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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 November 2022
This article explores the geographical outlook of the late antique author Ausonius of Bordeaux (c.310–395 c.e.). It offers close readings of his poems on roads, oysters and cities, and situates him within the vibrant geographical debates of his day. Section I, on roads, argues that an overlooked passage in Epistula 24 reflects attested routes through Gaul, and that other passages in Ausonius’ letters are similarly influenced by ‘hodological’ ways of thinking. Section II, on oysters, identifies a new geographic mode, ‘teleports’, in Epistula 3, a poem in a long tradition of works that use oysters to chart imperial space and map cultural landscapes. Section III, on cities, brings the recent paradigm of ‘landmarks’ to bear on the Ordo nobilium urbium, arguing that Ausonius uses the catalogue form both to articulate imperial unity and to express pride in his homeland of Gaul. This article thus advances our understanding of three related aspects of late antique geography: it demonstrates the importance of literary texts for discussions of cultural geography; shows how conceptions of space were influenced by provincial identity; and provides further evidence of the great diversity of Roman understandings of space.
I would like to thank Massimo Cè, Kathleen Coleman, Paul Kosmin, Alexandra Schultz and John Weisweiler for reading versions of this article and providing helpful suggestions, as well as the journal's editor and the anonymous reader for their constructive comments.
1 Itinerarium Burdigalense (‘Bordeaux Itinerary’): Elsner, J., ‘The Itinerarium Burdigalense: politics and salvation in the geography of Constantine's empire’, JRS 90 (2000), 181–95Google Scholar. Itinerarium Egeriae: McGowan, A. and Bradshaw, P.F. (edd.), The Pilgrimage of Egeria: A New Translation of the Itinerarium Egeriae with Introduction and Commentary (Collegeville, MN, 2018)Google Scholar. Encyclopedic topography: Johnson, S.F., Literary Territories: Cartographical Thinking in Late Antiquity (Oxford, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The date of the Peutinger Table is disputed, but most recent accounts place the map or important redactions of it in the second half of the fourth century: for an overview, see Fugmann, J., ‘Tabula Peutingeriana’, in Berger, J.-D., Fontaine, J. and Schmidt, P.L. (edd.), Handbuch der lateinischen Literatur der Antike (Munich, 2020), 6.1.42–6Google Scholar, at 44–5. Talbert, R.J.A., Rome's World: The Peutinger Map Reconsidered (Cambridge, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar suggests a date around 300 c.e.; Rathmann, M., ‘Tabula Peutingeriana: Bekannte Thesen und neue Forschungsansätze’, Antike Naturwissenschaft und ihre Rezeption 24 (2014), 82–123Google Scholar dates the last redaction to 435 c.e.;Albu, The Medieval Peutinger Map: Imperial Roman Revival in a German Empire (Cambridge, 2014) argues for a Carolingian date.
2 Ausonius is only mentioned in passing in Ellis, L. and Kidner, F.L. (edd.), Travel, Communication and Geography in Late Antiquity: Sacred and Profane (London, 2004)Google Scholar. But see Weisweiler, J., ‘Domesticating the senatorial elite: universal monarchy and transregional aristocracy in the fourth century a.d.’, in Wienand, J. (ed.), Contested Monarchy: Integrating the Roman Empire in the Fourth Century a.d. (Oxford, 2015), 17–41Google Scholar (which discusses the Gratiarum actio); S.P. Northrup, ‘Aristocracy of eloquence: language and identity in Roman Gaul, 289–389 c.e.’ (Diss., Yale University, 2017).
3 On the spatial turn, see generally B. Warf and S. Arias, ‘Introduction: the reinsertion of space in the humanities and social sciences’, in B. Warf and S. Arias (edd.), The Spatial Turn: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (London, 2009), 1–10. For space in Late Antiquity, see generally Ellis and Kidner (n. 2); S.F. Johnson, ‘Real and imagined geography’, in M. Maas (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Attila (Cambridge, 2014), 394–413.
4 See generally Riggsby, A., Mosaics of Knowledge: Representing Information in the Roman World (Oxford, 2019), 194–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also R.J.A. Talbert, ‘Greek and Roman mapping: twenty-first century perspectives’, in R.J.A. Talbert and R.W. Unger (edd.), Cartography in Antiquity and the Middle Ages: Fresh Perspectives, New Methods (Leiden, 2008), 9–26, at 22; B. Salway, ‘Putting the world in order: mapping in Roman texts’, in R.J.A. Talbert (ed.), Ancient Perspectives: Maps and Their Place in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and Rome (Chicago, 2012), 193–234, at 204–10.
