“The poetical fame of Ausonius,” says Gibbon in a contemptuous postscript to a footnote,[3] “condemns the taste of his age.” Whether or not Gibbon took too seriously the fourth-century habit in compliments, Ausonius at least reflects the taste of his age. Fading, therefore, long since to the shadow of a shade, hardly any longer an author, he is nevertheless an important document. Such fame as he may have had once is hardly even considered. Like the rhetors celebrated by Philostratus,[4] like those at Bordeaux whom he himself commemorates, he has ceased to be even a name. He is a collection of trivial fourth-century verses recalled only because they incidentally record contemporary preoccupations. Expert in the metric and the diction that he taught as _grammaticus_, he could turn a stanza on anything—on a city, a Cæsar, or a sage. Only he preferred topics that came handily in series: the order of the daily round or of noble cities, twelve Cæsars, seven sages, a roster of Trojan heroes. These are topics for Latin verses in school. Many of his poems are evidently, and others probably, school exercises. This in itself, the acceptance of themes as literature, is eloquent of the literary habit of sophistic. For the work of Ausonius may be summed up as _declamatio_.[5] Its being mainly in verse hardly modifies its character beyond emphasizing _sententiæ_. The conciseness imposed upon some of his work by his predilection for epigrams is the balance and word-play of rhetoric, not the focus of poetry. That poetic was rhetoric applied to verse Ausonius was not the man to doubt. His praise of the Bordeaux rhetors for both alike[6] increases the probability that the two were in fact alike; and this is confirmed by his own verse. It is confirmed also by the appearance of several local celebrities now as _grammatici_, now as _rhetores_. The function of the former was traditionally both to teach elegant correctness and to expound the poets; of the latter, to train directly for oratory. But the two functions thus distinguished by Quintilian seem in fourth-century Bordeaux to have been combined, or at least to have been exercised successively by the same person.[7] Evidently the sophistic conception of style as dilation by decoration and literary allusion was still prevalent. To be literary was to dilate. Of this Ausonius sometimes shows a humorous awareness. I might tell thee outright; but for more pleasure I will talk in mazes and with speech drawn out get full enjoyment.[8] But the humor of his address to his stenographer does not make the description of composing the less true to the habit of his time. I ponder works of generous scope; and thick and fast like hail the words tumble off my tongue.... I declaim, as now, at greatest speed, talking in circles round my theme....[9] The typical _declamator_ appears in Exuperius, “majestic in gait and in great words.”[10] Literary tags, especially in panegyric, come thick.