Ausonius Of Bordeaux

In the burgeoning field of late classical antiquity the authors of late Roman Gaul have served as a mine of information regarding the historical, cultural, political, social and religious developments of the western empire, and of Gaul in particular. Ausonius is outstanding among these authors for the extraordinary range of material which his writings illuminate. His family exemplifies the rise of provincial upper-classes in Aquitania through talent, ambition and opportunism. Fusing historical method with archaeological, artistic and literary evidence, Hagith Sivan interprets the political message of Ausonius' work and conveys the material reality of his lifestyle.

The present volume describes the rich and complex world in which Ausonius (c. 310-395) lived and worked, from his humble beginnings as a schoolteacher in Bordeaux, to the heights of his influence as quaestor to the Emperor Gratian, at a time of unsettling social and religious change. As a teacher and poet Ausonius adhered to the traditions of classical paideia, standing in contrast to the Fathers of the Church, e.g., Jerome, Augustine, and Paulinus of Nola, who were emboldened by the legalization, then the imposition, of Christianity in the course of the fourth century. For this position he was labeled by the 20th-century scholar Henri-Irénée Marrou a symbol of decadence. Guided by Marrou's critical insights to both his own time and place and that of Ausonius, this book proposes a hermeneutic for reading Ausonius as both a fourth-century poet and a fascinating mirror for his 20th-century counterparts.

Ausonius of Bordeaux, poet, professor, and statesman, lived during the Fourth Century A.D, a time of great cultural and political change. As an imperial courtier, he was closely involved in the administration of the Roman Empire. A prolific and original poet, Ausonius covered an astonishing stylistic range in his many and varied poems. This revised text of his complete works offers over 100 new emendations, and includes detailed commentary as well as four introductory chapters that consider the nature of Ausonius' poetry, his life and career, his influence, and the manuscripts of his works.

Decimus Magnus Ausonius of Bordeaux was one of the most significant literary and political figures of the fourth century AD. This edition of his short poems gives a line-by-line commentary dealing with points of literary, linguistic, historical and other interest.

Bringing together an international team of historians, classicists, and scholars of religion, this volume provides the first comprehensive overview of the extant Greek and Latin letter collections of late antiquity (ca. 300–600 c.e.). Each chapter addresses a major collection of Greek or Latin literary letters, introducing the social and textual histories of each collection and examining its assembly, publication, and transmission. Contributions also reveal how collections operated as discrete literary genres, with their own conventions and self-presentational agendas. This book will fundamentally change how people both read these texts and use letters to reconstruct the social history of the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries.

This collection of studies in Greek epigraphy honors the work of Stephen V. Tracy. His meticulous research on the hands of Attic letter-cutters has transformed the way we think about Greek inscriptions in Attica and beyond. The twenty-nine scholars who have contributed to this volume offer papers ranging from publication of new inscriptions and studies of others long-known to wide-ranging discussions of historical, religious, and social matters. Chronologically and geographically they cover Greece, the Aegean, and western Asia Minor from the Archaic period to the Roman Empire. What unites the work here offered to Tracy is the centrality of epigraphy to the questions addressed and conviction that careful attention to even the smallest details of the epigraphic evidence can advance our understanding of the Greek past in rich and unexpected ways.