergil, Statius, and a few others, especially of the Georgics and the Aeneid, suggest to the reader a hermeneutic for reading these poems. The Georgics are a reflection of natural realities, mostly devoid of human participation, 119

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which invite the reader to a rural life of peace and quiet in a time of recent unsettling and even violent interruptions of country life. The Mosella paints a picture of a calm countryside that is in reality subject to the uncertainties of war and the court of a dangerous prince, which together would dissuade the industrious and the talented from devoting themselves to governing with imperium and leaving their stamp upon the peace; yet this countryside emerges through the images of a peaceful glide downstream as idyllic as the ordered march of ants. But even as Ausonius acknowledges the dreadful majesty of the biggest fish in his attempt to reassure his reader not to fear to approach its dwelling place, his guarded and shadowed reflections betray the fear of one who knows all too well what happens to the little fish that comes into the lethal rays of full daylight. So the maligned poetry—the personal voice—of Ausonius survived the court of Valentinian and Gratian. Such a guarded reflection do we see in Ausonius’s description of the flagellated, bethorned, crucified god, Love. The Cupido Cruciatus offers not the tiniest opportunity to the reader to convict the conservative poet of betraying the classical canon as the undisputed repository of subject matter for serious poetry, and yet the courtier on the frontier, where emperors are made and unmade with all the speed and predictability of wind and rain, who does not know, as we who have hindsight, that the triumph of Nicene Christianity in the fifth century was a sure future, betrays the anxieties of a scholarly poet unsure of the future of his profession. The shocks of the first decade of the fifth century were not forseeable, at least not for him. Even after that, when the dismembered parts of the empire were going their own ways, and the story of the Romans was becoming the stories of the Italians and the Gauls and the Ῥωµαῖοι (the Byzantines) and a dozen others with fates uncertain, the monks and preachers from Lérins in France to Scetis in Egypt, Carthage in Africa to Antioch in Syria, could already speak with confidence of the fate of Christendom. Fourth century persons could not. Nor could a courtier afford to confess directly the real dangers of life in a frontier court. In such an environment as Valentinian’s Trier in the 370s, Ausonius the poet must be as subtle as Ausonius the quaestor. He will have

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been the same man as the grammaticus who lived without incident under Julian’s educational reforms.

THE JEWELLED STYLE

We will begin our discussion of Ausonius’s Cupido Cruciatus with a review of his most important model, Vergil. Because Vergil’s poetry more than any other author’s influenced Ausonius’s Mosella, Cupido, Cento, and Bissula, we will first review recent scholarship on the Georgics to see that the same critical themes of profound subtlety in the treatment of human persons abound in Vergil’s poetry as we find in that of Ausonius. In the poems themselves we will see also messages that could as easily be detected as dismissed, and images about whose basis we cannot be certain. Sometimes we can make no distinction between the poet’s experience and the imaginary storehouse of the memorized works of his literary predecessors. Our conclusions about Ausonius’s poetry rely on the precedent of Vergil, especially the Georgics. This is also because we can sum up the Cupid Crucified as an ecphrasis made of the tiny fragments of the Georgics that filled Ausonius’s mind. What late antique poet would not love a good ecphrasis? This type of conceit common in ancient epic was a telling of a story by describing a work of art on which that story is depicted. Famous examples from Homer and Vergil are the Shield of Achilles and the Shield of Aeneas. Catullus used a blanket; for Ausonius, it was this picture on the wall, made out of the little pieces of earlier poets that we have already noted.1 Like the mosaics beloved of fourthcentury artists and their patrons, the glittering tesserae of preexisting works in Ausonius’s Cupido shine out of a set-piece evocative of the painting itself. In a book of the same name, Michael Roberts (1989) called this fourth-century literary tendency—viz., that of literary art that shares the salient features of mosaic—the “Jewelled Style.” If the Golden Age and the Silver Age of Latin literature came in the last centuries of the Republic and the first ones of the Empire, any student of Hesiod’s Works and Days or Ovid’s

1

Iliad 18; Aeneid 8; Catullus 64.

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Metamorphoses must be able to deduce what metal a fourth-century poet like Ausonius was shaping:2 If only I did not have to be in the company of the Fifth Generation / of men, and if only I had died before it or been born after it, / since now is the time of the Iron Generation. (Works and Days 174–176, trans. Nagy) The harsh iron age was last. Immediately every kind of wickedness erupted into this age of baser natures: truth, shame and honour vanished; in their place were fraud, deceit, and trickery, violence and pernicious desires. (Metamorphoses 1.127– 131, trans. Kline)3

But what was this scene that Ausonius was fashioning with his tesserae? Any well-to-do Roman citizen would expect to see a sculpture or painting representing an emperor in the attitude of a god. One who grew up in Gaul in the 320s and 330s, and mingled with the great at Trier in the 60s and 70s, will have seen many such depictions of Constantine and his successors. In a crucifixion of a god who is Love, it is obvious to us today, but was not obvious at the time, what a Christian would see. But even if it was obvious to a Christian, it is not obvious that this work was either made by or for Christians, or even that Christians like Ausonius would be very quick to decorate their homes with art depicting Christian scenes any more eagerly than they wrote prayers in verse. We have already seen that it was the exception for Ausonius. There was more reason than fear of the consequences of a public expression of personal beliefs for Ausonius to write about Cupid rather than Christ, even if he also meant to write about Christ. That was simply what he and his audiences liked to read and write about. As is so often the case, the historians that give us a new hunger to study a period help us to suspend our knowledge of the future when we try to understand persons of a faraway time and place. Charles Norris Cochrane, Alan Cameron, Robert Markus, and Peter Hesiod, Works and Days vv. 109–201, and Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.89– 150. 3 What Kline renders as “pernicious desires” is amor sceleratus habendi, a bad kind of amor—literally a “criminal love of having.” 2

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Brown—to name just a few—each in his own way warned against assuming a quick and facile Christianization of the Roman Empire. The impact represented by even one of these historians is too great to encapsulate by referring to a single work, but in the present context the relevant books are Cochrane’s Christianity and Classical Culture (1940), especially his comments on Julian (pp. 319f) and on Valentinian (pp. 348f): how their failures were in part caused by their lack of appreciation of the power of ecclesiastical influence, an appreciation which Theodosius soon showed. Cameron in Last Pagans of Rome (2011) shows how “the Roman literary tradition played a vital and continuing role in shaping the thought-world of Christians” (p. 801). This is in fact the primary purpose of the book, if we may say this without oversimplifying a book that is so long and accomplishes so many things. Robert Markus in The End of Ancient Christianity had already shown that the victory of the ascetical movement—a movement which could claim Ausonius’s patristic counterparts like Jerome and Augustine—was by no means certain in the Gaul of the late fourth century. He says of the parrēsía of the holy man Lupicinus: This story comes from a milieu which had set itself up in reaction against the direction mainstream Christianity was taking in Gaul. It remained a protest in the margin of the history of Gallic Christianity. In the course of the century [i.e., the fifth century, after Ausonius lived and died] the ascetic ideal was transformed; and so was its relation to the Christianity preached to their churches by aristocratic bishops with ascetic sympathies. The ascetic ideology had moved from the fringes of society to its centre. (pp. 213–214)

Peter Brown’s whole career could fairly be called a painstaking description of the transitions of the Mediterranean world from “ancient” to “medieval.”

VERGIL’S PERSONALITY IN THE GEORGICS?

Llewelyn Morgan argued in his Patterns of Redemption in Virgil’s Georgics that a work may be at once a masterpiece of art and of propaganda.4 Taking head-on the split between the Harvard 4

Morgan (1999) 9.

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School and the Oxbridge School of interpretation of the Georgics that prevailed in the three decades before him, respectively labeled the “pessimistic” and the “optimistic,” Morgan attempts to synthesize a more inclusive hermeneutic for reading the Georgics.5 Here Morgan was attempting a new reading based on methods proposed by M. Owen Lee and, before him, Christine Perkell.6 Rather than supposing Vergil to be engaging in a voluntary pro-Octavian propaganda campaign in the Georgics, or on the other hand attempting to detect in this treatise on farming a subversive, veiled criticism of the new regime, recent scholars on the Georgics have begun with the hypothesis that the poet can write for another and for himself simultaneously or, as Lee put it, to “allow the oppositions in the poem to stand unresolved.” With qualified praise of Perkell (who indulges in a more extreme reader-response criticism), Lee goes on to say that “she is surely right in maintaining that Virgil was an artist concerned less with conventional notions of consistency than in presenting his reader with “oppositions that are not capable of resolution.””7 Lee is staking a claim to a place for criticism that constructs responses to the text based on the text itself, while remaining cautious to avoid total separation from plausible authorial intent. Morgan, of Cambridge, will begin his work (three years later than Lee’s optimistic prediction) by acknowledging the “pessimistic conclusion” of Harvard’s Richard Thomas in his commentary on the Georgics, which “encapsulates his view of the whole poem,” and by stating that he will take a “diametrically opposite view of the

For explicit acknowledgement of, and insight into the Harvard or “pessimistic” school and the Oxbridge or “optimistic” school, see M. Owen Lee’s Virgil as Orpheus (1996) xii–xiii. “In my previous books on Virgil […] I spoke with the “pessimistic” voice of what in Virgilian studies of those decades was called the Harvard School. Readers of this book may find it more “optimistic” than its predecessors, and perhaps for that reason think it reactionary.… Virgilian studies are moving out of the Oxbridge “optimism” vs. Harvard “pessimism” controversy that, once fruitful, has in recent years prevented new appreciation of the poet.” 6 Perkell (1989), The Poet’s Truth: A Study of the Poet in Virgil’s Georgics. 7 Lee (1996) xiii. 5

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Georgics.”8 This suggests a continuation of “the Oxbridge ‘optimism’ vs. Harvard ‘pessimism’ controversy,” and Llewelyn confirms this to be his intention.9 R.A.B. Mynors, whose Oxford commentary Morgan cites frequently alongside Thomas’, stood as a more reserved proponent of optimism. Though Mynors died in a car accident in 1989, therefore leaving no introduction to his commentary, Nisbet offers, in a very brief preface, the following sentences excerpted from Mynors’ drafts: Strange that Virgil’s Georgica, as heart-felt a poem as was ever written, should rest in a way on a foundation of makebelieve. A keen eye for nature, for light and shade, mountain and river, beast and bird and tree; a mind which found the work of earlier poets as rich a source of stimuli as things seen and felt; a passionate love of country and hope for its future, not untinged with deeper questions about what we might call the value and destiny of the individual—how did those things assume the mask (which proves to be no mask, but an essential element in the result) of a didactic poem on agriculture with a Greek title which might have been intended to mislead?10

Morgan, then, will have a strong ally in the commentator who considered the Georgics to have been “as heart-felt a poem as was ever written.” He will not, however, be content merely to be another critic arguing that Maecenas the patron was more influential than Vergil the author on the conception and execution of the Georgics. Morgan concurs with Wilkinson’s opinion that “Virgil’s own enthusiasms were more operative in generating the poem than any promptings from Maecenas,”11 but he insists that Wilkinson’s Morgan (1999) 1. To support his assertion about Thomas’ “view of the whole poem” Morgan adduces his opening comments: “here, as throughout, the complexity, ambivalence and ultimate darkness of the Virgilian world shine through” (1988: 1.1). 9 ibid. “[The Georgics] can on the contrary be interpreted as a thoroughgoing exercise in Octavianic propaganda, a precise response to the requirements of the regime headed by Octavian which at the time of the poem’s completion was emerging from the chaos of the Civil Wars; a text, in other words, capable of yielding a highly optimistic purport.” 10 Mynors (1990) v. 11 Wilkinson (1969) 54–5. 8

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criticism rests on a false dichotomy. “Wilkinson,” he says, “seems to assume that a privately motivated work of art cannot constitute propaganda: there is an implied antithesis in his remarks between political poetry and poetry which arises from Virgil’s private ‘enthusiasms’.”12 Morgan wants to separate the word “propaganda” from its pejorative and simplistic associations on account of which a subtle writer of noble and beautiful poetry, like Vergil, could not be believed to write propaganda. On the contrary, Morgan argues, propaganda can be subtle and beautiful and even true.13 Instead of understanding the text as a communication from one person to another, Morgan will urge an approach to the text which takes no account of the subjective experience of the author at all. It is difficult to understand what he means by this, and some of his critique of interpretations which attempt to perceive the author’s intent (what he calls post-Romantic criticism) involve him in incoherency. For example, in the process of highlighting all of the “profoundly anachronistic” and “post-Romantic” assumptions of his predecessors, Morgan includes the comment of Thomas that “the poem was begun, and much of it was written, in a time of the utmost political uncertainty, [which uncertainty] pervades the poem.”14 This, however, is certainly true, and Morgan offers no explanation of why this comment ought to be disallowed as “unhealthily occupied with the subjective experiences of the author.”15 His explicit statement of goals is similarly defective. The first part of the statement is clear enough: “[t]his reading of the Georgics will prove the possibility of an interpretation of the poem which, without ever ignoring those details which have been used to argue Virgil’s essential pessimism, can tease out of it an ultimately ‘upbeat’, propagandistic import… What I shall suggest, though, is that in the cultural and historical context of the Georgics such a message has great optimistic potential.”16 But it is difficult to see how using “the cultural and historical context” differs from reading the poem Morgan (1999) 6. Morgan (1999) 7. 14 Thomas (1988) 1.1. 15 Morgan (1999) 9. 16 Morgan (1999) 13, emphasis original. 12 13

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as having been written “in a time of the utmost political uncertainty,” other than as a difference between a generic and a specific claim of the same thing. This hermeneutic of Morgan’s does great credit to the poem as a work of art which is able to reflect a reality in such a way as to evoke an intended response—he prefers the word “designed” to “intended”17—without falsification or argumentativeness (we will learn that the correct response is to see the greatness of Octavian),18 but his valuation of the poem comes at the cost of personifying the poem itself. This he does in the statement of his second goal: “[to] move criticism of the Georgics away from the current author-orientated emphasis to a fuller recognition of its status as a purposefully created artefact, a text designed for a readership.”19 Yet Morgan never shows what is gained by treating the text as a being able to communicate and having a “design” of its own without reference to an author whose intention would impart not only existence but also design. His avoidance of the word “intended” obscures, but does not obviate, this problem. Is this post-modern approach now passé? Morgan deserves credit for the same contribution that Lee attributed to Perkell and predicted for the future: allowing oppositions to stand unresolved. Classical mythology is full of unresolved oppositions, and the countless examples of unearthed amphorae will testify that the cyclical stories of the Greeks are meant to be read (or heard or viewed) as the band of red and black turns and one set of interacting figures interacts both with itself and those which come before and after. There is no need to wonder how Achilles can be present and of fighting age at a war caused by an incident that occurred at the wedding of his parents, and at the end of which his son—himself already a grown man—slaughters the enemy king, any more than we wonder how the same amphora can depict Hercules stabbing Nessus in the same continuous space as that in which Perseus flees the sisters of the beheaded Medusa (Figure 7). As in the mythological sections of a Pindaric Ode, for example the First Olympian, one thing leads to another. Morgan (1999) 14. Morgan (1999) 213–218. 19 Morgan (1999) 13. 17 18

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Figure 7: Nessos Amphora Only by parading a series of partially concerted, partially opposed images can Vergil speak on multiple levels about soils,

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plants, animals and bees, and at the same time about persons usually latent. Anthropomorphism in the Georgics is not a novel claim.20 We have already seen that Vergil’s ambivalence can be read as an attempt to communicate more than one message on more than one level, influenced by the anxieties and uncertainties of the author’s historical context.21 Vergil was not alone in this subtlety; Ovid’s fate is an example of what happens when one eschews it, and Cicero advised Cornelius Nepos, who took living persons for his subject matter, to publish posthumously.22 Tacitus, on the other hand, after a time of patient silence, will describe in the preface of his Agricola the problem of speaking directly about contemporary persons in a time of despotic and unpredictable courtly power: legimus, cum Aruleno Rustico Paetus Thrasea, Herennio Senecioni Priscus Helvidius laudati essent, capitale fuisse, neque in ipsos modo auctores, sed in libros quoque eorum saevitum, delegato triumviris ministerio ut monumenta clarissimorum ingeniorum in comitio ac foro urerentur. (Agricola 2.1) Eulogies, indeed, were written by Arulenus Rusticus and Herennius Senecio—the one, of Thrasea Paetus; the other, of Helvidius Priscus. But both were treated as capital offences, and the savage rage of their enemies was vented upon the books as well as upon their authors. The public executioners,

See, e.g., Putnam (1979) 15. “In the four books, to choose only salient examples, our mental attitudes suffer the metaphoric guise of soils, plants, animals, and bees. Their anthropomorphism leaps at us constantly from the page. At the same time we are the objects of regular attention by abstractions greedy for power.” 21 “Anxieties” is Morgan’s word (see, e.g., 216), “uncertainty” Thomas’s (cited above). 22 If we may take Ammianus’ word for it (26.1.2): Haec quidam veterum formidantes, cognitiones actuum variorum, stilis uberibus explicatas, non edidere superstites, ut in quadam ad Cornelium Nepotem epistula Tullius quoque testis reverendus affirmat. Cicero’s letter is not extant, but his failure to take his own advice and the consequences he suffered for it, though casting doubt on whether he gave it, yet validates the wisdom of the opinion. 20

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We know from Tacitus himself what happend to Thrasea Paetus and Helvidius Priscus in the time of Nero.23 From the relative safety of the times of Nerva and then Trajan, Tacitus reflects upon the dangers of praising virtue:24 not merely one’s life, but one’s writings were at risk. The implication a fortiori of Tacitus’ remarks is even bleaker for those who attempt to be neutral or even critical. Ausonius entered into a literary tradition in which the dangers of speaking about contemporaries, and the solutions to those problems, were established conventions. To the examples from the last century before and the first two centuries after Christ we may add the remarks of Ammianus Marcellinus on the time in which Ammianus and Ausonius himself were writing: dictis impensiore cura rerum ordinibus ad usque memoriae confinia propioris, convenerat iam referre a notioribus pedem, ut […] pericula declinentur veritati saepe contigua, “Having narrated the course of events with the strictest care up to the bounds of the present epoch, I had already determined to withdraw my foot from the more familiar tracks, partly to avoid the dangers which are often connected with the truth” (26.1.1). Like that of Cornelius Nepos, Ammianus’ explicit and avowed purpose was to record deeds, res gestae, of persons. But now that he had come too close to the present, he sensed danger. Ausonius, like Vergil, wrote about ostensibly apolitical subject matter, but we have found reason to see in the beating to death of an ox to stimulate the generation of bees (in the Georgics), or the violent end that awaits the “slippery shoals” hauled by the fisherboy’s hook (in the Mosella), that they

Annales 16, especially 16.35, the forced suicide. By an accident of transmission, Thrasea gets the last word of the Annales, but the end of the text as we have it would stand out as a high point even if the manuscript were whole. 24 tam saeva et infesta virtutibus tempora (so cruel and hostile to virtue are the times, Agricola 1.4), cited earlier in our reading of the frogs in the Mosella. 23

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are not likely to be simply what they seem on the surface.25 We can not permit ourselves to be content with dismissive labels or the mere identification of sources. We must begin with the hypothesis that Ausonius was at least as learned in the traditions of Latin poetry and rhetoric as we are. If it is given that Ausonius meant more than he said in the Cupido Cruciatus, what can we infer about his relationship to his models, and what will a comparison of his poem with others who treated the same subject yield?26

A ERIS IN CAMPIS—IN E LYSIUM

The Vergilian echoes of the Cupido Cruciatus begin immediately with Aeris in campis, the first words of the poem, which set the scene in Elysium using Vergil’s own words,27 and an overt reference to Vergil to round out the first line: memorat quos Musa Maronis. Ausonius makes this reference even clearer by indicating the

The literature on images of violence in the Georgics is extensive. On the implications of the violence of Vergil’s description of bougonia, see Morgan (1999) 12–13 and 185, Ross (1987) 218–219, Miles (1980) 254, Kromer (1979) 16, Mynors (1990) 300. For the examina lubrica pisces, see Mos. 76 and cf. 150–151; for the death of the caught fish, see Mos. 240– 282. Ammianus seems also to have had this image in mind when he described the portentous exposure of the species natantium multiformes (cf. Ausonius’s vaga turba natantum, Mos. 250) to the sun’s rays at Alexandria (26.10.16). Kenney (1984) considered the distorting reflective boundaries of the surface of the water to be central to the Mosella. 26 On the importance of the Vergilian context of Ausonian echoes and citations, see Görler (1969), who notes both Ausonius’s thorough knowledge of Vergil, and the need for the reader constantly to ask the question, how much of the context does Ausonius want to import? “Einen Zufall wird man bei einem Vergilkenner wie Ausonius ausschließen dürfen. Es belibt zu fragen, ob es sich um eine rein äußerliche, auf den Wortlaut beschränkte Übernahme einer vergilischen Formulierung handelt oder ob Ausonius mit dem Vergilzitat auch an den vergilischen Zusammenhang erinnern wollte” (95–96). In the case of the particular passage alluded to in the beginning of the Mosella, Görler concludes that Ausonius is in fact attempting to recall Vergil’s landscapes. 27 Aeneid 6.887. 25

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specific poem, the Aeneid, with the echo of the proem (Musa, mihi causas memora…).28 But here as he often does, Ausonius draws in a less obvious and more significant way upon the Georgics. At the end of Book Four of the Georgics, we read about frustrated love which ends in disaster for both the hero and the heroine: the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice. Ausonius adverts the reader to this passage, not only with the quotation of inrita dona querens (Georg. 4.519–520 / Cupido Cruciatus 19), which Green notes in his commentary,29 but also with the orgia of line 3, recalling Georg. 4.521.30 Green offers two references to the Aeneid as loose connections.31 The first is to 6.517–18: euhantis orgia circum ducebant Phrygias, which he discards on syntactical grounds; the second is to 8.665, which he says offers a “similar” phrase, ducebant sacra. Other images which echo the same passage of the Georgics are grieving (maereo and maestus, Georg. vv. 511, 515 / Cupido vv. 13, 20), weeping (fleo, Georg. 509, 514 / Cupido 9, 17), loss (amitto, Georg. 512 / Cupido 14), the calling which is an echo (voco and revoco), and the riverbank (ripae, Georg. 527 / Cupido 8). Extended quotations of the two passages are included side-by-side at the end of this chapter. This juxtaposition will also suggest a reading of the orgia of line 3, which Green identifies as problematic. “orgia is seldom used without a deity being specified or implied: here it is hardly Amor that they are honouring, as Souchay suggested, but it may be Pluto, or Persephone.”32 The alternative to the three deities suggested is Bacchus, mentioned explicitly in the Georgics, which, by echoing inrita dona querens, Ausonius shows he had in mind. Ausonius consciously referred to 4.519–520. While it is not uncommon for Ausonius, who knew by heart most if not all of the Aeneid, Eclogues and Georgics, to quote a Vergilian phrase as a building block for a hexameter, we may expect a priori that the poet, to the extent that he uses epic unconsciously and spontaneously as his Aeneid 1.8. Green (1991) 529. 30 inter sacra deum nocturnique orgia Bacchi. 31 Green (1991) 528. 32 ibid. 28 29

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own living speech, will use these building blocks in the same position within a given line. Examples of this occur in the Cupido Cruciatus at the beginning and end of the poem, first with aeris in campis (Aeneid 6.887), which is at the beginning of a line in both the Aeneid and the Cupido, and second when Cupid flies away through the ivory gate in the last line: portaque evadit eburna (103). Like the phrase in the Aeneid (portaque emittit eburna, 6.898), the phrase occurs at the end of the line. When earlier epic lines, half-lines, or tags are being used by later poets, they are typically found in metrically the same position in the new line. This has often been observed by students of the composition of Homeric and Vergilian epic, as well as in the compositions of the centonists of late antiquity.33 Ausonius is a well-known representative, and we saw this tendency in our reading of his grammatical poetry. So for example we will often see different epithets for the same character each consistently occupying its own proper position within the hexameter. But that is not the case here. In line 19, the three words appear all together, and constitute a hemistich (a half-line) before the caesura. In Georgics 4.519–520, on the other hand, the first word is separated from the other two not only by Ditis but also by a line ending. Ausonius therefore was not merely stitching a Vergilian patch onto a quilt, but putting new wine into a new wineskin. The reference is therefore not a quotation but an echo. If this is true, then Ausonius is inviting us to consider the other implied parallels. These parallels include the images of weeping, mourning, grieving; both stories take place on river banks; both begin with the images of forests and dark places; both depict the recalling of the beloved to life. The phrase nulla Venus of the Georgics looks forward to the relationship between Amor and Venus in the Cupido Cruciatus. In a similar way the

See the Cento Nuptialis, in Green’s view (1991: 518–519) written at the behest of and in company with Valentinian, and which Green calls “one of the most detailed descriptions of sexual intercourse in Latin literature.” On the technique of centonism, see Usher (1998) and, with specific reference to Ausonius’s cento, McGill (2005); on epic composition, see Nagy (1996), who defines “authenticity” as that which is “in conformity with traditional oral epic diction” (153). 33

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Bacchantes who rend Orpheus in the Georgics prefigure the women whose rending of the flesh of Amor Ausonius foreshadows in the third line of the Cupido Cruciatus. Thus also Orpheus emerges as a parallel to Amor. If we understand the reference to the Georgics which includes the sacra as well as the orgia of the two passages of the Aeneid to which Green refers, we acquire a hermeneutic for the poem as a whole. It simultaneously evokes two heroes who descend to the underworld and return again to the light of day. Ausonius signals in his preface his intention to make amor the central image of the poem. In fact, though the title is Cupido Cruciatus for some editors,34 Cupido Cruciatur for others,35 “Cupid” occurs only once in the preface, where amor and related words occur three times (amatrices, amamus, amentur).36 In the poem itself Ausonius introduces and repeatedly names the afflicted god as Amor (at vv. 46, 59, 63), and only once near the end of the poem as Cupido (v. 101). As in the preface, the image of amor (not personified) overshadows the image of cupido (not personified), occurring seven times to the single personified use of Cupido at the end of the poem (at vv. 2, 13, 43, in addition to the three already mentioned). This focuses our attention and raises questions. It seems at first to be the same matter in the same form. By conflating Cupid with Orpheus and Adonis, Ausonius syncretizes a variety of religious images. By uniting these characters with the themes of love and culpability, and with images of the cross (vv. 56–62), the sudden fall of unnatural darkness (umida…nubila…fuscarent, 48–50), a wreath of thorns (v. 88, 91), flagellation (v. 89), an accusation and conviction without charge or consent of a judge (vv. 62–63), absolution by means of the transfer of guilt from humans to the god (vv. 63–64), mockery of the crucified (v. 65), the piercing of his side (vv. 75–78), and, after it all, the flight of the god up to heaven (v. 103), Ausonius crafts a poem with a profoundly subtle appeal for the Christian e.g., Green (1991), who observes that even this title has limited manuscript support, with others giving “less succinct” titles (527). 35 e.g., Evelyn-White (1919) following Peiper (1886). 36 Franzoi (2002) also notices this. 34

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audience as well, without risking what would be a revelation of personal beliefs: an explicit and public declaration of Christianity. A pagan audience totally ignorant of the Christian passion narrative would find in the Cupido Cruciatus a representation of a painting, an ecphrasis, of characters well-known from myth and epic, richly woven with prized references to Vergil, Ovid, and Statius. Ausonius means us to see more than Amor, to be sure. The presence of Orpheus, we noted above, is unmistakable. Finally, like Orpheus, the Christian god who is Love had power to go down to the underworld and bring back the beloved from the dead. Ausonius confirms the reference to Orpheus by making the argumenta leti (v. 4) of his heroines recall them back to life lost (in amissum revocant…aevum, 15). Green acknowledges the strangeness of quisque (63) when the feminine quaeque would have been expected, but offers a reference to Plautus (Poenulus 107) in which quisque is used to refer to a feminine, even though quamque had been used in the preceeding line. To this Green adds a second reference, to Terence (Hecyra 216). Green, however, calls Ausonius’s use of quisque at line 63 odd, because the poet will refer to the heroines with quaeque soon after (v. 67). By way of explanation, Green suggests that quisque here might mean “mankind in general,” and refers us to the very relevant passage of Sallust, which runs as follows:37 Sin captus pravis cupidinibus ad inertiam et voluptates corporis pessum datus est, perniciosa libidine paulisper usus, ubi per socordiam vires tempus ingenium diffluxere, naturae infirmitas accusatur: suam quisque culpam auctores ad negotia transferunt. (Bellum Jugurthinum 1.4) But if the soul is enslaved by base desires and sinks into the corruption of sloth and carnal pleasures, it enjoys a ruinous indulgence for a brief season; then, when idleness has wasted strength, youth, and intelligence, the blame is put on the weakness of our nature, and each man excuses himself for his own shortcomings by imputing his failure to adverse circumstances. (trans. Handford)

37

Green (1991) 531.

