Ausonius' ‘Late-Antique’ Poetics and ‘Post-Modern’ Literary Theory

1. Epistula Theodosi Augusti, passim. (All citations from the text of Ausonius are from the Teubner edition, ed. R. Peiper [Leipzig 1886]. Translations, unless otherwise noted, are my own.)

2. Epistula Symmachi ad Ausonium.

3. Gibbon, Edward, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (London 1813) v.3n.l.

4. Glover, Terrot Reaveley, Life and Letters in the Fourth Century (Cambridge 1901), 115 and 124.

5. Evelyn-White, Hugh G., Ausonius (Cambridge, Mass. 1919) i. vii.

6. Johnston, C., ‘Ausonius’, History Today 25 (1975) 400.

7. Cf.also Marx, F., s.v. ‘Ausonius’, RE II.2 (1896) 2562–80:‘er ist kein Dichter gewesen … die Gedichte des A. mehr ihres stofflichen Inhalts, als des dichterischen Wertes halber unser Interesse erregen’; or, more recently, Führmann, M. in Der Kleine Pauty I (1964) 774–76: ‘ … Zeitgenossen … stellten A. einem Vergil zur Seite. Die Nachwelt urteilt anders … Seine Werke sind, so manches Lebenswurdige sie enthalten, im ganzen von geringem poetische Wert.’

8. See particularly Peter Brown’s masterful evocation of late-antique concepts of the holy in ‘The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity’, JRS 61 (1971) 80–101, and The Making of Late Antiquity (Cambridge, Mass. 1978). Of Cameron’s work, I think particularly of his re-evaluation of pagan-Christian relations in ‘Paganism and Literature in Late Fourth Century Rome’ in Christianisme et formes littéraires de I’antiquité tardive en Occident, Fondation Hardt Entretiens 23 (Geneva 1977) 1–30, as well as his important study, Claudian: Poetry and Propaganda at the Court of Honorius (Oxford 1970). One might also mention the extensive body of 4th century studies from the pen of Jacques Fontaine, many of which are now collected in Etudes sur la poésie latine tardive d’Ausone à Prudence (Paris 1980), as well as the work of Momigliano, Amaldo, The Conflict of Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century (Oxford 1963).

9. Evelyn-White (n.5 above) i.xxviii.

10. The Cambridge History of Classical Literature Vol. II (Cambridge 1983) Part 5, ‘The Later Principate’, 19.

11. In addition to the works listed below, the extant Ausonian corpus includes a collection of letters. These vary greatly, from the touching correspondence between the rhetor and his pupil Paulinus, to whimsical macaronic compositions in Greek and Latin, and such trifles as a catalogue of the varieties of oyster.

12. Cf. Hopkins, Keith, ‘Social Mobility in the Later Roman Empire: The Evidence of Ausonius’, CQ 11 (1961) 239-49; Teitler, H.C., ‘Ausonius and his Mother’s Brother’, Journal of Indo-European Studies 7 (1979) 133–39; and Guastella, G., ‘I Parentaha come testo antropologica. L’avunculato nel mondo celtico e nella famiglia di Ausonio’, Materiali e Discussioni per l’analisi del testi classici 4 (1980) 97–124.

13. With the exception of Fontaine, who alludes to Ausonius’ ‘désinvolture ludique’ and recognizes that ‘l’éclatement des tons et la superposition des genres sont les instruments de ce jeu, plus sérieux qu’on ne penserait … Unité et diversité du mélange des genres et des tons chez quelques écrivains latins de las fin du IVe. siècle: Ausone, Ambroise, Ammien,’ Fondation Hardt (n.8 above) 443.

14. Gadamer, Hans-Georg, Truth and Method, trans. G. Barden, and Cumming, J. (New York 1974) 93–99.

15. Epistles 6.32

16. Evelyn-White (n.5 above) i.xxvi. Cf. also Pierre de Labriolle, characterizing Ausonius’ correspondence as ‘un desert des idéas’ in Un épisode de la fin de paganisme. La correspondance d’Ausone et de Paulin de Nole (Paris 1910) 16.

17. For a similar suggestion concerning another unusual classic poet, see Levitan, William, ‘Plexed Artistry: Aratean Acrostics’, Glyph 5 (1979) 60–62. See also his ‘Dancing at the End of the Rope: Optatian, Porphyry and the Field of Roman Verse’, TAPA 115 (1985) 245–69, on this ‘latecomer in extremis’ in Latin poetry and his peculiar poetic methodology.

18. Glover (n.4 above) 124.

19. Johnston (n.6 above) 400.

20. For a more sympathetic, even sentimental version of the same, see Dill, Samuel, Roman Society in the Last Century of the Western Empire 2nd ed. (London 1925) 167–80, as well as K. Chadwick, Nora, Poetry and Letters in Early Christian Gaul (London 1955) 47–62.

