\"Mystic River: Ausonius\' Mosella as an Epistemological Revelation\", Ramus 45.2, 2016: 231-266.

Ramus 45 (2) p.231–266 © Aureal Publications 2016. doi:10.1017/rmu.2016.12

MYSTIC RIVER: AUSONIUS’ MOSELLA AS AN EPISTEMOLOGICAL REVELATION Jesús Hernández Lobato Then the revelation occurred: Marino saw the rose as Adam might have seen it in Paradise, and he thought that the rose was to be found in its own eternity and not in his words; and that we may mention or allude to a thing, but not express it; and that the tall, proud volumes casting a golden shadow in a corner were not—as his vanity had dreamed—a mirror of the world, but rather one thing more added to the world. Jorge Luis Borges, ‘The Yellow Rose’ (Dreamtigers)1

Ausonius’ Mosella is probably the most remarkable, studied and beloved poem of late antiquity.2 This essay aims to examine it from a new perspective, by reinterpreting it as a complex and many-layered depiction of a sui generis epiphanic experience, ultimately triggered by an unmediated encounter with nature. This sudden ‘revelation’, be it real or merely an artful literary device, did not only provide Ausonius with a deeper insight into the world around him, but also raised many epistemological issues on the limits of human knowledge and the (in)ability of language to convey reality. Both aspects—the poetical rendering of a non-discursive quasi-mystical experience and the epistemological and philosophical reflections it brings about—pervade the whole of the poem and are absolutely central to an in-depth understanding of its very raison d’être. The river Moselle is, on the one hand, the vehicle and the trigger for this sudden revelation—a non-discursive experience that might well be called a kensho¯, in terms of Japanese Zen tradition.3 On the other hand, it embodies a whole set of epistemological, aesthetic and even political metaphors aimed at elucidating the nature of this newly acquired knowledge and the role of human language in its desperate attempt to grasp and express reality. This novel approach to

Acknowledgements: This essay condenses ten years of research in different academic environments. Thanks are due to Jas´ Elsner (University of Oxford), Averil Cameron (University of Oxford), Carmen Codoñer (University of Salamanca), Isabella Gualandri (University of Milan) and Alessandro Schiesaro (Sapienza University of Rome), who commented on different stages of this manuscript. I extend a heartfelt thankyou to Ana Sáez Hidalgo (University of Valladolid) and Óscar Prieto Domínguez (University of Salamanca) for their precious help during the correcting of the text. 1. English translation by Mildred Boyer and Harold Morland (in Borges [2004], 38). 2. For the text of the Mosella and Ausonius’ other works I follow Green (1991). English translations are adapted from Evelyn White’s 1921 bilingual edition, unless otherwise indicated. I have also consulted the recent editions with commentary by Dräger (2002) and Gruber (2013). 3. The word kensho¯ literally means ‘seeing (ken) the-essence-of-things (sho¯)’, that is, seeing reality as it really is and not as it merely seems to be. It can be thus defined as an initial, sudden, and generally ephemeral insight or awakening, opening up the path to a more permanent satori (comprehension or enlightenment).

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the poem will help us to explain some of its most outstanding features, thus opening the way for a richer apprehension of its many intricacies.

1. Ausonius’ Initiation Path: Finding the Way out of Plato’s Cave The poem begins quite abruptly with a gloomy depiction of Ausonius’ overland journey from Bingen on the Rhine to Neumagen on the Moselle: transieram celerem nebuloso flumine Nauam, addita miratus ueteri noua moenia Vingo, aequauit Latias ubi quondam Gallia Cannas infletaeque iacent inopes super arua cateruae. unde iter ingrediens nemorosa per auia solum et nulla humani spectans uestigia cultus praetereo arentem sitientibus undique terris Dumnissum riguasque perenni fonte Tabernas aruaque Sauromatum nuper metata colonis. (Auson. Mos. 1-9) I had crossed over swift-flowing Nava’s cloudy stream, and gazed with awe upon the ramparts lately thrown round ancient Vingum, where Gaul once matched the Roman rout at Cannae, and where her slaughtered hordes lay scattered over the countryside untended and unwept. Thence onward I began a lonely journey through pathless forest, nor did my eyes rest on any trace of human inhabitants. I passed Dumnissus, sweltering amid its parched fields, and Tabernae, watered by its unfailing spring, and the lands lately parcelled out to Sarmatian settlers. (tr. Evelyn White) The abrupt and highly unconventional presence of the pluperfect transieram (‘I had crossed over’) at the very opening of the poem has frequently puzzled scholars,4 who have even attempted to explain it as a result of an unlikely scribal omission.5 The answer, however, is much simpler. Following a longestablished convention in both Greek and Latin literature, the poem’s first

4. The pluperfect is by definition a relative tense (a past within the past), so it is rarely found at the beginning of a narrative. Furthermore, Latin verbs are most usually placed at the end of their sentences. For the classical reminiscences see Cavarzere (2003), 57 ad loc. 5. So Fuchs (1975), 173f. Green (1991), 463, on the contrary, thinks that ‘this is a carefully calculated opening, comparable to that of De rosis (App. A. 3) and Wordsworth’s famous poem on daffodils’. Dräger (1997), 32, provides an additional argument in favour of the opening which has come down to us: the presence of the telestic M-O-S-Æ in lines 1-4.

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word—transieram (‘I had crossed over’)—reveals and synthesises the gist of its content:6 the Mosella is all about crossing over boundaries, about passing from darkness into light, about going over into a different consciousness by means of a process of internal transformation.7 The voice of the enlightened poet is thus speaking from the present of this newly acquired condition, remembering the stages which he had to undergo in order to complete his exacting initiation journey. Hence the striking use of the past perfect instead of the expected simple past at the very beginning of his narrative. The starting point of this initiation passage is consistently characterised with unequivocally sombre brushstrokes: nebuloso (‘cloudy’, 1), moenia (‘ramparts’, 2), infletae (‘unwept’, 4), iacent (‘lay scattered’, 4), inopes (‘untended’, 4), cateruae (‘slaughtered hordes’, 4), iter…solum (‘lonely journey’, 5), nemorosa per auia (‘through pathless forest’, 5), nulla humani…uestigia cultus (‘no trace of human inhabitants’, 6), arentem (‘sweltering’, 7), sitientibus (‘parched’, 7), Sauromatum…colonis (‘Sarmatian settlers’, 9). Ausonius finds himself surrounded by darkness, mist and death, unable to perceive the stunning beauty of the world around him. The scant references to the idea of vision are always negative, underlying the absence of a real object to be seen: et nulla humani spectans uestigia cultus (‘nor did my eyes rest on any trace of human inhabitants’, 6). Quite surprisingly, Ausonius describes a potentially quaint and charming environment in terms of infernal landscape: the Nava River (today’s Nahe) crossed by the poet in line 1 is deliberately transformed into the underworld river Styx by means of an intelligent use of the literarily connoted adjective nebuloso (‘cloudy’, 1),8 as proved by Görler.9 Similarly, the idyllic Hunsrück mountains are represented with Vergilian diction as littered with unburied corpses (3f.), hostile to civilisation (5f.) and eerily gloomy. These first nine lines have indeed been proved to be a deliberate reworking of the topic of the travel to Hell or katabasis as depicted by Vergil in the sixth book of his Aeneid, many of whose passages are here intertextually borrowed.10 In Martin’s words:11

6. Cf. e.g. the celebrated Homeric and Vergilian openings: μῆνιν ἄειδε θεά (‘the wrath sing, O Goddess’, Hom. Il. 1.1); ἄνδρα μοι ἔννεπε Μοῦσα (‘of that man, O Muse, tell me the story’, Hom. Od. 1.1); arma uirumque cano (‘arms and the man I sing’, Verg. Aen. 1.1). Translations are mine. 7. Among the meanings of the verb trans-ire given s.v. by the Oxford Latin Dictionary are: ‘to come or go across from one place to another, cross over’, ‘to move on (from one condition or status to another)’ and ‘to change one’s nature, appearance, etc. (from one thing to another), be transformed’. 8. Cf. e.g. Ov. Met. 4.432-34 and Fast. 3.322. 9. Görler (1969), 96f. 10. For a detailed exposition see Görler (1969), esp. 95-98. A good example is line 4, modelled on Verg. Aen. 6.325: haec omnis, quam cernis, inops inhumataque turba est (‘all this mob you observe is the helpless folk, the unburied’) in combination with Aen. 11.372: …inhumata infletaque turba (‘unburied, unwept nobodies’); tr. Ahl. 11. Martin (1984), 252.