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Sallust is not only making the same point, but he is making quisque the subject of the same verb (transferunt) with the same direct object (culpam). Similarly the previous verb is the same in both passages (accusatur), the subject being naturae infirmitas in Sallust, Amor in Ausonius. Going further back into Sallust’s version of the argument we find the same origin: cupido, desire, or rather, the plural cupidines (captus pravis cupidinibus). We may remember that Ausonius the Grammaticus was a professional teacher of the quadriga: Vergil, Terence, Sallust, and Cicero. Green is cautious: “Perhaps Cupid is included, or even mankind in general (cf. Sall. BJ 1.4); but the form could well be due to a scribe.” And he may well be right. But the conformity to Plautine and Terentian usage and the verbal echoes of Sallust on the same topic warrant more confidence in the reading, which after all has the support of the MSS, the only exception being T’s obviously incorrect quisquam solvere.38 The latter explanation will show itself consistent with our reading of the poem as a whole. Alessandro Franzoi in his commentary on the Cupido Cruciatus identifies the poem as an “often difficult” text. The major commentaries often leave it insufficiently explained.39 Only the Italian commentators mention the nearly contemporaneous Cupid poems by Modestinus and Reposianus, and the anonymous Cupido T’s reading, in addition to being open to the objections to which quisque is open, does not have the benefit of frequent occurrences in those authors which Ausonius is fond of quoting. It is obviously the result of elision and liaison between the quisque absolvere of CKL. The corruption could not have happened the other way around. Scriverius offers quaeque solvere, which Green is willing to admit (even if he does in fact print the received reading), but as the received text is intelligible and is the lectio difficlior, then let the emender beware. Finally, Scriverius’ emendation on its face is unacceptable, since it is based on T’s solvere, and would not be able to explain CKL’s ab-. The reading of CKL, then, is the only one of the three options that Green prints which can both be explained by ancient usage and explain the other candidates. 39 Franzoi (2002) 5 n. 3: “[esegesi] utile e apprezzabile nella sua estensione, ma inevitabilmente al di sotto delle istanze interpretative di testi spesso difficili come il Cupido, talora oscuri al limite dell’indecifrabilità.” 38

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Amans. Franzoi agrees with Cupaiuolo in dating Modestinus later and therefore establishing dependence of Modestinus on Ausonius,40 but he considers the Concubitus Mavortis et Veneris of Reposianus to be earlier on thematic, structural, and generic grounds. We know nothing more about Reposianus than that he wrote the Concubitus. In fact, the 18th century scholar J.C. Wernsdorf, who edited the minor Latin poets, on account of the lack of any other attestation of the word “Reposianus,” thought that the name perhaps ought to be emended to Nepotianus.41 Wernsdorf observes that the name Nepotianus was common in the third and fourth centuries, citing the examples of the consuls of 301 and 336, as well as the priest and nephew of Heliodorus, the bishop who ordained Jerome; Jerome had written an epistolary epitaph on Nepotianus, and refers to it in a letter to Augustine.42 “Reposianus,” then, is known to us only through the Concubitus. There may be something in the last conjecture, which among the others was deemed unlikely to be received with favor on account of its “being altogether unsupported by evidence,” if we consider the letter of Jerome.43 Jerome begins the letter with a Franzoi (2002) 12: “Il collegamento tra il Cupido e il breve carme (11 vv.) dell’Anthologia è scontato, come osserva Giovanni Cupaiuolo [1991], che è propenso per una datazione bassa, comunque posteriore al Cupido.” They consider the innovations on the Adonis myth which Ausonius invents, and to which Modestinus alludes, to be convincing: “[l’innovazione] che, secondo Cupaiuolo (p. 1311 nt. 29), rivelerebbe la dipendenza di Modestino da Ausonio” (13). 41 Wernsdorf (1824), 3.8, p. 56: “Quis tamen Reposianus ille fuerit, et quando vixerit, plane ignoratur, si quidem id nomen alias in tota antiquitate non reperitur. Suspicatus sum aliquando, corruptum forte id nomen in codicibus, et notius Nepotiani reponendum esse.” It must be added at the outset that Wernsdorf tells us in these introductory remarks on the Concubitus that he has closely followed Burmann’s text and for the most part used Burmann’s notes in his own commentary: “adnotationes Petri Burmanni…integras…adhibui, cum meisque interpretationibus conjunxi.” 42 Letters 60 and 75, respectively. 43 Smith (1880) s.v. Reposianus. 40

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sort of recusatio, claiming that small genius ought not to undertake to write about great matters, lest it be crushed in the attempt.44 Then he waxes Ciceronian, airing his own learning in his attempt to appreciate properly the learning of the deceased Nepotianus, even indulging in peppering his letter with Greek, after the fashion of Cicero and of Ausonius (and the ἀµουσότερος Symmachus too): Nepotianus meus, tuus, noster, immo Christi, et quia Christi, idcirco plus noster, reliquit senes et desiderii sui iaculo vulneratos intolerabili dolore confecit. Quem heredem putavimus, funus tenemus. Cui iam meum sudabit ingenium? Cui litterulae placere gestient? Ubi est ille ἐργοδιώκτης noster et cygneo canore vox dulcior? (Ep. 60.1). Nepotian who was mine and yours and ours—nay rather, who was Christ’s and because Christ’s therefore the more ours— has left us in our old age overwhelmed with a grief that is past bearing, our hearts all sore with longing for him still. We thought of him as our heir, but now we only have his dead body. For whom now shall my mind exert itself? Whom shall my poor writings strive to please? Where is he, the inspirer of my labours, whose voice was sweeter than a swan’s song? (trans. Wright)

Here Jerome exhibits what Peter Brown describes in Power and Persuasion: the learned man validating his learning by giving way to another learned man.45 Jerome tells Heliodorus that he had considered Nepotianus to have been his intellectual “heir” (heres). He explains his metaphorical use of this word, meant to be striking coming from a monk, in the next three cola, each more syntactically complex and more impressive than the last. The first Ep. 60: Grandes materias ingenia parva non sufferunt et in ipso conatu ultra vires ausa succumbunt; quantoque maius fuerit, quod dicendum est, tanto magis obruitur, qui magnitudinem rerum verbis non potest explicare. 45 Brown (1992) 45: To give way to such persuasion, indeed, heightened [the learned man’s] authority…Charis and hémerotés, graciousness and gentle courtesy, with their all-important accompaniment, a willingness to grant favors to men of similar background, were the hallmark of the educated person. 44

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two credit Nepotianus’ taste as arbiter of literary elegance, using self-deprecating terms (litterulae) reminiscent of Ausonius’s ineptia poetandi. The third marks Nepotianus’ ability as a writer and very likely a poet. The comparison to the swan, celebrated for singing in Vergil among many other authors and linked by Horace to Pindar,46 strengthens Wernsdorf’s conjecture. We will see the same deference in the correspondence between Ausonius and Paulinus, as indeed we see in nearly all of the correspondence, not only of Ausonius, but of the period, especially where letters preface poems.47 Such evidence does not warrant certainty—even Wernsdorf demurred48—but is valuable for what it tells us about the prevailing literary conventions. Moreover, if the name is in fact Nepotianus, the increasing frequency of the name as the fourth century progresses, and the complete absence of the alternative in the third century, will support a dating in the later fourth century. Whether Reposianus’ treatment of the bedding of Mars and Venus came before or after Ausonius’s Cupido, the later was certainly aware of the earlier when he composed his own poem. Both poems are in the same meter, both feature Venus as one of the two main characters, both feature Cupid, both focus on the pains concomitant with surrender to love. Images and themes are common. The wreath of roses appears in both poems, indeed in metrically the same position, roseo following the masculine caesura and serto coming at the end of the line: nec satis in verbis: roseo Venus aurea serto. (Cupido 88) inter delicias roseo prope livida serto. (Concubitus 22)

See, e.g., Verg. Ecl. 8.55 and Hor. Carm. 4.2.25. Cf. Jerome’s preface to his hagiographical De Septies Percussa, Ep.1.1– 2. Scott McGill’s work on these conventions in the poems of Ausonius has been most illuminating, most recently in his chapter in Elsner and Hernández-Lobato (2017). 48 Sed quis tuto hoc nomen carminis auctori tribuat? (3.8, p. 56.) 46 47

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Franzoi notes this, as well as the common mise en scène, including the lucus, the myrtle, the hyacinth, and the reference to Adonis.49 All these features link the two poems, regardless of which influenced the other. We perceive the distinct character of the poet Ausonius not merely in the differences between the poems, but in the strikingly different uses to which he puts the features which the two poems do share. For example, both feature Venus and Cupid as the two main characters.50 Immediately after bringing Venus onstage in the second line, Reposianus evokes Cupid in line three, then apostrophizes him disparagingly three lines later: improbe, dure puer, crudelis crimine matris, / pompam ducis, Amor, nullo satiate triumpho (Concubitus 6–7)! In addition to addressing Cupid as wanton (improbus), hard (durus) and cruel (crudelis), Reposianus will repeatedly accuse him of saevitia, a characteristic frequently applied disparagingly to emperors in late antiquity, and especially to Valentinian.51 Cupid’s darts are saeva,52 the speaker addresses Cupid as saevus,53 and in the last line of the poem we read of the cupidinis ira,54 the image forever linked with saevitia by the proem of the Aeneid.55 In all but one of these poems, the god of love is depicted as mischievous and quick to hide or flee when his mischief is discovered. In all but one does the speaker address Love Franzoi (2002) 13: “la ripresa della giuntura roseo…serto, riferita a Venere, nella stessa sede metrica […]. Mentre il lucus, […] dove pure sono il mirto, il giacinto e il ricordo di Adone. 50 The meaning of the term “main character” may be debatable, especially where Mars is concerned in the Concubitus, but to say that Cupid is at least of equal importance to Mars in that poem, is not. 51 Ammianus calls him homo propalam ferus (27.7.4) and devotes a chapter (27.7) to the description of Valentinian’s saevitia in particular and a psychological excursus on that of emperors in general (27.7.9). He recurs to the same vocabulary in describing Valentinian under the influence of Maximus (29.3.1–2) and in his obituary (30.8). Gibbon is typically colorful on the subject (Chapter 25: Vol. 1.973–980). 52 saeva puer componat tela Cupido, 49. 53 saeve puer, 52; saeve Cupido, 176. 54 Pasiphaae crimen mixtique cupidinis iram, 182. 55 saevae memorem Iunonis ob iram, Aen. 1.4. 49

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in disparaging terms; Ausonius alone sympathizes with the god, just as Ausonius alone depicts him actually caught and tormented. Far from implying that Love deserves to be punished, Ausonius goes so far as to call him innocent. When Love is crucified in Ausonius’s poem, the poet tells us that no charge is levelled against him: reus est sine crimine, iudice nullo / accusatur Amor (Cupido 62–63). Using the language of the courts, Ausonius describes a situation outrageous to Roman jursiprudence. The terms reus and crimen in classical authors usually refer to the defendant and the charge, respectively. Here, however, crimen seems to indicate not the allegation, but the actual criminal act—what we would mean today by “crime” as a fact, in Latin a factum, facinus, or scelus. This is how the words are in fact used in the Concubitus, when Venus is caught in adultery but first meditates revenge rather than being convicted of a shameful deed: at Paphie conversa dolet non crimina facti / sed quae sit vindicta sibi tum singula volvens / cogitat et poenam sentit, si Phoebus amaret, “but Paphia turns and smarts, not at the accusations of the deed, but at what the revenge will be; then considering details she thinks and feels it punishment if only Phoebus should fall in love” (178–180). The present use of crimen by Ausonius raises our eyebrows ahead of the phrase iudice nullo. Next Ausonius tells us that each wants to absolve him- or herself, se quisque absolvere gestit (62). Green notes the generic masculine quisque, which may be taken to refer to all mankind, rather than simply the heroines of the Cupido, as we have noted above. The relatively rare denominative verb gestio—Ausonius might have used the much more common desidero or volo, or merely absolvo without a complementary infinitive construction—implies an intense desire to lay the guilt for one’s own sins to the charge of Love, transferat ut proprias aliena in crimina culpas, (seeks to lay her offences to another’s charge, 64). For Ausonius, the guilty party is the group of mythological heroines, and even mankind in general, not Amor. The god Love suffers in the Cupido because of the desire of the guilty to justify themselves. Ausonius had already invited us to focus on self-justification in his preface to the poem. Addressing his dedicatee, Gregorius, he foreshadows the principal subject of the Cupido—amor—when

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he says that we love (amamus) our own warts and scars, and, not content to have sinned because of our own vice, we attempt to make others love them (ut amentur).56 And he is careful to distinguish at the outset between two kinds of sinful woman lovers (amatrices): not those who acknowledge their own agency in their sin, but those from classical epic, who pardon themselves and punish a god.57 By depicting the heroines attempting to justify themselves by punishing Amor in this way, Ausonius causes us to sympathize with the god. He concludes the preface by professing that he has a greater hope for Gregorius to love (amabis) than to praise his poem (laudes).58 Finally he asks for that kind of love about which Jesus in the Gospel of John makes a point of distinguishing from amor,59 and which in John’s Gospel consistently renders the Greek ἀγαπάω in the Latin Vulgate: diligo. He bids Gregorius farewell with: dilige parentem, love [your] father (or is it love the father?).60 Ausonius’s treatment of Venus also differs from that of Reposianus. It is not necessary for the purposes of this comparison to consider the Concubitus to be of earlier date than the Cupido. If, however, we take that hypothesis, it would be easy to see in the unhappy affair the origin of the anger Venus displays in the Cupido. For most of the Concubitus, Venus has no cause to be angry with Cupid. We note, also, that in the Concubitus he is “Cupid” not Amor, as in Ausonius, for so Reposianus consistently calls the god in his poem.61

naevos nostros et cicatrices amamus, nec soli nostro vitio peccasse contenti affectamus ut amentur, praef.8–10. 57 non istae de nostro saeculo quae sponte peccant, sed illae heroicae quae sibi ignoscunt et plectunt deum, praef.3. 58 certus sum, quodcumque meum scieris, amabis; quod magis spero quam ut laudes. praef.11–12. 59 Jn. 21. 60 praef.12. 61 Eight times in the Concubitus he is Cupido (vv. 3, 31, 49, 92, 105, 126, 148, 176), only twice Amor (vv. 7, 136). The proportion is roughly the same the other way in the Cupido (but it is about half as long), as we have observed above. 56

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We will also see an explanation for her instrument of torture, the rosea serta. We have already observed that the wreath of roses appears in both poems. In the Concubitus, the rose appears several times: the noun rosa three times (vv. 42, 53, 95), the derivative adjective roseus five times (vv. 13, 22, 30, 54, 111), and the noun rosetum (properly rose-bed or rose garden, although here a synecdoche for rosa) twice (vv. 58, 79). In the Concubitus, the roses are Venus’s friends, or at least not yet the instruments of pain or chagrin for herself or her son. Mars’s sword is replaced with a rose (95), and he uses roses as a pillow under the neck of Venus (111) which, we are told earlier, might be bruised by a chain of the flowers, to say nothing of the chains of her husband.62 This is the passage which, we noted above, uses the phrase in metrically the same position. Nor will the roses’ thorns cause Venus any pain; the speaker reminds her to remove them first: destrictis teneras foliis constringe papillas,63 “strip off the leaves and graze the tender buds” (Concubitus 59).64 The wreath (serta) will be put to another use in the Cupido, where, using the same image in a different way, Ausonius draws parallels to the Passion of Christ already evoked by the crucifixion. In the Cupido the wreath of thorns, the weapon which Venus uses to flagellate the crucified Amor beyond even the plaintiff heroines’ perverse sense of justice, evokes the images of the crown of thorns and the scourging of Christ. Like the symbol of Venus’s unhappy love, the rose, the event of the unhappy love itself recalls the Concubitus. As Ausonius tells us when he first brings them on stage, each of the heroines comes

Vulcani vincla… / quae Martem nectant Veneris nec brachia laedant / inter delicias roseo prope livida serto. 20–22. 63 While papillae are normally the nipples, in the Pervigilium Veneris they are rosebuds (vv. 14 and 21), as Duff (1934: 528) notes. But both images are likely here. 64 This part of the text is puzzling, as the speaker shifts, in the course of ten lines (vv. 52–61) from addressing Cupid (saeve puer, 52) to “you” (sg.), possibly Cupid (tu, 53), but more likely with Duff (1934: 528) and Wernsdorf (1824: 330) one of the Graces, to another “you” (sg.), certainly Venus (tu, ne purpurei laedat te spina roseti, 58), to “you” (pl.), the Graces (servetis, 61; the puellas of v. 60). 62

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bearing the symbol of her own downfall,65 so that each may punish Amor with the pain he had caused her to feel: ut quo quaeque perit studeat punire dolore, “each eagerly to avenge her grief with that which slew her” (67). Like the other heroines, Venus comes bringing a symbol of her own pain for the torture of Amor—the rose wreath—and like a Pindaric or Horatian priamel, or like Zeus hanging all the Olympians by a golden cord, the last item in the catalogue will outperform all the rest. Ausonius evokes the same image as the Concubitus when he tells us of the shame (dedecus) which she lays at the charge of her son (nati in crimina confert, 83): dedecus ipsa suum, quod vincula caeca mariti / deprenso Mavorte tulit, “her own disgrace, because she endured the hidden bonds set by her husband, when taken in the act with Mars” (84– 5). We have already seen the close connection in the Concubitus between the vincula of Vulcan and the vincula made out of roses; here Ausonius connects the two images. Like the Venus of the Concubitus, the Venus of the Cupido is unrepentant of her crime, instead meditating revenge. In the Cupido, however, we see her not being caught in the act, but in the fulfillment of her vindicta. Ausonius uses the same word for revenge as Reposianus. Just as Venus refuses to feel shame for her deed in the Concubitus, in the Cupido her revenge so far exceeds even the heroines’ sense of justice that they begin to see Venus as the guilty party,66 and to absolve Amor of guilt in their own complaints: ipsae intercedunt heroides et sua quaeque / funera crudeli malunt ascribere fato, “the heroines themselves intervene, each one preferring to blame Fate’s cruelty for her death” (95–96). Like the different uses to which Ausonius puts the images of roses and vincula, Cupido and Amor, the presentation of Venus as vengeful tragic lover par excellence evokes the Passion narrative. All the while it enacts a familiar myth, thoroughly faithful to classical norms of subject matter and technique. Although it has never been necessary to postulate the chronological priority of one poem or the other, the foregoing observations invite a brief summary of the opinions which scholars have 65 66

ut quondam occiderant, leti argumenta gerebant, 4. vindicta…Venerem factura nocentem, 93–4.

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offered on the subject. Some recent authors have given partial accounts of the various scholarly opinions on the date of Reposianus, about whom, as we saw above, nothing at all is known but his name, if even so much. As for the dates of Ausonius, his life span (most of the fourth century) is not at all in doubt; the date of the Cupido nearly certain. We will begin with the less controversial question. Ausonius was in Trier between 365 and 375. Valentinian became Augustus in 364, moved from Milan to Paris and then Rheims in 365, and remained on the frontier to confront the menace of the Alamanni.67 After unexpectedly recovering from a severe illness he raised his son Gratian, the pupil of Ausonius, to the purple in 367.68 Valentinian left Trier, as Ammianus tells us, in the spring of 375 to deal with Sarmatians and Quadi in Pannonia.69 As Ausonius informs us in the preface that the Cupido was inspired by a painting in a dining room at Trier, we have a certain terminus post quem. Green considers the “freshness of detail” to indicate that the poem was written while he was there.70 The need to remind Gregorius, however, suggests that one or both of them is no longer there, and Green offers the occasion of Gregorius receiving his Fasti to date the preface to the early 380s. We can safely place an outer limit, then, at that time. Reposianus, on the other hand, stands at the center of a sometimes fierce, perhaps insoluble debate. Wernsdorf, who informs us that he follows the earlier Dutch scholar Pieter Burmann the Younger, tells us only that he considers the author not to be of the best age,71 although his suggestions for emending the name to Nepotianus, mentioned above, indicate he thought a date in the fourth century to be likely. Conte, on the other hand, stating that the work is “usually attributed to the third century,” allows that it is

Ammianus Marcellinus, Res Gestae 26.5.9–13. 27.6, with implied criticism of Ausonius’s influence at 27.6.15. 69 30.5.1. 70 Green (1991) 526. 71 Wernsdorf (1824) 55. “Auctor quidem non optimae aetatis esse videtur, quod peccata in metrum nonnulla et verba insolentiora demonstrant.” 67 68

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uncertain and that others have attributed it to the fourth and the fifth.72 Conte, however, only refers explicitly to Tolkiehn, who acknowledges the traditional dating about the year 300,73 but who repeats the opinion of the earlier scholar Baehrens, who believed Reposianus to be a contemporary of Dracontius based on echoes of the one in the other.74 Indeed, Baehrens does not explain his opinion of the date at all, and Tolkiehn explicitly states that his opinion is based on the a priori assumption that Dracontius cannot be assumed to be leaning on Reposianus.75 In the final analysis Tolkiehn does not insist on a particular date: he points to the irregular syllabification of some adjectives which was equally possible in the third and fifth centuries.76 On the subject of metrics, Vollmer favored an earlier date for Reposianus, on the grounds that the poet’s prosody was too good for a late Latin poet.77 All the arguments based on comparison with other works ultimately leave us with uncertainty about the direction of influence. We now come to the more recent treatments of the question by Shanzer, Cristante, Franzoi and others.78 Alessandro Franzoi in his commentary on the Cupido acknowledges the parallels to Modestinus and Reposianus, as we have already observed. There Franzoi refers to Lucio Cristante’s dating of the poem, in his Conte (1994) pp. 610 and 619. Duff and Duff in the Loeb edition of the Poetae Latini Minores (1935: 519) assert that Reposianus, Modestinus, and Pentadius, with the additional piece Cupido Amans by an unknown hand, are all of the third century. 73 Tolkiehn (1897) p. 620: “Teuffel-Schwabe röm. litt. gesch. s. 1005 und Schanz in IwMüllers handbuch VIII 3 s. 525 setzen ihn übereinstimmend ungefähr 300 an.” 74 ibid.: “Baehrens…sieht in dem dichter einen zeitgenossen des Dracontius, an den er in manchen wendungen erinnere.” See also Baehrens (1876) 605. 75 Tolkiehn (1897) 606. 76 Tolkiehn (1897) 623: “derartige unregelmäszigkeiten aber finden sich vereinzelt zu allen zeiten und waren im dritten jh. ebenso gut möglich wie im fünften (man fgl. den fünften abschnitt in L. Müllers de re metrica 1894).” 77 Vollmer RE “Reposianus,” 611–12. 78 Shanzer (1986) and (2013), Cristante (2011) and Franzoi (2002). 72

