Ausonius: Verse

“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.”

Ausonius

Edward Townsend Booth, God Made the Country (1946), p. 37.
Criticism

History

“I've never written for a fasting man;
A taste of wine is good before my verse.
But sleep is better than a little wine,
For when sleeping one thinks my songs are dreams.”
Jejunis nil scribo: meum post pocula si quis<br/>legerit, hic sapiet.<br/>Sed magis hic sapiet, si dormiet: et putet ista<br/>somnia missa sibi.

Ausonius

Jejunis nil scribo: meum post pocula si quis
legerit, hic sapiet.
Sed magis hic sapiet, si dormiet: et putet ista
somnia missa sibi.
"De Bissula", line 13; translation from Harold Isbell (trans.) The Last Poets of Imperial Rome (1971) p. 48.

Dreams , Thinking , Sleep , Wine

“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.”

Ausonius

And in spite of all this highly self-conscious technical facility he managed occasionally to write poetry.
Edward Townsend Booth, God Made the Country (1946), p. 37.
Criticism

History