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L’exorde du poème pourrait se lire comme le récit d’une cérémonie initiatique consistant, selon la tradition que rappelle Apulée au livre XI des Métamorphoses, en une plongée au royaume des morts suivie d’un retour à la lumière et pour ainsi dire une résurrection: Ausone apparaît ici comme un myste qui, à l’issue de cette catabase agonissante mais illuminante, reçoit la révelation de la Verité, qui jusque-là lui était demeurée cachée. And this hidden Truth does not only consist in revealing ‘la “gréco-romanité” fondamentale de la région trévire’—as Martin suggests12—but also in a higher degree of awareness in his knowledge of reality, what Western mystics would call a sudden illumination and Zen practitioners a kensho¯. Therefore, the beginning of the Mosella clearly underlines the global quality of ‘prise de conscience et/ou d’un révélation’13 that prevails in the whole composition. In fact, we are constantly told that there is a secret which Ausonius is going to reveal to us after his own initiation process,14 a concealed understanding that is about to be disclosed: sic demersa procul durante per intima uisu / cernimus arcani patet penetrale profundi (‘so, if our gaze penetrates thy gulfs, we behold things whelmed far below, and the recesses of thy secret depth lie open’, 59f.), spectaris uitreo per leuia terga profundo, / secreti nihil amnis habens (‘through thy smooth surface showest all the treasures of thy crystal depths—a river keeping naught concealed’, 55f.). But Ausonius is not allowed to reveal to the reader’s non-initiated eyes the secret knowledge provided by his direct contemplation of the river waters: sed non haec spectata ulli nec cognita uisu / fas mihi sit pro parte loqui: secreta tegatur / et commissa suis lateat reuerentia riuis (‘but of these things which no man has looked upon and no eye beheld, be it no sin for me to speak in part: let Reverence be covered in her seclusion, and let her dwell unspied upon, in the safe-keeping of her native streams’, 186-88).15 The ultimate reality is never utterable: it must be directly experienced. Lines 10-22 represent a second stage in that initiation journey through the darkness of barbarian territories into the blinding light of the civilising force of the Moselle: et tandem primis Belgarum conspicor oris Noiomagum, diui castra inclita Constantini. purior hic campis aer Phoebusque sereno lumine purpureum reserat iam sudus Olympum nec iam consertis per mutua uincula ramis

12. Martin (1984), 252. 13. Ibid. 14. On the nature of the ‘secret knowledge’ acquired by Ausonius in this watery revelation see section 5.1 below. 15. The meaning of this passage is discussed at length in section 5.2 below.

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quaeritur exclusum uiridi caligine caelum, sed liquidum iubar et rutilam uisentibus aethram libera perspicui non inuidet aura diei. in speciem quin me patriae cultumque nitentis Burdigalae blando pepulerunt omnia uisu: culmina uillarum pendentibus edita ripis et uirides Baccho colles et amoena fluenta subterlabentis tacito rumore Mosellae. (Auson. Mos. 10-22) And at length on the very verge of Belgic territory I descry Noiomagus, the famed camp of sainted Constantine. Clearer the air which here invests the plains, and Phoebus, cloudless now, discloses glowing heaven with his untroubled light. No longer is the sky to seek, shut out by the green gloom of branches intertwined: but the free breath of transparent day withholds not sight of the sun’s pure rays and of the aether, dazzling to the eyes. Nay more, the whole gracious prospect made me behold a picture of my own native land, the smiling and well-tended country of Bordeaux—the roofs of country-houses, perched high upon the overhanging river-banks, the hill-sides green with vines, and the pleasant stream of Moselle gliding below with subdued murmuring. (tr. Evelyn White) Meaningfully, the adverb tandem (‘at length’, 10), implying the end of a long delay or expectation, introduces the first verb of sight with an openly positive connotation to be found in the poem: conspicor (‘I descry’, 10). After a hard travel through darkness and death, Ausonius is finally able to see. The air is suddenly much purer16 (purior hic…aer, 12) and the sky is not covered any longer by a tangle of menacing branches (14f.) or a thick mantle of fog (13). Everything is luminous,17 transparent,18 calm,19 and open to the sight.20 Once again it is the sixth book of Vergil’s Aeneid that intertextually shapes the whole passage. This time, however, Ausonius takes his readers away from the gloomy depths of Hades to the much sunnier second stage of Aeneas’ journey through the Underworld: the Elysian Fields, a Greco-Roman paradise for the blessed souls of the virtuous. Lines 12f. are indeed a direct evocation of Verg. Aen. 6.640f.,21 depicting Aeneas’ first impression of that heavenly resting place: largior hic campos

16. For an allegorical reading of this passage from a metaliterary perspective see Formisano (2017). 17. See lumine (13), purpureum (13), rutilam (16), nitentis (18). 18. See liquidum iubar (16), libera perspicui…aura diei (17). 19. See sereno (12), sudus (13), tacito rumore (22). 20. See nec iam…exclusum…caelum (14f.), rutilam uisentibus aethram (16), in speciem (18), blando…uisu (19). 21. See Görler (169), 95.

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aether et lumine uestit / purpureo… (‘a more generously lustrous brightness of sky dresses meadows here with a colourful brilliance’).22 Curiously enough, what Aeneas finds at the very heart of Elysium is precisely a river: the Lethe23. In the Aeneid the river Lethe is deprived of any negative connotation. It is the river of resurrection, not of death.24 Only the souls who have attained to the highest degree of purification are allowed to drink of its blissful waters of oblivion and reincarnate.25 If the Nava in line 1 has been proved to be the Styx, would it not be tempting to interpret the Moselle as the embodiment of the Lethe—the river which, according to a time-honoured Vergilian, Platonic and Pythagorean tradition, affords access to a new life? The parallels of the Mosella with the sixth book of the Aeneid are indeed striking and go far beyond what has been usually accepted. A clear example is provided by Ausonius’ celebrated though much scorned catalogue of fish (82-149), immediately following his moving encounter with the transparent secrets of the Moselle (23-81). This catalogue could be easily reinterpreted as a playful homage to the famous scene following Aeneas’ vision of the river Lethe (Aen. 6.678751): the catalogue of illustrious Romans waiting their turn to be (re)born at the river’s edge (Aen. 6.752-892).26 The revelation experienced by the poet in his sudden encounter with the Moselle River makes him feel more at home than anywhere else, including his native town. That explains the moving evocation of Bordeaux triggered by this very experience (18-22), a recurrent theme throughout the poem.27 Ausonius feels no more in exile. He is finally at home, like wandering Aeneas enjoying once again the company of his deceased father Anchises by the banks of the river Lethe. Meaningfully enough, the poem’s last word is Garunnae (483), the river that runs through Ausonius’ much yearned-for home town. The Moselle

22. The translation is taken from Ahl (2007), 149. 23. See Verg. Aen. 6.703-06 (tr. Ahl [2007], 151): ‘Through this, Aeneas observes in a nearby vale, a secluded / grove with its green-leafed canopy rustling over the woodlands, / and river Lethe too, flowing on past dwellings of calmness. / Peoples and nations, too many to count, seethe all around, swarming’. 24. See Verg. Aen. 6.710-15 (tr. Ahl [2007], 151): ‘Shocked by this sudden sight, unaware of its meaning, Aeneas / asks for some answers: what river might this be which flows over yonder, / who are the people who’ve crowded the banks in a giant formation. / Father Anchises replies: “They’re souls that are due second bodies: / so fate rules, and they’re drinking now from the waters of Lethe, / draughts that will free them of care and ensure long years of oblivion”’. 25. See Verg. Aen. 6.746-51 (tr. Ahl [2007], 152): ‘Purged of the last trace of crime ingrained, they are left with ethereal / power of perception, the fire of its clear breath, pure and untainted. / God summons all these souls, when they’ve rolled time’s wheel for a thousand / years, to convene in a mass at the Lethe, Oblivion’s waters, / so, with their memories wholly erased, they can walk beneath heaven’s / dome yet again and begin to desire to go back into bodies’. 26. On Ausonius’ catalogue of fish as a parody of the Roman social strata within the framework of a broader dialogue with Vergilian epic see Hernández Lobato (2012), 391-94 (developing Martin [1985], 247f.). The fifteen fishes which constitute this catalogue might well correspond to the fifteen Roman heroes actually seen (not merely mentioned) by Anchises and Aeneas by the banks of the river Lethe. 27. See 18-22, 448-53 and 483.

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has become all rivers (omnia solus habes, ‘one, thou hast all’, 31)—it is thus the new metaphorical homeland of enlightened humankind. As we have seen, the privileged approach to the reality of things as provided by the transparent waters of the Moselle implies a whole process of gradual awakening or ‘illumination’, a kind of mystical revelation only available for ‘initiates’.28 The passage from darkness to light—from a Vergilian hell of blindness to a mystical heaven of pure vision—as enacted in this calculated exordium seems to be deliberately modelled on Plato’s celebrated myth of the Cave (Resp. 7.514a-521b), a text enthusiastically vindicated by late antique Neo-Platonism.29 It is no coincidence that in both Plato’s myth and Vergil’s account of Aeneas’ katabasis the initiation trip takes place inside a cave,30 while in opposite directions. Despite the differences, the result is the very much same: a final revelation in the realm of light and knowledge.

2. Ausonius’ Unmediated Encounter with Nature As already pointed out, it was the unexpected sight of the River Moselle, Ausonius’ own private Lethe, that provided him with a superior/expanded apprehension of the surrounding world, so far invisible to his eyes. The poet repeatedly stresses the autoptical nature of this experience, which is consistently represented as primarily personal: ‘I myself have seen’ (uidi egomet, 270; uidi ego, 341). Even Ausonius’ name is explicitly mentioned in the poem’s epilogue31, which contributes in no small measure to the almost intimate flavour characterising the whole composition. In fact, one of the most outstanding features of the way in which Ausonius depicts his face-to-face encounter with the Moselle (the third and last stage of his initiation journey, running from line 23 onwards) is undoubtedly its almost ‘dialogic’ character, as expressed by his extensive use of the first and the second person. The presence of these two communicative entities is obsessively underlined throughout the poem—an ubiquitous You (salue amnis, 23; omnia solus habes, 31; tu, 33; habes, 37; tu, 39; ipse tuos…miraris…putas, 43f.; tu, 45; i nunc, 48; te…te…te…te…te…te…te, 477-83; etc.) facing a very

28. For the complex notions of mystae and initiation in Ausonius’ works, see Hernández Lobato (2007). 29. Although it would be a difficult task to trace Plato’s exact level of presence in Ausonius’ works, we can resort to some serious studies on the outstanding role of Pythagoreanism in his poetry: for the Moselle see esp. Dräger (2000). It is not necessary to recall here the broad connections of Pythagoreanism with the revival of Neo-Platonic schools throughout late antiquity, and their insistence on the idea of a gradual quasi-mystical illumination. 30. According to Verg. Aen. 6.255-67, Aeneas entered the underworld through the cave of the Sibyl, in Cumae. 31. See 438-40: haec ego, Viuisca ducens ab origine gentem, / Belgarum hospitiis non per noua foedera notus, / Ausonius, nomen Latium,…(‘Such is the theme I compass—I, who am sprung of Viviscan stock, yet by old ties of guestship no stranger to the Belgae; I, Ausonius, Roman in name …’). For more on this epilogue see section 5.2 below.