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commentary on the Concubitus, in the fourth or fifth century.79 Cristante had already kindled the ire of Danuta Shanzer when he published his edition, commentary, and translation of Martianus Capella, a collaborative work with Luciano Lenaz;80 Shanzer wrote a review attacking, among many other aspects of the work, Cristante’s dating of Reposianus.81 Shanzer informs us that she was already disappointed in Cristante: “In 1986 I argued that Dracontius, Reposianus, the Aegritudo Perdicae, and Martianus were contemporary… The authors fail to discuss or take on these arguments in the appropriate place… Cristante had already passed over my discussion in his Reposianus (1999)…” But in that argument Shanzer takes the time, with many examples, to argue the dates of only three of those four authors and texts: not Reposianus. She spends fourteen pages with the aim of establishing the date of Martianus,82 but her whole discussion of the date of Reposianus consists of one example of a parallel between the two authors, which amounts to less than half of its paragraph. It is not the main point, but a pendant. Moreover, she acknowledges that Martianus might be influenced by Reposianus, not the other way around,83 and all of the prior scholarly opinions she cites either are aporetic, or rest, by their own admission, on a priori assumptions.84 At any rate Shanzer’s purpose here is not to establish the date of Reposianus. From the parallels discussed above, I find the influence between Reposianus and Ausonius more likely from the latter to the former than the other way around. This would date Reposianus to Franzoi (2002) 13, refers to Cristante (1999) 8 and 15. In this Cristante follows Gualandri (1974) who argues that Dracontius followed Reposianus. 80 Cristante and Lenaz (2011). 81 Shanzer (2013) herself sums up her tone best at the end of the review: “[w]hen the author of one commentary reviews another one on the same text, the situation can feel uncomfortable or invidious.” 82 Shanzer (1986) 8–21. 83 Shanzer (1986) 19: “the presence of two imitations in Martianus might suggest that he had read Reposianus rather than the other way around.” 84 ibid. She cites Tolkiehn, Baehrens, and Vollmer, all of whom we discussed above, and acknowledges of Baehrens that he “asserted without proof that he was a contemporary of Dracontius.” 79

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the late fourth (the most commonly assigned date among recent scholars, even by those who disagree on termini) or the fifth century. The parallel of the phrase roseo…serto in metrically the same position in both authors establishes for us the proposition that one influenced the other. Beyond that, however, all other conclusions will be imperfect. How can we be sure that Ausonius’s characterization of Venus by the iconographic chain of roses is a reference to Reposianus’ elaborate description of the origin and function of the flowers and wreaths in the Concubitus, and not rather the source of Reposianus’ elaboration of the symbols? Is it more likely that Ausonius used Reposianus’ treatment of the Mars and Venus myth, along with Vergil’s, Ovid’s, and other literary treatments of myth that Ausonius used in composing his catalogue of tragic lovers—or that Reposianus focused on one particular tragic lover from Ausonius’s poem, and elaborated one twice as long? The former seems to me more likely, but Ausonius so very rarely imitates any poets outside the well-established and time-honored canon (e.g., Vergil, Ovid, Statius) that a reference to Reposianus would be a unique departure from that habit, not only in this poem but in Ausonius’s poetry in general. In fact, if Ausonius were not so frequently and directly autobiographical; if, for example, the tables were turned and of all the works of Ausonius only the Cupido survived, without its preface, would we be able to date the Cupido itself? Apart from a possible echo of Valerius Flaccus at line 69, and one of Statius at 93,85 every verbal echo in the poem noticed by Green in his commentary is of Vergil or Ovid, and the others (Valerius and Statius) are hardly to be considered “late” authors. In the final analysis this habit of Ausonius weighs more heavily in the balance than the fact that the subject matter of the Cupido is chronologically subsequent to the subject matter of the Concubitus. Such a point would not be relevant to the relative dating of the texts unless we could be certain that one of them introduced a unique detail into the traditional story (taken, ultimately from Homer, Od. 8.267–366), and even this

See Green at vv. 69 and 93. The reference to Statius may be fortuitous, but the -que which follows in the same metrical position later in the line would justify at least Green’s “cf.” 85

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alone would not allow us to be certain which was a reference to which. Thus I favor the later dating of Reposianus. Even if the later date of Reposianus makes his parallels to Ausonius more significant for the former than for the latter, comparison with the Concubitus still sheds light on the Cupido. He is either an influence or a commentator: both are valuable to us. Though our level of certainty in the matter of dating is not sufficient to justify a dismissal of or scorn for the opposite position, nevertheless our comparison of the two has yielded two benefits. We have seen how a knowledge of Ausonius’s habits of composition helps us to date Reposianus. In the second place, Reposianus has been a useful foil to emphasize what about the Cupido Cruciatus is especially Ausonian. We have seen that, regardless of the relative dates of composition, a comparison of Ausonius with Reposianus, Modestinus, or the anonymous author of the Cupido Amans will illuminate the character of Ausonius as he treats the same subject matter in a different way. By inverting that hermeneutic, we will be able to support the conclusions to which the comparisons just mentioned have led. Ausonius knew Vergil’s Georgics by heart—he quotes that poem with as much frequency as any other. It is not the only important poem: it is the most important. We already observed that in the Cupido Ausonius evokes the image of the fields of Aeneid 6.887 with the first words of the poem, aëris in campis, and that he strengthens this connection two lines later with another reference to Book Six of the Aeneid. Like the parallels to Reposianus and the Cupid literature, these comparisons are both obvious and invited. But like the Mosella, the other long poem Ausonius wrote inspired by his experience at the court in Trier, the Cupido owes more to the Georgics than to the Aeneid, not based merely on frequency of references, but also based on the profound subtlety with which both poets treat their different but equally innocuous subject matter. Unlike the parallels to Reposianus and the Cupid literature, which are present whether Ausonius intended them or not, Ausonius’s evocation of the Georgics which we saw above is much more subtle, yet no less intelligible. Instead of treating the same subject matter in a different way, he treats

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different subject matter in the same way. This is as close as Ausonius comes to new wine in old wineskins. In writing the Cupido Cruciatus, a poem susceptible of vivid Christian responses, Ausonius’s reputation as a grammaticus, an artist, and a Roman was at stake. The Nachleben of the poem will show that he succeeded in crafting a poem in accord with classical standards and one which was approved by his profane successors. The leitmotif of Christ operating on another level shows that he was as profoundly different from his student Paulinus the poet as he was from his patron Theodosius the legislator. But he survived the fall of Valentinian and Gratian to be patronized by Theodosius! Ausonius was not one to support cultural rupture, nor may we dismiss him with the trite label of “deeply conservative.” The Cupido Cruciatus defies the simple explanation of an old man with his heels dug in, sliding gradually to the inevitable cultural collapse. In it Ausonius shows himself capable of change without revolution. If in the event such agents of cultural and political change as Jerome86 and Chrysostom,87 Alaric and Theodosius, effected violent revolutions on both fronts, this is no proof that Ausonius saw them as inevitable. We may or may not be able to say that Ausonius was typical of a class which must have been very numerous,88 as many presume, but we may certainly agree with Jullian when he calls the poet “une âme confiant et sereine, un esprit calme, de sens rassis, amoureux de liberté et de tolérance, un homme d’ordre, de sagesse et de bon sens.”89 A wise old soul that loved liberty and tolerance, for good and ill. He hedged his bets. This is why Henri Marrou, facing unsettling religious changes in his own century, took him to task.

We will have occasion in Chapter Six to compare Jerome’s letter to Heliodorus (Ep. 14) with the correspondence of Ausonius and Paulinus. 87 See, for example, Chrysostom’s De inani gloria et de educandis liberis, for his view that the study of the pagan classics could now be eschewed altogether by young persons. See also Kaster (1988) 71–72, who gives an extensive list of fifteen sources in both languages of Christian opposition to pagan learning. 88 Glover (1901) 109–10. 89 Jullian (1892) 252. 86

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A PPENDIX TO CHAPTER FIVE: A SIDE-BY-SIDE COMPARISON OF VERGIL, GEORGICS 4.507–527, AND A USONIUS, CUPIDO CRUCIATUS 1–20. septem illum totos perhibent ex ordine mensis

aëris in campis, memorat quos Musa Maronis,

rupe sub aëria deserti ad Strymonis undam

myrteus amentes ubi lucus opacat amantes,

flesse sibi, et gelidis haec evolvisse sub antris

orgia ducebant heroides et sua quaeque,

mulcentem tigris et agentem carmine quercus:

ut quondam occiderant, leti argumenta gerebant,

qualis populea maerens philomela sub umbra

errantes silva in magna et sub luce maligna

amissos queritur fetus, quos durus arator

inter harundineasque comas gravidumque papaver

observans nido implumis detraxit; at illa

et tacitos sine labe lacus, sine murmure rivos;

flet noctem, ramoque sedens miserabile carmen

quorum per ripas nebuloso lumine marcent

integrat, et maestis late loca questibus implet

fleti, olim regum et puerorum nomina, flores,

nulla Venus, non ulli animum flexere hymenaei:

mirator Narcissus et Oebalides Hyacinthus

solus Hyperboreas glacies Tanaimque nivalem

et Crocus auricomans et murice pictus Adonis

arvaque Riphaeis numquam viduata pruinis

et tragico scriptus gemitus Salaminius Aeas.

lustrabat, raptam Eurydicen atque inrita Ditis

omnia quae lacrimis et amoribus anxia maestis

dona querens. spretae Ciconum quo munere matres

rursus in amissum revocant heroidas aevum.

inter sacra deum nocturnique orgia Bacchi

exercent memores obita iam morte dolores:

discerptum latos iuvenem sparsere per agros.

fulmineos Semele decepta puerpera partus

tum quoque marmorea caput a cervice revulsum

deflet et ambustas lacerans per inania cunas

gurgite cum medio portans Oeagrius Hebrus

ventilat ignavum simulati fulguris ignem.

volveret, Eurydicen vox ipsa et frigida lingua,

irrita dona querens, sexu gavisa virili,

a miseram Eurydicen! anima fugiente vocabat:

maeret in antiquam Caenis revocata figuram

Eurydicen toto referebant flumine ripae (Georg. 4.507–527)

(Cupido Cruciatus 1–20)

CHAPTER SIX. IUGUM DISCUTIMUS: AUSONIUS, PAULINUS, AND HENRI IRÉNÉE MARROU Vous vous trouves bien, vous êtes heureux ensemble. Mais cela ne prouve rien. Il y a des gens que je connais vien, ils vivaient à la fin du IVe siècle ; ils s’appelaient Ausone ou Symmaque; ils avaient des amis, ils échangeaient des visites, ils allaient s’écouter mutuellement faire des conférences, ils s’écrivaient pour s’envoyer leurs vers. Quand on lit ce qui’ils faisaient là, on est pris de dégoût à mesurer le degré d’avilissement où était tombée la notion d’intelligence, ce nom divin. Et cependant ils étaient heureux les uns avec les autres, ils vivaient tranquilles, ils n’ont jamais compris quel était ce tragique destin de vivre une décadence et d’être les fossoyeurs d’une culture morte. Et quand l’un d’eux, je pense à Paulin de Nole, réalisant brusquement cet abîme ouvert à ses pieds, s’évada dans la mystique, les autres en éprouvèrent bien du chagrin et hochèrent la tête sans comprendre. Henri Davenson, Fondements d’une Culture Chrétienne, 62 You are well, you are happy together. But that does not prove a thing. There are people that I know well, they lived at the end of the 4th century; they were called Ausonius or Symmachus; they had friends, they visited one another, they went to listen to one another give talks, they wrote to one another to send their verses. When one reads what they wrote, one is disgusted to measure the degree of debasement

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AUSONIUS GRAMMATICUS to which the notion of intelligence, that divine name, had fallen. And yet they were happy with one another, they lived secure, they never understood what was the tragic destiny of living in decadence and being the gravediggers of a dead culture. And when one of them, I am thinking of Paulinus of Nola, realizing suddenly this abyss open before his feet, escaped into mysticism, the others experienced deep chagrin and wagged their heads uncomprehendingly. Henri-Irénée Marrou (under the pseudonym Henri Davenson), Foundations of a Christian Culture, p. 62 (trans. Yaceczko)

We turn now to Henri-Irénée Marrou’s ideas about civilization, to see how they explain the last chapter of Ausonius’s life. Marrou will not merely be for us a modern scholar unsurpassed in the work he accomplished to elucidate for us the realities of education in antiquity (although he was that). He will be an author whose writings warrant as close a look as Ausonius’s, because he was in a very superficial way another Ausonius. He was also something very different. First we will see what Marrou, most famous for his History of Education in Antiquity (Histoire de l’éducation dans antiquité, 1948), said about civilization in general terms in his Foundations of a Christian Culture (Fondements d’une Culture Chrétienne, 1932).1 We will see how he described the symptoms of a dying civilization, one of which is its inability to raise up new generations of an intellectual élite. Then we will see his description of what he calls a healthy civilization, characterized principally by what he calls its “metaphysic.” Next we will turn to Augustine, in Marrou’s Saint Augustine and the End of Ancient Culture (Saint Augustin et la fin de la culture antique, 1938), as an example of a generation of men without intellectual “maîtres” (masters), like Marrou himself in Fondements. In a third section, we will see an example of what happens when such a man grows up learning to live within, support, and train others to use the existing This book, written under a pseudonym in the author’s youth, has never been translated into English, and is very difficult to find in print. I will be summarizing and citing it extensively.

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structures of his dying civilization—and then turns resolutely away from them, leaving his students at a loss. Licentius, who hailed from Augustine’s Africa and was left behind in Rome when Augustine returned, a radical convert, to assume the new magisterial role of bishop, pleads with his teacher to remember their intimacy. Finally, we will bring Marrou’s theory and Licentius’s example to bear on the relationship between Ausonius and Paulinus, a relationship in which it was the master who persevered and the student who converted. Now (in the fifth century as opposed to the fourth) that even the masters were abandoning or radically transforming traditional paideia, at last even the star students— those whose profit lay in the future, and therefore had the most at stake—turned toward a new direction. Why did these friendships end? Was it because a conquered people can not continue to exist within the conqueror’s borders, unless they embrace the conqueror’s identity? One last word on fairness to Marrou. As has been true throughout this book, I will attempt to represent Marrou as he would speak himself if he were with us today. Thus I will report his way of speaking, even when the idiom of his time and place may offend the sensibilities of an audience a century later. As a translator, fairness to the author and the audience dictates that I must give the audience the data that will enable them to judge the author, not to prevent the audience’s judgment by changing the way the author speaks. This method should not require apology, but, becuase Marrou lived so much closer to our own time, it may not be always obvious that Marrou was, like Ausonius, a person of a very different time and place.

PART ONE: “ONLY A CIVILIZATION FOUNDED ON THE TRUTH ALONE COULD MERIT OUR ADHERENCE”2: FONDEMENTS D’ UNE CULTURE CHRÉTIENNE

Henri-Irénée Marrou wrote Fondements d’une Culture Chrétienne (1932), under the pseudonym Henri Davenson, at the age of 28, full of idealism and recollection from three years of study and Davenson [Marrou] (1932: 105): “Pour nous, seule mérite notre adhésion une civilisation fondée sur ce qui est à nos yeux la seule vérité.”

2

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retreat in Italy.3 He tells us this in his “dédicace aux compagnons,” in which he reveals the anxieties of a man returning after three transformative years absent from friends whose love might have been fixed upon those non-essential parts of the man now changed and gone. “After three years I have perhaps not written much, but I am quite changed. As are you. How could I speak freely of our projects and dreams? They are no longer lying in front of us like the day in the cold morning; we are entirely immersed in them.”4 His words are everywhere full of the awareness of the fleetingness of life which a childhood lived in France during the Great War must have taught.5 When he turned from his “compagnons” in a second preface to “l’étranger,” Marrou recalled the irresistible desire of his generation for intellectual work, for selfdefinition, to avoid the awkwardness of imitating the previous generation, which he expressed with the image of a child trying on his father’s clothes.6 Among these pressures he noted that they had no “maîtres.” His attitude was no mere adolescent rebellion. Marrou protested that his generation, which had no direct knowledge of the War, rejected it not from fear, but from a sense of its absurdity. For him, merely continuing to live was not the highest good, and it was at least theoretically possible to die beautifully for a “just cause.” But he thought that a modern war could never be just.7 “Je vous ai laissés à Paris vous démener tout seuls au milieu de l’action et des hommes et je me suis retiré au désert. Je partais pour l’Italie, j’avais devant moi quelques années de solitude lumineuse et tranquille. Vous trouviez cela très bien; vous disiez: tu pourras écrire pour nous et penser tout à ton aise. Je reviens maintenant; trois années ont passé. Voici mon livre” (7). 4 “Depuis trois ans je n’ai peut-être pas écrit beaucoup, mais j’ai bien changé. Comme vous. Comment pourrais-je parler librement de nos projets et de nos rêves? Ils ne sont plus étendus là devant nous, comme la journée dans le matin froid; nous y sommes plongés tout entiers” (9). 5 “Nous sommes la génération de l’après-guerre” (12). 6 “[C]omme le petit jeune homme efflanqué qui endosse la veste du père aux larges épaules” (10). 7 “[N]ous savons désormais qu’une guerre moderne n’est jamais une juste cause” (12). 3

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He adopted this attitude and expressed it on behalf of his generation in part because, as he alleged, the civilization which their elders had handed over to them was poor, insufficient, decrepit, fundamentally flawed (viciée).8 Here again Marrou adopts on behalf of his generation a premise that leads to a sense of having no masters, no guides. To return to our frequent metaphor: not only were the wineskins old, but even the ones that still held wine were cracked, flawed, vitiated. For that is what a vitium is, that is what a flaw is: the crack through which the vessel fails, the part of the wall through which the wind can blow. Finally, Marrou critiques the current fashionable wanderlust. He observes that in literature wanderlust is presented as the solution to the problem of living, of what to do with one’s life, and he calls it naïve. He says that the City of God is not on earth, and that whether one goes to Canada or Tahiti, one still finds nothing but the earth.9 Yet this impulse shapes his notion of culture. For Marrou, though wanderlust was not sufficient in itself, it was still an essential part of life: “There was something in that desire to go: the feeling that one could not live in an environment too closed, a cramped and stupid civilization; that one must accomplish for oneself the breaking of traditional frameworks that enclose us.”10 This attitude was fundamentally opposed to the conservatism of an Ausonius. Marrou natrurally considered him, along with Symmachus, to be gravediggers of a dead culture, symbols of “decadence,” and found in Paulinus and above all Augustine kindred spirits. For Marrou, these men represent what Hardy must have had in mind when he spoke of the time “when the May month flaps its glad green leaves like wings, delicate-filmed as “Nous avons brusquement réalisé que cette civilisation qu’on nous transmettait comme un idéal n’était qu’une bien pauvre chose, insuffisante, décrépite, radicalement viciée” (13). 9 “Cela était bien naïf; on ne fut pas long à s’apercevoir (même dans les romans) que tout cela n’était encore « rien que la terre » ; la Cité de Dieu était plus loin encore…” (16). 10 “Il y avait quelque chose dans cette ardeur au départ: le sentiment qu’on ne peut pas vivre dans un milieu trop fermé, une civilisation étriquée et stupide ; qu’il faut pour se réaliser soi-même briser les cadres traditionnels qui nous enferment” (16). 8

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new-spun silk.” Ausonius, on the other hand, represented for him the brittleness of holly in the winter; its suppleness gone, it either pricks the hand, or cracks under pressure. Ausonius’s students rejuvenated their civilization because they flapped their glad green leaves like wings. They were supple vessels for the new wine. According to Marrou, civilization develops out of culture. Culture comes from the accomplishments, judgments, and choices of an élite that transmits this culture to the mass of a people. The revision of culture requires an élite, and the mass receives its doctrine from them. It does not undergo the same processes of thought, but takes a leap of faith.11 This élite is not necessarily an entitled or powerful or wealthy class, but rather its most essential characteristic is its willingness and capability for intellectual work, “ce travail de prise de conscience, jugement, choix, etc.” In most times and places, this could only be an entitled or powerful or wealthy class. Even the most leisured society, however, will find its “travailleurs intellectuels” a minority. For various reasons, most persons will either be incapable of such an effort, or will not see its appeal and therefore will not pursue it. This is why Marrou thought that every civilization would have an intellectual élite, and that the historian’s job was to find and describe them. This leads to an apparently minor but very important consequence: the role of the mass can almost be mechanized. As Marxist or longue durée historiography have done, to great profit, or excess, the role of the great man may be minimized in our explanations of causes and effects, and the mass of a society may in theory be reduced to economic rational agents. Thus the creative faculties in man are extenuated, yielding to the cult of the expert, which Marrou saw in the fourth, and more pronounced in the twentieth century. “The growing complexity,” Marrou wrote, “of modern life accentuates more and more this tendency to “Il est bien évident que les individus qui composent cette « masse » ne vont pas refaire, chacun pour leur compte, ce travail de prise de conscience, jugement, choix, etc. Ils en seraient pour la plupart incapables et l’intérêt d’un tel effort ne leur apparaît pas evident : il leur est bien facile d’y suppléer par un élan de foi. La masse reçoit sa doctrine de son élite” (90). 11

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specialization and technical expertise,” so that “simple honest people” yield the power of judgment to experts.12 Technique (ars or τέχνη) could in theory (in antiquity), on the horizon (in the 20th century), or in actuality (today, with computers), be applied for the judgment of phenomena without the operation of the human intellect at all. Marrou saw this, the dominance of a single ideology, with eccentric and impermeable boundaries, to be the outline of the problem. The solution was what he called a metaphysique, but in filling in the picture of the problem he first complicated it further.13 The civilized and cultured man must break traditional frameworks that confine him, but he must not be a mere solipsist. For a healthy intellectual to cultivate his own mind and through it the culture of his civilization, he must not begin as a Raskolnikov or stop at becoming a Meursault, or strive for the ideal of an Übermensch. Nor could he be a Symmachus or an Ausonius. He could not merely dress himself up like the bourgeois putting on a tuxedo to go to the opera, keeping the treasure of culture as a privileged good that can be enjoyed but never changed.14 This kind of conservatism is the attitude of the victor in the material struggles of life, who, having learned to play by the rules, now desires to protect those rules as the guarantors of his enjoyment of the rewards of his prior efforts. But neither could the cultured man merely exalt his own personality, at the opposite extreme of freedom, against the structures into which he is born. One that claimed to exalt personality could not content him. It was “vain, empty, “Toutes nos sciences sont devenues si précises qu’il n’est plus possible au simple « honnête homme » de s’en faire « quelque idée ». La complexité croissante de la vie moderne accentue de plus en plus cette tendance à la spécialisation et à la technicité. De plus en plus s’étendent les domaines où la décision est refusée aux simples «honnêtes gens» et remise aux compétences et aux experts” (40). 13 Marrou makes several essays at the definition of this word, which we will summarize. It seems useful here to give an index of his mentions of “metaphysic,” which is not in the index to the book, nor can it be searched digitally: pp. 73; 80–91; 95; 105; 109; 126. 14 “Les bourgeois se mettent en smoking pour aller à l’Opéra: quel symbole ! La culture pour eux est un vêtement de cérémonie” (44). 12

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selfish and solitary.”15 The too-simple dichotomy between tradition and innovation must be rejected. So also the simple deconstruction of what came before. On the one hand, Marrou judged his culture to be burdened by the weight of the past and the vast, broad potential for knowledge in a world assisted by more powerful technology for remembering. Compare the substance of Racine’s education—the Scriptures, the Greek tragedies, Vergil—to the stunning reading of the modern man, he said.16 By “stunning reading” he means “stunning range or breadth of reading.” He confirms that he is more interested in breadth with what follows. For the first time, Marrou said with no little awe, a civilization including the entire world was blending elements from such far-flung places as China, Finland, and Peru. “Your record dealer offers you Chinese music, popular songs of Finland, or of Peru.”17 This leads the lettered man to specialization, but even more does the richness of the past, the burden of traversing not just one world, but many.18 The desperate attempt to escape from under that weight leads to the prizing of originality. It is not just the weight of the past, but the “[La culture] prétendait bien exalter la personnalité, mais tantôt vaine, vide, tantôt égoïste et solitaire, elle ne pouvait nous contenter” (56). 16 “Comparez le peu de choses qui composaient la culture de Racine par exemple, la Bible, les Tragiques grecs, Virgile…, à l’étonnante lecture d’un lettré de notre temps” (49). 17 “[V]otre marchand de disques vous offre de la musique chinoise, des chansons populaires de Finlande ou du Pérou” (ibid.). We might wonder with a smile what he might have said to calling up a livestreamed symphony of Dvořák from the website of a radio station in Phoenix while writing at one’s desk halfway between Baltimore and Washington, DC, to say nothing of the “marchands de disques” that come and go with dizzying speed: tapes, cds, Napster, iTunes, Pandora, etc. 18 “Plus que cette extension géographique de notre civilisation, c’est sa richesse dans le passé qui complique notre vie. Toutes nos techniques artistiques sont encombrées par le poids lourd d’un passé trop riche et trop bien connu: le répertoire de tout musicien remonte jusqu’à Bach, sinon jusqu’aux polyphonistes du XVIe siècle, l’histoire et l’archéologie font maintenant partie intégrante de la pratique de l’art. De là l’étonnante variété de notre vie culturelle” (50). 15

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weight of all the different things to know about the present. But the artist and his public, Marrou says, are haunted above all by the ancient masters, so that the artist comes to prize originality or mere novelty more than any other standard.19 On the other hand, the culture that tends toward individuation tends to isolation, and healthy culture depends on direct contact with masters. The cultured life requires breaking free from the contemporary, but not relying on a reactionary and negative posture. For Marrou writing in the 1930s, the modern intellectuals must seek the masters of the past, understand their perspectives by understanding their contexts, and above all their own words, through which we must establish direct contact with them. For example Marrou describes a soul, one of his real-life “compagnons,” asking one of the great souls of the past the secret of his interior life, sitting alone in the evening at his piano in a little garrison town, “dialoging with Schumann.”20 Culture would then have a common language. Such was the intellectual climate surrounding the painter Raphael. “Les individus n’étaient pas uniformisés, mais vivaient dans un même climat, parlaient la même langue…” (52). But the subjective response which leads one to see Rembrandt, another Picasso, in the same painting of Raphael, leads to narrow isolation within the straits of one’s own personality. The survival of masters in their masterpieces is not only superhuman, but inhuman. Having defined this impasse, Marrou proposes what he calls a healthy civilization, “la civilisation saine.” He recognizes two different meanings of this word. The one is broad, “civilization” in the sense used by ethnologists who attempt to make or imply value judgments about the people they describe: “Ils en ont volontairement éliminé tout « élément normatif », comme ils disent, tout jugement de valeur” (69). In this sense of the term there is “l’auteur et son public sont hantés par tous les « chefs-d’œuvre » des anciens maîtres, et cette hantise amène l’artiste à rechercher à tout prix l’originalité, la nouveauté, ce qui bien souvent est plus fâcheux qu’utile” (ibid.). 20 “Je pense à tel de mes compagnons qui, dans sa petite ville de garnison, seul, assis à son piano, le soir, dialogue avec Schumann” (52). 19

