Commemoratio Professorum Burdigalensium
Commemoratio Professorum Burdigalensium Late Antiquity Ausonius, Decimus Magnus Latinpraef. Preface. You too, whom no kinship joined to me, but the fame and the sacred bond of my dear homeland, and your devotion to books and your diligent care in teaching — I shall commemorate you, men renowned now that death has been met. It may chance that one day someone, wishing to be dutiful by my example, will so vindicate my own shade.
TIBERIUS VICTOR MINERVIUS, ORATOR. First to be named, pillar of Bordeaux, are you, Minervius, a second Quintilian of the rhetorical gown. By you as teacher there were once made illustrious Constantinople, Rome, and thereafter your native city — not indeed contending with the majesty of the other two, but more powerful in this name alone, that it is your homeland. Though Calagurris claim Fabius as ever its nursling, yet let the chair of Bordeaux be no lower for that. A thousand young men this man gave to the forum, twice a thousand he added to the senate's number and to the purple gowns; me too — but since the toga praetexta is much, I shall keep silent, and sing of you from yourself, not from my own honour. Whether one pleased to contend in panegyric books, you must be reckoned among the Panathenaics; or whether one liked to unroll the feigned disputes of the schools, Quintilian holds a doubtful palm. You had a torrent of fluent speech, which yet rolled gold, not also muddy filth. And that Demosthenic quality, which he called thrice first, so flourished in you that he himself would yield to you. Or shall I add the natural goods of the divine gift — how retentive of mind you were, so that you held things heard or read but once as if fixed, and there was one fidelity between your ears and books? We saw too once, in a long contest of the gaming-board, how you counted all the throws that had been made — at alternate turns, how many the cut-out steps pour forth through the hollow boxwood in their headlong roll — recounting through each several point with faithful recall what was given, what recalled through long delays. Your mind had no gall of malice; then your wit was much-salted, your tongue ready with kindly jests and without quarrel; your table neat, such as the censor's rule would not blame, nor Piso the Thrifty refuse to call his own; sometimes well-furnished for a birthday and a festal banquet, yet not so as to thin your slender means. Though wanting an heir, you, having completed twice six lustra, were wept by us as both father and young man. And now, whether anything survives after the last fates, you live still, remembering the age that has perished; or whether nothing survives, and the long repose has no perceptions, you have lived for yourself: us your fame delights.
LATINUS ALCIMUS ALETHIUS, RHETOR. Nor shall the descendants summon me, Alcimus, as guilty of impious silence, nor shall they bear me as less worthy, nor as having forgotten you, the minister of your memory — you whom this recent age sets forth, one man, against the men of old, glory of the forensic palm and of the Muses, a single model in letters, whether learned Greece cultivated them at Athens, or Rome cultivates them through Latium. Shall I speak of your character and the steadiness of your rule of life right to its term? That, famous for your praise, busied with letters, you fled all ambition? No one was graver or more courteous than you, or more liberal to the needy — granting safety, if the affair demanded the forum; with zeal for teaching, if the school. They shall live through all the memory of posterity whom you gave to sacred fame; and Julian you will give more to fame than the sceptres which he held for a short time. To Sallust your books will confer more than the consulship added. Of your character, of your dignity and eloquence, you gave the model to your sons. Forgive me, wounded by the homage of my pen: this is the fault of love for you, that, unable to bring forth things worthy, I do honour, injuriously diligent. Rest in peace, and repay the loss of your fallen body with glory.
LUCIOLUS, RHETOR. Recall, O mournful dirge, the rhetor Luciolus, my fellow-pupil and master and thereafter colleague — an eloquent and learned man, whether he composed his beginnings by the law of metres or loosened them into the measures of prose — whom Lachesis snatched from his father by a bitter death, leaving behind two children of each sex; whose heir, obscure, has by no means answered to his merits, though now your fame gives me aid. Gentle friend, good brother, most faithful husband, dutiful son, and father: one is sorry, since you were such. Courteous to your guests, never to cry out against your clients, never to speak harsh words to your servants — as you cultivated peaceful ways, so cultivate tranquil shades; and take from Ausonius this gift. Farewell, friend.