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powerful Ego (ast ego, 50; hic ego, 170; uidi ego, 341; uerum ego, 389; haec ego, 438; etc.). Such an unexpected profusion of subject pronouns, extremely rare in a pro-drop language like Latin, goes beyond any imaginable literary convention32 and shows very clearly Ausonius’ interest in bestowing a peculiar ‘statut communicatif’ on his poem. Borrowing the insightful classification of the Russian semiologist Yuri Levin,33 we can say that we are dealing with an ‘égotique-appellatif’ text, i.e., a text in which the poetical me and you are explicitly (and even lavishly) represented. According to this, we can say that we are witnesses to a real initiatic dialogue—that is, a direct communication, without any intermediary entity— between the poet (me) and the river (you).34 But how should this textual evidence be understood? Literarily speaking, such a non-mediated encounter with the Moselle—explicitly depicted as an enlightening experience—is primarily to be seen in what, according to Jacques Fontaine, can be considered the predominant genre of the piece: the hymn, a time-honoured form of literature with undisguised religious connotations.35 In fact, Ausonius constantly addresses the river as a sacred and numinous entity, most particularly in the poem’s epilogue: fas mihi sacrum / perstrinxisse amnem tenui libamine Musae (‘be it no sin for me to have touched lightly on thy holy stream with the poor offering my Muse affords’, 443f.).36 There is no need to go any deeper into the many ‘affinités liturgiques’37 of the poem, pretty apparent to any sensitive reader. In a broader historic and cultural context, this ‘unmediatedness’ can be considered a genuine expression of a new late antique episteme,38 whose remote origins date back to the early Imperial period. Traina already detected in Seneca’s style the first traces of a novel cultural situation—that of the ancient man feeling for the first time in front of the cosmos without any external mediation.39 Sure enough, classical man felt that there was a supreme hierarchical order in the world and—by extension—in the word, its alleged verbal ‘reflection’. His relationship with outer instances was entirely

32. At a rhetorical level, this can be seen as an extended embrace of hymnic Du-Stil, as discussed at length below. 33. Lévine (1976). 34. Following Lévine (1976), one might also mention the contrast between a ‘proper’ ego (identifiable with Ausonius himself) and an ‘improper’ you, that is to say, a communicational addressee (the river) unable to receive the message of the poetical ego. Obviously, an implicit prosopopeia is here at work. 35. See Fontaine (1977), 439: ‘Le poème d’Ausone est aussi…un hymne à la Moselle, comme nous en assure la triple récurrence, dans ce poème, du schéma hymnique aussi commun aux hymnes horatiennes et virgiliennes qu’au Te Deum: celui des longues anaphores laudatives de la divinité invoquée par le pronom personnel de la seconde personne, employé à différents cas.’ In this regard, the Mosella seems to be quite close to the first part of Rutilius Namatianus’ De Reditu, the well-known hymn to Rome (Rut. Namat. 1.47-164). 36. For more on this epilogue see section 5.2 below. 37. Fontaine (1977), 450. 38. On the notion of episteme see Foucault (1966). 39. See Traina (1974), 25-27. On Seneca’s concept of selfhood and imperial aesthetics see Bartsch and Wray (2009).

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filtered by an active participation in public life through the republican political apparatus and its profoundly hierarchical system (as expressed in its perfectly graduated cursus honorum). When a new imperial system deleted the sociopolitical dimension of man, erasing the individual’s possibility of getting involved in public business, the intermediation of society was no longer real, and therefore—for the first time in the ancient world—the individual and the cosmos met each other face to face. ‘La realtà politica passa in secondo piano,’ explains Traina,40 ‘e individuo e cosmo si trovano di fronte…. Il contraccolpo stilistico di questo mutamento di valori è una prosa esasperata e irrelata che ha tanti centri e tante pause quante sono le frasi’.41 The cultural change described by Traina becomes much more noticeable and extreme in late antiquity. Ausonius’ generation had seen how the pagan deities, ultimate guarantors of the validity of the classical world order, had been overthrown by the newcomer Christian God, accepted by many fourth-century intellectuals rather as an imposition of the Roman administration than as a personal belief. In this context, the poet’s unmediated contact with the River Moselle without any ‘diaframma fra di essi e la natura’42 has to be ultimately understood as a manifestation of the widespread crisis of language and representation which characterised late antique culture as a whole, thus giving birth to what I have proposed calling a ‘poetics of silence’.43 This collective distrust of language as a valid means to convey and grasp reality resulted in an unprecedented flowering of all kind of mystical trends (from pagan Neo-Platonism to Christian apophatic theology), basically aimed at attaining to a non-discursive knowledge of the ultimate essence of things by means of a direct non-mediated contemplation.44 It is precisely in this breeding ground that a work like Ausonius’ Mosella should be culturally contextualised and understood. Speaking of a ‘direct’ reunion between individual and nature does not mean at all that the resulting poem should be entirely exempt from all literary, rhetorical or cultural mediation, as though we could ever deal with a piece of true ‘natural’ poetry. Nothing could be farther from the way in which art really works than

40. Traina (1974), 26. 41. Traina (1974), 25-27, contrasts this ‘broken’ style, whose ‘cellula stilistica’ is to be found in the single sentence, with the classical concept of a well-balanced coherent subordination of the parts to the Whole. I would venture to add that this process of aesthetic dismemberment goes further in Ausonius’ time, to such an extent that the single word becomes the only valid unity of literary composition. For more on this unstoppable process of ‘aesthetic atomisation’ see Hernández Lobato (2012), 318401 (esp. 381-83) and Gualandri (2017). 42. Castorina (1967), 68. 43. Hernández Lobato (2017). 44. Cf. e.g. Hadot (1993), 41, on Plotinus’ critique of human reflection: ‘The simplicity of life escapes the grasp of reflection. Human consciousness, living, as it does, split in two, and occupied by calculations and projects, believes that nothing can be found until it has been searched for.… Everywhere it acts, consciousness introduces something intermediate. Life, by contrast, which…is immediate and simple, is incapable of being grasped by reflection. In order to reach it, just as in order to reach our pure self, we shall have to abandon reflection for contemplation.’ On Ausonius’ own critique of human reflection see section 5.2 below.

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those ‘pseudo-romantic’ myths—authenticity, creation ex nihilo, originality, etc. It was perhaps a real mystical experience of a direct unmediated contact with the Divinity that inspired Saint John of the Cross to compose some of his best poems; but what is certain is that they are a highly culturalised product full of intertextual recalls and modelled on the rhetorical precedent of the Song of Songs.45 The same could be said of Ausonius’ Mosella: after all, we are dealing with a complex hyper-culturalised poem aimed at facing all previous literature—both Greek and Latin—through a continuous intertextual dialogue, with an unusual mixture of tones and genres46 and a political spirit transcending any automatic reading. Ternes has shown indeed how far is Ausonius’ literary attitude towards nature from a simple realistic description.47 Nature appears by no means ‘natural’ or unbiased48—in fact, as we shall see in section 4 below, it is rather depicted as a highly culturalised entity, a real imago Imperii. Late antique literature always claims to be made of literature, and Ausonius can be considered a pioneer in such a self-conscious metaliterary ironical trend. But what he is depicting in this poem through all these sophisticated rhetorical devices is nonetheless a ‘revelation’, by definition a non-mediated experience. Ausonius himself sums up his poetical procedure as a transformation of a previous visual experience—in this case a revelation—to the nonsense of words: mirandi stuporem transtuli ad ineptiam poetandi (‘I translated my amazed admiration [sc. produced by the vision of a picture] into insipid versification’, Auson. Cup. pref.). The question now is: what did Ausonius actually see in this face-toface encounter with the river?

3. Ausonius’ Autoptical Revelation: The Exhaustion of Gaze The Mosella is in many senses a poem about vision. Fontaine has felicitously described it as a ‘kaléidoscope de “visions”’,49 a sudden bombardment of visual stimuli able to exhaust the poet’s gaze.50 This multisensory experience, ultimately triggered by a direct contact with nature, is vividly expressed by the poem’s lexicon: its careful selection, its sensory—and even sensuous51— connotations (particularly visual and chromatic), its extreme density and its combination within synaesthetic formulae point to an expanded perception of reality, 45. Cf. Hadot (1993), 55: ‘Plotinus used Plato like Christian mystics used the Song of Songs. Like the latter, Plato’s Symposium became the subject of allegorical interpretation, in which the vocabulary of carnal love was used to express a mystical experience.’ 46. For an approach to the mixture of tones and genres inside the Moselle see Fontaine (1977) and Scafoglio (1999). 47. See Ternes (1970). 48. Further discussion on the possibly misunderstood topic of nature vs. artifice can be found in Roberts (1984) and especially in Newlands (1988). 49. Fontaine (1977), 443. 50. See 75f., discussed p.244 below. 51. On the subtle eroticism underlying this passage see Taylor (2009), 186f.