21. Robert Browning, ‘Poetry of the Later Principate’, CHCL (n.10 above) 19.

22. See Katzenellenbogen, Adolf, Allegories of the Virtues and Vices in Medieval Art: From Early Christian Times to the Thirteenth Century (New York 1964) 3, and Woodruff, Helen, The Illustrated Manuscripts of Prudentius (Cambridge, Mass. 1930).

23. Cameron, Claudian (n.8 above) 270.

24. The best-known examples are probably Homer’s description of the Shield of Achilles in Iliad 18, and the ostensible description of the coverlet on Thetis’ marriage-couch, which comprises most of the narrative of Catullus’ mini-epic, Poem 64. The classic treatment of classical ekphrasis remains the introduction of Friedländer, P., Johannes von Gaza, Paulus Silentarius, und Prokophs von Gaza: Kunstbeschreibungen justinianischer Zeit (Leipzig 1912; repr. Hildesheim 1969). See also now Bartsch, Shadi, Decoding the Ancient Novek: The Reader and the Role of Description in Hehodorus and Achilles Tatius (Princeton 1989).

25. Fauth, Wolfgang, ‘Cupido Cruciatus’, Grazer Beiträge 2 (1974) 39–60. See also Lucifora, Rosa Maria, ‘Il Cupido Cruciatus di Ausonio revisitato’, AAPel 59 (1978) 305–18. Although Lucifora agrees with Fauth that Ausonius’ ekphrasis is not merely a ‘fictio’ but represents an actual triclinium fresco, she also asserts that Fauth’s concerns ‘non rappresentano l’aspetto più importante del Cupido Cruciatus’ and finds some of his conclusions ‘ben al di là delle intenzione del poeta’. I concur.

26. Cf., e.g., Philostratus’ Imagines 1.2 (for the sound of musical instruments), 1.6 (for the fragrance of flowers), 1.28 (for the movement of horses and riders), and passim for mythological background as supplement to visual representation.

27. Zanker, G., Realism in Alexandrian Poetry: A Literature and its Audience (London 1987) 49f.

28. Ibid. 50. Cf. a similar conclusion on the essential fictionality of an ekphrasis reached by Nees, Leonard, ‘Theodulf’s Mythical Silver Vase, Poetica Vanitas and the Augustinian Critique of the Roman Heritage’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 41 (1987). I am indebted to Professor Nees for sharing his work with me, as well as for his interest in this essay.

29. The lines in question are 45f.: quas intermedias furvae caliginis umbram/dispulit inconsultus Amor stridentibus alis. Evelyn-White renders them: ‘Into the midst of these Love rashly broke scattering the darkness of that murky gloom with rustling wings.’ In The Last Poets of imperial Rome (New York 1982) 66, Harold Isbell offers: ‘But suddenly Love scatters the gloomy darkness on the place by breaking in on his beating wings.’ Both versions make explicit the temporal irruption implicit in the Latin.

30. olli purpureum mulcato corpore rorem/sutilis expressit crebro rosa verbere, quae iam/tincta prius traxit rutilum magis ignea fucum (‘The crimson dew drawn from his battered body by frequent lashes yielded a twining rose, which took on a successively deeper hue of red’). Lucifora’s (n.25 above, 310) exuberant appreciation of the image effectively reproduces its indecipherability: ‘ … tutta la vicenda sfocia in un esuberante ostentazione di colorì. II poeta si abbandona alia sollecitazione cui è più sensibile, all’ inspirazione più vera che lo muove, dipingendo un fulgido monocromo che pure acquista delicatezza dalle variazioni su tema.’

31. Onians, John, ‘Abstraction and Imagination in Late Antiquity’, Art History 3.1 (March, 1980) 4 and 12.

32. Ibid. 21.

33. Ibid. 17.

34. Ibid. 16.

35. On these lines in particular and, more generally, on the aesthetics of late antique poetic composition, see now Roberts, Michael, The Jeweled Style: Poetry and Poetics in Late Antiquity (Ithaca, N.Y. 1989), which became available to me only as this essay was going to press.

36. See Hosius, C., ‘Die literarische Stellung von Ausons Mosellied’, Philologus 81 (1925) 192–201; Ternes, Ch. M., ‘Paysage réel et coulisse idyllique dans la Mosella d’Ausone’, REL 48 (1970) 376–97; and Kenney, E.J., ‘The Mosella of Ausonius’, G&R 21 (1984) 190–202.

37. Fontaine (n.13 above) 443. (The Moselle is dated to 370 or 371). See also Ternes (n.35 above) 394f. This claim is not undisputed; cf. Wightman, E.M., Roman Trier and the Treveri (London 1970).

