A European walk through Bordeaux 5 - Ausonius Roads
Cours
d'Alsace-Lorraine
La Statue d'Ausone (XIXèmre siècle) sur
l'Ausoniusweg à Neumagen-Dhron
(Rhénanie-Palatinat).
Decimus Magnus Ausonius
(310-394) was born in
Bordeaux, where, in his words, the sky is gentle and clement.
This lawyer was taught rhetoric by rhetorician Luciolus, by Staphylius and by orator Tiberius Victor Minervius, the Demosthenes and the Quintilian of
the time. A rhetorician, he
pleaded before becoming a poet
and grammarian, but then renounced the bar: nec fora non celebrata
mihi.
In 368, he
left his professorship to engage in travel
and public life. At the request of Emperor Valentinian, he had to move to Augusta Treverorum (Trier), which was the capital of the West in the 4th century,
to assume the position of private tutor
for his son Gratian, aged eight.
It is this
journey, both difficult and dangerous at the
time, and during which Ausonius crossed the Hunsrück in 368, travelling the Roman roads
from Bingen on the Rhine to Trier on the Moselle, that inspired the 483 hexameters of his most famous poem
La Moselle. The path of the old
Roman military road, Ausoniusweg,
bears his name in memory of this trip, and is today a famous
hiking trail that takes walkers
from Bingen to Trier.
When Valentinian
died, on 17 November 375,
the poet’s fortune was secured. Gratian showered his teacher
and all his family with everything he had to offer.
Ausonius became prefect of Africa and Italy, and praetorian prefect of Gaul in 377-378. Ausonius was then
declared First Consul for the year
379, and proconsul of Asia… …
… …
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Buste d'Ausone par Bertrand Piéchaud. |
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Walk down Cours
d’Alsace-Lorraine and up to Rue des
Bahutiers. Walk down
Rue des Bahutiers, Rue du Cerf-Volant and continue into Rue du Loup.
© Bertrand Favreau
and Tyché Editions 2014
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Representation or reproduction in whole or in part by any means whatsoever,
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