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bringing about a deeper insight into its secret underlying nature—what might be simply called a revelation. Let us consider the ecstasy of this wordless epiphany —the passage in which the poet, having passed though the many toils and uncertainties of the initiation journey described in section 1 above, enjoys for the first time a face-to-face encounter with the river (23-81). It is in that very moment that Ausonius finally penetrates the secrets hidden under the Moselle’s transparent waters, suddenly disclosed to his once blind gaze. The poet manages to evoke the exhausting rapture of his senses over the overwhelming spectacle of nature —always made of an unutterable plethora of separate stimuli—by laying out a real lexical flood, as organised in the following schema: Overwhelming Sensory Universe Terms related to sight and concealment

occulti (34), miraris (43), praetexeris (45), mirabor (51), spectaris (55), secreti nihil (56), aperto intuitu (56f.), panditur (57), liquidis obtutibus (57), oculos (58), per inania (58); uisu (59), cernimus (60), patet (60), arcani profundi (60), prodit (62), lucetque latetque (66), nudat (69), detegit (74), intentos oculos (75)

Visual and chromatic terms

baccho (colour) (25), iuga uitea (indirect chromatic characterisation) (26), gramineas ripas (26), uiridissime (26), uitreo (28), limigenis uluis (45), inmundo caeno (chromatic evocation) (46), uitreo profundo (55), liquidarum aquarum (61), caerulea luce (62), gramina (64), uiridi fundo (64), agitatae herbae (65), calculus et glarea (67), uiridem muscum (67), uirides algas (69), rubra corallia (69), albentes bacas (70), non concolor herba (74), pisces (76)

Fine Arts metaphors

imitate (28), aequiperare (29), Phrygiis crustis (48), sola leuia (48), marmoreum campum (49), laqueata per atria (49), opus (51), uestigia pressa (54), figuras (54), dispersas figuras (62), pictura (68), assimulant (72), nostros cultus (72), imitata monilia (72)

Non-visual senses or sensations

odorifero baccho (taste and smell) (25), trepido (29), gelidos (30), potu (30), murmura uenti (33), spirante (35), segnius (44), piger (46), sicca (47), humentia (53), leuia terga (touch) (55), aer (57), placidi uenti (58), tremunt (64), uibrantes (66), lubrica (76)

This brief outline in the form of related semantic fields will be enough to demonstrate Ausonius’ aesthetic concern for the visual and plastic character of his

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poetry.52 The Mosella could indeed be described as a poem about vision and— metaphorically—about knowledge: uidi ego (‘I myself have seen’, 341) proudly declares Ausonius with regard to this enlightening autoptical experience. Let us consider now, at least briefly, the way in which these terms are significantly interwoven inside the poetic construct. The words he uses do rarely have a chromatic sense by themselves, but they acquire it either by taking part of a visually connoted context (tu neque limigenis ripam praetexeris uluis, ‘thou with no mud-grown sedge fringest thy banks’, 45) or by joining other terms specifically referring to colours or shades (lucetque latetque / calculus et uiridem distinguit glarea muscum, ‘pebbles gleam and are hid, and gravel picks out patches of green moss’, 66f.). The usage of common words chromatically resemanticised as little colour brushstrokes must have been inherited mostly from Vergil’s Eclogues, a constant source of intertextual borrowings and conscious recalls throughout the poem. In fact, line 45 echoes a passage of this very work—hic uiridis tenera praetexit harundine ripas / Mincius (‘here [the river] Mincius fringes his verdant banks with tender reeds’, Verg. Ecl. 7.12f.)53—by stretching the already mentioned rhetorical resources to the limit: Ausonius dares indeed to delete every trace of chromatic terms, letting the implicit reader imagine by himself the alternating picture of green and sienna shades, whose rhythmical interval is vividly evoked by the subtle strategy of word order: limigenis ripam praetexeris uluis, ‘thou with no mudgrown sedge fringest thy banks’ = sienna (limigenis) + green (ripam) + sienna (uluis). The permanence of Vergil’s elided uiridis (sc. ripas) in the reader’s mind guarantees the effectiveness of such an audacious colour depiction in absentia. As for the other instance cited above (lucetque latetque / calculus et uiridem distinguit glarea muscum, ‘pebbles gleam and are hid, and gravel picks out patches of green moss’, 66f.), it must be considered one of those rare non-intertextual displays of Ausonius’ poetic skills. Let us set aside for the moment the alliterative polysyndetic oxymoron lucetque latetque (‘gleam and are hid’) in line 66, with which I shall deal later. Suffice it to remark in this context that the strong opposition of these two phonetically similar verbs within such a short phrase suggests a rhythmical alternation between light and shadow—in other words: chromatism. In line 67 we recognise one of the most felicitous examples of Ausonius’ impressionistic brushstrokes: the adjective uiridis (‘green’) leads us to a chromatic reading of the originally non-chromatic nouns calculus (‘pebbles’), glarea (‘gravel’) and muscum (‘moss’), following the poetic technique described above. Ausonius creates a real mosaic in the river bed by putting together the infinite range of colours of the water pebbles on the green background of the bottom. What is more significant, he is able to 52. On the visuality inherent in late antique literature see Roberts (2010), esp. 66-121, and Hernández Lobato (2012), 470-518. 53. My translation.

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paint such a gorgeous image by means of three simple rhetorical devices: in the first place, the alternating arrangement of the four chromatically connoted terms in a single line, carefully separating the semantically related couples (calculusglarea, ‘pebbles-gravel’, as many-coloured tesserae; uiridem-muscum, ‘greenmoss’, as a monochromatic mossy background); then, the semantic value of the verb itself (distinguit, ‘picks out, distinguishes’); last, the retinal permanence of the Phrygiae crustae (‘Phrygian slabs’) from line 48. Ausonius is frequently quite audacious in elaborating those verbal pictures from intertextual sources, mostly by an extensive use of unexpected hypallages or surprising metaphors. Thus, resorting to well-known Vergilian material (Verg. G. 3.144: uiridissima gramine ripa, ‘where the banks are greenest with grass’), Ausonius manages to depict the reflection of the green banks on the water surface, by twisting the base text with an eloquent hypallage: consite gramineas, amnis uiridissime, ripas (‘o’ergrown, river most verdant, thy banks with turf’, 26). The colour adjective that should agree with ripas (‘banks’) according to the Vergilian model is now transferred to the syntagma of amnis (‘river’), which clearly works as a formal expression of an entirely visual content: the reproduction on the water surface of the chromatic qualities of the riversides as a result of their reflection. Once again we are driven to detect a highly iconic value in the word order. It does not appear to be a coincidence that the nominal group of the river is embraced by that of its banks (gramineas, amnis uiridissime, ripas) and is metrically announced by the penthemimeral caesura, a clear boundary between the outer and the inner (or reflected) world. As already mentioned, the seductive and almost inebriating goal of such a sensuous vocabulary makes especially suitable resources like synaesthesia, broadly promoted by Vergil in his Eclogues, and frequently based on connotative values of the terms. Line 25 (amnis odorifero iuga uitea consite Baccho, ‘river, whose hills are o’ergrown with Bacchus’ fragrant vines’) can be regarded as a perfect sample of that poetic procedure: amnis (coolness, humidity, tactile sensations) odorifero (scent, aroma) iuga (roughness of the arable land, sienna, ground elevation) uitea (greenness) consite (image of dissemination, dispersal) Baccho (burgundy shade, bouquet, taste). Note also the accusatiuus Graecus in iuga uitea, a clear symptom of Ausonius’ contrived style and of the—often ironic— epic resonance of the piece.54 Also metaphors are frequently used to lend more plasticity to the descriptions. And one of Ausonius’ favourite metaphorical fields is—as listed above—that of Fine Arts. He considers the world before his eyes a naturae opus (‘handiwork of Nature’, 51) or a pictura (‘picture’, 68). The artistic lexis allows him to give form to the dichotomy between nature and artifice, which, according to Michael Roberts, constitutes a real leitmotiv in this poem.55 This conceptual opposition,