38. Transieram Navam … unde iter ingrediens … conspicor Noiomagum but in speciem quin me patriae cultumque nitentis/ Burdigalae blando pepulerunt omnia visu … (‘I had crossed over the Nava … whence, setting on my way … I catch sight of Noiomagum’; ‘it all appears to my fond gaze in the guise of the well-tilled land of my native Bordeaux’). Cf. Roberts, Michael, ‘The Mosella of Ausonius: An Interpretation’, TAPA 114 (1984) 352f.

39. See Kenney (n.35 above) 196–201 for a slightly different appreciation of Ausonius’ fascination with reflection and deception, as well as Roberts (n.37 above) 347 n.23.

40. Lacan, Jacques, ‘The Mirror Stage’, in Écrits: A Selection, tr. Sheridan, Alan (New York 1977) 2.

41. Roberts (n.37 above) 346.

42. At least one scholar has recognized this and speaks of Ausonius as ‘a poet so conscious of the fallibility of appearance and communication’ (Roberts [n.37 above] 352).

43. Barthes, Roland, ‘The Reality Effect’, in The Rustle of Language, trans. Howard, Richard (New York 1986) 141–48.

44. Ibid. 146.

45. Barthes, Roland, ‘Literature Today’, in Critical Essays, tr. Howard, Richard (Evanston, III. 1972) 160.

46. Forms of nomen appear 176 times; the next most frequently appearing noun is pater, forms of which occur 107 times. (As with the image of the Mirror Stage, Ausonius’ stress on these two terms uncannily coincides with the importance Lacan accords The Name of the Father.)

47. OLD, s.v. nomen.

48. Again, there is ample precedent for nomen in the sense of ‘in name only’, i.e., distinct from what-is-the-case. Some Ausonian examples include Domestica 4.5f. and Gratiarum Actio 4 and 7. More interesting cases include Moselle 353, Epistles 6.21 f. and 19.17f.

49. Cf. Parentalia 11 (Pastor), Professorum 7 (Lascivus), Epitaphs 12 (Protesilaus), Epistles 8 (Gratian), 12 (Probus), 17 (Theon), Epigrams 6 (Ausilius), 41 (Meroe), 102 (Hermaphroditus). One of the most interesting, in Epigrams 52 and 58, illustrates as well Ausonius’ reification of the word, as an object to be manipulated. Two brothers, Krēstos (‘Worthy’) and A-Kindunos (‘Danger-less’), have false names (nomina falsa) Ausonius claims, but they could be corrected by one simple shift in letter, so that the two became A-Krēstos (‘Worth-less’) and Kindunos (‘Danger’).

50. Witke, Charles, Numen Litterarum (Leiden 1971) 11.

51. Ibid. 55.

52. Onians (n.31 above) 15.

53. The exceptions are Kenney (n.35 above), Roberts (n.37 above) and Newlands, Carole, ‘Naturae Mirabor Opus: Ausonius’ Challenge to Statius in the Mosella’, TAPA 118 (1988) 403–19. Each of these critics presents a sensitive reading of the Moselle as a poem shaped by Ausonius’ cultural and political aims — though they differ on the identification of those aims.

54. See esp. Peiper’s edition 437–99, ‘Auctores et Imitatores’; Posani, MR., ‘Reminiscenze di poeti latini nella Mosella di Ausonio’, SIFC 34 (1962) 31–69; Görier, W., ‘Virgilzitate in Ausonius’ Mosella’, Hermes 97 (1969) 94–114; Lucifora, R.M., ‘I loci similes del Cupido Cruciatus’, AAPel 55 (1979) 261–71; and Green, R.P.H., ‘Ausonius’ Use of the Classical Latin Poets: Some New Examples and Observations’, CQ 71 (1977) 441–52.

55. Cf. the sweeping judgement of Comparetti, Domenico, Vergil in the Middle Ages, tr. Benecke, E.F.M. (New York 1895) 50: ‘ … every work of art during this period is a mere unintelligent imitation … ’

56. Ibid 53–55.

57. See Russell, D.A., ‘De imitatione’, in Creative Imitation and Latin Literature, ed. West, David and Woodman, Tony (Cambridge 1979) 1–17.

58. R. L. Brown, Peter, ‘Art and Society in Late Antiquity’, in Age of Spirituality, ed. Weitzmann, Kurt (Princeton 1980) 22f.

59. For a similar call to a new evaluation (rather than mere cataloguing) of classical allusion, see Dronke, Peter, ‘Functions of Classical Borrowing in Medieval Latin Verse’, in Classical Influences on European Culture A.D. 500–1500, ed. Bolgar, R.R. (Cambridge 1971) 159–64, now reprinted in Dronke, , The Medieval Poet and His World (Rome 1984) 105–11.