ATTIUS PATERA, THE ELDER, RHETOR. Although in age you have surpassed those named before, Patera, noble in eloquence, yet, because you flourished in the age nearest mine, and I, a young man, saw you old, you shall not lack the honour of a mournful dirge, O teacher of powerful rhetors. You, sprung of the Druid stock of the Baiocasses — if fame does not cheat belief — draw your consecrated race from the temple of Belenus, and thence are your names: yours, Patera; for so the Apollinarian mystics call their ministers. To your brother and father a name was given from Phoebus, and to your son from Delphi. No man in that time had so great learning, and so many turns and rounds of speaking: retentive, eloquent, of lucid fluency, endowed with melodious voice and refinement, modest in your wit, never smeared with gall, abstemious of wine and food, cheerful, chaste, handsome — even in old age, like the old age of an eagle or a horse.
ATTIUS TIRO DELPHIDIUS, RHETOR. Eloquent, learned, swift in tongue and wit, pleasant in jests, Delphidius — be woven into the tearful threnody of your father, as you followed close, his rival in praise. You, beginning almost from the very cradle, a noble poet of the god, bearing the garland of the Olympic crown, as a boy celebrated Jove; soon thereafter, swiftly, in the manner of a rushing sea, you bound metric epic, so that no book of song wove out an oration with equal law. Your eloquence, variously celebrated, shone bright at home and abroad: whether you cultivated the prefect of the praetorian cohort or the judges of the provinces, devoted to the protection of clients wounded in fame and safety. Happy, if you had remained in quiet letters, cultivating the work of the Muses, and no avenging impulse had armed the hatreds stirred up in great lawsuits, nor had you raised yourself in the restless palace of a tyrannical time. While you ever summon to yourself a remote hope, disdainful of what lay before you, and prefer the good to be your own rather than fortune's, you longed for very many things, ranging through all the formulas of dignities, and deserving more than you held. Whence, when a grave movement of charges followed, given over to your father's afflictions, soon thereafter a rhetor, and not persistent in teaching, you cheated the cares of fathers — having experienced less of evils, by the gift of god, in that you were snatched away in the midst of your age, and were not wounded by the error of a not-erring daughter and the punishment of a wife.
TO ALETHIUS MINERVIUS, THE SON, RHETOR. O flower of the young, glad hope of your father, a possession given to your homeland but not assured — rhetor Alethius: you, a teacher in your earliest years; at the time when, were you a grown man learning, it would be no shame, you, still wearing the boy's gown, were already compared to your father, and after Patera a teacher too. He increased the walls of proud Rome, renowned for fame and merits; greater than both, you, the glad joy of your homeland Bordeaux, ruling the bright standards of the cohort, had all the goods of fate, not without the bite of grievous envy: all things did precocious fortune give you and snatch away — both rhetoric, while still wanting the fruit of grown years, and a noble marriage with your father-in-law without your father's peace, and the riches of either house without an heir. As the solstitial grass is wont, shown forth and snatched away at once, in the bloom of youth you deserted the prayers of your own, adorned with goods not destined to abide. How truly, with fate-speaking utterance, the verse of Horace was spoken: “Nothing is in every part blessed.”
LEONTIUS, GRAMMARIAN, SURNAMED THE PLAYFUL. You who cultivate glad and merry ways, who love feast-days, jests, vows, and play, recall in the yearly threnody the name of Leontius, now that he has died. He, content to be called Lascivus (the Playful), never refused that name, unworthy of the uprightness of his life, because it was pleasing to friendly ears. He gained only so great a title in letters as is enough for a humble chair, that he might seem inserted into the number of the grammarians. You, ever the companion of my youth, though heaped with more years, even now grow warm again in my marrow, charming Leontius! And it gladdens me to celebrate with sad care the tearful song of a mindful complaint: a gift unwelcome to you, yet owed, in our verse.
TO THE GREEK GRAMMARIANS OF BORDEAUX. After these, shall I record first Romulus, or the Attic Muses of Corinthus, or of Spercheus, and likewise of his son Menestheus, the grammarians? Diligent was the zeal of all in teaching, slender the fruit and thin the discourse; but, because they taught in our age, they are to be commemorated. The third of these was not my master; the rest taught me in my first years, that I might not be ignorant of words or so without cultivation in speaking — because, I believe, the slower sense of my mind hindered, and the harmful error of boyish age did not drive me to Greek disciplines. May the light turf cover you, and the coverings of the tomb protect the hidden ashes, and the inscription of my voice render the last honour.
TO JUCUNDUS, GRAMMARIAN OF BORDEAUX, BROTHER OF LEONTIUS. You too, whom they say usurped the chair rashly and think did not deserve the name of grammarian, I shall yet summon by voice, simple, good, friendly comrade, Jucundus, the dearer for this very pursuit: because, though unequal, you loved so noble a name, you are to be commemorated among the deserving men.