54. On the ironic and mock-epic qualities of the poem cf. e.g. Hernández Lobato (2012), 391-94. 55. See Roberts (1984).

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as eloquently expressed by the stunning oxymoron marmoreum…campum (‘an expanse [literally ‘field’] of marble’, 49), seems to be eventually resolved in favour of nature: thus is at least suggested by Ausonius’ explicit statement in lines 50f. (ast ego despectis quae census opesque dederunt / naturae mirabor opus, ‘but I, scorning what wealth and riches have bestowed, will marvel at Nature’s handiwork’), as well as in several other passages—the episode of fishing (240-82), the description of the riverside villas (283-348), etc. Nevertheless, that alleged ‘superiority’ of nature—as radically defended by Newlands56—should be seriously reconsidered, provided that the Moselle works to some extent as a highly culturalised entity foreshadowing Rome, as I shall explain in the following section. It is not nature tout court that must be considered superior, but the Moselle River, both as a metaphor of Rome and as an enlightening principle for initiands. That superiority of the Moselle over both natural57 and artificial realities— whatever the river itself is taken to mean—is precisely expressed by means of artistic lexis. The river, for instance, is often depicted in terms of an artist imitating —and superseding—not only nature (lacus imitate…riuos…potis aequiperare… fontes praecellere, ‘imitator of lakes…able to match brooks in flow…and to surpass springs’, 28-30) but also human artistry (assimulant nostros imitata monilia cultus, ‘mimic necklaces counterfeit our fashions’, 72). With this implicit comparison Ausonius seems to be bringing back for his own purposes the old Aristotelian concept of mimesis, considerably enriched by the fitting connotations of water reflection.58 There is no need to say our all-embracing river always wins the battle: omnia solus habes (‘one, thou hast all’, 31). Its many-coloured palette surpasses by far that of the artist—at least, that is what the singular chromatic enumeration in lines 69f. seems to be proudly proclaiming (uirides algas et rubra corallia…et albentes…bacas, ‘green seaweed and red coral and whitening pearls’). Not even the grass on the bottom of the river can remain monochromatic (non concolor, ‘of different hue’, 74). This swift bombardment of painfully sharp close-ups, brought about by an unmediated perception of nature’s synaesthetical spectacle, has the undesired effect of overwhelming the poet’s senses, suddenly intoxicated with a joyful fatigue: intentos tamen usque oculos errore fatigant / interludentes, examina lubrica, pisces (‘though fixed upon the depths, the eyes grow weary with straying after fishes who in slippery shoals sport midway between’, 75f.).59 A similar, though much more sombre, statement can be found in the fifth-century poet Rutilius Namatianus, who, echoing this very passage, faces the flimsiness of the then menaced Roman world with an 56. See Newlands (1988). 57. Cf. e.g. 31f.: omnia solus habes, quae fons, quae riuus et amnis / et lacus et biuio refluus manamine pontus (‘alone thou hast all that belongs to springs, brooks, rivers, lakes, and tidal Ocean with his ebb and flow’). 58. On the role of reflection within the metaphoric fabric of the poem, see section 5.2 below. 59. The expression seems to be modelled on Stat. Theb. 5.437: ambiguo uisus errore lacessunt (‘[the twin sons of Oebalus] bewilder our vision with ambiguous error’).

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exhausted gaze: defessis oculis (‘straining eyes’, Rut. Namat. 1.434).60 If, according to my interpretation, the Mosella should be defined as a poem about vision, Rutilius Namatianus’ De Reditu is basically ‘a poem about blindness’, as I have proposed elsewhere.61 Thus, the apparent coincidence of both late antique masterpieces in the metaphor of an exhausted gaze only confirms the enormous differences which separate them. But that is another question. 4. omnia solus habes: The World in a River’s Disguise In order to grasp the depth of the philosophical and literary stance underlying Ausonius’ Mosella, we should begin by considering some of the richest metaphorical implications of the subject of the river, simultaneously conceived as imago Imperii (i.e., in its political dimension) and as speculum mundi (i.e., in its epistemological one, generally neglected by scholars). The political dimension of the poem has been long discussed in the last decades, reaching sometimes conclusions that may seem quite contradictory. A good synthesis of such a burning question can be found in René Martin’s 1985 article, whose well-founded point of view I gladly assume—at least partially— in the next lines. To sum it up, Martin states that there is no convincing reason to deny the obvious political implications of the piece, although they could well be quite different from those traditionally proposed by Ternes in the slipstream of Marx.62 Ternes tended to look at this poem as a direct and highly censored propagandistic carmen commendaticium aimed at promoting the Romanisation of the right side of the Rhine according to a hypothetical goal of Valentinian’s agenda. Martin, on the contrary, suggests that the strong and unquestionable political implications of the piece seem to fit much better Ausonius’ own point of view regarding the Empire and its coming challenges—as they were about to be faced up to by his pupil Gratianus, under the poet’s direct inspiration.63 Nowadays there is no reasonable doubt about the political spirit of the poem, whatever its real extent and its exact proposals may have been.64 The Moselle was after all the river that bathed the walls of Trier, at that time capital of the Western world and permanent residence of the Emperor, a fact that would be enough by itself to prevent it from lacking political connotations.

60. The possible intertextual relation between those two analogous expressions was first suggested by Castorina (1967), 68 and 208, whose edition of Namatianus’ De Reditu I follow. Cf. also Stat. Silu. 1.1.87f.: uix lumine fesso / explores quam longus… (‘your straining sight could scarcely discover how far…’). On Ausonius’ general presence in Namatianus’ work see Guttilla (1994-1995) and the old edition of Vessereau (1904), 400f. Translations from De Reditu are taken from Duff (1934). 61. Hernández Lobato (2017), 304f. 62. See Marx (1931) and Ternes (1970). 63. Martin (1985), 244-49. 64. Even Green (1991), 457, reluctantly admits that ‘it is highly possible that the poem was written with the emperor’s encouragement’.

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These considerations lead us to a first and extremely relevant assumption: that the Moselle in Ausonius’ work foreshadows the Empire itself and, as a logical extension, the whole of classical civilisation. Martin would probably agree with this assertion, since he himself points out that ‘de cette œuvre l’un des thèmes récurrents, le plus constant et le plus important peut-être, est que le pays trévire est en quelque sorte tout à la fois une Italie en miniature et une véritable synthèse du monde gréco-romain’.65 Martin’s paper lavishly proves and justifies this statement by bringing forth a plethora of textual instances taken from the poem.66 One more could be added to his list, hopefully not less convincing: the eloquent expression omnia solus habes (‘one, thou hast all’, Auson. Mos. 31)67 by which the Moselle is praised above all as a sum of the individual virtues of the fountain (fons), the stream (riuus), the river (amnis), the lake (lacus) and the ocean (pontus), that is to say, as a compendium of every comparable reality. This expression clearly echoes the almost identical68 omnia solus habens atque omnia dilargitus (‘alone holding all though he has all distributed’) that Ausonius himself had dedicated not so long ago69 to the emperor Valentinian I in his Versus Paschales (Auson. Vers. pasch. 4.28 Green [1991]). As is well known, that piece enacts a praise to the three members of the reigning house (Valentinian, his brother Valens and his son Gratianus) by means of an audacious comparison with the three persons of the Holy Trinity, foreshadowed on earth by this majestic dynasty. Valentinian, by sharing his all-embracing power with his brother and his son (omnia dilargitus, ‘he has all distributed’), does not divide his own might but increases it, achieving a real unity able to grasp the whole Empire in its natural diversity (omnia solus habens, ‘alone holding all’).70 From this perspective it seems quite evident that the parallel expression omnia solus habes now addressed to the river tinges its waters with a clear political meaning: the Moselle can be seen in this sense as a powerful metaphor of Rome and its Government throughout the world as embodied in the person of the 65. Martin (1985), 249. 66. See esp. Martin (1985), 249-53. 67. Its textual source seems to be the openly humorous Mart. Epigr. 3.26.5: omnia solus habes— hoc me puta nolle negare (‘you alone have it all—suppose I don’t demur’). However, there is no indication of a real intertextual play with the base text. 68. Note the strict metrical parallelism between both verses, another sign of their intratextual connection. 69. I take the year 371 as the most widely accepted date of composition of the Mosella (Green [1991], 456), although the question is still under discussion (see Sivan [1990] and Drinkwater [1999]). As for the Versus Paschales, I follow Charlet (1984), whose paper sums up the different dating hypotheses and sets the Easter (and more specifically the Easter Saturday) of 368 as the most probable date for the public recitation of these verses. It was probably then that Ausonius composed too his Griphus ternarii numeri, to which I shall soon refer. Anyway, not even the maximum spectrum of dating hypotheses (less than a decade) affects the essential point of this paper. 70. Cf. also Auson. Griph. 89 (tris numerus super omnia tris deus unus, ‘the number three is above all, Three Persons and one God’) and 39 (omnia solus, ‘alone all things’), where the expression reappears—at least partially. For the hidden political implications of Ausonius’ obscure Griphus ternarii numeri and its close connection both with the Versus Paschales and with Valentinian’s reigning house see Hernández Lobato (2007).

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Emperor(s). As a symbol of a whole new way of understanding reality, the Moselle can put together the vast diversity of everything existing and reunite it under a deeper unifying power. Just like Rome, it contains everything, it makes all one. A clear semantic parallel can be found at the very beginning of Rutilius Namatianus’ De Reditu, the so-called Romae laus or praise of Rome: fecisti patriam diuersis gentibus unam (‘you have made a single fatherland out of various nations’, 1.63).71 This text shares with Ausonius’ work a clear hymnic tone72 which reinforces my vision of the poem as symbolic praise of the Empire in its new geographical and psychological context.73 But unlike Namatianus’ pessimistic centralism (always attached to the materiality of the wounded urbs aeterna), Ausonius does not seem to perceive any symptom of a tragic blurring of Rome under that eloquent transfer of power to Trier, at the very heart of the barbarian world. On the contrary, he optimistically celebrates this new translatio Imperii as a sign of the survival and definitive universalisation of Rome’s civilising power. The underlying idea is always the same: Rome—hidden in Ausonius’ text under the appearance of a river—reunites under the same power the whole diversity of the world and thus it can be seen as a speculum mundi or as a way of depicting reality. In a more abstract approach to this unifying character of the Empire in a river’s disguise, the Moselle can be taken as an eloquent image of a particular way of looking at reality, in fact, the only way in which reality could be grasped in late antiquity. Thus, according to my symbolic interpretation, knowledge and politics can be joined together under the same image: the river. The Mosella is a political poem too in its continuous allusive play with the political poem par excellence, Vergil’s Aeneid and the whole corpus of Vergilian poetry, particularly his Georgics. Vergil is indeed one of the most frequent intertextual sources throughout the poem,74 a constant point of reference (either for agreement or rejection) in the construction of the new political ethos, whether it be considered the expression of Valentinian’s actual programme or of Ausonius’ wishful thinking. As he himself clearly suggests, Ausonius is meant to be for the Moselle (i.e., the late antique West) the poetical equivalent of Vergil for the Tiber (i.e., the Augustan Empire).75 In fact, in his second and definitive 71. The same idea is also present in other verses of the hymn to Rome that opens Namatianus’ De Reditu and, more subtly, in the poem as a whole. Cf. e.g. 1.66 (urbem fecisti quod prius orbis erat, ‘thou hast made a city of what was erstwhile a world’) and 1.78 (foedere communi uiuere cuncta facis, ‘dost make all things live under a common covenant’). See also 1.57f. (uoluitur ipse tibi [sc. Romae], qui continet omnia, Phoebus / eque tuis ortos in tua condit equos, ‘for thee the very Sun-God who holdeth all together doth revolve: his steeds that rise in thy domains he puts in thy domains to rest’), in which an all-embracing Sun chariot is said not to be able to cover any territory outside the Roman power ‘proprio perché, come Roma, Phoebus continet omnia’ (Castorina [1967], 148). 72. On the Mosella as a hymn see Fontaine (1977), 438f., and section 2 above. 73. Thus Roberts (1984), following Symmachus’ well-known assertion (Symm. Epist. 1.14 Seeck). 74. See e.g. Görler (1969) and Ternes (1992). 75. See Mos. 374-77: quod si tibi, dia Mosella, / Smyrna suum uatem uel Mantua clara dedisset, / cederet Iliacis Simois memoratus in oris, / nec praeferre suos auderet Thybris honores (‘but if to thee, O divine Moselle, Smyrna or famed Mantua had given its own poet, then would Simois, renowned on

