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

253 Pages·2021·10.163 MB·English

by  Lionel Yaceczko

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
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2021 ܚ 1
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

v

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 Wine-

skins ................................................................................ 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
viii 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 Commu-

nion”: Paulinus, Augustine, and Licentius .................. 178

Ausonius and Paulinus .................................................. 187
Conclusion. From φιλόλογοι to θεολόγοι: Word-lovers to Wor-

shipers of the Word ....................................................... 207

“Ciceronianus es” ............................................................ 207

Ausonius in his Landscape ............................................. 213

Bibliography ......................................................................... 221

Primary Texts ................................................................ 221

Secondary Sources ......................................................... 223

Index .................................................................................... 235
PREFACE
Attending Peter Brown’s Kluge Prize lecture at the Library of Con-
gress 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 un-
explored 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 en-
couragement 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 Depart-
ment 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 Au-
sonius 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 free-
dom and security that one receives from having a teacher who is
honest and expert. I am also grateful to Philip Rousseau († 2020,
xi
xii AUSONIUS GRAMMATICUS
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 dy-
namic 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 disserta-
tion, 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 every-
thing that I accomplish), for fear of trivializing a gift too rich for
verisimilitude. Vergil’s “time flies” admonishes brevity: amor om-
nibus idem.