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From mythology we learn that Hermaphroditus was the son of Hermes, or Mercury, and Venus Aphrodite, and had the powers both of a father and mother. In speaking of the foregoing Ausonius writes, "Cujus erat facies in qua paterque materque cognosci possint, nomen traxit ab illis."
Clearly this is no Britain, where in the sixth century half-barbarian people camped in the abandoned villas and cooked their food on the floors of the principal rooms. And yet ... it had gone a long way downhill since the days of Ausonius, and Sidonius could not now ignore the very existence of the barbarians.
He died in 395 and within twelve years of his death the host of Germans had burst across the Rhine, 'all Gaul was a smoking funeral pyre', and the Goths were at the gates of Rome. And what have Ausonius and his correspondents to say about this? Not a word. Ausonius and Symmachus and their set ignore the barbarians as completely as the novels of Jane Austen ignore the Napoleonic wars.
Symmachus sees nothing higher or better than custom; the secret of the universe, says he, is unknowable; there is no inner life. He was confuted by a much more alive and less estimable man: Ambrose, bishop of Milan, with whom, also, both he and Ausonius were on friendly terms.
The inventress of brooms. From casting out the birth. Aulus Gellius. Aelian. From erritor, to struggle. See Ausonius, Idyll 12. Some make her the same with Rhea or Vesta. Among the Romans the midwife always laid the child on the ground, and the father or somebody appointed, lifted it up; hence the expression of tollere liberos, to educate children.
And the Silli, of which examples are found in Diogenes Laertius and Dio Chrysostom, were rather patched together from the verses of serious writers, forming a kind of Cento like the Carmen Nuptiale of Ausonius, than original productions. The Roman Satire differed from these in being essentially didactic.
As the Greek tongue is made famous and eloquent by HOMER, HESIOD, EURIPIDES, AESCHYLUS, SOPHOCLES, PINDARUS, PHOCYLIDES, and ARISTOPHANES; and the Latin tongue by VIRGIL, OVID, HORACE, SILIUS ITALICUS, LUCANUS, LUCRETIUS, AUSONIUS, and CLAUDIANUS: so the English tongue is mightily enriched, and gorgeously invested in rare ornaments and resplendent habiliments by Sir PHILIP SYDNEY, SPENSER, DANIEL, DRAYTON, WARNER, SHAKESPEARE, MARLOW, and CHAPMAN.
She shall ride on a car drawn by horses, one black and the other white, or, if you desire variety, by a mule, after Festus Pompeius, or by bullocks, after Claudian and Ausonius; and if you choose bullocks, they must have the horns very small and a white patch on the right flank.
Ambrose himself, though as Bishop of Milan he belongs properly to the Italian school of theological writers, was born and probably educated at Treves. But the literature of the province reached its highest point somewhat later, in one of the most important authors of the century, Decimus Magnus Ausonius of Bordeaux.
In virtue of this poem Ausonius ranks not merely as the last, or all but the last, of Latin, but as the first of French poets. His feeling for the country of his birth has all the romantic patriotism which we are accustomed to associate with a much earlier or a much later age. The language of Du Bellay in the sixteenth century
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