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salutatio to the river (Mos. 381) he appropriates the famous initial verses of Vergil’s laus Italiae (Verg. G. 2.173f.): salue, magna parens frugum, Saturnia tellus, / magna uirum (‘hail, land of Saturn, mighty mother of earth’s fruits, mighty mother of men’). This intertextual dialogue confirms the equivalence between the Moselle and the Roman world in its entirety that had been subtly traced throughout the poem: salue, magne parens frugumque uirumque Mosella (‘hail, mighty mother both of fruits and men, o Moselle’, Mos. 381). As Alvar Ezquerra points out in relation to this very passage, ‘si el Lacio fue grande por lo que tuvo y porque hubo un gran poeta que lo cantó, también el Mosela tiene un poeta que lo ensalza con palabras pariguales’.76 Moreover, it does not seem to be sheer coincidence that Symmachus, in his well known letter to Ausonius complaining that he has not been sent a copy of his already worldwide spread Mosella (Symm. Epist. 1.14), dares openly to compare Ausonius’ implicitly imperial river with the Tiber itself,77 thus equating Vergil’s Aeneid with Ausonius’ work (ego hoc tuum carmen libris Maronis adiungo). Such authoritative reception of the political and symbolic meaning of Ausonius’ poem seems to confirm the dialogic contrast between those two ways of understanding an imperial ‘epic’, and, to use a Bloomian term,78 Ausonius’ real anxiety of influence towards his Vergilian forebear. But there is still an essential detail in that symbolic construction which has been generally overlooked by scholars: in a time when epic tout court was no longer a practicable genre Ausonius dares to enact a kind of post-Aeneid representing the most powerful empire worldwide under the unexpected image of a river. Rome in a river’s disguise is not precisely what one would call an automatic metaphorical link. The river had already a long literary tradition in Ausonius’ times as an image of the ever-changing, the fleetingness, the ungraspable, the slippery Heraclitean flowing of the always unstable reality. By no means could it be considered the

Ilium’s coasts, yield place, and Tiber would not dare to set his glories above thine’). Perhaps the inclusion of Homer should be considered an attempt to underline what Martin (1985), 250, would call the ‘caractère gréco-romain de la région mosellane’ and not only a rhetorical demand of the topos of hyperbolic comparisons. In this sense, cf. also the presence of Greek mythological beings flowing in the river waters, such as Nymphs or Nereids, as indicated by Martin (1985), 249. The Moselle is thus representing a whole civilisation, a way of gazing at reality and not only a precise political entity. 76. Alvar Ezquerra (1990), ii.109 n.218. For this play of identification between Ausonius and Vergil see esp. Ternes (1992). 77. noui ego istum fluuium, cum aeternorum principum iam pridem signa comitarer, parem multis, imparem maximis: hunc tu mihi inprouiso clarorum uersuum dignitate Aegyptio Melone maiorem, frigidiorem Scythico Tanai clarioremque hoc nostro populari [sc. Tiberi] reddidisti (‘I know that river from of old when I was on the staff of the immortal Emperors: ’tis a match for many though no match for the greatest. And yet your noble and stately verse has upset my preconceptions and made this stream for me greater than the Nile of Egypt, cooler than the Don of Scythia, and more famous than this Tiber we all know so well’, tr. Evelyn White). Note how, according to Symmachus, it is precisely Ausonius who has conferred such a great importance on a quite ordinary river (parem multis, imparem maximis), making it capable of preceding the Tiber in dignity (clarior) and, therefore, of being superior to any other river in the world (Nile etc.). The result of this power subversion is obvious: it is the Moselle—no longer the Tiber—that must be now considered the real imago Imperii, the symbol of Roman potestas on earth. 78. See Bloom (1975).

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ideal image to praise the intended stability and solidity of the Roman Empire and it could hardly fit a real imperial propaganda programme. These characteristics of the river are precisely the ones Ausonius underlines throughout his poem. As Carole Newlands points out, Ausonius challenges the ‘static picture’ of reflection traced by his model Statius and ‘emphasises the movement of the water’ with a rosary of specular images always ‘full of natural life’.79 With his surprising choice of the image of a river and with his constant emphasis on its eternal movement and flimsiness, Ausonius seems to be problematising the identity of Rome as the highest ever ‘meta-narrative of legitimation’ (as the postmodern philosopher Jean-François Lyotard would call it).80 The river actually functions as a questioning imago Imperii, a metaphor of late antique Rome—changing, unsure but not deprived of certain optimism. At the same time, in its capacity of containing all that exists (omnia solus habes, 31), it will allow us to reach some interesting conclusions of how reality as a whole was perceived in the late western world, thus gaining a privileged access to that time’s underlying episteme.

5. The River as Epistemological Metaphor: Knowledge and Language in Ausonius’ Poetics The image of the river (or the fountain) as a vehicle of knowledge has a centuries-old tradition, both in Latin and Greek literature. It is found, for instance, in Callimachus’ Hymns 5 and 681 and its presence is still attested well into the late Byzantine era.82 This metaphorical association between water and wisdom did not diminish but was even strengthened with the arrival of Christianity, a key element in the forging of late antique culture.83 Much in the same vein, that time’s flowering Neo-Platonism made an extensive use of the image of the river both for philosophical and exegetical purposes.84 Plotinus himself uses 79. Newlands (1988), 405f. 80. See Lyotard (1979). 81. See Heyworth (2004). 82. See e.g. the following text (Chronographia 6.42-43) by the eleventh-century historian Michael Psellus (1018-1078): ἀλλ’ ὅτι μὴ ἐϰ ῥεούσης πηγῆς εἴ τί μοι σοϕίας μέρος συνείλεϰται ἠρανισάμην, ἀλλ’ ἐμπεϕραγμένας εὑρηϰὼς ἀνεστόμωσά τε ϰαὶ ἀνεϰάθηρα, ϰαὶ ἐν βάθει που τὸ νᾶμα ϰείμενον σὺν πολλῷ ἀνείλϰυσα πνεύματι.…[sc. ἐγώ] ὅθεν μὴ αὐτοῖς δὴ τοῖς ζῶσι νάμασιν ἐντυχεῖν ἔχων, ταῖς εἰϰόσιν ἐϰείνων προσεσχηϰὼς, εἴδωλα ἄττα ϰαὶ αὐτὰ δεύτερα τῇ ἐμῇ συνεσπασάμην ψυχῇ (‘I drew my small measure of wisdom from no living fount: the sources I discovered were choked up, and I had to open and cleanse them myself. Their waters, too, were hidden in the depths and only brought to the surface after I had expended much energy…. So, since I was unable to reach the living sources themselves, I perforce studied their images. These second-hand imitations I greedily devoured in my mind’). The translation is taken from Sewter (1953). 83. Cf. e.g. John of Damascus’ Fountain of Knowledge (Πηγὴ τῆς γνώσεως) or Clement of Alexandria’s famous quotation (Stromateis 1.5.28): ‘There is but one river of truth, but many streams pour into it from this side and from that.’ For the wide range of metaphors depicting words as water (or even as snow) in the works of Ambrose and other Christian writers (drawing on Homer) see Gualandri (1999). 84. See e.g. Macrob. In Somn. 2.16.23f. (tr. Stahl [1990], 243): ‘The nearest thing to it [sc. the soul as source of motion] that one will be able to find will be a spring (fons), which is so truly the beginning