5 Mathisen, R.W., Roman Aristocrats in Barbarian Gaul (Austin, 1993), 18Google Scholar. Ausonius has often been treated as emblematic of the political re-emergence of the Gallic aristocracy: see Matthews, J., Western Aristocracies and Imperial Court, a.d. 364–425 (Oxford, 1975), 56–87Google Scholar; Sivan, H., Ausonius of Bordeaux: Genesis of a Gallic Aristocracy (London, 1993)Google Scholar; Watts, E.J., The Final Pagan Generation: Rome's Unexpected Path to Christianity (Oakland, 2015), 144–8Google Scholar. On Ausonius’ works as performances of Roman Gallic identity, see e.g. Johnston, A.C., The Sons of Remus: Identity in Roman Gaul and Spain (Oxford, 2017), 269–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Northrup (n. 2). It is worth remembering that Ausonius and his circle were part of a very specific subset of Roman Gallic society, the land-owning decurial elite. See Van Dam, R., ‘Review of H. Sivan, Ausonius of Bordeaux: Genesis of a Gallic Aristocracy (London, 1993)’, Speculum 71 (1996), 214–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 215–16.
6 Ellis and Kidner (n. 2), xiii; Weisweiler (n. 2); J. Weisweiler, ‘From empire to world-state’, in M. Lavan, R.E. Payne and J. Weisweiler (edd.), Cosmopolitanism and Empire: Universal Rulers, Local Elites, and Cultural Integration in the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean (Oxford, 2016), 187–208.
7 See Johnson (n. 1).
8 Few scholars have addressed similar questions in the past: G. Villais, ‘Ausonius’ cities: perception of the urban space in fourth-century Gaul’ (Diss., University of Birmingham, 2009), an unpublished MPhil Thesis, discusses the Ordo nobilium urbium (see also n. 49 below). Arnold, E.F., ‘Fluid identities: poetry and the navigation of mixed ethnicities in late antique Gaul’, European Journal of Literature, Culture and Environment 5 (2014), 88–106CrossRefGoogle Scholar discusses the connection between rivers and political and cultural identity in Ausonius, Sidonius Apollinaris and Venantius Fortunatus.
9 M. Humphries, ‘A new created world: classical geographical texts and Christian contexts in Late Antiquity’, in J.H.D. Scourfield (ed.), Texts and Culture in Late Antiquity: Inheritance, Authority, and Change (Swansea, 2007), 33–67.
10 H. Inglebert, ‘Introduction: late antique conceptions of Late Antiquity’, in S.F. Johnson (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity (Oxford, 2012), 3–27, at 7–8; Salway (n. 4), 230.
11 On Ausonius’ performance of provincial identity, cf. Johnston (n. 5), 269–72, who contrasts his genealogical articulation of that identity with Martial's topographical approach. This article makes the topographical case for Ausonius. For Jerusalem as the ideological centre of a Christian Roman empire, see Elsner (n. 1), 194–5. Contrast, along with Ausonius, the Gallo-centrism of Sidonius, discussed in Arnold (n. 8), 98–9.
12 See Heather, P., The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians (Oxford, 2006), 24–8Google Scholar.
13 Cf. e.g. the Achaemenid ‘Royal Road’ (Hdt. 5.52–4, 8.98). But for the role played by the sea in Achaemenid conceptual geography, see Haubold, J., ‘The Achaemenid empire and the sea’, MHR 27 (2012), 5–24Google Scholar.
14 For the primacy of itineraries in Roman perceptions of space, see C.R. Whittaker, Rome and its Frontiers: The Dynamics of Empire (London, 2004), 63–79. On the importance of the bird's-eye view as an alternative model, see T. Poiss, ‘Looking for bird's-eye view in ancient Greek sources’, in K. Geus and M. Thiering (edd.), Features of Common-Sense Geography: Implicit-Knowledge Structures in Ancient Geographical Texts (Zurich, 2014), 69–88; B. Bergmann, ‘Pictorial narratives of the Roman circus’, in M. Roddaz and J. Nelis-Clément (edd.), Le cirque romain et son image (Bordeaux, 2009), 361–91.
15 See generally Cioffi, R., ‘Travel in the Roman world’, Oxford Handbooks Online (Oxford, 2016)Google Scholar, https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199935390.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199935390-e-110 (accessed 28 December 2021).
16 All passages from Ausonius are cited from R.P.H. Green (ed.), Decimi Magni Ausonii opera (Oxford, 1999). Translations are adapted from H.G. Evelyn-White's Loeb Classical Library volume (Cambridge, Mass., 1919).
17 The expression Alpes et marmoream Pyrenen (79) is a hendiadys: see Green, R.P.H., The Works of Ausonius (Oxford, 1991)Google Scholar, ad loc. Cf. Alpini used of the Pyrenees: Prudent. Perist. 2.538; Sid. Apoll. Carm. 5.594.
