Decimus Magnus Ausonius (4th century)

Steven Avery

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Decimus Magnus Ausonius (0310-0395) (Latin poet and rhetorician)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ausonius
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/43540/Decimus-Magnus-Ausonius

Knittel
https://archive.org/details/newcriticismsonc00knitrich/page/76/mode/2up


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Prolegomena to an Edition of the Decimus Magnus Ausonius (1919)
by Marie José Byrne -
https://books.google.com/books?id=Om-HAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA18

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Ausonius: Books I-XVII
https://books.google.com/books?id=-dlfAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA369
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Latin
https://books.google.com/books?id=-dlfAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA368
 
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Steven Avery

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TWOGIG

Decimius Magnus Ausonius (310-395 AD)

• Ausonius, Decimus Magnus, a native of Bordeaux, was the son of Julius Ausonius, a physician of Cossium
(Bazas), in Aquitania (Aus. Idyll. ii. 2). His poems, which are singularly communicative as to his private history,
display him to us in riper years both as student and courtier, professor and prefect, poet and consul. At the age
of 30 he was promoted to the chair of rhetoric in his native city, and not long after was invited to court by the
then Christian emperor Valentinian I., who appointed him tutor to his son Gratian (Praef. ad Syagr. 15‒26).
Ausonius was held in high regard by the emperor and his sons and accompanied the former in his expedition,
against the Alemanni. It was no doubt during the residence of the court at Trèves at this time that he composed
his Mosella. From Valentinian he obtained the title of Comes and the office of Quaestor, and on the accession
of Gratian became successively Prefect of Latium, Libya, and Gaul, and finally, A.D. 379, was raised to the
consulship (Praef. ad Syagr. 35, etc.; Epigr. ii. iii., de fast.). After the death of Gratian, A.D. 383, although he
seems to have enjoyed the favour of Theodosius (Praef. ad Theodos.), it is probable that he returned to the
neighbourhood of his native city and spent the remainder of his life in studious retirement (Ep. xxiv.). His
correspondence with Paulinus of Nola evidently belongs to these later years. The date of his death is unknown,
but he was certainly alive in A.D. 388, as he rejoices in the victory of Theodosius over the murderer of Gratian
at Aquileia (Clar. Urb. vii.).
(Decimus Magnus Ausonius. Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature to the End of the Sixth Century,
<en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_Christian_Biography_and_Literature_to_the_End_of_the_Sixth_Century

, Ausonius,_Decimus_Magnus>)
• Ausonius taught in the famous schools of Burdigala (now Bordeaux, Fr.), first as a grammarian and then as a
rhetorician, so successfully that Valentinian I called him to Trier to tutor Gratian, who, on his accession,
elevated Ausonius to the prefecture of Africa, Italy, and Gaul and to the consulship in 379. After Gratian’s
murder, in 383, Ausonius returned to his estates on the Garonne River to cultivate literature and pursue his
many friendships with eminent persons through a lively exchange of letters, often poetic epistles. Although he
was a Christian, he wrote mainly in the pagan tradition, but, by the sheer volume of his preserved work, he was
one of the forerunners of Christian Latin literature and of the literature of his own country. His last years were
saddened by the action of his favourite and most outstanding pupil, Paulinus of Nola (later bishop and saint), in
deserting literature for a life of Christian retirement. Ausonius’ pleading, pained letters to Paulinus continued
until his death.
(Decimus Magnus Ausonius. Encyclopaedia Britannica. 20 July 1998, <biography/Decimus-Magnus-Ausonius>.)

• [Edwards] Such an age was that in which Decimus Magnus Ausonius lived, and he is its best interpreter. It
was the fourth century of our era, the time of the pagan Emperor Julian and the Christian Theodosius, the
epoch which witnessed the final triumph of Christianity over heathenism and the settlement of the Goths within
the Roman empire -two events of tremendous portent for the civilized world. The men of this century idolized
ancient Rome. They took the great writers of the Golden Age as their models, and echoed the thoughts, the
sentiments, the language of Cicero and Vergil.
(Edwards,”Ausonius, the Poet of the Transition. The Classical Journal,”1909, p. 250)

HITS:
 O mighty Father of all things ; to whom are subject earth, sea, and air, and hell, and all the expanse of
heaven emblazoned with the Milky Way ; before thee tremble the folk guilty of offences, and
contrariwise the blameless company of righteous souls extols thee with prayer and praise. Thou dost
reward our course through these few years and the swift close of our frail being with the prize of
everlasting life. Thou dost bestow upon mankind the gentle warnings of the Law together with the holy
Prophets ; and, as thou didst pity Adam when beguiled by Eve, on whom the poison seized so that she
drew him by her smooth enticements to be the fellow of her transgression, so thou dost keep us, their
progeny. Thou, gracious Father, grantest to the world thy Word, who is thy Son, and God, in all
things like thee and equal with thee, very God of very God, and living God of the source of life.
He, guided by thy behests, added this one gift alone, causing that Spirit
which once moved over
the face of the deep to quicken our dull members with the cleansing waters of eternal life.
Object of our faith. Three, yet One in source, sure hope of our salvation! Grant pardon and bestow
on me the gift of life for which I yearn, if I embrace this diversity of Persons united in their powers.
(Ausonius,”Personal Poems")

