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The specious and artful character of Avienus was admirably qualified to conduct a negotiation either of public or private interest: his colleague Trigetius had exercised the Prætorian præfecture of Italy; and Leo, bishop of Rome, consented to expose his life for the safety of his flock.
Lastly Avienus, a writer in the reign of Diocletian, or perhaps of Theodosius, has left a rugged, unpolished translation of this much-valued poem. Aratus, the poet of the heavens, will be read, said Ovid, as long as the sun and moon shall shine. Sosibius was one of the rhetoricians of the museum who lived upon the bounty of Philadelphus.
Avienus had been already privately noted by Caesar as having been connected with the mutiny in Campania. His own habits in the field were simple in the extreme, and he hated to see his officers self-indulgent. He used the opportunity to make an example of him and of one or two others at the same time. He called his tribunes and centurions together.
It contains the Phænomena of Aratus in Greek with Cicero's Latin interpretation, the places where Cicero's Translation is wanting being supplied; a Translation of the same Phænomena, ascribed to Germanicus; the fragment of Aratus's Prognostics, and the forms of the constellations as found in a Manuscript; with Remarks upon the whole, the Paraphrase of Festus Avienus, and marginal notes.
The envoys had been well chosen to satisfy that punctilious pride which insisted that only men of the highest dignity among the Romans should be sent to treat with the lord of Scythia and Germany. Avienus, who had, two years before, worn the robes of consul, was one of the ambassadors.
Tartessus has been regarded by some as properly the name of a country rather than a town; but the statements of the Greek and Roman geographers to the contrary are too positive to be disregarded. Tartessus was a town in the opinions of Scymnus Chius, Strabo, Mela, Pliny, Festus Avienus, and Pausanias, who could not be, all of them, mistaken on such a point.
They had the monopoly of all the commerce of the world that was carried on beyond the Straits of Gibraltar. And in the Latin poem of Festus Avienus, frequent references are made to the records of the voyages of another celebrated Carthaginian admiral, Himilco, who had explored the north-western coast of Europe. Our own islands are mentioned by Himilco as the lands of the Hiberni and the Albioni.
While Caesar was in difficulty at Ruspinum, and was impatiently waiting for his legions from Sicily, there arrived a general officer of the 10th, named Caius Avienus, who had occupied the whole of one of the transports with his personal servants, horses, and other conveniences, and had not brought with him a single soldier.
This important commission was accepted by Avienus, who, from his birth and riches, his consular dignity, the numerous train of his clients, and his personal abilities, held the first rank in the Roman senate.
"You, Caius Avienus, instigated soldiers in the service of the State to mutiny against their commanders. You oppressed towns which were under your charge. Forgetting your duty to the army and to me, you filled a vessel with your own establishment which was intended for the transport of troops; and at a difficult moment we were thus left, through your means, without the men whom we needed.
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