60. Cf. Ausonius’ own allusion to his macaronic poetry: sermone adludo bilingui (Epistles 8.2).

61. Thomas, Richard, ‘Virgil’s Georgics and the Art of Reference’, HSCP 90 (1986) 171–98. See also Macklin Smith’s arguments that Ausonius’ contemporary, Prudentius, employs Vergilian allusion against the pagan poet: Prudentius’ Psychomachia: A Reexamination (Princeton 1976) 234–70. For an intriguing view of fourth century allusion as a tissue of transparencies superimposed upon one another, see Fontaine (n.13 above) 442.

62. See esp. his The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry (Oxford 1973) and A Map of Misreading (Oxford 1975).

63. For discussion of intertextuality in the mode of traditional classical philology, see Conte, Gian Biagio, The Rhetoric of Imitation: Genre and Poetic Memory in Vergil and Other Latin Poets, trans. Segal, Charles (Ithaca, N.Y. 1986) 27–31.

64. Culler, Jonathan, The Pursuit of Signs: Semiotics, Literature, Deconstruction (Ithaca, N.Y. 1981) 103.

65. Although it should be stressed that Kristeva intends the concept as a general description, not one limited to particularly pedantic poets, see Culler’s criticism (n.64 above, 106f.) on this very point — that the test cases Kristeva offers may not go far to support the general applicability of the theory.

66. Kristeva, Julia, Semeiotike: Récherches pour une semanalyse (Paris 1969) 85.

67. Ibid. 196.

68. Ibid. 18.

69. Brown (n.57 above) 22.

70. For the extension of the analogy of musical ‘play’ to other types of artistic realization, cf. Gadamer (n.14 above) 104–8, and Barthes, ‘Work to Text’ 63.

71. My thinking on this point owes a great deal to Joseph Pucci, ‘Attextuality: A Theory of Allusion’ (unpubl. ms.).

72. Cf., e.g., Epistles 7,12,15,22.

73. Cf., e.g., Epistles 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 11, 23, 25, Epigram 1, and the prefaces treated below.

74. Roberts (n.37 above) 353.

75. Ibid. 350.

76. Ausonius presents another such possible equation of dream and poem in the final preface to the reader of Bissula. The poet suggests that his wisest reader will think of the following poem as a dream sent to him: sed magis hie sapiet, si dormiet et putet ista/somnia missa sibi. One is led to think of the popularity of the dream-vision as a medieval poetic conceit.

77. Kitzinger, Ernst, Early Medieval Art,> rev. ed. (Bloomington, Ind. 1983) 24.

78. Citations are taken from the prefaces of: Epitaphia, Technopaegnion, Griphus, Bissula, Parentalia, and the Eclogarum Liber.

79. Bissula ‘Ad Lectorem Huius Libelli’.

80. Evelyn-White (n.5 above) i.xxxv n.l.

81. Pavlovskis, Zoja, ‘From Statius to Ennodius: A History of Prose Prefaces’, RIL 101 (1967) 551.

82. See Tompkins, Jane P., ‘An Introduction to Reader-Response Criticism’, in Tompkins, (ed.), Reader-Response Criticism: From Formalism to Post-Structuralism (Baltimore 1980) ix-xxvi.

83. See Fish, Stanley, Surprised by Sin: The Reader in Paradise Lost (Berkeley 1967) and Self-Consuming Artifacts: The Experience of Seventeenth Century Literature (Berkeley 1972).

84. The essay was first published in New Literary History 2 no.l (Autumn 1970) 123–62. In addition to appearing in Tompkins’ anthology (n.82 above) it also appears as the Appendix to the author’s Self-Consuming Artifacts (n.83 above) and as the first essay of his Is There a Text in This Class? (Cambridge, Mass. 1980).

85. Gerald Prince, ‘Introduction to the Study of the Narratee’, in Tompkins (n.82 above) 15.

86. See Culler (n.63 above) 50–53. Relevant here too is Hans Robert Jauss’ concept of the Erwartungshorizont or the horizon of expectations which a reader brings to the reception of a text: ‘Literaturgeschichte als Provokation der Literaturwissenschaft’ in Literaturgeschichte als Provokation (Frankfurt 1970) 144–207, esp. 173–89. The concept is not without its difficulties (see the critiques of Holub, Robert, Reception Theory: A Critical Introdution [New York 1984] 58–63 and of De Man, Paul in his introduction to the English translation of Jauss’ work, Toward an Aesthetic of Reception [Minneapolis 1982] xv-xxii.) Still, some such ‘prejudice’ in Gadamer’s positive sense (n.14 above, 240–67) must inform our reading.

87. In addition to the anonymous readers whose comments have contributed substantially to the development of this article, I want to thank Frederick Ahl, Sheila Bonde, Anthony Boyle, Katherine O. Eldred, Eleanor Winsor Leach and James Trilling, all of whom encouraged and supported my work on this project. As always, I owe a special debt to Thomas J. Scherer, who, with endless patience, saw this paper through its many revisions and always helps me to see anew.