Who like you can approach the charm of Æsop, the sophistic perorations of Isocrates, the arguments of Demosthenes, the Tullian richness, or the felicity of our own Maro?[11] The speeches and poems of these men, and of Ausonius himself,[12] are typically occasional. Their ideal of aptness is sought by following the recipes for encomium. Literature, long fixed, was to be attained by expert conformity. Evidently too these encomiasts still had their reward.[13] As official spokesmen they were appointed to public office. Ausonius himself rose with the fortunes of Gratian. From being his tutor he mounted by the steps of _comes_ and _quæstor_ to be in 378 _præfectus Galliarum_. Such a position dispenses a man from writing for posterity, and effectually prevents him from questioning the permanence of an order of life and thought already spent. Until the Roman world fell apart, it was satisfyingly enclosed in the schools of Bordeaux. 2. Sidonius Apollinaris Cherishing of the past, rhetorical education, obsession of style—all this is embodied in the Roman prefect and Christian bishop Sidonius Apollinaris.[14] His letters and poems, current through the middle age as models of style, are consistently in the modes of sophistic. Commemorations, addresses of welcome or congratulation, above all panegyrics, they follow the tradition of _declamatio_;[15] and their allusions abundantly exemplify both the school practise of his day and the literary preoccupations. Sending to Perpetuus his discourse at Bourges, Sidonius apologizes for its defects of style. Neither rhetorical division, nor oratorical urgency, nor the figures of _grammatica_ have contributed to it appropriate ornament and virtuosity. For I did not give myself the pleasure of adjusting, after the habit of those who file their perorations, the weight of narrative, or the figures of poetry, or the sparks of the cadences practised in school.[16] A long letter to Domitius, describing villa life in detail most interesting to the historian, contains a lively passage of description. How pleasant the sound of crickets chorusing at midday, frogs prating as twilight broods, swans and geese trumpeting their matings at night, cocks in concert crowing untimely! So far Sidonius sounds as if he had a respite from style. The picturesqueness seems to spring from observation. But habit is too strong to let him either stop there or dispense with literary allusions. He goes on: ominous ravens thrice saluting the ruddy torch of rising Aurora, and at daybreak Philomela whispering among the bushes, Progne chirping among the posts. To this symphony you may add the shepherds’ reed music, which in rivalry of songs by night the unsleeping Tityri of our mountains practise among herds whose bells echo through the cropped pastures. But all the various melodies of voices and of songs will the more caressingly lure your sleep.[17]