Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 3 (1897).djvu/506

 484 APPENDIX of Letters) ; and fragmentary remains of eight Orations (first published by Mai, and unknown to Gibbon). The poems of Decimus Magnus Ausonius (bom c. 310 at Burdigala) are more important for the literary than for the political history of the century. His uncle and prceceptor Arborius, with whom he lived at Tolosa (320-28), had the honour of being for a time teacher of one of Constantine's sons (Constantino or Constantiufi). He became a teacher of grammar (about 334) and soon afterwards of rhetoric, in his native town, and married about the same time. About 364 a.d. he was summoned to the court of Trier to instruct Gratian. In 368 and 369 he accompanied Valentinian and Gratian on their Alamannic campaigns. He refers to their victories in his Mosella (wTitten at Trier in 370-1) : Hostibus exactis Nicrimi super et Lupodunum Et fontem Latiis ignotum annalibus Histri (423-4). In 370 he obtained the rank of comes and in 375 was promoted to be gucestor sacri jxtlatii. His son Hesperius (a.d. 376 proconsul of Africa) became in 377 prsetorian prefect of Italy, while his son-in-law Thalassius became in 378 proconsul of Africa. Ausonius himself was appointed Praetorian prefect of Gaul in first months of 378 (see Cod. Th. 8 5, 35). But in his Epicedion in Patrem he describes his son Hesperius as, Praefectiis Gallis et Libj'se et Latio. By coupling this wth words in the Gratiarum Actio to Gratian, § 7, ad prae- fectur.-e collegium filius cum patre coniunctus, and Liber Protrept. ad Nepoteiii, V. 91, praefecturam duplicem, it has been concluded (see Peiper's preface to his ed. p. ci. ) that, in consequence of the relationship between the two praef ects, the praefectures of Gaul and Italy were temporarily united into a single administra- tion under the collegial government of father and son, and, when Ausonius laid down the office in the last month of 379, again divided. In 379 he was consul. His death occurred later than 393. One of his most intimate friends was his pupil Pontius Paulinus, and he was in touch with many other men of literary im- portance, such as S3Tnmachus and Drepanius Pacatus. His son-in-law Thalassius was the father (by a first wife) of the poet Paulinus of Pella. The works of Ausonius have been edited by Schenkl (in I»Ion. Germ. Hist.) and by Peiper (1886). Of Pontius Paulinus of Nola, the most important of various people of the same name (to be distinguished from (1) Paulinus of Pella, (2) the author of the Life of St. Ambrose, and (3) Paulinus of Perigueux, who in the latter half of fifth century wrote a Life of St. jNIartin), there are extant various works both poetical and, in j^rose, epistles and a jianegyric on Theodosius i. Born about 354, he retired to Xola in 304 and died 431 (there is an account of his death in a letter of L^ranius to Pacatus, j)rinted in IMigne, Patr. Lat,, vol. 53). His descriptions of Churches at Nola, in Epistle 32 and in some of his poems (18, 21, 27, 28). are of great im- portance for the history of Christian architecture. A new edition of his works is much wanted. That in Jligne's Patrologia is most convenient for reference (Monograph : A. Bose, Paulin und seine Zeit, 1856). Paulinus of Pella (his father, a native of Burdigala, was Praetorian Praefect of Illyricum; which explains the birth of Paulinus in Macedonia) is known by his poem entitled Eucharisticon Deo sub ephciiieridis mea: tcxtu (published in De la Bigne, Bibliot. Patr., Appendix col. 281, ed. 1579) ; contains one or two important notices of events in Aquitania at the time of Ataulf's invasion. The jjoet, thirty years old then, was appointed comes largitionum by the tyrant Attalus, Ut me conquirens solacia vana tTai.aus Attalus absentem casso oneraret honoris Nomine, privatae comitivae largitionis. Burdigala was burnt do^^ni by the Goths, who, not knowing that he held this dignity, stripped him and his mother of their property. He went to t'he neigh-