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the river as a metaphor for the emanation of the multiple out of the One in Enn. 3.8.10. This Plotinian text implies that man’s only mission is that of swimming upriver to reach the utmost depths of his own soul, i.e., the inexhaustible spring from which the river of reality continuously flows. It is worth mentioning that, like Ausonius’ Moselle, Plotinus’ river is taken to encompass the whole of the existing (omnia solus habes), that is, the kaleidoscopic multiplicity of everyday reality, which, quite paradoxically, makes possible the soul’s ascent to the ultimate revelation: the underlying Oneness of all things. In Ausonius’ poem, the river is famously described according to two outstanding features, quite eloquent if considered from this novel perspective: its transparency (i.e., its capacity of revealing its inner deepness) and its reflectivity (i.e., its ability to reflect the outer world).85 Only careful attention to these two metaphorical modalities of knowledge can lead us to a broader and more nuanced approach to the epistemological status of Ausonius’ poetics. For the first one—the transparency or, in other words, our possibility of accessing an underlying reality—I shall briefly reexamine the passage describing Ausonius’ autoptical revelation (Mos. 23-81). As for the second one—the reflexivity or the way in which that reality can be captured into the narrow frame of its verbal (or non verbal) representation—I shall consider three key texts: Mos. 186-88 (the poet’s plea for speaking), 189-239 (the sailors deluded by their watery reflections)86 and 438-83 (the poem’s epilogue). Thus we shall be able to cover the Foucauldian abyss between words and things (les mots et les choses).87 5.1 Transparency: A Doorway to Reality (les choses) Let us consider again Mos. 23-81 (the peak of Ausonius’ revelation) in search of the poem’s underlying theory of vision/knowledge. The loss of the feeling of stability and hierarchical order in the Universe—followed by a structural crisis of the anthropological model of Classical Antiquity,

of water (principium…aquae) that though it produces rivers and lakes (cum de se fluuios et lacus procreet) it is not said to be born from anything, for if it were it would be not the beginning. Just as the sources are not easy to discover from which pour forth (funduntur) the Nile, the Po, the Danube, and the Don, and as you, in wonder at the vastness of such streams (illorum rapacitatem uidendo admirans) and curious about their beginnings (intra te tantarum aquarum originem requirens), run back in your thoughts to their sources (cogitatione recurris ad fontem) and realize that all this flood originates in little bubbling springs (de primo scaturriginis manare principio), so when you pause to think about the motion of bodies, whether they be divine or earthly, and wish to seek their beginning, let your mind run back to the soul as the source (mens tua ad animam quasi ad fontem recurrat), the motion of which, even without bodily activity, is evidenced by our thoughts, joys, hopes, and fears.’ 85. These two different ways of looking at the river (according to its reflectivity or its transparency) coincide partially with the two mutually inviolable worlds—the ‘super- and subaquaneous realms’—proposed by Roberts (1984), 346-53. Cf. also Taylor (2009), 181-83. 86. Roberts (1984), 347 n.23, already understood the possibilities of an epistemological approach to this passage: ‘While it is true that Ausonius avoids a philosophical digression, we should not underestimate the sophistication of his response to the phenomenon of reflection. Mirrors and reflections, and in general the play of appearance and reality, are a favourite subject of mannerist poetry.’ 87. See Foucault (1966).

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which conceived the virtuous man as a uir bonus dicendi peritus (‘a good man skilled in the art of speaking’),88 thus binding together ethics and eloquence, reality and language—brought about a new way of facing reality. Now the particular prevails over the general, and therefore, the consciousness of the individuality, mutability and perishability of concrete entities (the only ones whose existence is not openly questioned)89 becomes the lens through which the world is observed. Language and conceptual thinking, which necessarily entail generalisation, mediation and absence, are distrusted as effective means to grasp reality, while a new epistemological paradigm emerges with strength: that of wordless contemplation, sharp concreteness, immediate presence and bewildered awe. Ausonius’ felicitous pun lucetque latetque (‘gleam and are hid’, 66) does admirably and very synthetically condense—as expected of a man with his sound rhetorical background—this new way of looking at reality. To this end, he deliberately uses the rhetorical device of oxymoron (bringing to mind the mystics’ coincidentia oppositorum), which brings opposite traces of reality face to face on the same level, in open contradiction with the classical notion of the continuity and stable permanence of being. This astonishing gathering of the opposite, of what is and what is no more, is successfully remarked by a significant alliteration of the sound [l] combined with plosive phonemes. The rhetorical mastery of Ausonius enables him to concentrate such a blurred concept into just a couple of orthographic words (the enclitic -que is never written separately) and to emphasise its meaning with other levelling devices such as isosyllaby, homoeoteleuton and polysyndeton. In this way, he increases the formal and phonetic similarities of both terms (only the vowel-consonant binomial u/a - c/t makes them different) in open contrast with their radical semantic opposition. This real display of eloquence enacts almost visually the underlying sense of a hidden epistemological metaphor: it hints that the most subtle variation in the conditions of a virtually stable reality produces deep changes in its ontological constitution. Therefore, everything that exists must be seen as discontinuous, unseizable and ultimately unutterable; there is no way to represent an ever-changing world, always new and always different, like Heraclitus’ ever-flowing river.90 The meaningful presence in the poem of that border zone within what is now but immediately fades away—namely, the Heraclitean stream of reality—can be clearly recognised in the wording discussed in section 3 and included in the table on p.241 above under the rubric ‘Terms related to sight and concealment’. The recurrent image of the ever-flowing water and the blowing wind91 helps to build up such a strong metaphor of flimsiness and—what is still more significant—of the way in 88. According to Quintilian’s famous formulation (Inst. 12.1.1). 89. Hence the quintessentially late antique ‘problem of the universals’, introduced to the western medieval world by Boethius’ translation of Porphyry’s Isagoge. 90. According to Plato (Cra. 402a), ‘Heraclitus says somewhere that “all things are in process and nothing stays still”, and likening existing things to the stream of a river he says that “into the same river you could not step twice”.’ 91. See e.g. almus…aer (‘the calm air’, 56f.) and placidi…uenti (‘stilled winds’, 58).

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which reality could be known in Ausonius’ time. Knowledge indeed cannot consist in a mere extrapolation of universal truths any more, since these—like the firm sand of the Moselle’s banks (solidae…harenae, 53)—are definitively unable to hold the irreducible specificity of each concrete being or figure: nec retinent memores uestigia pressa figuras (‘and the foot resting on them [the firm sands] leaves no recording print behind’, 54).92 The real knowledge, the only kind still feasible at the end of the Empire, is that emanating from the pure contemplation of individual entities, always contingent, irreducible and mutable. This explains Ausonius’ eagerness for catalogues (the quintessential ‘asyntactic’ structure) throughout the poem,93 as well as his Mannerist thoroughness in describing and enumerating the most insignificant details94—that is in fact a general aesthetic trend of the whole late antique period, whose origin can be ultimately traced in the new epistemological principles that I am trying to identify in this article.95 The most plastic metaphor for this new and unprecedented fragmentary model of knowledge is the transparency of the flowing waters of the Moselle,96 which reveal every particular being as a distinctive, unique, separate entity, eschewing any intention of investing it with a global sense which it perhaps never had: liquidarum et lapsus aquarum / prodit caerulea dispersas luce figuras (‘and thy waters limpid-gliding reveal in azure light shapes scattered here and there’, 61f.). These dispersas figuras (‘shapes scattered here and there’) that the river so disjointedly reflects are listed in detail in the following lines, showing the specific features or ‘traces’ that make them unique and thus reinforcing their concreteness: sulcata leui…harena meatu (‘how the furrowed sand is rippled by the light current’, 63),97 inclinata…uiridi…gramina fundo (‘how the bowed

92. Lines 53f. (hic solidae sternunt umentia litora harenae, / nec retinent memores uestigia pressa figuras, ‘here firm sands spread the moist shores, and the foot resting on them leaves no recording print behind’) are intertextually modelled on Ov. Met. 11.231-33 depicting the coastal setting of Thetis’ encounter with Peleus: summis inductum est aequor harenis; / litus habet solidum, quod nec uestigia seruet / nec remoretur iter nec opertum pendeat alga (‘the sea spreads smooth over the sandy bottom; the shore is firm, such as leaves no trace of feet, delays no journey, is free from seaweed’). Both texts convey the same idea: that the sand on the seashore/river bank is so compact that human feet leave no visible trace on its surface. The Ovid translation is taken from Miller (1966-1968), ii.137. 93. There are catalogues of fish, of tributaries, of architects… On late antique catalogues see Wedeck (1960), and Hernández Lobato (2012), 389-99. 94. In Roberts’s words (1984), 344, ‘the “eye” of the reader is intended to be dazzled by the brilliance of particular detail.’ 95. For a thorough study of the typically late antique ‘aesthetics of detail’, see Hernández Lobato (2012), 318-449. Cf. also Elsner (2004). 96. The unparalleled transparency of the river’s waters, as suggested in section 1, is consistently described in terms of an epistemological revelation, which not only enhances the initiand’s faculty of vision but also grants a secret knowledge of reality: sic demersa procul durante per intima uisu / cernimus arcanique patet penetrale profundi (‘so, if our gaze penetrates thy gulfs, we behold things whelmed far below, and the recesses of thy secret depth lie open’, 59f.); spectaris uitreo per leuia terga profundo / secreti nihil amnis habens (‘through thy smooth surface showest all the treasures of thy crystal depths—a river keeping naught concealed’, 55f.). 97. Interestingly, this passage would be intertextually echoed only some decades later by Rutilius Namatianus (De Reditu 2.13f.: arridet placidum radiis crispantibus aequor / et sulcata leui murmurat