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no such thing as a prescriptive “normal.” The other meaning of “civilization” implies the healthy civilization. It is by definition “good” because it carries within it a means for judging new experiences and ideas.21 It is good because it imparts the ability to understand and to defend it. Again we begin to see the suggestion that a conquered people cannot happily exist within the boundaries of the conqueror’s nation unless it be willing to identify with the essential characteristics of the conqueror, even if it retains some of its own individuating accidents. These terms suggest an Aristotelian notion of metaphysics, and certainly Marrou means us to think in these terms. By definition the healthy civilization has what Marrou calls a “metaphysic.” The metaphysic of a civilization draws on the creative energies of multiple overlapping ideologies with permeable boundaries.22 For example, Marrou would have seen a healthy conflict in the disagreement between Augustine and Jerome about the relative goods of knowledge of Greek, Hebrew, and Latin for understanding the Scriptures and ordering the Christian life in accord with them. Well-meaning intellectuals might profitably hold positions not entirely reconcilable, and this tension might even be held within the mind of the individual. Marrou argued that this cognitive dissonance, the simultaneous maintenance of two or more propositions, each on its own merits, which eventually leads to a contradiction, could and must be allowed. So far he agrees with Ausonius and Vergil. We observed this process in Chapter Five in our discussion of the Georgics and the Cupido: “allowing

“Mais nous ne somme pas ici pour faire de l’ethnologie. Ce que nous recherchons précisément c’est une norme, une règle qui permette d’établir un jugement sur la valeur des civilisations, qui en définisse la santé et la maladie.… pour [l’ethnologie], toutes les civilisations sont sur le même plan, …tous les faits sont également dignes d’attention et d’intérêt” (ibid.). 22 “[J]e désignerai par là simplement un faisceau de vérités qui constitue une certaine doctrine sur le monde, l’homme et la vie, une Lebens- und Weltanschauung, quelle que soit la manière dont ces vérités sont reçues par l’esprit, que ce soit par voie de démonstration rationnelle ou autrement” (73). 21

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oppositions to stand unresolved” within the poems.23 He did not propose abandonment of the ultimate goal of the truth and the resolution of the conflict. On the contrary, he held that a metaphysic had a central truth with a capital “V”: “For us, all that merits our adhesion is a civilization founded on that which is in our eyes the only truth. We must resign ourselves to being alone. We could not sacrifice the Truth to Communion.”24 On the contrary, Marrou proposed the patience required to resist selecting one option now merely because it is the best of those which are apparent at the moment. Cicero’s academic philosophy of temporary acceptance of probabiliora, though it earned him the scorn of systematic philosophers and theologians who won the attention of posterity, illuminates for us Marrou’s idea of a metaphysic.25 In summarizing Marrou’s views here we risk too much abstraction, but his views are essentially historiographical, claiming validity on the strength of examples, not demonstration in the formal logical sense of that word. The history of the metaphysic of a civilization is not history of philosophy or history of theology: it is history of civilization. The metaphysic of a civilization is the philosophy or theology which the civilization itself articulates through its bundle of truths, its “faisceau de vérités” about the world, man, life. It was something else entirely, Marrou said, to tell the story of the central doctrines that can be discerned in the actions of a civilization.26 Marrou’s goal then was precisely the opposite of systematic philosophy or theology.

Cf. M. Owen Lee (1996: xiii), quoted above, pp. 114–115. “Pour nous, seule mérite notre adhésion une civilisation fondée sur ce qui est à nos yeux la seule vérité. Il faut nous résigner à être seuls. Nous ne pouvons sacrifier la Vérité à la Communion” (105). 25 For a summary of academic philosophy through Carneades and Cicero, and the doctrine of probabiliora, see Sharples (1996: 9–10; 30–32). 26 “In faut en effet introduire ici une distinction capitale: il y a d’un côté cette histoire technique des métaphysiques, l’histoire des philosophies chez les philosophes, des théologies chez les théologiens. Mais il y a aussi, et c’est tout autre chose, l’histoire de ces mêmes doctrines se propageant au dehors de leur milieu technique, l’histoire du retentissement et de l’influence des métaphysiques sur les civilisations” (80). 23 24

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Christianity opposed the most characteristic aspects of the ancient world. Marrou notes three in particular. First, it rejected the formalism of ancient rhetoric. The words of Christ at Luke 12.11–12, and about Peter at Acts 4.13, established the prerogative of the Christian to eschew paideia as a guide to verecundia or a justification for parrēsía.27 Secondly, the dogmas of the eschaton and the second coming of Christ and the rolling up of the scroll of the universe (Isaiah 34.4 and Apoc. 6.14) directly opposed the dogma of the eternity of Rome. Finally, the Christian moral teachings about the brotherhood of man and the proper treatment of the poor challenged, in Marrou’s view, “this society of castes, …this rude socialism of the State.”28 To these challenges of the mores conveyed through paideia and ubiquitous in the Roman world of late antiquity, we will add one more: the adoption of a new canon of texts, which for the Christian revolutionaries of the grammatical tradition was itself the “faisceau de vérités” in which their metaphysic was bundled. Marrou concludes by assessing the power of a metaphysic to guarantee a civilization. A metaphysic does not create civilization, but preserves it. It is never perfectly achieved and is constantly being undone even as it is being achieved.29 Eventually, the effort of the faithful becomes too difficult in the face of heresies, lukewarmness, and other pressures of circumstance. We see in his description of the death of a metaphysical civilization its principle of existence: “…ὅταν δὲ εἰσφέρωσιν ὑµᾶς ἐπὶ τὰς συναγωγὰς καὶ τὰς ἀρχὰς καὶ τὰς ἐξουσίας, µὴ µεριµνήσητε πῶς ἢ τί ἀπολογήσησθε ἢ τί εἴπητε· τὸ γὰρ ἅγιον πνεῦµα διδάξει ὑµᾶς ἐν αὐτῇ τῇ ὥρᾳ ἃ δεῖ εἰπεῖν” (Luc. 12.11–12). “Θεωροῦντες δὲ τὴν τοῦ Πέτρου παρρησίαν καὶ Ἰωάννου καὶ καταλαβόµενοι ὅτι ἄνθρωποι ἀγράµµατοί εἰσιν καὶ ἰδιῶται ἐθαύµαζον…” (Acta 4.13). 28 “Dans tous les domaines, le christianisme se heurtait à des obstacles insurmontables: sa pensée fut gênée par le formalisme rhétorique, son apocalyptisme par le dogme officiel de l’éternité de Rome; que devenait le sentiment de la fraternité humaine, le primat des pauvres dans cette société de castes, dans ce rude socialisme d’Etat” (85)? 29 “[E]lle n’est jamais réalisée en toute rigueur. C’est qu’en effet cet édifice harmonieux que la volonté des hommes cherche à construire est sans cesse à se défaire avant même que d’être achevé” (94). 27

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Au contact des hérétiques, des indifférents et des tièdes, les plus ardents sentent leur foi chanceler; cet effort continu et ces sacrifices leur paraissent trop lourds… L’histoire nous montre les hommes oublier peu à peu ce qui d’abord avait été le centre de leur être et les civilisations métaphysiques mourir parce que la Vérité qui les animait s’obscurcit et s’éteint parmi leurs membres (95). In contact with heretics, the indifferent and the lukewarm, the more ardent feel their faith falter; this continuous effort and these sacrifices seep too heavy for them… History shows us that men forget little by little that which before was the center of their being and metaphysical civilizations die becuase the Truth that animates them is obscured and extinguished among its members.

He is speaking here in Christian terms, not only explicitly referring to heresy and lukewarmness, which are important themes of the Apocalypse and the Epistles of the New Testament, but also alluding to the parable of the sower, whose seeds suffer or enjoy the limits of the soil in which they fall (Mt. 13.1–9; Mk. 4.1–9; Lk. 8.4–8). Excellence required an environment. Therefore Marrou rejected the “myth of Progress”: “The theory of Progress was a myth accepted sentimentally; as philosophy it never withstood three minutes of examination.”30 Marrou intended us to read his description of the death of a metaphysical civilization in Christian terms, because he was illuminating his own time and place with the lessons of the fourth and fifth centuries. We turn his lamp back upon the generation of Ausonius, which Marrou considers the generation of decadence, to see how it became the generation of Augustine, whom Marrou saw at the end of ancient culture and therefore the beginning of that next period, often called “medieval” which, in light of all that has been said, it would be absurd to label uniquely “middle.” “Christendom” is a much more useful term for that millennium (about 400–1500) because it differentiates the period, rather than labeling it with an adjective that applies to all periods. Every “La théorie du Progrès était un mythe accepté sentimentalement; comme philosophie il n’a jamais résisté à trois minutes d’examen” (32). 30

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period of history has finally proven to be between the past and the present. In fairness we must ask whether Ausonius himself was one of “les indifférents et les tièds.” The likes of Juvencus and Prudentius, Marius Victorinus, Jerome and Ambrose, in the West, and Gregory of Nazianzus, Prohaeresius of Athens and Arsenius of Constantinople in the East, represent the heretics of the later fourth century, from the point of view of grammatici like Ausonius. Most of these men truly had no “maîtres.” The Evangeliorum Libri Quattuor (of Juvencus), the Hymns (of Prudentius), the De Generatione Divini Verbi (of Victorinus), the Commentarii and the De Officiis (Jerome and Ambrose); the De Vita Sua of the Constantinopolitan bishop, and the one’s rejection of the overtures of one emperor, the other’s rejection of future influence over another, mark all these men, whom history has vindicated as heroes, as the heretics who made the more ardent conservatives of classical paideia feel their world to be overwritten. Each of these works evokes and proposes to replace an established work of the same kind, retaining almost all the aesthetic forms, substituting the central Truth for the proper names of a mythology that fewer and fewer men believed to be literally true. To use Marrou’s way of putting it: men forgot, little by little, that which was at first the center of their being. For this is the only way truly to delete a memory: one must overwrite it. Marrou took Augustine to be the most excellent example of the élite who adopted and passed down to the masses the metaphysic of the new world. VIR ELOQUENTISSIMUS AC DOCTISSIMUS: THE THEOPOLIS

AUGUSTINE AND

Marrou in the first part of Augustin et la fin de la culture antique argued that the ideal cultivated man, for Augustine, was the vir eloquentissimus ac doctissimus. He drew the phrase from the passage of Augustine’s de Quantitate Animae, that he used as the epigraph to Part One of the book: “Oh, that we should be able to question a man most learned, not only that, but even most eloquent…about both these things (about the force and the potency of the soul)! (o utinam doctissimum aliquem, neque id tantum, sed etiam eloquentissimum…de hoc ambo (de vi et potentia animae)

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interrogare possemus! 33.70). Marrou emphasized the two superlatives by italicizing them. The first part of the ideal he spends four chapters describing: this eloquentia is based on grammar (chapter one) and rhetoric (chapter three). He then moves on in chapter five to “l’érudition,” doctrina or eruditio, the second part of the ideal. Greek, formerly essential, had suffered the fate that Latin has suffered among scholars today. Formerly the language of international scholarship in all branches of the arts, sciences, and theology, today even Oxford critical editions of classical texts have English prefaces, and outside the field of classical philology, scholars are only expected to have enough facility with Latin to verify claims based on Latin sources, not to employ it as the primary means of encounter with them. Marrou’s assessment of Augustine’s knowledge of Greek was similar.31 Also like the Latin used today for original writing or speech, for example those older OCT introductions or spoken Latin immersion programs, Marrou said that only small groups and isolated specialists continued to “use” Greek in the fullest sense of that word.32 Thus in chapter two Marrou describes the role of Greek in the fourth-century western Christian’s ideal of the eloquens. As we saw above with the colloquia of the hermeneumata pseudodositheana and the Ephemeris of Ausonius, the non-Christian attitude toward Greek in the course of paideia may have been no different. Greek, then, in the west, was no longer an important enough part of the educational curriculum to be fought over. Finally, in chapter four, Marrou extends his notion of the vir eloquentissimus ac doctissimus from Augustine to those contemporaries whom Augustine represents. These are the grammatici and “[O]n voit dans quelles limites, relativement étroites, s’enferme l’hellénisme de saint Augustin. Il sait le grec, c’est entendu, assez pour s’en servir dans le travail scientifique pour une brève vérification du texte, mais il n’a pas accès, j’entends un accès aisé, aux trésors de l’hellénisme; il ne connaît pas du tout les classicques grecs” (37). 32 “Seuls de petits groupes ou des individus isolés continuent de l’étudier, mais ils font figure de spécialistes, et comme Victorinus ou Jérôme, ils consacrent une grande partie de leur activité au travail de traduction” (45). 31

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rhetores, and men trained in these arts who moved on to administrative careers rather than teaching. Ausonius boasted in the Professores of the ability of Bordeaux to enrich with its alumni the courts and the senate. Minervius alone, Ausonius says, produced three thousand orators in his career: mille foro dedit hic iuvenes, bis mille senatus / adiecti numero pupureisque togis, “a thousand pupils has Minervius given to the courts, and twice a thousand to the Senate’s ranks and to the purple robes” (Prof. 1.9–10).33 These numbers at first glance are too round to be exact, but we ought to leave open the question of how exaggerated they are, in light of the example of Nicocles of Sparta, the teacher of that Julian who would become the last emperor of the Constantinian dynasty. Nicocles was a renaissance man, variously called in ancient and modern authors a rhetor, philosopher, and grammarian.34 But although Libanius never calls him γραμματικός, Kaster argues convincingly on many points both positive and negative that that is what he was.35 One point adduced by Kaster is from Libanius’ Autobiography. When the Antiochene Libanius had arrived in Constantinople, the Spartan Nicocles offered him forty students. The reason, Libanius tells us, is that Nicocles wanted to revenge himself upon another teacher who had wronged him. Since we know that Libanius was a rhetor, this ploy would have made little sense if Nicocles had been a rhetor, but perfect sense if he had been a grammaticus. He had forty students to give, which according to Kaster is too many for a rhetor to spare for another rhetor, and

Green commented that “these are round figures […] and should not be used to estimate […] the numbers of the student body in any city or the size of the Roman senate, although this has been done…” (331), and he cites Chastagnol (1966). But if an a priori argument may be met with an a priori argument, it is not unusual for a high school teacher today—the modern equivalent of Minervius—to teach a hundred students in a year. This would lead to a thousand in a decade. 34 For ancient and modern sources, see Kaster (1988: 317), who begins his article on Nicocles thus: “Confusion about N.’s profession has been the rule for at least a century.” 35 Ibid. pp. 317–321. 33

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according to Cribiore was certainly for a full professorship and not an assistantship.36 On the other hand, Cribiore also observes that Libanius’ letters allow us to count more than three times that number over fifteen years sampled from a span of forty years 354–393. That is, allowing for the gap in Libanius’ extant letters between 365 and 388 because of the Terror of Valens, we have a sampling of evidence which shows an average of 134 students over fifteen years, or about forty-five per five-year period. This number is very close to the same as the number of Nicocles’ gift, as well as the median (44) between the extremes given by Cribiore of eighty at the height of Libanius’ success at Antioch and seven in the days of the mass exodus of the city following the Riot of the Statues in 387. This is the best argument for the use of the data against Kaster, but arrayed against it is a.) Norman’s taking for granted already in 1962 that Nicocles was a grammaticus,37 and b.) the text itself, in which Nicocles says to Libanius: µηδ’ ἄρχειν ἔξον ἀρξόµενος πλέε: “Don’t sail off to be a subordinate when you have the opportunity to have your own class” (Or. 1.31). This would make for a graduating class of about 45 moving from Nicocles the grammaticus to Libanius the rhetor. It would have been easy for Minervius to have sent several hundreds or a thousand students to the legal and administrative professions. Ausonius himself taught at Bordeaux alone for thirty-four years before beginning another twelve-year career in teaching and administration at Trier. Like Nicocles who proposed a partnership to Libanius in Constantinople, Calliopius worked in Antioch as a grammaticus funneling students to the rhetor.38 Calliopius studied under Zenobius, and so he and Libanius were fellow alumni (but not contemporaries). Calliopius taught in Libanius’ school, but, as one of his students was certainly no older than seven years old Calliopius was teaching grammaticē or even primary school. Then he became an advocate, went to Constantinople, and was magister epistularum in 388. Like Ausonius, who became quaestor sacri palatii, Calliopius School of Libanius (2007) and Libanius the Sophist (2013: 32). Norman (trans.), Libanius, De Vita Sua (1965): Or. 1.31, note. 38 Kaster (1988: 250–252). 36 37

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was able to turn his talent for writing to a high-ranking position in the imperial bureaucracy in which skill in composition was essential. He did not, however, move directly from his occupation as a teacher of grammaticē. Grammaticē as an ars, a technique, qualified him for the work. We begin to see the professions of what Marrou called travailleurs intellectuels, those who live the vie de l’esprit, the life of the mind.39 Difficult to define, it was manifest in the anecdote he shares about his own intellectual coming of age: my parents sent me to school and told me to work hard. So I did. I would never again find fulfillment in the work of my hands, but only in “travail de l’esprit.”40 In this context Marrou sets his motivating questions of Augustin et la fin: what was the activity of the intelligence for a man of late antiquity? What was his ideal, and how did he try to realize it? What was his formation toward that end, his studies, his “life of the mind” in practice?41 This phrase, “life of the mind” motivates all of Marrou’s investigations of culture. For him the vie de l’esprit is a good in itself. Culture provides the opportunity for a man to live the vie de l’esprit, and education prepares a man by his intellectual activity simultaneously to affect the culture into which he is born and to effect that into which the succeeding Fondements (1934: 19): “j’entends par là tous les travailleurs intellectuels, tous ceux qui ont été lycéens d’abord, étudiants ensuite, et dont le type de vie est fondé sur une activité de l’esprit.” 40 “Un jour j’ai quitté l’école primaire; mes parents m’ont amené au lycée et m’ont dit: « il faudra que tu travailles bien. » Et voilà, c’était fait; je ne serais jamais un typographe ou un maréchal-ferrand, comme mon père ou mon grand-père; je ne pourrais jamais m’enorgueillir du travail de mes mains; je ne pourrais plus trouver une raison de vivre que dans le travail de l’esprit” (ibid.). 41 Augustin et la fin (1938: vi): “De façon plus précise j’ai voulu savoir ce qu’était l’activité de l’intelligence pour un homme de la fin de l’antiquité. Quelle idée s’en faisait-il ? quel idéal cherchait-il à en réaliser ? De quels éléments disposait-il pour cela ? quelles études avait-il faites, quelle formation avait-il reçue? Pratiquement, qu’était en fait la vie de l’esprit pour un homme de ce temps, son but, ses méthodes, sa technique ? En un mot qu’est-ce qui représentait pour lui ce que nous appelons aujourd’hui la culture ?” 39

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generation will be born. For us, Ausonius has been an example of this. As a conservative at the end of an epoch, the culture which he acquired and that which he handed over were the same. Marrou saw a new one beginning with Augustine, for whom these were different, and who, consequently, would list exhaustively a canon of inspired Scriptures.42 They were both grammatici at heart. Only in rare moments did these men themselves, even the chief agents of change, looking to one another, realize the magnitude of it as it was taking place. We will see two examples below: first, Licentius and his teacher Augustine; second, Paulinus and his teacher Ausonius. Now we are meant to see Augustine as a vir eloquentissimus in a crowded field of eloquentissimi pursuing office, influence and public life. The educated man’s ideal was still to become the orator. “Education once achieved, what then was the cultivated man? What was his ideal? This ideal, we know, was defined by a word: the orator. For Augustine and his contemporaries, the cultivated man was above all the eloquent man, vir eloquentissimus.”43 These men, to whom work furnished also leisure, spent their otium honestum doing the intellectual work of the grammaticus: editing texts, writing original works, publishing those of their friends, and above all writing what Marrou called, the “lettre d’art.”44 De Doctrina Christiana 2.8. Another was Jerome’s Prologus Galeatus (for the OT) and his letter to Paulinus, Ep. 53.8 (for the NT). 43 “L’éducation une fois achevée, qu’était donc l’homme cultivé? Quel était son idéal? Cet idéal, on le sait, se définit d’un mot: l’orateur. Pour Augustin et ses contemporains, l’homme cultivé c’était avant tout l’homme éloquent, vir eloquentissimus” (85). 44 As for the editing of texts, see Cameron (2011: 421–497, especially 421 n.1): “I make no attempt to list even a selection of the modern works in which this is stated as established fact.” Here “this” refers to the belief that the aristocracy did this “to maintain and promote the old order” (ibid.), which is the point that Cameron challenges, but the fact that they performed this work, if not their motivations, is not in question. In fact Cameron’s challenge of traditional assumptions about the editors of texts (he enumerates five on page 422) tends more to support Marrou’s description of the literary activity of the educated élite. Cameron is 42

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Marrou called the lettre d’art the prose equivalent of Catullus’s poetry of “decadence.” Catullus had included in his poems all the trifling flippancy of private life: “not without awkwardness or brutality, a worldly life is sketched out.”45 The letters which the learned solicited from each other dressed up such social intercourse in party clothes. But these became the touchstone of the doctus and the eloquens. The letter, then, was like today’s essay or article, which is published in a periodical and disseminated at regular intervals of time. Unlike the periodical article, the lettre d’art was called for and received and copied and distributed and recommended by the force, not only of habit, but of that feeling of discovery of something beautiful and good. For Marrou this meant, in the culture of “decadence,” that Symmachus and Ausonius were the primary representatives of the genre (for an earlier model he looks back to Pliny). Ausonius, with his two careers, first as professor and then as administrator, combined the two aspects of the culture of décadence: “pédanterie scolaire, badinage mondain” (95). The Christians were no less susceptible. Here, however, Marrou’s long-term considerations of “décadence” will lead us on a brief excursus. We must not suppose that Marrou repeated and maintained uncritically Gibbon’s paradigm of decline. In the Retractatio (1949) Marrou distanced himself from this aspect of Gibbon’s treatment of the period. For example, he addressed the unsuitability of the French term “Bas-Empire” (Low Empire), and considered the usefulness of the German Spätantike (Late Antiquity), although the rise of the now-current “Late Antiquity” in English would develop over the next few decades with the indispensible stimulus of the work of Peter Brown, especially in the 1970s.46 In the first place, Marrou recognized “Basconcerned more with the transmission of the classics as a whole through late antiquity, than with contemporary practices of publication in the fourth-century. 45 “Non sans gaucherie ni brutalité, s’esquisse une vie mondaine” (94). 46 For a detailed disciplinary history from Marrou’s Augustin (1938) to Peter Brown’s work in the 1970s and 1980s, see Vessey (1998), “The Demise of the Christian Writer and the Remaking of ‘Late Antiquity’: From H.–I. Marrou’s Saint Augustine (1938) to Peter Brown’s Holy Man (1983).” The opening of this rich field that used to be called the Dark

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Empire” as a “vaguely pejorative” prejudice of classical scholarship, which had generally substituted, instead of detailed study of the period in question, the logical consequence of naming successive earlier periods after metals proceeding from precious to base.47 Of himself personally he says, “Il m’est facile aujourd’hui d’apercevoir d’où provenait cette erreur: humaniste de formation classique, venu de l’Antiquité au Bas-Empire, je ne pouvais pas ne pas constater ce changemenent” (690). He goes on to describe what he saw to be “inévitable” and catastrophic in the period, instead as “nouveautés,” “transformations internes,” and “manifestations de la vitalité vigoureuse” (ibid.). Marrou was not yet ready to adopt the “Spätantike” of the Germans, who were perhaps a little too eager for neologisms, but preferred to emphasize the movement from the civilization of the πόλις (polis, city) to that of paideía as “l’âge de la Théopolis.”48 In the event, Spätantike, or something like it, gained more traction in the modern European langauges than Théopolis.

Ages has been the invaluable gift for which credit is due to many more, some mentioned in this book, some not. 47 Vessey (1998: 387) put it thus: “This, he now saw, was an error, the product of a classicist’s bias against the post-classical and an unconscious reliance on nineteenth-century myths of Roman decadence.” See Marrou (1958: 664): “Je voulais, je croyais, réagir contre l’optique défavorable que les préjugés néo-classiques ont si longtemps imposé à l’étude de ce que le français continue à désigner du terme, vaguement péjoratif, de Bas-Empire. Mais je ne prenais pas garde que j’abordais cette étude avec des notions reçues sans contrôle de cette tradition même avec laquelle je prétendais rompre. C’est le cas, pur commencer de la notion de Décadence” (emphasis original). 48 Certainly Marrou, and most of his countrymen, remembered well how the Nazi party attempted to reform the German language, purging words of foreign origin (1958: 694–695): “L’allemand, qui accueille facilement les néologismes, a pris l’habitude de parler de la Spätantike… Le français, plus conservateur, demeure comme asservi aux traditions classiques: peut-être, puisqu’il s’agit de l’opposer à la πόλις comme à la παιδεία, pourrait-on proposer d’appeler cette civilisation, d’inspiration si profondément religieuse et, dequis Constantin, à dominante chrétienne, l’âge de la Théopolis.

