In te consumere nomen: The Politics of Naming in Ausonius’s Mosella

Abstract

Scholars have noted that Ausonius (ca. 310–395) plays with names in his poetry, but no one as yet has studied the poetic effects that Ausonius creates through naming. This article surveys several poems by Ausonius, showing how the poet crafts the nomen as a way to forge political alliances. The name’s political applications are shown to be an engagement with late antique onomastic practices. By attending to Ausonius’s use of names, we can interpret his Mosella as an allegory in which the poet provides advice to his student, Gratian, about how to relate to his brother, Valentinian II. This reading, which is corroborated by referring to Ausonius’s correspondence with Gratian, helps us to date the poem.

Keywords:

• Ausonius
• Gratian
• Mosella
• late antique
• fish
• tria nomina
• adoption

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank friend Arvind Thomas for his counsel and his friendship. I would like also to express my gratitude to the organizers and participants at the 36th International Patristics, Medieval, and Renaissance Studies Conference, Villanova University, 2011, where I first presented an early version of this paper, and to my anonymous readers and the editorial staff at NAMES.

Notes

1 Names are, of course, important elements of classical literary style, and they often serve as myth- makers. Eleanor Dickey shows that, in Cicero’s dialogues, Cicero almost never allows the character representing himself to be addressed or referred to by name (1997). Ellen Oliensis demonstrates how Catullus uses names and naming in order to develop a poetic style (1997). Vergil uses nomina to create origins, as, for example, in the Aeneid, when he marks out a connection between Aeneas and Caesar: “puer Ascanius, cui nunc cognomen Iulo | additur” (266–267).

2 On Ausonius’s relationship with Symmachus, see Cristiana Sogno (2006: 6–8). Also, on Symmachus’s reading of Mosella, see Peltiari (2011).

3 All texts by Symmachus and Ausonius are sourced from the Loeb two-volume edition of Ausonius’s works (1919–1921) with facing-page English translation by Hugh G. Evelyn White, whose translations are cited here. Prose passages are referenced by page number. Verse passages are noted by line number and, when applicable, by section number.

4 Besides noting that Ausonius plays with names, several scholars have suggested that Ausonius occasionally neglects to name certain individuals. The absence of certain names in Mosella is touched on by Newlands (408–410). C. Hosius also briefly discusses Ausonius’s silences about naming (1925: 200).

5 The name Bissula has been explained as Old Germanic, but Jurgen Zeidler argues that it is derived from the Celtic biss for “finger, cone, twig” (2003: 1–3). As Joseph Hirsh suggested to me in conversation, the name sounds very similar to the Hebrew bithula or בתולה (virgin). Remarkably, Ausonius wrote a commentary, now lost, on Hebrew names. His works include “libellum de nominibus mensium et hebreorum et atheniensium; Item de eruditionibus hebreorum et interpretationibus hebraicorum nominum librum unum” (Bowersock et al., 2000: 325; a small book concerning the names of months of Hebrews and of Athenians; also one book concerning the instruction of the Hebrews and the interpretations of Hebrew names). Ausonius seems to have had an interest in Hebraic onomastics, and he may have been familiar enough with Hebrew to name his slave Bissula, from the Hebrew for “virgin,” which if true would add a further, disturbing layer of irony to the poem.

6 On this point, see also Dustin Cranford (2012).

7 Salway writes that Ausonius “disdains others for the habit of importing the names of connections rather than of direct ancestors into their nomenclature” (1995: 133).

8 Before Ausonius writes of the Rhine, he makes a digression from the river’s flow in order to talk about another name. He celebrates the Begla and notably the éminence grise of line 405. Ausonius’s usual insistence upon the honor of nomina provides the subtext for his praise of this obscure figure: “quique caput rerum Romam, populumque patres­que, | tantum non primo rexit sub nomine, quamvis | par fuerit primis: festinet solvere tandem | errorem fortuna suum libataque supplens | praemia iam veri fastigia reddat honoris | nobilibus repetenda nepotibus” (409–414). The identity of the person praised here has long been a mystery. Danuta Shanzer argues that Ausonius is lauding the consul Probus. Shanzer suggests that Ausonius merely quibbles when he writes of Probus as ruling in an office that is first in everything but its name (1990: 216). As Shanzer points out, Probus was consul posterior rather than consul prior, so that his name was not quite first. Perhaps this apparently trivial distinction was important to Ausonius, who gave such credit to names. For a different opinion on the identity of the mysterious office-holder, see Drinkwater (1999: 444). In Ausonius’s poem to Probus of 368, discussed earlier, Ausonius writes that Probus is second only to three emperors (16–18).

9 See Smith (1857: 708).

10 Tangentially we might note that in the final lines of the poem, Ausonius again catalogues names, listing all of the rivers that will celebrate the Moselle: Loire, Aisne, Marne, Charante, Dordogne, and the gold-bearing Tarn (461–468). Like the catalogue of fish, which delighted Symmachus for its names as well as for its colors and tastes, this list is entertaining because of the excessive amount of names given. Ausonius continues with his list of names, adding the Drome and the Durance (479) and offering that the Moselle will be worshipped by Alpine streams and by the Rhone, which “dextrae […] dat nomina ripae” (481; gives names to the right bank). To end his poem, Ausonius commends the Moselle to the Garonne, the river in his native Bordeaux. Con­spicuously absent from this long list of names is, of course, the Tiber. Hugh G. Evelyn White suggests that praise for the Tiber occurs in a lacuna indicated by Accursius as existing between lines 379 and 380 (1917: 136).