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Chapter 8 - Ausonius at the Edge of Empire

Consular Poetics as Cognitive Improvisation

from Part II - Religion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 August 2021

By
Mark Vessey
Edited by
Harriet I. Flower
Harriet I. Flower
Affiliation:
Princeton University, New Jersey
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Summary

The visual and intertextual effects of Ausonius’ versified riverscape, the Mosella, make it a prize specimen for modern study of late antique Latin poetics and aesthetics. What kind of performance – and then what kind of a book – would this poem originally have been, in the empire of Valentinian and his sons, in the 370s and ’80s? The chapter measures the oddity of the Mosella, and of the poet’s oeuvre, against the background of prior fourth-century Latin opuscular poetizing, to argue that Ausonius’ “poetical fame” (Gibbon) was at once enabled by his profile as an imperial officeholder and an effect of his deliberately stepping aside from it. A following generation of Latin writers, many of whom would style Christian literary careers for themselves, may be seen reprising – if not emulating – the trick that Ausonius performed in improvising a personal poetic subjectivity at the edge of the cognitive ecology of Roman empire.

Keywords

AusoniusMosellaLatin poeticsLate Antiquitycognitive ecologycognitive bibliologyRoman empire
Type
Chapter
Information
Empire and Religion in the Roman World , pp. 187 - 211
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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