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Brown drew inspiration from and built upon Marrou, but also from the historiographical methods of the Annalistes, especially Fernand Braudel, for example their emphasis on the longue durée or on social phenomena as opposed to major military and political events, or on the importance of ideas. We can almost glimpse in Marrou’s “nouveautés,” “transformations internes,” and “manifestations de la vitalité vigoureuse,” the coming of the “mentalités” that continue to loom in the minds of historians using the tools that this scholarly tradition fashioned. Mark Vessey said of the strong tendencies of this current as it ran from the 1930s to the 1970s, “By 1977…it would have been difficult to say which of the two men, Brown or Marrou, had the better claim to be considered the founder of modern Late Antiquity.”49 Careful not to conflate or oversimplify the new directions of two original thinkers, Vessey is quick to add that Marrou’s lettré (lettered man) of this period, if not the lettré de la décadence (decadence) then the lettré de la antiquité tardive (late antiquity), did not point directly or unambiguously to the “holy man.”50 Marrou’s Retractatio links his earlier description, influenced more by classical-philological interests, to future historiographical methods which were less inclined to see causes as necessary. Still we remain at present focused on “the disciplinary categories of classical culture,” which, emptied of their contents, by contrast with those who strove to fill them anew, illuminate the poetry of Ausonius.51 The epistolary exchange between Augustine, Licentius, and Paulinus, like the one between Ausonius and Paulinus, are all minted in the currency of the time.52 These lettres d’art share the Vessey (1998: 383). Vessey (384–385): “We look in vain in Marrou’s text for a sign of the coming of the “holy man.” Marrou’s antiquité tardive is a macrocosm of the “late antique man,” who is himself (as Brown reminds us) the disciplinary descendant of the lettré de la décadence, a product of late classical literary culture in a very particular sense.” 51 Cf. Vessey (ibid., 386): “While he could not help thinking in the disciplinary categories of his classical culture, Augustine showed no sentimental attachment to their contents.” 52 Marrou (1938: 100): “Transposé dans une atmosphère chrétienne, nous retrouvons ce goût des lettrés de la décadence pour les politesses 49 50

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characteristics of the poetry that we have examined. Superficially conventional, their models are known and properly reverenced. Their style was, to use Marrou’s word, “chatoyant” (glittering— like a jeweled mosaic!). Their prose was rhythmic, eloquent, periodic. That is, the metrical impressions were planned, the clauses balanced and arranged according to classical conventions of raising, fulfilling, and disappointing expectations, and above all, the authors constructed them out of the store of words used for generations of classically trained orators. In this way their conversion allowed them to retain many old habits of mind. Paulinus’s Epistle 45 to Augustine provides a good example of these characteristics. In the following sentence of eight clauses, he proves his facility with the classical model, and signals his committment to the new canon. Verumtamen idem vir, ut antea retulisse me puto sanctitati tuae, his operibus locupletatus abscessit, ut maternae humilitatis nobilitatem si veste non gesserit, tamen mente praetulerit; ita enim secundum verbum Domini mitis moribus fuit et humilis corde, ut non immerito credatur introisse in requiem Domini, quoniam sunt reliquiae homini pacifico, et mansueti possidebunt terram, placentes Deo in regione vivorum. Nevertheless the same man, as I think I have reported to your holiness before this, departed richly endowed with these works, so that, if he did not wear it in his dress, yet with his mind he displayed the nobility of his mother’s humility; for he was so, according to the word of the Lord, gentle in character and humble at heart, that not without merit is he believed to have entered into the rest of the Lord, since the man that is a peacemaker has his rest, and the meek shall possess the earth, pleasing God in the land of the living.

Here with the postponement of si in the result clause Paulinus raises the profile of maternae humilitatis. Having disposed of the other elements of the condition, he answers this deep hyperbaton with the balanced arrangement of the other words: si veste non mutuelles; protestations d’humilité, éloges dithyrambiques pour le génie du correspondant, enthousiasme pour ses productions littéraires: tout cela était monnaie courante dans le milieu littéraire du temps !”

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gesserit, tamen mente praetulerit. Tamen answers to si; mente answers to veste; praetulerit to non gesserit. The chief difference lies in the storehouse of literature on which he draws for authority. His eloquentia is based not on Vergil or Cicero, but on the Scriptures. Marrou observed that the chief and perhaps only innovation, although this was an innovation at the very origin of the trajectory, an innovation of revolutionary importance, was the use of the Scriptures. The style is glittering, “the Bible replaces Vergil and Cicero, the sentiments remain the same.”53 With the minor substitution of the word “Scriptures” for Marrou’s anachronistic “Bible,” we are making the same point.54 The beginning of the correspondence between Augustine and Jerome was no exception. They were lettres d’art. Manners, diffidence, Greek phrases: all the standard elements were present. The author deferred to the recipient, requesting an essay on a particular topic. In the act of praising the other’s erudition, the author would put on a display of his own, flattering his correspondent with the implication of faith in his ability to appreciate the complexities of his art and his oblique references.55 As we saw in the letter above, Paulinus

“Ces lettres ciselées avec art, pleines de lyrisme, au style chatoyant, me paraissent tout à fait conformes à la ligne de cette littérature mondaine de la décadence. Les procédés de style ont pu changer, la Bible remplacer Virgile et Cicéron, les sentiments sont restés les mêmes” (100). 54 Surprisingly, the use of the term “Bible” to indicate “the Scriptures” in antiquity persists even among scholars today in spite of its anachronism. The reality which the word “Bible” represents in modern English, viz., a single codex volume containing all of the Scriptures, is totally alien to the experience of the men and women of the fourth century, and, for that matter, most centuries. Its currency in English is likely a development of the Protestant period, which coincides with the invention of the printing press and the beginning of the history of the object called today by the word “Bible.” 55 Ibid. p. 101: “…protestations d’estime, d’humilité ; désir de se mieux connaître; espoir, le premier billet reçu, de recevoir un jour une lettre plus longue ; effort pour polir le style, pour lui donner une haute tenue; allusions littéraires, mots grecs insérés dans le texte avec art ; riend ne 53

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made four references to the Scriptures, blending and molding them to his context, adopting a langue not unlike that of an ancient Homeric bard or his contemporary counterpart, the centonist poet.56 Again in this exchange of letters, Marrou recognizes the old wine, the “allusions virgiliennes,” the “forme consacrée par la littérature mondaine” (102), by which the classically educated could claim and practice in their proper turns parrēsía and verecundia. Marrou saw how the total transformation of that langue led Augustine to what he believed to be the sapientissimus perfectusque homo. In Part Two of Augustin et la fin, Marrou supplies the words of the lacuna in his original epigraph. Here he gives the original epigraph in its full form, with emphasis now on the restored words: o utinam doctissimum aliquem, neque id tantum, sed etiam eloquentissimum et omnino sapientissimum perfectumque hominem [etc.]!57 For Augustine, the vir perfectus would not be the vir expolitus, ready to convince the judges in the courts. Armed with knowledge of the Truth, the Word of God, the vir sapiens would stand in the assembly and convict the people of sin. He would still need to be a great orator, but his sapientia would be based on the Scriptures. His claim on his audience’s attention manque.” We may also recall Jerome’s dedication of his Comm. in Evang. Matt. (prol.6–7), quoted above, Chapter Two. 56 Paulinus quotes or alludes to, in order, Matt. 11.29; Ps. 36.37; Matt. 5.4; Ps. 114.9. For the construction of authentic langue, see Nagy, Poetry as Performance (1996: 153), who defines the “authentic” as “in conformity with traditional oral epic diction.” See also Homer’s Text and Language (2004: 61), in which he confirms his commitment to the idea, quoting his earlier formulation. For the langue as the language of the centonist, made up not merely of words but also of phrases and lines, see Usher’s comments (1998: 10) on parole-langue selection, and the further references there: “According to this familiar model, parole (“speech” or “langue-realization”) corresponds to the activity of verbal combination, visualized as taking place on a horizontal axis. Langue, meaning “language as a complete system” or “parole-potential,” corresponds to the process of verbal selection from a vertical axis” (emphasis added). 57 Augustin et la fin (1938: 159). The italics are Marrou’s; I have abbreviated the quotation.

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would no longer be mere love of the word, but a conjuring of the conscience of those for whom the word was God. Not all the nurslings of the Muses saw the need to turn their backs on traditional grammaticē. Even some, like Augustine and Jerome in the West, the Cappadocians in the East, would strive to find a place for the classics alongside the Psalms, the Gospels, and the rest of the Scriptures.58 But the day when John Chrysostom would make the first exploratory steps toward advocating mere Scripture for a child’s education was only a few years off.59 In those unsettled years, those who took the opposite position would see the companions of their youth give up their common bonds as they strove to answer what they perceived to be God’s call. For examples of the latter we will now turn to two series of letters, first between Licentius, Augustine, and Paulinus; second between Ausonius and Paulinus.

PART TWO: “WE COULD NOT SACRIFICE THE TRUTH TO COMMUNION”60: PAULINUS, AUGUSTINE AND LICENTIUS

Licentius had the same relationship to Augustine that Paulinus had to Ausonius. Ausonius trained Paulinus in grammaticē for the courts and for the Courts, that is, those of law, and those of partiality. As Ausonius showed in the Professores, the success of the orators that a grammaticus or rhetor had trained would redound to the credit of the master, and could even, as Augustine described in the Confessions, lead to building the network of favorable influence necessary for the master himself to rise to office.61 Paulinus For example, Basil’s De legendis gentilium libris and Gregory’s Carmina (PG vol. 37). 59 De inani gloria et de educandis liberis, written in the late 390s (505–509): Οὐ πολλῷ µᾶλλον ἀντὶ τῶν χρυσοµάλλων προβάτων καὶ τῆς τερατείας ἐκείνης ταῦτα διηγεῖσθαι καλόν; Εἶτα αὐτὸν καὶ διανάστησον—ἔχει γάρ τι καὶ ἡ διήγησις— µηδὲν ψευδὲς ἐπιφέρων, ἀλλὰ τὰ ἀπὸ τῆς Γραφῆς. On the dating see Laistner (1951: iv–vi). 60 Davenson [Marrou] (1932: 105): “Nous ne pouvons sacrifier la Vérité à la Communion.” 61 For Ausonius on the success of Bordelais alumni, see Prof. 5.1.9–10; for Augustine on afternoon networking and the grammarian’s expectation, founded upon his connections and proficiency in the artes, of a 58

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shocked and disappointed Ausonius (and the rest of the peerage) by dropping out of the race right when he was beginning to hit his stride. In the case of Augustine and Licentius, on the other hand, it was the master who abandoned the sidelines while his student was striving in the heat of the contest. Augustine too was on the verge of a career in provincial government, as he tells us in the section following the one just mentioned. The pathos of these two episodes is different: Licentius suddenly found that he was close to the top, dripping with sweat, to recall Lucian’s phrase, when his teacher moved to another mountain. Ausonius the teacher had to watch his student quit even as he was grasping victory. Thus when Licentius found his teacher to have aimed his hopes on a new goal, he feared a loss of the intellectual intercourse that defined their friendship. He wrote to Augustine a poem full of classical allusions on the subject of Varro and astronomy, recalling their old otium honestum together at Cassiciacum. Augustine soon responded (Ep. 26), with due attention to Licentius’s poem, not only quoting a few lines but echoing others, with a recommendation to Licentius, who was in Italy, to fly to Paulinus as his new magister. Paulinus (Ep. 32) took up the duty of apostolate which Augustine laid on him, composing a poem of his own, to be sent with a letter to Romanianus, the father of Licentius and financer of Augustine’s early education. Paulinus in his letter to Romanianus secured in advance four important positions from which to achieve the object of his campaign. First, he established his credentials in addressing Licentius as filius by invoking the recommendation of the latter’s magister Augustine (legem Augustini, 32.4), by addressing himself simultaneously to his father Romanianus, to whom Paulinus shows himself equal by addressing him domine frater (32.3), and finally by invoking the advice of the young man’s mother, whether this be

provincial governorship, see Conf. 6.11. We may also recall here the grammatici and rhetores discussed above in the context of the careers of Libanius and his associates.

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literal or metaphorical.62 With roles defined for speaker and audience, the didactic tone of his poem would be less alienating. Secondly, he offered hierarchical promotion in the place of secular promotion in no uncertain terms, inviting Licentius to be groomed for sacerdotium, which in the context clearly means the office of bishop. In the first half of the letter, which is concerned with congratulating Romanianus on receiving Augustine as a new bishop in the African church, Paulinus had equated sacerdotium with episcopatus.63 Now in the second half of the letter, addressed to Licentius, he could recommend training for the sacerdotium together with the responsibilities of the magister devoted rather to the salvation of an urban populus than the paideia of the privileged iuventus. Paulinus says to him, in exquisitely periodic Latin: Vere enim pontifex et vere consul, Licenti, eris, si Augustini vestigiis propheticis et apostolicis disciplinis, ut sacrato beatus Elisaeus Eliae, ut illustri Apostolo Timotheus adolescens, adhaereas, indivulso per itinera divina comitatu, ut et sacerdotium corde perfecto discas mereri, et populis ad salutem magistro ore consulere. For you, Licentius, will be truly pontifex and truly consul, if you follow closely in the prophetic footsteps of Augustine, and his apostolic discipline, as blessed Elisha to hallowed Elias, as young Timothy to the illustrious Apostle, in companionship not parted through the divine journeys, so that you will learn both to merit the priesthood with perfect heart, and consult the interest of the people for their salvation with a teacher’s mouth. (32.4)

Licentius can not likely have had a more certain invitation to a career at court. Paulinus equates these consilia matris with the pietas Augustini: noli repellere consilia matris tuae, quod aeque nomen in te Augustini pietas iure sibi vindicat (32.4). 63 32.2: …episcopatum Augustinus acceperit…coepiscopus Augustinus est. Et ille beatus senex [Valerius Hipponensis Ecclesiae episcopus], cui purissimam mentem nulla unquam liventis invidiae macula suffudit, dignos sui cordis pace nunc ab altissimo fructus capit, ut quem successorem sacerdotii sui simpliciter optabat, hunc mereatur tenere collegam. 62

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Here Paulinus achieves a third important advantage: establishing his rhetorical credentials while capturing the young man’s benevolence by unapologetically offering him a complex sentence, a tacit gesture of appreciation of Licentius’s ingenium (genius, in-born talent). He begins the sentence with the images of pontifex et consul. These were secular honores—offices and honors—toward which the ambition of Licentius was striving and Paulinus had himself achieved at Rome. Paulinus had mentioned them as imagines falsi operis in the previous sentence. But pontifex was also the title Paulinus had already used for Augustine in the first part of the letter.64 As for consul, this image at the beginning of the sentence looks forward to the dignity of the final position, in which the infinitive consulere transforms the image in his reader’s mind of the consular trabea in the senate into the chasuble or pallium of the late antique bishop.65 We are witnessing catachresis: the transformative use of the same word to represent a different reality. We are also witnessing evidence of the development of the insignia of public office into priestly vestments that are still in use today. Like St Timothy, the paradigmatic bishop of the apostolic age, Licentius could pass through itinera divina instead of the itinera Varronis mentioned in his own poem to Augustine, and become a new kind of magister. The fourth point Paulinus makes in his preface reveals his ultimate object, and the essential difference of this new kind of magister. Your letter, says Paulinus to Licentius, in which I understood you to be quite an accomplished young versifier, has come 32.3: Tunc vere sibi summus Christi pontifex Augustinus videbitur. The title still carried a relatively broad range of meaning, and did not have the Christian meaning it has today until later. See Cameron (2011: 51–56). 65 For a description of the consular trabea, see Symmachus Ep. 6.40; for Paulinus’ probable experience wearing it, together with a list of late antique descriptions of the trabea, see Trout (1999: 46). Ausonius in the panegyric he delivered to Gratian on receiving the consulship, tells us that his own consular trabea had an image of Constantius, the grandfather of Gratian, embroidered in gold thread on the back (Gratiarum Actio 11). Paulinus himself will allude to this in the poem, where he refers to it as chlamys, urging Licentius to consider the price of earning it: sweat and loss of decus, vv. 45–46. 64

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to my attention—you know I myself at your age pursued the musici modi.66 Again Paulinus shows Licentius that he appreciates his talents and shares his enthusiasms, not only for rhetoricē but also for grammaticē. Indeed, to be more precise, the defining substance of grammaticē: poetry in the classical tradition. But here, now finally delivering his own verses, which he has carefully prepared Licentius to receive like the good soil of the parable of the sower, Paulinus will reveal his endgame.67 The new kind of magister, the new grammaticē, will be based, not on Vergil and the quadriga and the texts of the great tradition of classical paideia, but on a whole new canon, that of the Scriptures. Paulinus simultaneously flatters and challenges Licentius, acknowledging him a grown man in the old grammar, a baby in the new, the word of God: te adultum aetate corporea, in spiritualibus adhuc cunabulis vagientem, videt [sc. Augustinus] adhuc infantem verbo Dei, “he [sc. Augustine] sees you an adult in the age of the body, in spiritual things still a mewling babe in the cradle, still an infant in the word of God” (32.4). Paulinus rightly saw that, in order to win Licentius, he would have to convince him that he could continue to do what he loved: in Licentius’s own words in the Carmen ad Augustinum, to pursue libera otia (free leisure, vv. 53–54), candida iura bonorum (the shining rights of the good [men], 54), copula communis honesti (the common intercourse of the noble [man] 103); to enjoy amicitiae decus (the beauty of friendship, 104), the work of shared study and writings, labor interiora legens, vulgata libellis (108), and the discussion of nobile dogma (noble teaching, 109). In short, all the pleasures of Cassiciacum. Paulinus had prepared the ground; now was his chance to commit himself. He ventured his position on a similar long poem, the two most salient differences being the Ep. 32.5: in mentem venit epistola tua, qua te musicis familiarem modis intellexi: a quo studio ego aevi quondam tui non abhorrui. 67 Paulinus alluded to this parable earlier in the letter (32.3): Utinam haec nunc Domini tuba, qua per Augustinum intonat, filii nostri Licentii pulset auditus, sed ut illa audiat aure, qua Christus ingreditur, de qua non rapit Dei semen inimicus! Would that this trumpet of the Lord now strike the ears of our son Licentius, whereby he intones through Augustine, but that he should hear with that ear whereby Christ enters, from which the enemy does not snatch God’s seed! Cf. Matthew 13. 66

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meter and the proper names. The former was dactylic, an Alexandrian array of learned allusions, the latter elegiac, its proper names all the Lord, Rome, Alypius, Augustine, Licentius, Christ, and God. Paulinus promised to understand and to meet Licentius on his own terms: he will not have disappointed. In his own poem, at over a hundred lines nearly as long as that of Licentius, Paulinus never strays far from Licentius’s concerns, often bringing himself back with a verbal echo or reminiscence of Licentius’s poem. Licentius wants to learn about the motions of the stars (astrorum causas clarosque meatus 13) and the secrets of the sky (latebras coeli 16); Paulinus urges him to die to bodily motions and strive toward a foretaste of the good things of life in heaven.68 And if the point was too subtle, then after reestablishing his right to speak as a second father (with Augustine), he adds the weight of Licentius’s brother Alypius, asking him if he could think of any better means than the spiritual instruction and fraternity of these by which to seek the stars: tanto fratre vales et praeceptore, Licenti, / et dubitas pennis talibus astra sequi (you are strong in such a great brother and teacher, Licentius, and do you hesitate to seek the stars on such wings? 85–6)? Other echoes of Licentius’s expressed wishes appear at various points.69 Licentius was not being asked to give up everything. Just as he reinforced the pater-filius relationship, so Paulinus reinforces the promise of sacerdotium. Licentius’s proper place, his proper people, lie among the ranks of the clergy in Africa. Speaking of Alypius and Augustine, Paulinus says, ambo sacerdotes te remeare iubent (both priests bid you return, 94). Recalling the promise of sacerdotium alluded to above in the preface, Paulinus condenses all of the cola and commata of his prose introduction

corporeis iam nunc morere actibus, et bona vitae / coelestis liquido praemeditare animo, 67–68. 69 For example tibi magnus honos laetificasse duos, v. 78, recalling Licentius v. 53 (laetificis rotis), cited above, in which he recalls the libera otia of the good old days at Cassiciacum. Augustine also quoted this passage (vv. 52–59) back to Licentius in his prose response. Another example: copulo, v. 79, recalls the copula of Licentius v. 103. 68

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into a neatly tied couplet in the poem.70 In language remarkably close to hereditary entitlement, Paulinus offers an exhoratation to the kingdom of heaven that could easily also be read as a ticket to advance to the grades of the priesthood. He quickly passes on to a clear and apt reference to Scripture, taking a little of the edge off of the imputation of an immature knowledge in the preface, cited above:71 seek this, drink deeply of this, don’t waste time with profane literature; if you don’t want what is yours, who will give you what is another’s? haec repete, his inhia, externis ne contere tempus, / si tua nolueris, quisquam aliena dabit (97–98)? In this couplet Paulinus deftly moves from the externis which implies the secular and the pagan to aliena that recall the parable of the talents of Luke 16:12: and if you have not been faithful in what is another’s, who will give you what is yours? In Latin: et si in alieno fideles non fuistis quod vestrum est, quis dabit vobis? Thus Paulinus is able to close with a strong push for Scripture. The pagina, in this case the poem itself, but broadly the pagina sacra of Scripture, will either bring life, or bear witness against him: feret…pagina vitam / …pagina testis erit (103–104). Paulinus in another letter to Augustine showed the foundational position of verbum dei in the lettered man’s reputation. Throughout this letter, a consolation on the death of Publicola, his cousin and the son of Melania (the Elder),72 Paulinus constructs an image of Augustine as almost a source of divine revelation. He observes that Augustine had deigned to ask him for his thoughts on the resurrection of the body, but Augustine ought to teach him, for Augustine could more easily claim to be the teacher of Paulinus. tu me interrogare dignatus es, says Paulinus. At ego de praesenti vitae meae statu et magistrum et medicum spiritalem consulo, ut doceas me facere voluntates Dei, tuis vestigiis ambulare post Christum, “You have deigned to question me, but I seek counsel of you, the master and spiritual physician about the present state ad tua te retrahunt, nam nunc aliena petescis: / haec mage, quae retinent regna tui, tua sunt 95–96. 71 32.4: adhuc infantem verbo Dei. 72 On this relation, difficult to define exactly, see Ep. 29.5, and Trout (1999: 206–9). 70

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of my life, to teach me to do God’s will, to walk in your footsteps after Christ” (Ep. 45.4). Augustine is the magister whose proper office is docere. Paulinus ought to follow in the other man’s footsteps. Why? Augustine has already died to the saeculum; Christ lives in him, and Paulinus can see it above all in Augustine’s words. [Christi] et mors et vita in corpore tuo, et corde, et ore cognoscitur; quia non sapit cor tuum terrena, nec os tuum loquitur opera hominum; sed verbum Christi abundat in pectore tuo, et Spiritus veritatis effunditur in lingua tua superni fluminis impetu laetificans civitatem Dei, “[Christ’s] death and life are recognized in your body and heart and mouth; because your heart is not wise in the things of the earth, nor speaks your mouth of the works of men; but the word of Christ abounds in your breast, and the Spirit of truth is poured out in your tongue, with the force of a heavenly river gladdening the city of God” (ibid.).73 Augustine is a magister, but not one who is wise or eloquent in terrena, earthly things. Instead Augustine’s lingua pours forth the verbum Christi. His sapientia is based on the verbum Christi. Above all, his authority is based on the verbum Christi. Paulinus associates sapientia and eloquentia with the word of God as opposed to the sapientia terrena. He had earlier in the letter set up this dichotomy. There was one basis of eloquentia, which Paulinus has already claimed as his due in his illustrious public career. Augustine had this too, but more importantly he now had the other. The truly wise man, said Paulinus, is the man wise in the Scriptures. Quid ergo humilis et terrenus respondeam ad hanc sapientiam, quae data est tibi desuper, quam hic mundus non capit, et quam nemo sapit, nisi sapientia Dei sapiens, et Dei verbo eloquens, “How, then, should I, a lowly man of the earth, respond to this wisdom, which has been given to you from above, which this world does not receive, and in which no one is wise, unless wise with the wisdom of God, and eloquent in the word of God” (Ep. 45.2)? Here too we see the contrast with eloquentia that is terrena, and that which is based on verbum Dei. Augustine’s authority is his knowledge of Scripture. Paulinus will even go so far as to associate Augustine’s word with divine revelation in the final, 45.4, with another use of laetificans similar to those of Ep. 32, v. 78, and Licentius v. 53 above.

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most adventurous and speculative part of the letter. Here Paulinus says that he knows that Augustine’s perfect knowledge of history (through Scripture of course) has led to his perspicacity in the present, validating his opinion about the future. scio te illuminatum spiritu revelationis ab ipso duce et fonte sapientium, ut sicut praeterita cognovisti, et praesentia vides, ita etiam de futuris aestimes quid censeas, “I know you to have been illumined with the spirit of revelation by the leader himself and fount of the wise, so that you have come to know things past, and see things present, so also do you determine what you should consider about things to be” (Ep. 45.7). The actual question, on which Paulinus meditates for the rest of the letter, is full of the elements of the verbal tapestry we have already seen: lingua angelorum, eloquium humanum, and vox Dei. As he had said metaphorically in the passages we saw above, here Paulinus says literally that God is able to speak without the eloquence of men. Sed et vox Dei saepe ad sanctos emissa de nube, ostendit posse loquelam esse sine lingua, “But the voice of God, even often sent from a cloud to the saints, shows that a locution is able to be made without a tongue.” Christian eloquence needed no external ornament, even a tongue to speak it. The Christian rhetor had turned decisively away from the ancient ideal of the sapiens who based his authority on the veteres, the eloquens as he who could elaborate any theme using commonplaces and formulae (“rhetorical maximalism,” to use Scott McGill’s term for Ausonius’s typical tendency). The Christian rhetor had rejected the store of those commonplaces and formulae for a new, unfamiliar one. As Kennedy described the langue of classical Greece (The Art of Persuasion in Ancient Greece, 1963): “The orators usually memorized their commonplaces, but, except for that feature, the construction of the speech resembled the composition of oral poetry out of themes and formulae” (53).74 The Christian rhetor radically transformed his contemporary langue that was constructed of complex blocks by replacing their smaller components with new ones. His redefinition of individual words, formerly words of power in the most high and palmy state of Rome, now mere tuxedos to wear to the show, is Cf. the observations of Nagy and Usher, cited above in our discussion of cento composition.