18 All maps in this article were generated using the Antiquity À-la-carte application of the Ancient World Mapping Center (accessible at http://awmc.unc.edu/awmc/applications/alacarte/). The Ancient World Mapping Center owns a 2012 copyright in these images, which are made available under the Creative Commons CC BY-NC 3.0 license (accessible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/). Names and highlights are my own addition. The purpose of these maps is not to capture Ausonius’ worldview but to aid the modern reader.
19 Duval, M., La Gaule jusqu'au milieu du Ve siècle (Paris, 1971), 514Google Scholar. For the local nature of the Antonine Itinerary, see Whittaker (n. 14), 71; see also Salway (n. 4), 206–7.
20 See Johnson (n. 1), 44.
21 See first Janni, P., La mappa e il periplo: cartografia antica e spazio odologico (Rome, 1984)Google Scholar.
22 Flower, H.I., ‘A tale of two monuments: Domitian, Trajan, and some praetorians at Puteoli (AE 1973, 137)’, AJA 105 (2001), 625–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 633. Thanks to Kathleen Coleman for drawing my attention to this connection.
23 M.R. Salzman, ‘Travel and communication in The Letters of Symmachus’, in L. Ellis and F.L. Kidner (edd.), Travel, Communication and Geography in Late Antiquity: Sacred and Profane (London, 2004), 81–94, at 85–93.
24 To compare routes I used the Stanford Geospatial Network Model of the Roman World (ORBIS) at http://orbis.stanford.edu. On sea and riverine travel as part of Roman itineraries, see generally B. Salway, ‘Sea and river travel in the Roman itinerary literature’, in R.J.A. Talbert and K. Brodersen (edd.), Space in the Roman World: Its Perception and Presentation (Münster, 2004), 43–96.
25 ‘All roads lead to Rome’: the expression is medieval, but the thought is not. The Miliarium Aureum erected by Augustus marked the beginning and end of all roads: see Plut. Galb. 24.4 and Brodersen, K., ‘Miliarium aureum und Vmbilicus Romae: zwei Mittelpunkte des römischen Reiches?’, WJA 21 (1996/7), 273–83Google Scholar, at 274–5.
26 The Gallic leuga emerged as a predominant unit of measurement on milestones in Celtic Gaul in the second century. It is found both on the Peutinger Table and in itinerary writing. This use has been seen as evidence of resurgent nationalism in late Roman Gaul: MacMullen, R., ‘The Celtic renaissance’, Historia 14 (1965), 93–104Google Scholar, at 103.
27 Johnston (n. 5), 269 with further references in his n. 168.
28 The Genoni have not been satisfactorily identified: cf. Green (n. 17), ad loc.
29 Roberts, M., The Jeweled Style: Poetry and Poetics in Late Antiquity (Ithaca, 1989)Google Scholar.
30 The craze for boasting of types of food from far-flung locations is criticized as a sign of decadence in (e.g.) Stat. Silu. 4.6.5–11 (with K.M. Coleman, Statius Siluae IV [Oxford, 1988], ad loc.).
31 The precise boundary of the quotation (after Cerceiensibus or compertum est) is disputed. The translation is adapted from H. Rackam's Loeb Classical Library volume (Cambridge, Mass., 1938).
32 HN 32.62 sed dicemus aliena lingua quaeque peritissima huius censurae in nostro aeuo fuit. Cf. Tacitus’ comments on Mucianus’ luxuria (Hist. 1.10). For the use of oyster connoisseurship in satire, cf. Juv. 4.139–42.
33 The coupling of the Lucrine Lake and Circeii is also found in Juvenal's fourth satire: both are perhaps influenced by Verg. Aen. 3.386 (infernique lacus Aeaeaeque insula Circae); the Lucrine Lake and Avernus are also prominent in the laudes Italiae (G. 2.161–4).
34 On the transport of oysters, see Andrews, A.C., ‘Oysters as a food in Greece and Rome’, CJ 43 (1948), 299–303Google Scholar, at 300–1.
35 On oysters from the Lucrine Lake, see Coleman, K.M., ‘The Lucrine Lake at Juvenal 4.141’, CQ 44 (1994), 554–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
36 Cf. Inglebert (n. 10), 8 on the division of the late antique world into ‘cultural zones’ with their ‘own perception of the world’.
37 Cf. Green (n. 17), ad loc.; however, he takes 3.20 as an allusion to a recent visit by Theodosius.
38 Both figures recur with a similar dynamic in the Ordo nobilium urbium (67–72).
39 Ep. 3 thus casts doubt on the orthodoxy that both Christian and pagan geographies of Late Antiquity were centred on the Mediterranean. See e.g. Humphries (n. 9), 54–5.