o Latin: Magne pater rerum, cui terra et pontus et aer Tartaraque et picti servit plaga lactea caeli,
noxia quem scelerum plebis tremit almaque russum concelebrat votis animarum turba piarum :
tu brevis hune aevi cursum celeremque caducae finem animae donas aeternae munere vitae. tu
mites legum monitus sacrosque prophetas humano impertis generi servasque nepotes,
deceptum miseratus Adam, quern capta venenis implicuit socium blandis erroribus Aevva. tu
verbum, pater alme, tuum, natumque deumque, concedis terris totum similemque
paremque, ex vero verum vivaque ab origine vivum. ille tuis doctus monitis hoc addidit
unum, ut, super aequoreas nabat qui spiritus undas, pigra inmortali vegetaret membra
lavacro. trina fides auctore uno, spes certa salutis [da veniam et praesta speratae munera
vitae] hunc numerum iunctis virtutibus amplectenti.
(Ausonius,”Personal Poems”in Ausonius - translated by Evelyn-White - Loeb Classical Library, 1919, vol 1, p. 37)

 The number three is above all, Three Persons and one God! And that this conceit may not run its course without significance of number, let it have verses thrice then times three, or nine times ten!
(Ausonius,”The Riddle of the Number Three")

o Latin: tris numerus super omnia, tris deus unus. hic quoque ne ludus numero transcurrat
inerti, ter decies ternos habeat deciesque novenos.
(Ausonius, ”The Riddle of the Number Three” in Ausonius - translated by Evelyn-White - Loeb Classical Library, 1919, vol 1, p. 368)

Comment:
• [Knittel] Among the Latins also, in the 4th century, this expression ”Three are one,” was familiar as a sacred phrase. Ausonius, in his Poem bearing the name ”Gryphus,” says, ”Tris numerus super omnia, Tris Deus unus.”
(Knittel, New Criticisms on the Celebrated Text, 1 John V. 7, 1785; 1829, p. 77)

Ausonius: The Christian
• [Evelyn-White] In connection, however, with his life something must be said on his attitude towards
Christianity. When and how he adopted the new religion there is nothing to show ; but certain of his
poems make it clear that he professed and called himself a Christian, and such poems as the Oraiio
(Ephemeris iii. and Domestica ii.) which show a fairly extensive knowledge of the Scriptures...
(Ausonius, Decimus Magnus, and Hugh G. Evelyn-White ”Introduction”in Ausonius, with an English Translation,
p. xii-xiii)

• The question of the poet's [Ausonius'] religion has always been a matter of dispute. Voss, Cave, Heindrich,
Muratori, etc., maintain that he was a pagan, while Jos. Scaliger, Fabricius, Funccius, and later M. Ampère,
uphold the contrary view
. Without assenting to the extreme opinion of Trithemius, who even makes him out to
have held the see of Bordeaux, we may safely pronounce in favour of his Christianity. The negative view
rests purely upon assumptions, such as that a Christian would not have been guilty of the grossness with
which some of his poems are stained, nor have been on such intimate terms with prominent heathens
(Symmach. Epp. ad Auson. passim), nor have alluded so constantly to pagan rites and mythology without
some expression of disbelief. On the other hand, he was not only appointed tutor to the Christian son of
a Christian emperor, whom he seems at any rate to have instructed in the Christian doctrine of prayer
(Grat. Act. 43); but certain of his poems testify distinctly to his Christianity in language that is only to be
set aside by assuming the poems themselves to be spurious. Such are (1) the first of his idylls, entitled
Versus Paschales, and commencing Sancta salutiferi redeunt solemnia Christi, the genuineness of which is
proved by a short prose address to the reader connecting it with the next idyll, the Epicedion, inscribed to his
father. (2) The Ephemeris, an account of the author's mode of spending his day, which contains not merely an
allusion to the chapel in which his morning devotions were performed (I. 7), but a distinct confession of faith, in
the form of a prayer to the first two Persons of the Trinity. (3) The letters of the poet to his friend and former
pupil St. Paulinus of Nola, when the latter had forsaken the service of the pagan Muses for the life of a
Christian recluse. This correspondence, so far from being evidence that he was a heathen (see Cave,
etc.), displays him to us rather as a Christian by conviction, still clinging to the pagan associations of
his youth, and incapable of understanding a truth which had revealed itself to his friend, that
Christianity was not merely a creed but a life. The letters are a beautiful instance of wounded but not
embittered affection on the one side, and of an attachment almost filial tempered by firm religious principle on
the other. Paulinus nowhere chides Ausonius for his paganism; on the contrary, he assumes his
Christianity (Paulin. Ep. ii. 18, 19), and this is still further confirmed by a casual passage in one of the poet's
letters to Paulinus, in which he speaks of the necessity of returning to Bordeaux in order to keep Easter (Ep.
viii. 9). Ausonius was not a Christian in the same sense as Paulinus; he was one who hovered on the
borderland which separated the new from the old religion: not ashamed, it is true, to pen obscenities
beneath the eye and at the challenge of his patron, yet in the quiet of his oratory feeling after the God
of the Christians; convinced apparently of the dogma of the Trinity, yet so little penetrated by its awful
mystery as to give it a haphazard place in a string of frivolous triplets composed at the dinner-table (Gryph.
Tern. 87): keenly alive to natural beauty, and susceptible of the tenderest affection, he yet fell short of
appreciating in his disciple the more perfect beauty of holiness, and the entire abnegation of self for the love of
a divine master. Probably his later Christianity would have disowned his own youthful productions.
(“Ausonius”in A Dictionary of Christian Biography, Literature, Sects and Doctrines, edited by William Smith
and Henry Wace, 1877, vol 1, p. 231)
 
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