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obvious and well known.75 In the ultimate demonstration of facta non verba, the deified word had manifested itself as a tangible substance. Meanwhile, the magnificence and balance of classical style yields to the exhaustivity of the jeweled. The lapidary majesty of the Parthenon, with its lines curved so that they would appear straight, its art that hides its art, gives way to glittering mosaics in which senators and emperors clothed in the broad stripe imperceptibly give way to the clergy in theirs.

Figure 8: Mosaic of Justinian in San Vitale, Ravenna

AUSONIUS AND PAULINUS

Ausonius and Paulinus wrote a series of verse epistles very similar to the pair of poems and letters by Licentius, Augustine, and Paulinus. Here, however, it was the teacher who wanted to recall the student. Perhaps unrelated circumstances, namely Paulinus’s travel between Spain, Italy and Gaul, led to the writing of much more in this case. Ausonius wrote three or four letters to Paulinus, and Paulinus responded with two of his own, totaling about eight A few examples: πρεσβύτερος (presbyter), διάκονος (deacon), ἐκκλησία (ecclesia), pontifex, pietas, basilica. 75

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hundred lines.76 Certainly the two men were more intimately acquainted, as Ausonius had been grammaticus and rhetor to Paulinus, and may even have been the first promoter of the wealthier and more highly born Aquitanian’s career at the Court.77 This is usually supposed to be the cause of the higher volume. We will, however, lay open to question the depth of the division between the two men. After briefly comparing those aspects of the letters relevant to the present discussion, we will suggest a new hypothesis: that the simplest explanation of the volume and quantity of the letters is that Paulinus responded as soon as he could and achieved the desired result. It is entirely possible that their rift has been exaggerated, and that Ausonius was satisfied with Paulinus’s response. Scholarly interpretations of these letters have changed somewhat over the last century, but tend to retain a focus on the sincerity of Paulinus’s Christian faith compared with the less sincere Christianity of Ausonius. In 1909 one scholar accused him of “skin-deep” Christianity professed only for the sake of professional advancement.78 A contemporary had issued a consenting opinion, classing Ausonius with a lukewarm, pseudo-Christian In Green’s edition 395 lines of Ausonius, 399 of Paulinus. For a summary of the debate about whether to accept the third and fourth letters of Ausonius as two, or one, on which all or nearly all modern editors of the text have weighed their opinions, see Green (1991: 654–655). We have tried throughout the present study to avoid giving too much space to matters of textual criticism of the Ausonian corpus, in part because it requires more space than we can afford, but no less because of the contribution, too important to be obscured by our inferior duplication, of Green’s talent and industry. 77 Ep. 22.33–35: ego sum tuus altor et ille / praeceptor primus, primus largitor honorum, / primus in Aonidum qui te collegia duxi. 78 Cole, P.R. (1909: 7): “Julius Ausonius was probably a pagan, and even the Christianity of his son was only skin-deep, never coloring his thought or diminishing his allusions to the pagan mythology, but only affording a pretext for a few perfunctory verses upon Easter… It was at this time [i.e., A.’s appointment over Gratian as tutor by Valentinian] that Ausonius first professed himself a Christian, and the shallowness of his profession accorded perfectly with that of the emperor himself.” 76

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fourth-century majority over against the more convincing piety of the ascetics.79 The chief problem with these judgments, apart from doing something very dangerous—psychoanalyzing someone who has been dead for centuries—is that the fourth century ascetic by definition would not have had a secular bureaucratic career. If there had been a layman saint who perfectly carried out God’s instruction to “be master of the earth, and subdue it”—an injunction which came before the Fall—we would hardly know of him. The late antique hagiographies, from Athanasius’s Anthony to Sulpicius Severus’s Martin to the Apophthegmata Patrum to Paulinus the Deacon’s Ambrose to Possidius’s Augustine to Gregory’s Benedict to Bede’s Cuthbert, all focus on ascetical monks and bishops. Can it really be that there were no lay saints in this period? Recently scholars have devoted their energies to the more important question of what Ausonius considered Christianity to be. What imperatives did Ausonius’s belief carry for him in his private and public conduct, professional work, and creative personal efforts? What can we imagine the poet asking himself as he writes the Cento Nuptialis or epigrams about male homosexual activity or oral sex?80 We must not mistake the confidence and directness with which the Fathers asserted their positions for the same settled attitude, for example, of a grammaticus toward the Glover, T.R. (1901: 109–110): “His position is interesting, not because it is thought out, but because it is typical of a class which must have been very numerous… Point after point in his prayer [in the Ephemeris] may be illustrated from the creeds of the Nicenes… But it is hardly suggestive of a specially deep piety. Contrast it with Prudentius’ Daily Round, where every part of life is touched by religion.” 80 Without indulging in the quotation of titillating epigrams only tangentially related to our study, we observe that Ausonius struggled with this question, as he translated several poems from the Anth. Pal. mocking certain men’s sexual perversity, e.g., 74, 75; 82–87, all about Eunus, 100, 101; and yet, as he did in the preface to the Cento Nuptialis, introduced the poems with a self-defence similar to Martial’s: Non unus vitae color est nec carminis unus / lector: habet tempus pagina quaeque suum (Epigr. 1.3– 4, transposed by Green to the beginning of the poem). Cf. Martial’s apology: Epigr. 1.prol. His attitudes must have changed, also, over the course of nearly a century. 79

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range of acceptable ancient authorities for usage. Their performance was itself part of the argument. Ausonius may fail to fit into a later definition of Christianity, but in his time it was all too new to be a blueprint for culture. Ausonius was not doing what the Fathers were doing; his novelty was of a subtler kind. We judge his personal voice by his words on their manifest meaning, in poems like the Ephemeris and the prayers, and on their more subtle effects in poems like the Cupido Cruciatus and the Mosella. Later twentieth century scholars have taken him at his word. R.P.H. Green writing in the late 1980s and early 1990s did, and Neil McLynn (1994) subscribed to Green’s assessment.81 In the last few years, Alan Cameron (2011) and Peter Brown (2012) have weighed in. Cameron took for granted both that Ausonius was a Christian and that he was “the most conspicuous example of enthusiasm for classical culture among Christians, especially Gallic Christians.”82 He then equates Paulinus of Nola’s attitude toward education with that of Ausonius.83 Cameron dissolves the contradictions in an easy attitude of acceptance of Ausonius’s varied literary poses. Peter Brown called Ausonius “a sincere representative of the Christianity of that generation,” and couched his claim about Ausonius the Christian in his idea of a Constantinianage Christianity that was “deeply alien to us” and changed at the end of Ausonius’s life and in the decade after his death.84 The Christianity of this age was “fashionably transcendental,” not the all-or-nothing of “new-style bishops” such as Ambrose, Augustine, and Paulinus. We have shown throughout this study the risks of using the personas projected by Ausonius as foundational historical narrative.85 Evelyn-White (1919) argued that when Ausonius professed and McLynn (1994: 82). Cameron (2011: 404). 83 ibid. “After all, Ausonius’s favorite and best-known pupil, Paulinus of Nola, a deeply committed and active Christian, was (if with a less easy conscience) scarcely less well read in at any rate the Latin classics than his teacher.” 84 Brown (2012: 207 and 202, respectively). 85 For example, the studies of Jullian (1898), Haarhoff (1920), or even for that matter Gibbon. 81 82

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called himself a Christian and even displayed extensive knowledge of the Scriptures and recent conciliar developments, he was deliberately airing his Christianity, and that: [Ausonius’] everyday attitude was clearly very different. When Paulinus began to conform his life to what he believed to be the demands of Christianity, Ausonius is totally unable to understand his friend’s attitude and can only believe that he is crazed. A devout and pious Christian might have combated the course chosen by Paulinus, but he would certainly have sympathised with the principle which dictated it… In the Parentalia there is no trace of Christian sentiment—and this though he is writing of his nearest and dearest: the rite which gives a title to the book is pagan, the dead “rejoice to hear their names pronounced” (Parent. Pref. 11), they are in Elysium (id. iii. 23) or in Erebus (id. xxvii.4) or amongst the Manes (id. xviii.12) according to pagan orthodoxy… There is a marked contrast, therefore, between Ausonius’ formal professions and his actual beliefs… Conventional by nature, he accepted Christianity as the established religion, becoming a half-believer in his casual creed: it is not in the least likely that he ever set himself to realize either Christianity or Paganism. (xiii–xiv)

Again definitions are important. The dichotomy which EvelynWhite presents with “either Christianity or Paganism,” with an uppercase “P,” is a tautology similar to that which we described regarding the more convincing piety of the “ascetics.” EvelynWhite does not define what he means by “Christianity,” if it is not “the established religion.” By “Paganism” Evelyn-White apparently meant “not-Christianity.”86 He is certainly right in saying that Ausonius never set himself to realize either “not the established religion” or “not-Christianity.” But that is not saying much. Alan Cameron gave an extensive account of the evolution of the word “paganus” and its cognates in Latin antiquity: Last Pagans (2011: 14–32). His comment about pagan and Christian sarcophagi emphasizes the role of foundational texts, which we have constantly emphasized: “to distinguish (say) pagan from Christian sarcophagi, meaning those decorated with mythological scenes as opposed to those decorated with biblical scenes” (32). 86

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The Parentalia is a poem well-grounded in pagan tradition.87 It is so by genre. For Ausonius this might have been a tuxedo for a bourgeois concert-goer, but it might have been more. In his preface, Ausonius appeals to none less than the most conspicuous founder of pagan Roman religious practice: Numa Pompilius. These solemn poems will revere and command reverence like that associated with a thousand-year tradition.88 Addressing the dirge itself, Ausonius announces the formal context of his poem with characteristic vocabulary: funereus, munera, sollemnia, dedicare, umbrae. Another common term from the vocabulary of Roman funeral customs appears repeatedly throughout the Parentalia: Manes. The Manes or Ghosts of the deceased were the common addressees of Roman funerary inscriptions; the dedicator would sometimes even ask the Manes to welcome the dearly departed. The phrase Dis Manibus or some abbreviation of it was as ubiquitous as R.I.P. today. Propertius begins his elegy—“Ghosts do exist!”—in which the ghost of his deceased mistress Cynthia comes back from the grave to chide him: sunt aliquid Manes (Eleg. 4.7.1). As in modern times, attitudes toward ghosts would not have been split along imaginary lines of pagan and Christian. Ausonius knew Propertius well. He echoes him at Parent. 9.26 (another Propertian ghost story): liquisti natos, pignora nostra, duos (you left two sons, our pledges). Green notes in his commentary that this arrangement of words “is rare in these elegies,” unsurprising if we suppose the echo to be intentional. Propertius had Cornelia, the dead wife, address similar words to her widower Paullus: nunc tibi commendo communia pignora natos (now I commend you our sons, the pledges we have in common).89 Whether Ausonius’s rare turn of phrase here is a conscious imitation, an unconscious echo, or neither of the two, his language is that of

Green notes, “There is certainly no trace of the homiletic or triumphant tones common in Christian funerary inscriptions.” 88 Praef.6–7: nenia, funereis satis officiosa querellis, / annua ne tacitum munera praetereas, / quae Numa cognatis sollemnia dedicat umbris. 89 Green (1991: 314). Propertius Eleg. 4.11.73. 87

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the pagan Roman funeral tradition.90 Ausonius refers to the Manes of his father in the poem on his mother,91 and he asks the Manes to grant his grandmother’s ashes peace, adding the formulaic si pia verba loquor, if I speak pious words.92 His poem to his fatherin-law Attusius Lucanus Talisius is superficially an address to a pagan man. Full of the language of the mos maiorum, the elegy would have the reader imagine the Bordelais aristocrat a true Roman.93 It was appropriate for Ausonius to commend him on his happy fate, and to pay him pia munera (v. 17): vota probant superi meritisque faventia sanctis / implent fata, viri quod voluere boni, “the Gods above give effect to prayers, and the Fates looking kindly on unsullied worth, fulfil what good men desire” (8.13–14). But the pia munera are not strictly pagan, and with an announcement of what these munera are Ausonius launches into the poem on his deceased wife. Although the Parentalia as a whole is firmly situated in pagan form and imagery, Ausonius shows in the ninth elegy, addressed to Sabina, that the mode of expression was not merely determined by whether or not the adressee was a Christian. At the end of the eighth elegy Ausonius said that he was performing the filial duty of giving pia munera to his father-in-law. These pia munera are not the customary officiosa of the preface.94 Ausonius does not claim to be pius because he spoke Talisius’ name three times. His claim to pietas is celibacy: caelebs namque gener haec nunc pia munera solvo: / nam et caelebs numquam desinam et esse gener, “for unwedded, I, your son-in-law, now pay this tribute of devotion: nor will I ever cease to be both unwed and your son-in-law” (8.17– 18). Ausonius never remarried, as he testified in the next elegy: te iuvenis primis luxi deceptus in annis / perque novem caelebs te fleo Green (1991: 313–14), notes that echoes of classical poetry, specifically Vergil and Horace are more common in this elegy than in the others of the Parentalia. 91 Parent. 2.5: aeternum placidos manes complexa mariti. 92 Parent. 5.11–12: tranquillos aviae cineres praestate, quieti / aeternum manes, si pia verba loquor. 93 8.4: moribus ornasti qui veteres proavos. 94 Praef.11–14: gaudent compositi cineres sua nomina dici… / ille etiam, maesti cui defuit urna sepulchri, / nomine ter dicto paene sepultus erit. 90

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Olympiadas, “in youth I wept for you, robbed of my hopes in early years, and through these six and thirty years, unwedded, I have mourned, and mourn you still” (9.7–8). Even though it has been thirty-six years since Sabina’s death, Ausonius has remained celibate (like his grandmother Hilaria, aunt Corinthia, and uncle Magnus). This was not a traditional pium munus. On the contrary, Ausonius belonged to the first generation for which celibacy was legal (which means that for the relatives mentioned it involved even greater conviction).95 Talisius spent most of his life in a world in which Ausonius’s pia munera were actually the opposite, something more like scelesta crimina. It was an increasingly Christianized culture, a culture that included among its heroes the celibate, that pressured the emperor to repeal the ban on celibacy. Paulinus’s generation followed it. Paulinus of Nola was born in 357. Ausonius was already a 47-year-old widower, a professor of rhetoric at the foremost university of Gaul, the province where even the leading men of Rome sent their boys to learn their rhetoric.96 His relationship with Paulinus was that of master-student. Therefore Ausonius usually addresses Paulinus as filius, and Paulinus is given to addressing him as parens. Most of Ausonius’s correspondents are. But in spite of the foundation of their relationship, and their final break, through it all they regarded one another as intellectual equals. Ausonius and Paulinus’ correspondence is a two-man effort of highly polished verse, spanning the years 389–394 (the last letter being the last dateable evidence of Ausonius’s life). These respondent letters, in varied verse forms with dactylic hexameter predominating, amount to 794 lines (395 by Ausonius, 399 by Paulinus). Strikingly, although Ausonius had to write five letters at a stretch in order to get a response from Paulinus, respond he Codex Theodosianus 8.16.1, passed in AD 320, for Constantine’s repeal of the Augustan penalties for celibacy, the leges Iuliae and the Lex Papia Poppaea (17–19 BC). Ausonius was born in 310. For a recent treatment of the issue, see Grubbs (2002), Women and the Law in the Roman Empire (she mentions the lifting of the ban on p. 103). Epigr. 99 shows that Ausonius was aware of these laws. 96 E.g., Symmachus. Ep. 9.88.3; 6.34; also Cameron (2011: 404), with further references there. 95

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did with multiple poems, one of them 331 lines long (the longest by either correspondent). Paulinus eventually proved himself a worthy and willing partner of Ausonius in this literary exercise. Ausonius attempts to dissuade Paulinus from his chosen course of action: renouncing his secular career and entering on a “plan” of monastic life (propositum, Paulinus Carm. 10.327). But Ausonius does not merely protest Paulinus’ decision to become a monk. He protests Paulinus’s “silence”; this is his consistently repeated complaint. “Not one page has rendered the officium pium to me.”97 He then dares Paulinus, with the same gesture we have seen in such lettres d’art, to complement his poetical flourishes. Ausonius adduces examples from mythology and nature of the sermo of caves, streams, rocks, bees, snakes, the rattle of Isis known from the shield of Aeneas (Aen. 8.696), and other exotic instruments. He offers a line of all spondaic substitutions, followed by a perfectly regular dactylic line, and then a balanced line of three of each: respondent dociles moderato verbere pelves (21.23–25). He piles on the proper names, twenty-nine in a 74line poem, and invokes Paulinus’s honores: the consular trabea and the curule chair (60–61). Only a technical virtuoso could respond to this master, who could compose the Nuptial Cento in a day from memory. It certainly was not celibacy that Ausonius found shocking. Ausonius himself was celibate, and so, as we have seen, were several of his relatives. Jane Austen’s Emma, whom Ausonius resembles in more ways than one, observed that not mere celibacy, but the choosing of celibacy together with poverty were shocking and incomprehensible to others: “[I]t is poverty only which makes celibacy contemptible to a generous public! A single woman, with a very narrow income, must be a ridiculous, disagreeable old maid! the proper sport of boys and girls, but a single woman, of good fortune, is always respectable, and may be as sensible and pleasant as any body else.”98 In 19th-century England one had less to fear from public imputations of insouciance. Only a madman would abandon Paulinus’s career. 97 98

Ep. 21.3: officium sed nulla pium mihi pagina reddit. Austen (1815) Emma 1.10.

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Priscillian’s followers were such madmen. Trout in reserved tones sketched a picture of the Priscillianist controversy and the impact it might have had on Bordelais society at this time.99 Priscillian had gone to Bordeaux, and the bishop Delphinus “repulsed” him from the city.100 Trout interprets this to mean that Delphinus “refused him admission to the city” (72). It is difficult to imagine Delphinus preventing Priscillian’s entry within the city walls. More likely it means that he refused to give him audience. Priscillian was himself a bishop (of Ávila) from 380, and now, having been condemned by the Council of Saragossa for his particular brand of asceticism, was on his way to Rome in 381 when he stopped at Bordeaux.101 This was not his only stay; even Ausonius was made to feel his impact there. In the Professores he consoles Delphidius the rhetor, who died too early to suffer through the execution of his wife Euchrotia at Trier for implication in the controversy. More than one string could be tied to Ausonius from the Urbica who was stoned as a Priscillianist at Bordeaux.102 Ausonius had already seen firsthand the magnetism and the danger of Priscillian’s personality. Priscillian had everything to recommend him to a student of Ausonius. He was of noble family, taught by a famous rhetor (Elpidius), possessing all the qualities which a first-rate study of grammaticē could impart. His teachers were the foremost disciples of the gnostic heretic, the Egyptian Marcus: Trout (1999: 67–77). Brown (2012: 210–215) leans more heavily on the importance of Priscillian of Ávila and of Martin of Tours as models for Paulinus. But Brown did not go so far as we will here in ascribing Ausonius’s anxieties about Paulinus to fears of Priscillianism. 100 In the words of Sulpicius Severus, Chron. 2.48: a Burdigala per Delfinum repulsi. 101 Sulpicius Severus, Chron. 2.47, tells us of the council at Saragossa: Aquitani episcopi interfuere. We learn in the next paragraph that when Priscillian finally did arrive at Rome (with Instantius and Salvian, two bishops of Spain who had also been condemned), they were not granted an audience with Pope Damasus: Hi ubi Romam pervenere Damaso se purgare cupientes, ne in conspectum quidem eius admissi sunt. 102 For Delphidius, see Prof. 5; Trout explains the connections to Urbica, p. 74. 99

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huius [Marci] auditores fuere Agape quaedam non ignobilis mulier et rhetor Elpidius. Ab his Priscillianus est institutus, familia nobilis, praedives opibus, acer, inquies, facundus, multa lectione eruditus, disserendi ac disputandi promptissimus: felix profecto, si non pravo studio corrupisset optimum ingenium. Prorsus multa in eo animi et corporis bona cerneres: vigilare multum, famem ac sitim ferre poterat: habendi minime cupidus, utendi parcissimus. Sed idem vanissimus, et plus iusto inflatior profanarum rerum scientia: quin et magicas artes ab adolescentia eum exercuisse creditum est. (Sulpicius Severus, Chronicon 2.46) His [Marcus’s] disciples were a certain Agape—a woman not without distinction—and the rhetor Elpidius. Priscillian, educated by these, of noble family, of exceedingly ample means, keen, restless, a fluent speaker, polished with wide reading, most ready to discuss and dispute: happy indeed, if he had not arrested a very fine talent with perverse pursuits. Moreover you could see many good qualities in him of mind and body: he could keep frequent vigils, bear hunger and thirst: very little desirous of possessing, most sparing in using. But he was at the same time very vain, and more puffed up than was right with his knowledge of superstitious crafts103: why, it was even believed that he had practiced magic from his youth. (trans. Yaceczko)

Similar to Albina, Corinthia and Hilaria, but even more strongly than all, we see perhaps in Agape an example of a female grammaticus—a grammatica. Priscillian, as we will see presently, was eloquens ac doctus. He was a proper product of the paideia of the grammaticus and the rhetor. His rhetor is named—Elpidius—but not his grammaticus. Instead, we are given the name only of a woman, Agape, followed by that of Elpidius. Could this be an indication that Priscillian accomplished the stage of his education in which he memorized verses and studied grammaticē, in short, profanae res is difficult to translate, as the semantic range of the word profanus was shifting at this time. Macrobius opposed litterarum profani to doctrina initiati (Somn. Scip. 1.18), and Lactantius had used it in the sense of ignorant or strangers to (+ ABL of separation), viz., profani a sacramento veritatis (2.15.2 and 2.16.13; cf. 7.24.10). 103

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the proper province of the grammaticus, entirely under the direction of Agape?104 That Sulpicius Severus might have wished to undermine Priscillian by damaging his credentials in this way (viz., by making him the disciple of a woman), yet that at the same time he blushed to credit a woman with the venerable name of grammaticus, is the simplest explanation for this surprising situation. Trout seems to downplay slightly the influence of women on actual (criminal) events. He calls it “the stock-in-trade of Roman invective,” even if he does maintain that “charges of sexual deviance, magic, and secrecy continued to carry emotional force.”105 If generally speaking we have overlooked or underestimated the weight of the role of women in education at this time, we may fairly expect that real anxieties, and not mere rhetorical convention, harried men like Ausonius and Sulpicius Severus, no less than they pricked the conscience of men like Paulinus or Delphinus. All of this evidence comes from the same region, limiting its application to the rest of the empire, but at the same time legitimating the connections we are attempting to draw. As for Rome, we have briefly discussed Jerome’s relationship to Albina (herself at Rome even if Jerome was not at the time when he was writing

The question will no doubt receive, and is receiving, the attention it deserves. Conybeare’s chapter on St Monica in The Irrational Augustine (2006: 63–138), emphasizing the negative or cataphatic feminine influence on the intellectual formation of Augustine and company at Cassiciacum, describes in Monica an investigative style more suited to the education which lies prior to the dialectical training of the rhetor. See also Vessey’s chapter in Olson and Kerby-Fulton (2005), “Response to Catherine Conybeare: Women of Letters?” Clark (2015: 80–115) picks up some of Conybeare’s insights, especially comparison with the Platonic valuing of aporía, in her chapter on Monica’s education in her recent book on this “Ordinary Saint.” 105 Trout (1999: 75); but he describes at greater length the possible significance of the widow Euchrotia and her daughter Procula, nobles of Bordeaux and members of Priscillian’s entourage on the mission to Rome, and of Urbica, his discipula stoned at Bordeaux, for Ausonius’s reference to Tanaquil in his letter to Paulinus (pp. 73–76). 104

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to Paula and Eustochium). We should not be surprised to find similar relationships in the Greek East. As we said, Priscillian possessed all the qualities of a firstrate vir eloquens ac doctus. He was facundus, eruditus, promptus (eloquent, polished, ready). Sulpicius Severus describes him in terms very similar to Sallust’s Catiline; unsurprising if we remember the currency of that author’s language. Sallust said that Catiline was nobili genere natus, born of noble stock (De Coniuratione Catilinae 5.1). For Catiline it was not pravum studium, ill pursuits, that corrupted his ingenium, but the other way round: ingenio malo pravoque. Like Priscillian, who was believed to have practiced sorcery from boyhood (ab adolescentia exercuisse) Catiline trained his youth (iuventutem exercuit, 5.2) from boyhood (ab adulescentia) for his evil deeds. Catiline was the model, too, of the sinister ascetic. He could endure fasts and vigils (corpus patiens inediae, algoris, vigiliae, 5.3), and so Priscillian: animi et corporis bona cerneres: vigilare multum, famem ac sitim ferre poterat. Both were liberal and even prodigal. Catiline was sui profusus (5.4), Priscillian was habendi minime cupidus, utendi parcissimus. Both men had, to take Sallust’s phrase, satis eloquentiae (5.5). Like Catiline, Priscillian would eventually be executed, but his influence lived on. Sulpicius tells us that it was only the beginning. Priscillian’s followers brought his body back to Spain, where he was revered as a saint and a martyr, and the cause of dissentions fifteen years later.106 Against this background, Ausonius’s invocation of the names of Tanaquil and Bellerophon in his letter to Paulinus likely betray his fear of Paulinus’s involvement in Priscillianism.107 Ausonius Chron. 2.51: Caeterum Priscilliano occiso non solum non repressa est haeresis, quae illo auctore proruperat, sed confirmata, latius propagata est: namque sectatores ejus, qui eum prius ut sanctum honoraverant, postea ut martyrem colere coeperunt. Peremptorum corpora ad Hispanias relata, magnisque obsequiis celebrata eorum funera. Quin et jurare per Priscillianum summa religio putabatur. Ac inter nostros perpetuum discordiarum bellum exarserat, quod jam per quindecim annos foedis dissensionibus agitatum, nullo modo sopiri poterat. 107 Trout does not put it so assertively, but allows for the possibility: “Ausonius’s letters to Paulinus may not mention the name of Priscillian, but, as Paulinus apparently realized, behind Tanaquil and Bellerophon lurk 106

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was writing to Paulinus while the man was in Spain. This alone should put to rest any thought that Ausonius might object to Paulinus’s radical adoption of asceticism out of any lack of sympathy for Christianity per se, rather than for a specific concern springing from alarming current events. Ausonius also complains of Paulinus’ distance and his abandonment of his fatherland Gaul, but Ausonius quickly assures him that literary correspondence would satisfy him of his craving for his friend’s presence. Indeed, we do not see another complaint from Ausonius after Paulinus’ great response. It may even be that Paulinus’s response satisfied Ausonius and healed the rift between them, and this hypothesis ought not to be lightly laid aside. Ausonius’s lack of response to Paulinus’s Carm. 11 may indicate an improvement in their relations. His Epp. 23 and 24, written in 393 or 394, are his last datable works. Of all the fears Ausonius must have felt for his friend and son, Priscillianism may have been the worst, and Paulinus certainly satisfied him with Carm. 10 and 11. If we had heard another request from the octogenarian in the twilight of his days to his younger, more able-bodied friend, that he come visit his mentor one last time, should we then surmise a condemnation of monasticism, and that the two men held fundamentally different, irreconcilable faiths? It is not the case, as Evelyn-White said, that “Ausonius is totally unable to understand his friend’s attitude and can only believe that he is crazed.” Paulinus’s Christianity is not somehow more real or an invalidation or condemnation of Ausonius’s expression of the same faith. Nor need Paulinus’s withdrawal from his career necessitate a sundering of their relationship. “Ironically…Paulinus’s reply to Ausonius also reveals the degree to which his “contempt for the world” still seemed compatible with many of the ideals shared by men of his background and education.” This correspondence illustrates a difference of exterior piety, not a difference of interior faith. Moreover, Ausonius had worldly concerns, and Brown was certainly right to see in his attempt to salvage Paulinus’s career also a the vague shadows of the ghost of Priscillian and his followers. Ausonius’s poems serve further notice on the resentment many harbored toward the incipient monastic movement” (75).

