Ausonius - Biography

Biography

Decimus Magnus Ausonius was born ca. 310 in Bordeaux, the son of Julius Ausonius, a physician of Greek ancestry, and Aemilia Aeonia, daughter of Caecilius Argicius Arborius, descended on both sides from established, land-owning Gallo-Roman families of southwestern Gaul. Ausonius was given a strict upbringing by his aunt and grandmother, both named Aemilia. He received an excellent education at Bordeaux and at Toulouse, where his maternal uncle, Aemilius Magnus Arborius, was a professor. Ausonius did well in grammar and rhetoric, but professed that his progress in Greek was unsatisfactory. When his uncle was summoned to Constantinople to tutor one of the sons of emperor Constantine I, Ausonius accompanied him to the capital.

Having completed his studies, he trained for some time as an advocate, but he preferred teaching. In 334 he became a 'grammaticus' (instructor) at a school of rhetoric in Bordeaux, and afterwards a 'rhetor' or professor. His teaching attracted many pupils, some of whom became eminent in public life. His most famous pupil was the poet Paulinus, who later became a Christian and Bishop of Nola.

After thirty years of this work Ausonius was summoned by emperor Valentinian I to teach his son, Gratian, the heir-apparent. When Valentinian took Gratian on the German campaigns of 368-9, Ausonius accompanied them. In recognition of his services emperor Valentinian bestowed on Ausonius the rank of quaestor. Gratian liked and respected his tutor, and when he himself became emperor in 375 he began bestowing on Ausonius and his family the highest civil honors. That year Ausonius was made Praetorian Prefect of Gaul, campaigned against the Alemanni and received as part of his booty a slave-girl, Bissula (to whom he addressed a poem), while his father, though nearly ninety years old, was given the rank of Prefect of Illyricum. In 376 Ausonius's son, Hesperius, was made pro-consul of Africa. In 379 Ausonius was awarded the consulate, the highest Roman honor.

In 383 the army of Britain, led by Magnus Maximus, revolted against Gratian and assassinated him at Lyons; and when emperor Valentinian II was driven out of Italy, Ausonius retired to his estates near Burdigala (now Bordeaux) in Gaul. When Magnus Maximus was overthrown by emperor Theodosius I in 388, Ausonius did not leave his country estates. They were, he says, his nidus senectutis, the 'nest of his old age', and there he spent the rest of his days, composing poetry and writing to many eminent contemporaries, several of whom had been his pupils. His estates supposedly included the land now owned by Château Ausone, which takes its name from him. He appears to have been a late and perhaps not very enthusiastic convert to Christianity.

He died about 394.