Top 13 Ausonius Quotes

It is the things which Ausonius reveals unconsciously that win him liking, not those which he sets out to celebrate with a kind of innocent pomp: not the chair of rhetoric at twenty-five, nor the imperial tutorship in his fifties, nor the consulship at sixty-nine, but that he loved and taught rhetoric all his life, and kept his simplicity.

Ausonius must be read to be believed! As poet, no subject is too trivial for him; as courtier, no flattery too excessive.

In the history of versification did anyone ever juggle so wildly well with iambics, sapphics, dactylics, anapestics, and all the rest? He fabricated verses most ingeniously, most enthusiastically. His virtuosity is amazing. Almost every line he wrote was a tour de force. And in spite of all this highly self-conscious technical facility he managed occasionally to write poetry.

The poetical fame of Ausonius condemns the taste of his age.

Iniurium est de poeta male sobrio lectorem abstemium iudicare.

Multis terribilis timeto multos.

Every stage of life has its troubles, and no man is content with his own age.

Omne aevum curae; cunctis sua displicet aetas.

Monumenta fatiscunt:
mors etiam saxis nominibusque venit.

Collige, virgo, rosas, dum flos novus et nova pubes,
et memor esto aevum sic properare tuum.

Tot species, tantosque ortus variosque novatus
una dies aperit, conficit ipsa dies.

Errantes silva in magna et sub luce maligna
inter harundineasque comas gravidumque papaver
et tacitos sine labe lacus, sine murmure rivos,
quorum per ripas nebuloso lumine marcent
fleti, olim regum et puerorum nomina, flores.

Quis color ille vadis, seras cum propulit umbras
Hesperus et viridi perfudit monte Mosellam!
tota natant crispis iuga motibus et tremit absens
pampinus et vitreis vindemia turget in undis.