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desire to consolidate the Gallic aristocracy’s relationship with the new emperor Theodosius.108 It also illustrates the profound change in the Christianity of the two men’s generations.109 As usual, the two most important things for the grammaticus were the two most important things for Ausonius: what texts to learn and the mores to be adopted from them. The question of what texts to learn had been settled, as we have seen, for centuries, and therefore seldom lay open to debate. We only see it to have come into focus at the time when it lay under the attentions and efforts of those who were trying to change it, and subsequently when men like Ausonius, Macrobius, and especially Messius reacted to this alarming trend with a conservative reassertion. Messius published the Exempla Elocutionis in 395, and Macrobius his Saturnalia a few years later. At any rate, Ausonius himself wrote his last datable letter—to Paulinus—in 394, and the more obvious revolution up to this point was the second one: of mores. The series of letters presently under discussion made him aware of the danger to the first. Mores therefore were Ausonius’s primary concern in writing his Quarta tibi (Ep. 21), canonical texts in his iugum discutimus (Epp. 23 and 24), and Paulinus’s response in his Quarta redit (Carm. 10) shows that he understood. So when Ausonius said to Brown (2012: 210): “[Aquitaine] was the breadbasket of Trier. Now Aquitaine found itself on the margins of a tenuously united empire ruled, in effect, from distant Constantinople. It is as if in modern times the administration of Bordeaux had switched from Paris to Istanbul. Ausonius the old courtier knew that if the nobility of his region were to have any say in the new regime, they should hang together. This was why he wished to lure Paulinus back from Spain to Bordeaux so as to remain active in the political life of the region.” 109 Watts (2015) has crafted a lively account of the generations, to understand the relationships Ausonius had with the men of the next generation, and to contrast him with those younger leaders with whom he did not have direct contact. “Although he too was a Christian, Ausonius came to represent a member of the conventional elite who thrived by working within the bounds of the fourth-century imperial system. Paulinus then represents a new Christian order against the aristocratic ideals recognizably embodied by Ausonius” (217). 108

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Paulinus, vertisti, Pauline, tuos dulcissime mores, “you have changed, Paulinus, your most sweet character” (21.50), he was able to do so with a tone of reproach and a period, rather than pleadingly, with a question mark. Contrast Evelyn-White’s translation, which runs thus: “Hast thou, dearest Paulinus, changed thy nature?” Nature would have been ingenium, as we have seen in a few other quotations. Character (mores, plural) is the fabric made of habits (mos, singular), themselves concatenations of choices, or actions. That was before he saw the imminence and the magnitude of the danger. Paulinus in his response showed that he shared Ausonius’s seriousness about mores, had read Ausonius’s letter carefully, and above all that he had resolved to alter his mores radically: Nunc alia mentem vis agit, maior deus, / aliosque mores postulat (10.29–30). A greater god is now in the driver’s seat, no longer Apollo and the Muses, on whose gifts (munus, 27) and powers (numina, 26) my former concord (concordia, 24) with you depended, and this God demands different mores. The whole elaborate sentence finally recalls at the end the gifts of the Muses, and hands them over to the new god who demands them as his due: fuit ista quondam non ope sed studio pari tecum mihi concordia ciere surdum Delphica Phoebum specu, vocare Musas Numina fandique munus munere indultum dei petere e nemoribus aut iugis; nunc alia mentem vis agit, maior deus, aliosque mores postulat, sibi reposcens a suo munus suum, vivamus ut vitae patri. (10.23–32) Once there was this accord betwixt me and thee, equals in zeal110 but not in power—to call forth deaf Apollo from his

Although Evelyn-White here translates non ope sed studio “in zeal but not in power,” we ought to prefer a translation which captures the images of resources (ops) and study (studium), especially that kind of study

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Delphic cave, to invoke the Muses as divine, to seek from groves or hills the gift of utterance by the god’s gift bestowed. Now ’tis another force governs my heart, a greater God, who demands another mode of life, claiming for himself from man the gift he gave, that we may live for the Father of life. (trans. Evelyn-White)

Paulinus was not rejecting concordia with Ausonius. In fact his contemporary and now-countryman in Spain, Prudentius, would soon produce the Psychomachia, in which Concordia was to be the chief heroine. He was rejecting the old basis for that concordia, and inviting Ausonius to a new kind of concord, not without the certain knowledge that his physical withdrawal from Ausonius’s world would postpone their enjoyment of it literally to the end of time. Paulinus and Ausonius left sufficient letters from before the former’s renunciation of the Muses to show on what their concordia had been based. Ausonius sought from Paulinus, as he did from Probus, Theon, Paulus, Pacatus, and his other correspondents, the munera of the Muses and Apollo, but even more importantly the giving of the fruits of these munera to one another, along with the relatively simple delights of exotic comestibles.111 In an earlier letter Ausonius thanked Paulinus for his excellent verse epitome of Suetonius’s three books On Kings, quoting some back after the fashion we have now frequently seen to be part of the etiquette of their lettres d’art.112 He tells Paulinus that no by which one acquires the kind of ops Paulinus means here, as will be clearer below when we comment on his use of studium. 111 Epp. 14 and 15, both to Theon, in verse as always, request poetry and thank him for oysters from Médoc, a few miles away from Bordeaux on the Atlantic coast. Epp. 3 and 4, to Paulus, also praise the oysters of Médoc and invite the fellow rhetor to Lucaniacus to celebrate the Easter season with feasting and versification. Probus receives Ausonius’s versions of Aesop and of Nepos’s Chronica (Ep. 9), and we have already touched on the importance of literature and publishing in his relationship with Pacatus. 112 Ep. 17.15–17: …poema…de tribus Suetonii libris, quos ille de regibus dedit, in epitomen coegisti tanta elegantia, solus ut mihi videare assecutus, quod contra rerum naturam est, brevitas ut obscura non esset. in his versibus

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Roman youth could equal his facundia poetica, and if I am wrong, well, pater sum, and forgive the impediment that pietas throws in the way of iudicium (vv. 30–32). But do send me such, he says, turning more serious, and I promise to discharge faithfully the duty of delight and honor: affice me, oro, tali munere frequenter, quo et oblector et honoror (33–34). In another letter Ausonius reassures Paulinus that the oil he had sent was duly received and enjoyed, not to worry, as the reciept of another munus seemed to imply: veritus displicuisse oleum quod miseras, munus iterasti, “fearing that the oil you sent had not given satisfaction, you repeat the gift” (Ep. 19.2–3). Here Ausonius had received the Barcelonian version of garum (19.6), but also another poem. Ausonius praises the poem, calling it inimitable; his prolixity is characteristic: iuro omnia nulli umquam imitabilie futurum, “I swear by everything that it will never be imitable by any man” (19.16). Paulinus had asked him to edit and publish the work, of which we know only—since the preface but not the poem itself survives—that it was already perfect.113 Such, then, was Paulinus, and such his mores: a powerful lord, a consularis, a poet, a cultivator of elegant manners and tastes, pursuing the life of the mind; ensconced in a large house, quiet and removed from the bustle and demand of public officium. He was in all these respects just like Ausonius. This unanimity, this concordia, is precisely what made Paulinus’s rejection of his own mores a rejection of those of Ausonius. The older man could see it immediately, as Trout observed, in the sudden change in Paulinus’s poetry, especially after a long silence.114 When Paulinus finally did respond, he showed that the basis of their concordia was their shared studia, and he demonstrated, rather than proclaimed, that his new Muse was the Holy Spirit, his new canon the Scriptures. ego ista collegi; and he goes on to quote nine hexameters full of exotic polysyllabic proper names stuffed into dactyls and spondees, of which the following is perhaps a reveille for the sleepy reader: Illibanum Numidamque Avelim Parthumque Vononem (23). 113 19.18–20: caelum superfluae expolitionis adhibebo, magis ut tibi paream quam ut perfectis aliquid adiciam. 114 Trout (1999: 79): “Paulinus had already begun to implement a new poetic practice, and he was on the verge of radically changing his life.”

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He was one of many, and they would gather and bind the “faisceau de vérités” at the center of the metaphysic of a new civilization. As he showed Licentius, so Paulinus showed Ausonius that he had read his letter carefully and was rejecting the precious metal on which his currency was based. Paulinus responded with 331 lines full of references to Christ and almost totally devoid of oblique references to proper names of persons and places. Those times when he made such references he did so precisely to prove his attentiveness to Ausonius’s letter. He evokes the image of the Roman paragon of feminine virtue, Lucretia, to allay Ausonius’s fears of a Tanaquil, the symbol of sinister feminine manipulation from the same early days of Etruscan lore (Carm. 10.192). Sulpicius, a younger fellow Aquitanian, had a great fear of women as the transmitters of heresy among the nobility; such fear would explain Ausonius’s Tanaquil.115 At the same time he addresses Ausonius with the tender name of pater and proves his care with the repetition of oblivio patrii caeli in metrically the same position that Ausonius had used.116 He returns to the Vasconei saltus and the ninguida Pyrenaei hospitia (Ausonius 21.51–2) with his own lines (203–204), and answers Ausonius’s reference to Quintilian (Ausonius 21.57) with an even longer demonstration of his knowledge of Spain’s just causes for fame (221–238). He might have exhausted his teacher; even the Mosella was only 483 lines. In the end, Paulinus took so long to respond, and responded so fully, because he was composing a manifesto, and, he feared, a farewell. He would no longer keep the kind of friendship that they had, sharing lettres d’art and consuming their time in what he called “empty cares.” His only fear, he concluded, was of being found by Christ on the last day writing the kind of poetry that According to Sulpicius, the women “started rushing to [Priscillian] in droves” (catervatim ad eum confluebant), and the heresy spread from them to the bishops: Ad hoc mulieres novarum rerum cupidae, fluxa fide, et ad omnia curioso ingenio, catervatim ad eum confluebant: quippe humilitatis speciem ore et habitu praetendens, honorem sui et reverentiam cunctis injecerat. Jamque paulatim perfidiae istius tabes pleraque Hispaniae pervaserat: quin et nonnulli episcoporum depravati (Chron. 2.46). 116 Paulinus, Carm. 10.193; pater, 195; Ausonius, Ep. 21.52. 115

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Ausonius had taught him to write, and was writing to him from Bordeaux even now. hic metus est, labor iste, dies ne me ultimus… / sopitum…sterili deprendat in actu, / tempora sub vacuis ducentem perdita curis, “This is my fear, this my task, that the Last Day overtake me not asleep in…profitless pursuits, spending wasted time amid empty cares.” (316–318). His later compositions, annual hymns to St Felix, some of which extended to more than twice the length of the present letter, prove that he did not consider the writing of poetry to be “spending time lost on empty cares.” Cares, he repeats, he can put forever to rest, if only he abandon rerum voluptas (325) and curarum labor (326), which we may understand to be oysters and the consular robes. His propositum (327), his plan of life, offers him a rich hope, spes dives (330): the promise of eternal life. If they did in fact shake off the yoke forever, as Ausonius complained and Paulinus confirmed, it need not have been a final farewell in either of their minds. It certainly was not so to Paulinus. If we disbelieve that promise, which Paulinus took to his heart, of a life after this, infinite and therefore incomparably longer to enjoy than that which now we live, in which we will be reunited with those friends whom we embrace with a pure love, corde, mente pia, then we will pity Ausonius and blame Paulinus for his unnecessary rejection of a man whose friendship had never harmed him. But let no Christian for that reason suppose no cause to pity the fate, or to accuse the sincerity, of either of these two friends. The sundering of their relationship was a true tragedy, in which heroes, like Antigone, strove to follow the laws of gods and men, and still suffered unenviable fates. We must not suppose that we ought to take sides. If we are not Christians, we will be tempted to blame Paulinus as Gibbon blames the monks. If we are Christians, we must pity the fate of two yokefellows who, by their own lights answering the call of God, must suffer to shake off the yoke until the end of the world, to enjoy concordia for world without end.

CONCLUSION. FROM φιλόλογοι TO θεολόγοι: WORD-LOVERS TO WORSHIPERS OF THE WORD Itaque quae philosophia fuit, facta philologia est. (Seneca, Ep. ad Lucilium 108.23) And so what was philosophy, has become philology. (trans. Yaceczko) ——— …καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος. (Evang. Sec. Iohannem 1.1) …and the word was god.

“CICERONIANUS ES”

Ausonius was born into a world in which philologi, “lovers of the word,” practiced an ancient art well-defined and preserved by conservative masters, and passed on to the conservative magni…pueri magnis e centurionibus orti, “great boys sprung from great centurions” (Horace, Sat. 1.6.72–73). He worked hard, and was not unjustly proud, even if he was properly modest, of the work that he did. Like Marrou, whose parents took him to school and said, “You must work hard,” voilà, it was done, and Ausonius would never again be a professional to take pride in the work of his hands, like his father the surgeon or his grandfather the 207

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unknown.1 Like Augustine and Libanius, Ausonius protested that school—the rote memorization of myriad verses—was very hard, and even, like Augustine, that Greek was bewildering.2 And like the climber of the hill of engkúklios paideía, when he finally reached the top, panting and sweating, he reached his hand into the coolness of the clouds and filled his lungs with the sweet, thin air, and looked down over the distance he had traveled.3 He had become a nursling of the Muses, pallid with Philology’s labored lucubrations: in short, a guardian of language. In the intensely competitive environment of fourth-century Bordeaux, he had won appointment to a professorship. He had become a grammaticus. All his success rested on the foundation of grammaticē, in which no writer of his time would ever excel him. It was not something a young man of his background would have turned against. In addition to the opportunities opened by mastery of grammaticē, Ausonius learned the importance of patronage in his career. At least as important as his talents and his philoponía must have been the influence of his uncle Magnus. Like Augustine, who had Romanianus and Symmachus to thank for the advancement of his career, or Libanius, who had the help of Nicocles in Constantinople and of Calliopius and others at Antioch, Ausonius relied on the assistance of those grammatici who shared his conservatism and love for the ars. As they did to Arsenius of Constantinople, Prohaeresius of Athens, or even (again) Aemilius Arborius Magnus, the most powerful family in the Roman world extended to him the opportunity to teach their sons at court. Arsenius was born at Rome in 350 and might even have had Ausonius to thank for the advancement of his career. Theodosius had asked Gratian to recommend a tutor for his sons Arcadius and Honorius, and Arsenius, grammaticus of Rome, became Arsenius of Constantinople (and Cf. Marrou (1934: 19), cited above: “mes parents m’ont amené au lycée et m’ont dit : « il faudra que tu travailles bien. » Et voilà, c’était fait ; je ne serais jamais un typographe ou un maréchal-ferrand, comme mon père ou mon grand-père ; je ne pourrais jamais m’enorgueillir du travail de mes main s; je ne pourrais plus trouver une raison de vivre que dans le travail de l’esprit.” 2 Cf. Libanius, Orat. 1.4–5; Augustine, Conf. 1.14.23; Ausonius, Prof. 8.12. 3 Cf. Lucian, Hermotimus 5, cited above. 1

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eventually Abba Arsenius of Scetis). Julian the Emperor invited Prohaeresius to a similar professional opportunity, and Magnus taught princes both at Toulouse and Constantinople. Magnus died early and Prohaeresius declined to serve the pagan reformer emperor. Arsenius experienced a radical conversion, like that of Paulinus of Nola, and removed himself to the desert of Scetis, where the Apophthegmata Patrum remember him as the man who had turned resolutely away from eloquentia forever. The divine locution told him the three roots of sinlessness: anachoresis, silence, and hesychasm.4 Later, reflecting on a life spent in this way, Abba Arsenius would say on his deathbed that he had often regretted having spoken, but never having kept silent.5 Ausonius alone of all these examples persevered in the profession. The move to Trier must have been a lesson in diffidence and subtlety. No doubt politics were involved in his professional work at Bordeaux, but there was a whole new set at Trier and he was himself as unknown to them as they were to him. Once again Ausonius had to rely on his talents and his tact, where others could claim a place as their right. He had lived through the edict of Julian, prohibiting the teaching of the classics by Christians; we have no evidence that it affected his career in any way.6 Perhaps it is a sign that he converted to Christianity after 363. We may infer from the Mosella that he accompanied Valentinian (and the nine-yearold Gratian) on the expedition of 368–389. But this need not have been an inducement to make any kind of radical conversion. Along with the Mosella, the Cupido, which Ausonius tells us was inspired by the night life of Trier, suggests a reserved Ausonius. He was not about to have nightmares in which he was accused of being a Ciceronian. On the contrary, he would have liked to have such a dream, and his students knew it.7 Apart from

Apophthegmata Patrum, Arsenius 2: Καὶ ἤκουσε φωνῆς λεγούσης αὐτῷ· Ἀρσένιε, φεῦγε, σιώπα, ἡσύχαζε· αὗται γάρ εἰσιν αἱ ῥίζαι τῆς ἀναµαρτησίας. 5 ibid. 40: λαλήσας, πολλάκις µετεµελήθην, σιωπήσας δὲ οὐδέποτε. 6 The crucial part of the text: ἄτοπον εἶναι µοι φαίνεται διδάσκειν ἐκεῖνα τοὺς ἀνθρώπους ὅσα µὴ νοµίζουσιν εὖ ἔχειν, Ep. 36.423D. 7 We have already seen Paulinus, Carmen 11.38–39: vix Tullius et Maro tecum / sustineant aequale iugum. Emperor Theodosius in his letter to 4

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Juvencus, of whose existence Ausonius seems to be unaware, there were not yet any Latin poets who took Christian themes, and Green observed that the prayer in the Ephemeris is the earliest non-liturgical Latin prayer in verse.8 There was not much reason, then, for Ausonius to be writing as if the battle for mastery of state religion had already been won by Christianity. Nor had Ausonius any inducement to fight such a revolutionary battle, which would have undermined his own professional position, whatever his personal beliefs were. After a very long life punctuated by so many professional successes, we should be surprised if Ausonius had turned against grammaticē in the end. The next generation, with the nobly-born bishop Ambrose in the vanguard, would accomplish the revolution of Roman education.9 It is easy to forget that Symmachus, Augustine, Ambrose and the emperor Theodosius I, were all born after Ausonius had been an established grammaticus at Bordeaux for years. Ambrose was about 30 when Probus, friend and correspondent of the 62-year-old comes Ausonius, first advanced the career of the future bishop of Milan. Symmachus was educated in Gaul, either at Toulouse or at Bordeaux, when Ausonius had been teaching there for about twenty years. Then Augustine was born, was promoted (in part because of Symmachus’s influence) to a professorship at Milan, and later heard the divine locution “tolle, lege,” at Cassiciacum, while the septuagenarian Ausonius was back at Lucaniacus, enjoying the produce of his vineyards, writing the Ausonius, included in Appendix B of Green’s edition, places Ausonius on a par with the Golden Age authors (enjoying no less the implication of his own place in the analogy?): […auctores optimi], quibus par esse meruisti, qui Octaviano Augusto rerum potienti certatim opera sua tradebant, nullo fine in eius honorem multa condentes (9–11). Symmachus (Ep. 1.31.1–2) compares him directly to Cicero: Merum mihi gaudium eruditionis tuae scripta tribuerunt… erat quippe in his oblita Tulliano melle festivitas… 8 Green (1991: 250), cited above. 9 But we must be careful not to paint with too broad a brush, as Brown (1971: 33) cautioned: “[o]f the Fathers of the Church, for instance, only one—Ambrose—came from a senatorial family.” He goes on to observe the humble origins of the influential Plotinus (Upper Egypt), Augustine (Thagaste), Jerome (Stridon), and Chrysostom (a clerk’s office in Antioch).

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Professores, letters, and the protreptic Genethliacos to his grandson, on the latter’s fifteenth birthday. Maximus had risen and fallen, and Symmachus was left to pick up the pieces of his reputation damaged by support of the failed usurper. Theodosius was a young man just coming into his prime, with more reason than the conventions of academic etiquette for addressing Ausonius with the venerable name of “father.” The guardians of language who made their careers in the middle of the century might easily have glimpsed, but nowise considered destined, the radical new directions into which the Empire, now under Theodosius triumphantly Christian, was driving in the last decades of the fourth century.10 Watts’s comment on Ausonius at “the moment when the children of the year 310 began to work their way up the professional ladder,” viz. the decade or so from 350–361, emphasizes the Bordelais professor’s conservatism. “Libanius set up a school in his home city of Antioch after stints spent teaching abroad. Themistius perfected his public persona as a politically astute philosopher who advised emperors. Praetextatus held a sequence of governorships that put him on a track for an eventual urban prefecture. Ausonius continued to work as a well-placed provincial teacher” (13). The predictable parataxis of the list lulls the reader into a state of less than sharp attention by the time he arrives at the last sentence, but the last point is a surprising contrast. Ausonius appears not only as philosophically conservative, as these his peers were, but also temperamentally inclined to be so from the beginning. Libanius was an academic like Ausonius, but for him this meant ambitious travel and networking before he established himself at home. Ausonius established himself at home, but seems not to have gone any further from home than Toulouse, from which he must have returned To show these generational differences Watts (2015) follows the careers of Ausonius, Themistius, Praetextatus and Libanius. Of the first two he says: “Later authors spend less time manipulating the legacy of Themistius and Ausonius, but in their cases too a general consensus developed that they represented fixtures of the imperial system against whom younger, less conventional contemporaries sometimes pushed.… In each case, however, [Themistius’] memory was directly tied to his role as an adviser working within a functioning fourth-century imperial system guided by reason and not religious persuasion” (217). 10

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at the age of eighteen, when his uncle Arborius went to Constantinople, unless Ausonius went with him. If not, the fact itself of Arborius traveling to what must have been at that time the most exciting city in the empire, especially for a man of Ausonius’s talents for both languages, and so full of opportunity, while Ausonius returned home, tells us something about Ausonius’s natural temperament. Surely a talented, ambitious and opportunistic young man, whose uncle held a position in the Imperial domus, would have found a foothold at the New Rome. We must resist judging Ausonius’s character by the standards effected by the men of genius who flourished in the generation that followed him. Objectively, it might have been noble or base, but we have not posed that question, and are not now attempting to answer it. We must recognize the limits of comparing him with those who—after he retired from public life—turned the power of grammaticē to the promotion of a triumphant Christian culture. If he had been their contemporary in age, we must have considered him to be a resolute objector to the cultural revolution that led eventually to European Christendom. But he was not their contemporary in age. Nor did Ausonius live his life looking ahead, with anxiety or eagerness, to the inevitable establishment of Caesaropapism in the East or of secular Papal States in the West. He came of age and achieved his successes in an empire without a metaphysic, when cultural forces tended more toward fragmentation and isolation than unification. Theodosius II destroyed the temple of Zeus at Olympia in AD 426, but the Olympic games were already long-since defunct. “In the end the Olympic games perished,” in the words of one sympathizer who considered this act of Theodosius to be “criminal,” “not because they were outlawed by a Christian emperor, but because they were suffocated by the weight of the past.”11 The terms of the mos maiorum and of classical paideia had been partially hollowed out, and the Christian Scriptures began filling the voids left behind when a classical text fell into obsolescence. ars, doctrina, figura, and above all lógos, had taken on new meanings in which the new importance of the Word attended the new personification 11

Mitchell (2014) pp. 54 and 41, respectively.

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of Truth. Substance was now more important than style. Without the backing of authorities, all the lettré de la décadence could do was mutter to himself if he found the prophets of the new religion to be agrámmatoi or idiṓtai, as the apostles are called in Acts. The Augustan regime had broken down traditional barriers between Roman citizens’ public and private lives. Being Roman was now no longer the result of accidental birth in a place and loyalty to the Senate and the Roman populus. The new cosmopolitan state forged consensus through loyalty to the person of the princeps and membership in his domus, and the individual could embrace and appropriate Romanitas whether he had been born at Rome or Bordeaux or Trier, lying as it does by the Rhine, secure because of the strength of the Empire, of which it is itself a source: Trevericae…urbis solium, quae proxima Rheno / pacis ut in mediae gremio secura quiescit, / imperii vires quod alit, quod vestit et armat, “that royal city of the Treveri, which, though full near the Rhine, reposes unalarmed as if in the bosom of deep profound peace, because she feeds, because she clothes and arms the forces of the Empire” (Ordo Urbium Nobilium 6.2–4). The same was true in the fourth century, when Ausonius so described the court city of his employer and protégé. Ausonius entered the domus before he entered the senatus, and the order was no accident.