40 Wickham, C., Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean, 400–800 (Oxford, 2005), 696CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
41 Wickham (n. 40), 709–16.
42 Wickham (n. 40), 163–5.
43 Wickham (n. 40), 164.
44 See Wickham (n. 40), 710 for the wide western distribution of a south Gaulish type of terra sigillata (red-gloss tableware), the ‘dérivées des sigillées paléochrétiennes’.
45 Compare the phasing out of the superior/inferior distinction between different parts of provinces during the fourth century, which provides further evidence of the decline of a Rome-centric perspective; Salway (n. 4), 218–19.
46 Cf. Heather (n. 12), 24–6, 106–8.
47 Green (n. 17), 568–71.
48 Beck, R., Die “Tres Galliae” und das “Imperium” im 4. Jahrhundert (Zurich, 1969)Google Scholar; Gindhart, M., ‘Lineare und interaktive Ordnung: zur Inszenierung der Städte und ihres Rombezuges im “Ordo Vrbium Nobilium” des Ausonius’, JbAC 51 (2008), 68–81Google Scholar. Johnston (n. 5) discusses the final poem's negotiation of provincial identity.
49 The only scholar to address related questions is Villais (n. 8), with whose argument I disagree on several points: the parallel she draws between the Ordo nobilium urbium and the Peutinger Table obscures the absence of roads from Ausonius’ poem; she overstates the relevance of triumphal processions; and her comparison of the Ordo nobilium urbium with city personifications ignores some of the important differences discussed below.
50 Elsner (n. 1), 188–9.
51 On the significance of the central placement of Aquileia, see Beck (n. 48) and Gindhart (n. 48); Green (n. 17), ad loc. is sceptical.
52 Green (n. 17), ad loc.
53 Green (n. 17), ad loc. sees a suggestion of precariousness or impermanence in the characterization of Alexandria as donum fluminis (cf. also Hdt. 2.5.1).
54 Cf. B. Gibson, ‘Gratitude to Gratian: Ausonius’ thanksgiving for his consulship’, in D.W.P. Burgersdijk and A.J. Ross (edd.), Imagining Emperors in the Later Roman Empire (Leiden, 2018), 270–88, at 273.
55 McCormick, M., Eternal Victory: Triumphal Rulership in Late Antiquity, Byzantium, and the Early Medieval West (Cambridge, 1986), 111–19Google Scholar.
56 M.R. Salzman, On Roman Time: The Codex-Calendar of 354 and the Rhythms of Urban Life in Late Antiquity (Berkeley, 1990), 27–8.
57 Stern, H., Le Calendrier de 354. Étude sur son texte et ses illustrations (Paris, 1953), 130Google Scholar.
58 Stern (n. 57), 128–9.
59 Green (n. 17), 570.
60 Brodersen, K., Terra Cognita: Studien zu römischen Raumerfassung (Hildesheim, 1995), 50–3Google Scholar; ‘act of possession’: Benvenisti, M., Conflicts and Contradictions (New York, 1986), 192Google Scholar.
61 Brodersen (n. 60), 111–33. For further differences in the representation of conquered territories, cf. R.R.R. Smith, ‘Simulacra gentium: the ethne from the Sebasteion at Aphrodisias’, JRS (1988), 50–77, at 70–1.
62 Brodersen (n. 60), 132–3. Smith (n. 61), 75–7 compares the Augustan Sebasteion in Aphrodisias with Hadrianic coinage and the Hadrianeum.
63 For a similarly disordered topography, compare the later Topography of the Holy Land (c.518 c.e.): cf. Johnson (n. 1), 40–1.
64 Mention of the defeat of Maximus (70) supplies the terminus post quem of 388 c.e., and the entire poem on Aquileia can be read as a laus Theodosii. Cf. Praef. 3 with Green (n. 17), ad loc. for Ausonius’ relationship with Theodosius.
65 Gindhart (n. 48), 79–80.
66 The idea of twin patriae is found as early as Cicero (Leg. 2.5).
67 Cf. Salvo, L. Di, Decimo Magno Ausonio: Ordo Vrbium Nobilium (Naples, 2000)Google Scholar, ad loc. A similar mention in Juvenal indicates that this was a rhetorical topos of long standing (10.177).
68 For problems with the date and content of this agreement, see Blockley, R.C., ‘The division of Armenia between the Romans and the Persians at the end of the fourth century a.d.’, Historia 36 (1987), 222–34Google Scholar.
69 Compare Egeria's more modest comparison of the Euphrates to the Rhone (Itin. Eger. 18.2): [Euphrates] ita enim decurrit habens impetum, sicut habet fluuius Rhodanus, nisi quod adhuc maior est Euphrates.
70 See U. Anhäuser, Die Ausoniusstraße: Ein archäologischer Reise- und Wanderführer (Alf, 2006).