TO THE LATIN GRAMMARIANS AND PHILOLOGISTS OF BORDEAUX — MACRINUS, SUCURO, CONCORDIUS, PHOEBICIUS; (and) to Ammonius and Anastasius, grammarian of Poitiers. Now, as the devout honour of a tearful duty suggests each to me, I shall set forth those who, though of humble stock, station, and merit, yet introduced the study of grammar to the untrained minds of Bordeaux. Let Macrinus be among these: to him at the start my boyhood was entrusted; and Sucuro, of freedman descent, sober and useful to the minds of boys; and you, Concordius, who, exiled from your homeland, exchanged your barren chair for another city. Nor shall I keep silent about the old man named Phoebicius, who, sacristan of Belenus, drew no aid from that; but yet, as was pleasing, sprung from the stock of the Druids of the Armorican race, obtained a chair at Bordeaux by his son's effort: let the series continue. Ammonius too I shall sing again — for it is devout to commemorate a grammarian of my homeland — who gave the first elements to untrained boys, slight in learning, of unquiet manners: accordingly, as was deserved, he had a slender fame. Compose, O Muse, a tearful melody for Anastasius too, and recall in a dirge the slender grammarian. Ambition transferred this man, born at Bordeaux, and gave him to the Pictones; poor there, cultivating a slender living and habit, he lost in old age his slight little glory, both of homeland and of chair; but yet our honour has commemorated him, lest the tomb cover alike his name and his bones.
TO HERCULANUS, SISTER'S SON, GRAMMARIAN OF BORDEAUX. Herculanus, who, set forth from my own bosom and school, gave your uncle hope rather than a thing to be enjoyed; sharer of my school and chair, and almost my successor — had not the swerve of slippery youth cast you headlong, you who held not the straight way of the Pythagorean path: be at peace, and cherish your seat with quiet shades, now long since commemorated by me among kindred names.
TO THALASSUS, LATIN GRAMMARIAN OF BORDEAUX. Your office and your name, Thalassus of an earlier time, I heard as a tiny child, and scarcely even remember; of what form or merit you were, of what stock of parents, no later age celebrates aught of you. Fame bore you only as a young grammarian, then too as slight as now no fame remains. But whoever you were, since you lived as a teacher in our age, take this our gift. Farewell.
TO CITARIUS, A SICILIAN OF SYRACUSE, GREEK GRAMMARIAN OF BORDEAUX. And you, beloved Citarius, shall be commemorated by me, worthy to be celebrated among the good grammarians. Yours would be the glory of Aristarchus and of Zenodotus among the Greeks, if the ancient honour followed; to the songs which were composed in your first years the Muse of Cean Simonides yields. Born in a Sicilian city, you came, a stranger, to our city, which you had so quickly made famed, refined by your studies. Having soon obtained a noble and wealthy marriage, by the envy of fate you die no father. But us we celebrate you, deceased, with mindful honour, as we cherished you living with the gift of friendship.
TO CENSORIUS ATTICUS AGRICIUS, RHETOR. Equal in the merit of eloquence to the first, you were, Agricius, placed in a later position: who, since you were born and died in a recent age, were deferred by me, not also omitted. In whatever number, you shall be commemorated with a sad threnody: there is one honour of the tomb, given late as well as early. As lofty was the peak of your lineage as the glory of your speaking, the glory known in the seat of the Athenaeum, which, granted once to Nazarius and to famous Patera, excellently refined many young men. Now, with your wife and surviving sons and son-in-law, you cherish the shades and monuments of your forefathers.
TO NEPOTIANUS, GRAMMARIAN AND ALSO RHETOR. Witty, courteous, an old man of youthful spirit, whose mind, dripping with no gall but much honey, mingled nothing bitter through all his age — medicine of my heart, Nepotianus, sharer alike of serious things and of jests; silent man, who would have outdone Amyclae in keeping silence: as you told your tales, Ulysses would not have left you, who left the singing melodious maidens. Upright and chaste, sparing, thrifty, abstemious, eloquent, yielding to no rhetor's pen, and a disputant up to Cleanthes the Stoic; knowing Scaurus and Probus in your inmost heart, and more mindful of Cineas of Epirus; comrade and table-companion, ever a guest — too little to say a guest: a stirrer of my mind. No one gave counsels with so pure a mind, or hid what was given in a deeper concealment. Renowned for the honour of a governorship you held, having completed ten times nine turns of years, leaving two children, you meet death, with much grief, of your own as of mine.