AUSONIUS IN HIS L ANDSCAPE

Marrou’s (1904–1977) contemporary Gilbert Highet (1906–1978) attempted to draw the personalities from the poems of Catullus, Vergil, Propertius, Horace, Tibullus, Ovid, and Juvenal (Poets in a Landscape, 1957). We must not stop with the Golden and Silver Ages, but add Ausonius and the poets of the Jeweled Style to the canon. Himself a Scottish American and a New Yorker, Highet observed that few of the Latin poets of the Classical period were Roman born; none of those mentioned above were born in Rome itself. But the City inspired them: “[a]ll found it a perennial spring of aesthetic and intellectual energy, in which the power of ancient traditions blended with the activity of new authors, new artists, new critics and patrons, and a never-satisfied public, to make an intoxicating drink for any imaginative soul” (225). We can turn

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many of Highet’s observations of the poets mentioned above directly upon Ausonius, who might not have objected. Juvenal was almost a perfect negative image. Highet’s attempt to glimpse Juvenal’s personal experience at court is the dark silhouette of Ausonius’s success: Year after year, he stood in the corridors of the emperor’s palace, and visited influential noblemen, hoping to be noticed, perhaps to be called in to fill a sudden vacancy. But he was always passed over. And gradually he saw that the posts of greatest value were allotted, not to the men who best deserved them, but to those who had the right friends at court, who knew how to flatter, who could share a dirty secret with a powerful minister, or toady to a ballet-dancer who had caught the emperor’s fancy.

If Highet had it right, we can easily see how Ausonius would have been the object of Juvenal’s ire, and how right Ausonius was to take care around the lurking pikes described in Mosella 120–124. Ausonius’s rise to the emperor’s cabinet was as much easier as it was less anticipated. None of his writings depict the kind of direct, resentful satirization of an emperor’s court that we see, for example, in Juvenal’s lines on Domitian’s court: quod non dant proceres, dabit histrio. tu Camerinos et Baream, tu nobilium magna atria curas? praefectos Pelopea facit, Philomela tribunos. (7.90–92) You can get from a stage-player what no great man will give you: why frequent the spacious antechambers of the Bareae or the Camerini? It is Pelopea that appoints our Prefects, and Philomela our Tribunes! (trans. Ramsay)

Where Ausonius refrains from mentioning living persons, Juvenal spoke with parrēsía and without verecundia—and the two men’s career trajectories could not have been more different. The poets shared the characteristically Roman attitude toward satire. Juvenal’s descriptions of perversities leap from the page with the same shocking explicitness of Ausonius’s epigrammatic lampoons of sexual deviancy or the cento that he wrote in sport with Valentinian, like E.C. Bentley or W.H. Auden writing

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lascivious clerihews for their friends. The homosexual Auden was more chaste than the schoolmaster Ausonius. The following from the former’s Academic Graffiti (1971), a collection of poems which would have delighted Ausonius to receive, illustrates the point: Lord Byron Once succumbed to a Siren: His flesh was weak, Hers Greek.

Juvenal attacks the closet pathic with as much relish and color as Ausonius’s translations of Greek epigrams. castigas turpia, cum sis inter Socraticos notissima fossa cinaedos? hispida membra quidem et durae per bracchia saetae promittunt atrocem animum, sed podice leui caeduntur tumidae medico ridente mariscae. (Juvenal, Sat. 2.9–13)12 And do you rebuke foul practices, when you are yourself the most notorious of the Socratic reprobates? A hairy body, and arms stiff with bristles, give promise of a manly soul: but the doctor grins when he cuts into the growths on your shaved buttocks. (trans. Ramsay)

Green sees an echo of Persius (4.39–40) in Ausonius’s poem, a sign that though many of these epigrams are translations of the Anthologia Palatina, Ausonius took ownership of his new versions. Green also suggests that all the poems based on Greek models ought to be viewed as early works, and he cites Prof. 8.12, in which Ausonius seems to imply that he did not learn Greek very well as a boy.13 This type of protestation, which Libanius and Augustine both also make, is more modesty than history. Green’s theory explains the wide range of subject matter of the Epigrams.

Cf. (Ausonius, Epigr. 100) Inguina quod calido levas tibi dropace, causa est: / irritant volsas levia membra lupas. / sed quod et elixo plantaria podice vellis / et teris incusas pumice Clazomenas, /causa latet: bimarem nisi quod patientia morbum / adpetit et tergo femina, pube vir es. 13 Green (1991: 376). 12

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We may expect a priori that some of Ausonius’s tastes and attitudes changed over the course of an unusually long life. Propertius, in Highet’s estimation, warns us against trying to construct a single, coherent person out of an entire corpus of poetry. We saw briefly in Chapter One, and in more detail in Chapter Six, how for Marrou the integrity of the personality that emerges in the writings of Augustine makes him one of the great shapers of culture of his time. Marrou saw in Augustine’s “interior universe” a central truth, the core of Marrou’s notion of a metaphysic: La tendance de sa pensée qui apparaît la plus profonde est le sens de l’unité. Son univers intérieur est construit de telle sorte qu’il ne peut pas penser de façon analytique et discursive, conditions premières d’une composition ordonnée. Qui n’a été tenté d’instituer un parallèle entre lui et Pascal? Univers qui gravite autour d’une idée unique, de l’idée de Dieu source de toute lumière et de toute vérité, et si unifié qu’il est difficile qu’à la moindre démarche de l’esprit, une idée saisie n’évoque bientôt de proche en proche et le centre et l’édifice entier. De là ce caractère tumultueux de la pensée augustinienne, de là son impuissance foncière à se soummetre à des contours arrêtés, à un plan défini, à un développement linéaire… [sic] (1938: 73–74) The tendency of his thought which appears most profound is the sense of unity. His interior world is constructed in such a way that he can not think in an analytical and discursive fashion, the principal conditions for an ordered composition. Who has not been tempted to establish a parallel between him and Pascal? A world which revolves around a unique idea, the idea of God as the source of all light and of all truth, and so unified that it is difficult but for the smallest step of the mind, an idea once grasped soon evokes by degrees both the center and the entire edifice. Hence the tumultuous character of Augustinian thought, hence its innate inability to submit itself to firm boundaries, to a defined plan, to a linear development…

The poetry of Propertius and that of Ausonius do not permit such an abstraction. Highet said of Propertius: Conversion is a difficult process. It is not always explicitly recorded in poetry, or even completed in a lifetime. How Propertius’s brief and passionate life closed, we cannot tell. The

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Roman poets of the great generations died young. They found their ardent lives and their subtle tasks as exhausting as the operating table or the torturer’s dungeon. (112)

We might say the same of Ausonius. He lived a much longer life, evidence to support the accusation often leveled at him, that he was a temporizer and never really sought to “realize” any profoundly held philosophical positions.14 But in addition to his lifespan we have the poems themselves. And his most ambitious one, full of a reflective soul’s encounter with the Mosel, would have been a credit to Propertius himself. In two poems, Propertius mentions the Clitumnus, and in one of them, he describes his satisfaction that Cynthia will be out there, far from places frequented by men, among many of the same sights and sounds, the small creatures, vines and herds, which Ausonius described in the Mosella.15 Of Propertius’s Clitumnus, Highet said: The springs are more than gravel, sand, and water. They are filled with delicate water-plants, all in motion. It looks as though a garden had been overrun by rising floods. There are starlike green flowers; ferns, or so they seem; sphagnum mosses; tender bright moss, streaming lightly just beneath the surface; long elegant leaves which might be the leaves of narcissus flowers; thin filigree fronds like ‘baby’s breath’. The clean liquid nourishes and reveals many different kinds of green, some youthful and tender, some brilliantly iridescent, some old and autumnally dark. Tiny fish flit in and out of the foliage, like birds of the water. (101)

It might have been Ausonius himself speaking of the Mosel, as he described the fish that by slanting ways ascend through the currents: per adversum succedunt agmina flumen (78). Ausonius’s own Cf. Evelyn-White’s comments (1919: xiii–xiv), cited above in Chapter One. We 21st-century persons living in the days of social media should all wonder if any of our lives, recorded as never before, could defeat this charge. 15 Prop. Eleg. 2.19.25–6; cf. 1.20.7, as well as Pliny Ep. 8 and Vergil, Georg. 2.146–154, especially his mention of triumphs (triumphos, 148) and scales (squameus…anguis, 154), important images in the Mosella discussed above, Chapter Four. 14

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conversion was certainly not explicitly recorded in his poetry, and modesty demands that we forbear to judge whether it was completed in a lifetime. We saw in Chapter Six that the letters depict a man who probably experienced more than one conversion. Of Horace, Highet said that “lonely people write letters,” and no doubt Ausonius would agree. We can imagine the Ausonius that emerges from the letters to have been a man constantly reaching out to his friends, wise with the lessons of the vineyard, that to expect a constant yield one must constantly be cultivating old plants. The time required to send a letter, and to receive it, admonished the lonely man to be always writing to someone, so that he might always be expecting from someone. Thus Highet says of letters in general, “Often [they] are merely negative, calls for sympathy, cries of despair. Often they are dreary personal reports, tedious self-analyses, lists of minuscule happenings within one tiny system” (154–155). Horace’s letters were different; Ausonius’s not always so. We have seen the exchange of novelty foodstuffs: minuscule happenings within one tiny system. But, like the letters of Horace, the letters of Ausonius convey to us “one of the great letter-writers,” “one of the great talkers and charmers” (155). We must not fail to appreciate the greatness of the intellectual effort which all the prefatory letters, and the poems they accompany, represent. Like Horace, “he gave positive and winning advice. He sketched, in these poetic Letters, both his own character and the personalities of his correspondents.” In the end, Ausonius’s reputation suffers because we have so much of what he wrote. It would be fair to suppose that some was preserved by accident—a happy accident, but an accident none the less. Unlike Horace, Propertius, Vergil or Juvenal, we have of Ausonius not merely that which under the pressures of time has been compressed to sparkling diamond, cut and even set by the attentions of generations, but the rough stone which by chance might be found encrusted with all the minerals and matter that have shared its fate for centuries. To cast aside the whole lump without discerning that it holds a jewel inside would be a wasted opportunity. Ausonius had enough rope to hang himself. Did he fade from view when his best student’s star began to shine because the

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explanations of longue durée historians are sufficient? Was it simply that he did not turn, like Prudentius or Paulinus, to themes of the fight for mansoul or the lives of the saints? Or was his lack of sincerity, of convincing interior sentiment, what caused the Latin poets of the next century to turn away from him? Paulinus, after all, left a massive corpus of surviving poetry that has been similarly neglected. And for all his emphasis on sincerity in interior life, Marrou was one of the fathers of this most powerful historiographical theory of the twentieth century. We pay homage to it whenever we use the phrase, “his time had come,” or “her time had come,” or even, “it was an idea whose time had come.” But for all its merits, perhaps the hermeneutic of longue durée history does have a fatal blind spot when it comes to the importance of ideas. For in the last example we do also find that word: idea. Perhaps it was because new ideas were coming to rule the world in the fourth century, and Ausonius was like Dickens’s Wopsle, behind the curve. Can a twenty-first-century reader find much sympathy with Wopsle, who, if he was guilty of literary sins, was guilty of some of the same ones as Ausonius? As it was a raw evening, and I was cold, I thought I would comfort myself with dinner at once; and as I had hours of dejection and solitude before me if I went home to the Temple, I thought I would afterwards go to the play. The theatre where Mr. Wopsle had achieved his questionable triumph was in that water-side neighbourhood (it is nowhere now), and to that theatre I resolved to go. I was aware that Mr. Wopsle had not succeeded in reviving the Drama, but, on the contrary, had rather partaken of its decline. He had been ominously heard of, through the play-bills, as a faithful Black, in connection with a little girl of noble birth, and a monkey. And [my friend] Herbert had seen him as a predatory Tartar of comic propensities, with a face like a red brick, and an outrageous hat all over bells. (Charles Dickens, Great Expectations, Chapter 47)

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INDEX Athanasius, 109, 189 Athens, 18, 61, 166, 208 Attusia Lucana Sabina, see Sabina Auden, W.H., 214–215 Augustine as bishop, 190 canon of Scriptures, 171 career, 15, 62, 123, 155, 208, 210, 210, 216 Confessions, 8, 15, 20, 35, 51, 178 correspondence with Jerome, 137, 162, 176 correspondence with Licentius and Paulinus, 174–187 De Doctrina Christiana, 28, 36, 51, 56, 171 and education, 20, 27–29, 178, 184–186, 208 as grammaticus, 27–29, 35– 36, 179 Marrou commenting on, 9, 216 Ausonius birth, 9 Bissula, 80, 82, 119, 121

Aemilia Corinthia Maura (grandmother of Ausonius), 10, 197 Aemilia Hilaria (aunt of Ausonius), 10, 197 Aemilius Magnus Arborius (uncle of Ausonius), 11–14, 84, 194, 208, 212 Agape, grammatica, 197–198 Albina, 33–35, 43, 197–198 Ambrose, 29, 109, 166, 189– 190, 210 amicitia, 4, 63, 182 Ammianus Marcellinus, 90, 97, 110, 115–117, 130, 145 Antioch, 24, 33, 52, 109, 120, 168–169, 208, 211 anthology (Greek/Palatine), 14, 66, 215 Appendix Vergiliana, 56 Apophthegmata Patrum, 189, 209 Aquitaine, 9, 90, 104 Arcadius, 208 Aristotle, 64, 66 Ars (grammarian’s textbook), 11, 22, 23–29, 57, 66, 67, 73 ars (technique), 170 Arsenius, 166, 208–209

235

236

AUSONIUS GRAMMATICUS Cento Nuptialis, 71, 82, 121, 133, 177, 186, 189, 195, 214 Cupido Cruciatus, 7, 81–82, 84, 92, 111, 119–151, 190 death, 5 Ephemeris, 8, 27, 38–39, 47–48, 70–76, 167, 190, 210 Epitaphia, 46, 56, 66 Genethliacos, 20, 211 Grammaticomastix, 38 grammaticus at Bordeaux, 5, 13–14, 24–25, 77– 78, 99, 111, 168– 169, 208–210 Gratiarum Actio, 74, 82, 181 Ludus Septem Sapientum, 44, 56, 68, 70, 76 Mosella, 4, 7, 69, 76–77, 79–118, 119–121, 130–131, 149, 190, 205, 209, 214 Orationes, 8, 38, 56, 70, 73–77, 122, 189– 190, 210 Ordo Urbium Nobilium, 24–25, 93, 213 Parentalia, 10–14, 37, 191– 193 Professores, 5, 7, 11–13, 24– 25, 37, 76–78, 99, 104, 168, 178, 196, 211 quaestor, 3, 15–16, 98, 105, 120–121, 169–170 religious convictions, 15– 16, 51–52, 60, 73–75,

92–94, 109–110, 122– 123, 134–135, 150, 189–191, 194, 210 reputation, 6, 52–53, 150, 178, 218 teacher, 178 Technopaegnion, 38, 41, 57– 66 Austen, Jane, 195 Basil of Caesarea, 178 Bede, the Venerable, 56, 189 Bentley, E.C., 214 Booth, A.D., 5 Bordeaux, 24–25, 52, 77–78, 99, 168, 169, 196–198, 208–210 Brown, Peter, 61, 122–123, 138, 172, 174, 190, 200 Caecilius Agricius Arborius (grandfather of Ausonius), 14, 207–208 Calliopius, grammaticus, 169– 170, 208 Cameron, Alan, 122–123, 190 Cappadocians, 178 Cassiciacum, 179, 182, 210 Catullus, 1–6, 22, 59–60, 63– 64, 66, 121, 172, 213 cento (and centonists), 35, 133, 177, 186 Charisius, grammaticus, 23, 25, 27, 31, 57 Chrysostom, John, 150, 178 Cicero, 6, 25, 27, 43–44, 56, 94–95, 136–138, 163, 176–177, 209–210

INDEX

237

Claudian, 92 Cochrane, Charles Norris, 122– 123 Concordius, L. Terentius Iulianus, 24 Concubitus Mavortis et Veneris, 137, 139–149 Constantine, 10, 13, 35, 84, 108, 122, 194 Constantinople, 24–25, 84, 87, 109, 166–168, 169–170, 208–209 Coşkun, Altay, 5 court (residence of emperor), 4, 7, 15, 59, 76, 78, 79–81, 83, 87, 98–99, 103–109, 114–118, 120, 129, 141, 149, 168, 177–178, 180, 188, 208, 213, 214 Cribiore, Raffaella, 17, 40, 52, 67–68, 169

33–35, 43–44, 50, 178 role of women in, 10–11 Eliot, George (Mary Ann Evans), 34 Elpidius, rhetor, 196–197 emperor Gratian, 5, 14–15, 80, 83–84, 99, 113, 120, 145, 150, 208– 209 Julian, 83–84, 108–109, 121, 123, 168, 209 Valentinian, 5, 14, 79–81, 84–88, 97–99, 105– 110, 115–118, 120, 123, 140, 145, 150, 209, 214 Eustochium, 33–34, 198–199 Evelyn-White, H.G., 6, 9, 12, 63, 69, 190–191, 202

Davenson, Henri (Henri-Irénée Marrou), 7, 153–166, 207 De Rosis Nascentibus, 56 Delphinus, 196, 198 Diomedes, grammaticus, 23–26 Dionysius Thrax, 29, 62 Donatus, grammaticus, 22, 25– 26, 29–31, 36 Dositheus, grammaticus, 25–27 Dostoevsky, Fyodor, 2

Faulkner, William, 2 Fondements d’une culture chrètienne, 7, 153–166 Fraenkel, Eduard, 1, 6

education in antiquity, 3, 8, 17–53, 55–78 methods in early childhood, 11–12, 19–21,

Gaul, 4–5, 10, 13–14, 75–76, 98, 107, 122–123, 194, 200, 210 Gibbon, Edward, 6, 140, 172, 206 Glover, T.R., 5, 8 Gorgias of Leontini, 66 grammatica, see Albina grammaticē (sc. technē), 8, 17, 66, 76, 84, 169–170, 182, 196, 197, 208, 210, 212

238

AUSONIUS GRAMMATICUS

grammaticus Ausonius, 121, 136, 150, 188 Calliopius, 169–170, 208 Charisius, 23, 25, 27, 31, 57 Diomedes, 23–26 Dositheus, 25–27 Messius, 26–27, 201 Marius Victorinus, 15, 26– 27, 32–36, 93, 166 Nicocles, 168–169, 208 profession, 11, 15, 18–26, 28, 33, 35, 43, 57, 62, 78, 171, 178, 201 Servius, 22, 29–32, 36 Gratian, 5, 14–15, 80, 83–84, 99, 113, 120, 145, 150, 208–209 Green, R.P.H., 5, 8, 9, 58, 63, 75, 84–87, 100, 111, 132– 136, 141, 145, 148, 190, 192, 210, 215 Gregory the Great, Pope Saint, 189 Gregory Nazianzen, 166 Haarhoff, Theodore, 2, 37–40 hagiography, 139, 189 hermeneumata Pseudodositheana, 39, 46, 47, 49, 70, 73, 167, Hesiod, 64, 66, 112–113, 121– 122 Highet, Gilbert, 2, 9, 213–218 Hilary of Poitiers, 29, 32–33

Homer, 11, 20, 28, 35, 56, 65– 66, 74, 121, 133, 148, 177 Honorius, 208 Hopkins, M.K., 5 Horace, 1, 4, 6, 8–9, 37, 71–72, 139, 207, 213, 218 Jerome correspondence with Augustine, 137, 162, 176 as exegete, 29, 51, 56, 123, 137–138, 150, 166, 178 as grammaticus, 27, 30–33, 35, 36, 137–138, 198–199 Julian, emperor, 83–84, 108– 109, 121, 123, 168, 209 Julius Ausonius (father of Ausonius), 12, 20, 193, 207– 208 Jullian, Camille, 2, 4–5, 150 Juvenal, 37, 213–215, 218 Juvencus, 166, 210 Kaster, Robert, 11, 17, 23–24, 35, 39, 61, 168–169 Keil, H., 11, 23–24, 26 Libanius, 8, 18, 52, 55, 168– 169, 208, 211, 215 Licentius, 155, 171, 174, 178– 183, 187, 205 longue durée historiography, 158, 174, 219 Lucaniacus, 203 Lucian, 18–19, 38, 40, 64, 179

INDEX Macrobius, 60–61, 201 Marius Victorinus, grammaticus, 15, 26–27, 32–36, 93, 166 Marrou, Henri-Irénée, 3, 9, 150, 207, 213, 216, 219 Augustin et la fin de la culture antique, 154, 166–167, 170–177, Fondements d’une culture chrètienne, 7, 153– 166, 207 Markus, Robert, 122–123 McGill, Scott, 3, 186 McLynn, N.B., 8, 190 Messius, grammaticus, 26–27, 201 Milan, 15, 109, 145, 210 Morgan, Llewelyn, 123–131 mythology, 44, 70, 127, 141, 166, 195 Nicocles, 168–169, 208 O’Brien, Flann, 2 Oppian, 103 orator, 56–57, 94, 168, 175, 177, 178, 186 orator (Latin equivalent of Greek rhetor), 171 oratorical skill (rhetoricē), 58, 175 Ovid, 13, 58, 103, 121–122, 129, 135, 148, 213 paideia, 8, 11, 17, 19, 20, 25– 26, 40, 51, 52, 55–56, 61, 66–67, 72, 98, 107, 155, 164, 166–167, 180, 182, 197, 212,

239 parrēsía, 55, 60–61, 67, 78, 123, 164, 177, 214 Panegyrici Latini, 57 panegyric, 57–58, 181 Paula, 33–34, 198–199 Paulinus the Deacon, 189 Paulinus of Nola, 1, 3, 153–154, 157, 190 as convert, 35 as correspondent with Augustine and Licentius, 175–177, 179– 186 as correspondent with Ausonius, 139, 171, 174, 178, 187–188, 191, 194–195, 199– 206 as poet, 29, 150, 219 as student of Ausonius, 5, 7, 14, 15, 72–73, 171, 178, 194 career, 68, 195 Paulinus of Pella (grandson of Ausonius), 20 philoponía, 55, 57, 77, 208 Pindar, 6, 127, 144 Plato, 56, 112–113, 198 Platonism, 74, 77 Plautus, 34, 35, 135 Pliny, 104, 172 Possidius, 189 Praetextatus, 60, 211 priamel, 144 Priscillian, 196–205 Proba, centonist, 35 Probus (Marcus Valerius Probus of Beirut), 21–23

240

AUSONIUS GRAMMATICUS

Probus (Sextus Petronius Probus), 59–60, 203, 210 Prohaeresius, 166, 208–209 propaganda, 123–131 Propertius, 6–9, 192–193, 213, 216–217, 218 prosopography, 6, 11, 23, 37–38 Prudentius, 51, 166, 203, 219 quadriga (the four canonical authors), 27–29, 34, 136, 182 Quintilian, 11, 19, 37, 56, 62, 205 Reposianus, 136–137, 139–149 rhetoric, 8, 17–18, 35, 43, 56, 67, 84, 182 Rome common people, 106 eternity of, 164 locus of grammarians and rhetors, 27, 31, 33, 35, 109, 155, 181, 198, 208 locus of political opportunity, 181 locus of triumphs, 87, 88, 95, 96 New (Constantinople), 212 Ordo Urbium Nobilium, 24 traditional aristocracy, 98, 194, 213 Sabina, 13–14, 193–194 Sallust, 25, 27, 77, 107, 135– 136, 199

Servius, grammaticus, 22, 29– 32, 36 sex, morality and deviancy, 189, 198, 214–215 Shanzer, Danuta, 101, 146–147 Sivan, Hagith, 2, 5 Suetonius, 21–23, 43, 203 Sulpicius Severus Vita Martini, 189 Chronicon, 196–199, 205 Syme, Ronald, 6, 97 Symmachus, 5, 59, 98, 111– 113, 153, 157, 159, 172, 208, 210–211 Tacitus, 105, 129–130 Talisius (father-in-law of Ausonius), 13, 14, 193–194 Terence authority of, 27, 62, 77, 104, 135, 136 commentary of Donatus on, 29–30, 34, 36 Themistius, 211 Theodosius I, 5, 58, 73, 97, 111–112, 123, 160, 201, 208, 210–211 Theososius II, 25, 35, 82, 212 Toulouse, 11, 13, 15, 84, 209, 210, 211 tragedy, 2, 160 Trier, 14–15, 68–69, 80–82, 95, 98, 99, 109, 120, 122, 145, 149, 169, 196, 209, 213 Trout, Dennis, 1, 196, 198, 204 university, 4

INDEX Valentinian, 5, 14, 79–81, 84– 88, 97–99, 105–110, 115– 118, 120, 123, 140, 145, 150, 209, 214 verecundia, 55, 61, 67, 164, 177, 214 Vergil Aeneid, 7, 79, 96, 106 anthropomorphism in the Georgics, 129 authority of, 11, 20, 23, 27, 35, 62, 71, 79, 88, 90, 91, 92, 96, 103, 106, 119, 131–132, 135, 136, 139, 148, 160, 176, 182, 212, 218 commentary of Servius on, 29–30, 36 Eclogues, 90, 91 Georgics, 79, 90, 92, 103, 106, 119, 123–125, 149

241 propaganda, 123–131 Vergilian cento, 35, 133 Vergiliana, Appendix, 56 Victorinus, Marius, grammaticus, 15, 26–27, 32–36, 93, 166 Watts, Edward, 2, 211 Wiseman, T.P., 1, 63–64 women as transmitters of heresy, 197–198, 205 in education, 10–11, 33– 35 in the poetry of Ausonius, 134, 142, 197–198 marriage, 4, 13, 195 Yeats, W.B., 6