AEMILIUS MAGNUS ARBORIUS, RHETOR AT TOULOUSE. Among kindred shades already wept, my uncle, now you shall be commemorated among the rhetors; let that be the work of piety, this the reverend names of men for the sacred bond of my homeland. Let us celebrate with a twofold honour a father twice deserving — Arborius, son of Arborius and grandson of Argicius. Yours was the pedigree of an Aeduan father, the Tarbellic origin of Maura your mother: both of the race of nobles. A noble and dowered wife, a home and a school, the cultivated friendships of princes fell to you as a young man, while wealthy Toulouse held the brothers of Constantine, set apart under the show of exile. Thence the fame of you drove you to the citadel of Byzantium and the city of the Thracian Propontis, Constantinople. There rich in wealth, and honoured there by the learned Caesar, you die, Magnus, with the fathers surviving you. But the piety of the Augustan prince restored you to your native seat and the monuments of your own; hence the yearly day renews the cause for tears and the tearful gift, with thankless devotion.
EXUPERIUS, RHETOR AT TOULOUSE. Exuperius, to be remembered by me, eloquent without art, grave in gait and with mighty words, fair of face and, in sum, graceful in movement and bearing; whose fluency of speech was by far most beautiful, which, if you received it only by hearing, would please when puffed up, but, examined, you would know to bring forth nothing of solid sense. The gown of Palladian Toulouse first revered you, then with like fickleness drove you off. Narbo thereafter received you; there you formed, as rhetor, the sons born of Dalmatius, the fatal names of kings — then boys — teaching for a great fee, almost to the goal of grown age. They, having soon obtained the Caesarean name, assigned to you the honour of a governor and the Spanish tribunal; departing, very rich, you ended your peaceful ways and the tranquil times of your life in your Cadurcan seat. But the laws of your homeland and the origin of your parents call you, that you may render again to Bordeaux the name derived from the rhetor.
TO MARCELLUS, SON OF MARCELLUS, GRAMMARIAN OF NARBONNE. Nor shall I keep silent of you, Marcellus, born of Marcellus, whom a harsh mother drove from city and home; but powerful fortune quickly restored all and increased it: Narbo first gave you the homeland you had lost; here the noble host Clarentius, moved by your excellent disposition, gave you his daughter in marriage. Soon a school and many a hearer and the gown-clad youth gave you the name and riches of a grammarian; but fortune never makes the course perpetually favourable, especially when it has found a man of crooked disposition. But I must not pile up his fates, having undertaken to commemorate them; it is enough to have said that all perished at once: yet not also the name, of which I do not defraud you, received among the grammarians of very slight merit.
SEDATUS, RHETOR OF TOULOUSE. It is a sacred duty, if I should leave you, Sedatus, unmentioned, though you obtained your teaching-office abroad. Your homeland is common with mine: by the lot of powerful fate you obtained Toulouse as the seat of your school. There marriage and sons and a wealthy old age and fame, such as is equal to a great rhetor. Yet, though from a foreign region, your homeland brings you back and, death being met, reclaims you as its citizen; and though you spent your wandering toil on a separated city, your origin takes its own judgement of you. And your offspring now, following the manner of their parent, ennobles Narbo and Rome with their studies; but why do I complain? After a long time fame, willing or unwilling, will bring even them back to Bordeaux.
STAPHYLIUS, RHETOR, A CITIZEN OF AUSCH. Thus far I have observed for myself the law of commemorating fellow-citizens, whether they taught at home or abroad; but it is right to join to the citizens one foreigner — you, Staphylius, born of the stock of the Nine Peoples. You were to me both as a father and as an uncle — one man, both: the one as Ausonius, the other as Arborius. A grammarian equal to Scaurus and Probus, a most ready rhetor, skilled in the history of Livy and Herodotus. The whole method of all learning was known to you, as much as Varro packs into six hundred volumes. A golden mind, a persuasive voice, and quiet discourse: he was neither a delayer nor a hastener. A fair old age, a neat habit, anger and grief far off; and the goal of his peaceful life was fitting.
CRISPUS AND URBICUS, LATIN AND GREEK GRAMMARIANS. You too, into the age to come, Crispus, shall come, commemorated by the gift of a sad threnody; you who taught the first of the new signs of the elements to the youngest and to those untrained in speech; believed once to glow with wine, so that you bore matter to rival the passages of Vergil and of Flaccus. And to you, Urbicus, ranked after in Latin beginnings, but renowned among the Greeks, thus may my song raise the cry. For you, joined with your Crispus, were wont to speak prose and verse with the same impulse, so that, as in song, you might soon recount the ancient heroes once commemorated in the song of Homer: the sweet son of Plisthenes (Agamemnon) among the few, and, like the torrent's, the snowy words of the man of Dulichium (Ulysses), and King Nestor, singing words sweet to utter with the nectar of his honeyed voice. Both ready of speech, both learned in all songs, skilled in the fictions of myth and in history; both freedmen by birth, but such as it would befit to gain what they deserved, that they might have renown from freeborn fathers.
TO VICTORIUS, ASSISTANT-MASTER OR USHER. Victorius, studious, mindful, swift, assiduously reading in unknown books and nothing but what was obscure, having greater care to unroll pages eaten by moths and barbarous than for studies ready to hand: what the law of the pontiffs was, what treaties, what pedigree of the sacrificer once was at Cures before Numa; what Castor set forth of all the doubtful kings, what Rhodope from her husband's books; what the law of the pontiffs, what the decrees of the ancient Quintus, what the resolutions of the fathers, what Draco or what Solon ratified, and what laws Zaleucus gave to the Locrians, what Minos ruled under Jove, what Themis before Jove — these were better known to you than our Tullius and Maro, and whatever is stored in Latin history. Perhaps a long reading would have given you even those, had not Lachesis hastened the final journey. Tinged with the slight honour of our chair, having barely tasted the name of grammarian: thereafter you died in the distant shores of Cumae, to which you had crossed from the Sicilian shore. But now rejoice, commemorated in the company of the noble, if pious care reaches your shades.
TO DYNAMIUS OF BORDEAUX, WHO TAUGHT AND DIED IN SPAIN. But neither shall I defraud you, Dynamius, of a sad complaint — fellow-townsman of my homeland and advocate, whom rumour, wounding with a charge of adultery, drove off; whom little Ilerda cherished in its hiding-places; whom a Spanish wife enriched while you lay hidden; for there, with your name changed, you were a rhetor, a rhetor disguised under the surname of Flavinus, lest a fault could betray its fugitive. Though a late will had restored you to your homeland, soon the house of Ilerda drew you back, idle again. Whatever your flight and the report of your life may have been, you are joined to me by an ancient friendship; and receive my office, if the shades have any feeling, now late, death being met, Dynamius. Though you lie dead in distant shores, pious care commemorates you in sad elegies.
TO ACILIUS GLABRIO, GRAMMARIAN, THE YOUNGER, OF BORDEAUX. Fallen with an equal brevity of learning and of life, Glabrio, I shall commemorate you in sad elegies — a name drawn down from the pedigree of noble grandsires, Glabrio son of Acilinus, of Dardan progeny. You once my equal as a boy, soon my pupil, and thereafter, when I was made rhetor, a grammarian; in the forum a protection to the accused and a cultivator in the fields, worthy long to enjoy the goods you had won: obliging, glad, kindly, abstemious, as good ever in giving counsels as silent about those given; as much every glory of your own as soon their grief, snatched away before all by a bitter death, you forsake all things, Glabrio: leaving wife and children, father and mother — alas, by how many names undone! Long to be wept by us, never enough, take, Glabrio, the bitter farewell, commemorated forever.
CORONIS (Conclusion). Those whom you read, drawn from the first page of the book, know to have been the teachers of my homeland, in the study of the grammarian or of the rhetor, or of both, whom it is enough for me to have commemorated now that death has been met. Praise is an allurement to the living; it will suffice to summon by voice the names alone to their tombs. Therefore, you who read the sad leisure of my page, seek not eloquence, but the office by which pious care performs the rites for famous and learned men, while it recalls the glories of an excellent homeland.
THE POET. Farewell, shades of the renowned rhetors; farewell, upright teachers, whether history or the poetic pen or the forum made any of you noble, or the doctrine of the medical art or the Platonic gave to perennial glory; and if any care of the living pleases the dead, and the honour of the surviving gives joy: receive the sad observance of my song, woven with a tearful complaint. May the unmoved ash keep the seat of the tomb, may the memory of the names live, until that age returns, common to all by the gift of God the judge.