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water-grasses quiver in thy green bed’, 64), agitatae fontibus herbae (‘the tossing plants endure the water’s buffeting’, 65), lucetque latetque / calculus et uiridem distinguit98 glarea muscum (‘pebbles gleam and are hid, and gravel picks out patches of green moss’, 66f.). Following our interpretation, the pronounced contrast between the semantic value of 54 (nec retinent memores uestigia pressa figuras, ‘and the foot resting on them [the firm sands] leaves no recording print behind’) and that of 62 (prodit caerulea dispersas luce figuras, ‘[thy waters] reveal in azure light shapes scattered here and there’) enacts a confrontation between two antithetical knowledge systems: the one of the general traces (uestigia pressa) or concepts (memores…figuras)—refused as already seen by the hard sands of the Moselle’s bank (nec retinent)—, and the one of the isolated individual entities (dispersas figuras), which cannot be represented under the label of a single unifying word.99 This strong opposition between these two conflicting Weltanschauungen is formally emphasised by the repetition of the word figuras at the end of both verses (aesthetically and rhythmically marked for the sake of the following pause and of the metrical cadence). The adjectives modifying these two conflicting figuras are revealingly distinctive: memores in 54 hints at the ideas of memory, absence, mediation, reproduction, conceptualisation and language, whereas dispersas in 62 evokes the notions of scatteredness, presence, immediacy, irreducibility and individual concreteness. In addition, this lexical recurrence at the very end of both verses plays with the iconic suggestion of the reflection on the river water (figuras in 54 reflected as figuras in 62), thus giving a foretaste of the poem’s second major epistemological metaphor: that of reflection (i.e. mediated vision). Needless to say, the epistemological paradigm embodied in the memores figuras of 54 has no place in the realm of direct vision and wordless revelation described in this section of the poem (hence the negation nec). From this exegetical perspective, it will be easier to understand what Ausonius meant with that demersa …intima (‘things whelmed far below’, 59) and arcani…penetrale profundi (‘the recesses of thy secret depth’, 60), and to what extent, by means of the metaphor of a river which does not hide anything to our eager gaze (secreti nihil amnis habens, ‘a river keeping naught concealed’, 56), to us are openly revealed (aperto / panditur intuitu, ‘…lies clear and open to our gaze’, 56f.), without any shadow or delusion (patet, ‘lies open’, 60), the real nature of things, going far beyond any possible conceptualisation. Ausonius’ situation is quite similar to that of ‘Funes el memorioso’ in Jorge Luis Borges’ homonymous tale—a man who was able to remember everything he saw, and therefore was

unda sono, ‘calm smiles the surface of the waters as the sunbeams glitter: the furrowed wave whispers with gentle plash’), a fact which somehow confirms its significant weight within the Mosella. 98. Note, in support of what has just been said, the dominant idea of ‘separation’ under the semantics of the verb distinguit, clearly connected with that of dispersas in line 62. 99. For the theoretical background of such assertions see the introduction of Foucault (1966).

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almost incapable of ideas of a general, Platonic sort. Not only was it difficult for him to comprehend that the generic symbol dog embraces so many unlike individuals of diverse size and form; it bothered him that the dog at three fourteen (seen from the side) should have the same name as the dog at three fifteen (seen from the front).100 The shocking concreteness of the world destroys every possibility of building up any general reflection or theory on reality. It is only its irreducible multiplicity that prevails.101 From that point, the poet cannot dream of creating an all-embracing, self-consistent representation of the whole: like Baudelaire’s celebrated artiste chiffonnier or the carefree flâneur of Le Peintre de la vie moderne (1863), he is simply called to recollect some of the fragments or disiecta membra of the plethora of unconnected stimuli around him. That is in a sense Ausonius’ initiatic revelation in this poem and one of the most characteristic features of the late antique aesthetics as a whole, always favouring the particular over the general, the fragmentary detail, the disjointed catalogue, the unending enumeration, the single word over the coherent period, and other similar phenomena.102 Paradoxically enough, much in the same vein of Plotinus’ philosophy and Anchises’ all-embracing anima mundi (Verg. Aen. 6.725-29), the sharp awareness of the extreme concreteness, mutability and individuality of every single entity leads Ausonius to the joyful realisation of the ultimate unity of all things (omnia solus habes, ‘one, thou hast all’, 31), as if the radical immanence of all those details had brought him to the utmost form of epistemological transcendence. Both aspects are indeed inextricably interwoven in his watery revelation, thus turning a random collection of extremely detailed close-ups into a privileged intuition of the whole (or, in cinematic terms, a long shot). The poem itself is but the verbal celebration of that wordless realisation, a praise of the unutterable mystery pervading the irreducible multifariousness of the real. Thus, Ausonius’ experience of transparency could be perfectly summarised in the following passage of Plotinus (Enn. 5.8.4.4-8):103 All things are transparent, and there is nothing dark or resistant, but each thing is clear for all others right down to its innermost parts, for light is clear to light. Indeed, each has everything within it, and again sees all

100. Borges (1964), 74 (tr. Yates and Irby). 101. That is why, in spite of (or rather due to) his prodigious memory, Funes ‘was not very capable of thought. To think is to forget differences, generalise, make abstractions. In the teeming world of Funes, there were only details, almost immediate in their presence.’ Borges (1964), 75 (tr. Yates and Irby). 102. For a general characterisation of the late antique aesthetics and poetics see the monographs of Roberts (2010) and Hernández Lobato (2012). See also the essays collected in Elsner and Hernández Lobato (2017a). For an updated critical overview on this hot issue see Elsner and Hernández Lobato (2017b). 103. I take the translation from Chase’s version of Hadot (1993), 37, with minor adaptations.

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things in any other, so that all things are everywhere, everything is everything, each individual is all things, and the splendour is without end. (tr. Chase, adapted) But what can we say about the way in which those disjointed ungraspable entities so graphically revealed by the Moselle waters can be ‘reflected’ or represented by means of human language? 5.2 Reflectivity: The (Im)possibility of Representation (les mots) Let us briefly recapitulate to see exactly where we are. After a hard initiation journey through Plato’s cave and Vergil’s Underworld (1-22), the long-awaited revelation has finally happened (23-81). Like Aeneas, Ausonius has reached the hidden river which erases all secrets (the Moselle/Lethe): secreti nihil amnis habens (‘a river keeping naught concealed’, 56). There he feels suddenly at home;104 there everything seems to make sense. For the first time in his life, he can really see (et tandem…conspicor, 10; spectaris, 55; durante…uisu / cernimus, 59f.; uidi egomet, 270; uidi ego, 341). The Roman heroes waiting to be (re)born by the banks of the river Lethe in Vergil’s epic (Aen. 6.752-892) are half-mockingly transformed into the swift-swimming fish dwelling in the transparent depths of the Moselle (82-149). The landscape around the river has suddenly taken the shape of a big theatre, as if it had been deliberately designed to enhance the spectator’s faculty of vision (150-68). River nymphs, Pans and other minor deities fill the atmosphere with an indescribable numinous sensation (169-85). Following the story line of Plato’s myth, the time has come for the enlightened poet to ‘return’ to his fellows, in order to reveal to them what he has seen outside the cave, what reality is all about. Ausonius aspires to become a new Er, the only mortal who, according to Plato’s account (Resp. 10.614b-621b), was able to return from the Underworld without forgetting what he had seen (he had wisely avoided drinking of the waters of the river Lethe), thus becoming a privileged teacher of the unspeakable secrets of life and death. Like Aeneas (and Ulysses before him), Ausonius wants to be able to go safely out of the Underworld and transmit its ineffable mysteries to future generations of mystae. In his own words: sed non haec spectata ulli nec cognita uisu fas mihi sit pro parte loqui: secreta tegatur et commissa suis lateat reuerentia riuis. (Auson. Mos. 186-88)

104. Ausonius’ hometown Bordeaux is constantly evoked in connection with the Moselle. See 1822 (on which see section 1 above), 448-53 and 483.

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But of these things which no man has looked upon and no eye beheld, be it no sin for me to speak in part: let Reverence be covered in her seclusion, and let her dwell unspied upon, in the safe-keeping of her native streams. (tr. Evelyn White) Not surprisingly, this passage is intertextually modelled on Book 6 of the Aeneid, which is probably the most crucial hypotext underlying the whole poem. The exact intertext in this case, corresponding to Vergil’s invocation to the underworld deities as he prepares to relate Aeneas’ katabasis, is Aen. 6.266f.: sit mihi fas audita loqui, sit numine uestro / pandere res alta terra et caligine mersas (‘say it’s right to give voice to the things I have heard of, / grant your assent to disclose what’s submerged in the earth’s pit of darkness’).105 The expression pro parte loqui (‘to speak in part’) would immediately remind any fourth-century Christian of Paul’s famous assertion on the insurmountable limits of human knowledge and language (1 Cor. 13.9-10): ex parte enim cognoscimus et ex parte prophetamus: cum autem uenerit quod perfectum est, euacuabitur quod ex parte est (‘for we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away’).106 Ausonius is asking for divine permission to relate to his readers what he (and he alone) has seen, even if the natural limitations of human language will only allow him to do it ‘in part’ (pro parte). This short passage (186-88) serves as a transition to the second half of the poem, which will basically tackle the different ways in which human artifice (including language) vainly strives to reflect, emulate or appropriate the ineffable mysteries of the river: the transparency which once enabled a direct contemplation of the riverbed (23-81) is now threatened by the deceits of watery reflection (189-239), the swift-swimming fish (82-149) by the greedy fishermen (240-82), the natural landscape (150-68) by human architecture (283-348), and the mythological dwellers (159-85) by the simple peoples of the land (381-417). Thus the second part of the poem (from line 189 onwards) is conceived to a great extent as a problematic mirror image—full of playful conceptual and thematic correspondences—of the first one, which was entirely dominated by the idea of a nonmediated vision. The poem’s structure can be summarised in the diagram on p.257 below. Meaningfully enough, the passage immediately following Ausonius’ entreaty to put into words his ineffable revelation (186-88) already introduces the principal epistemological metaphor in this part of the poem: that of the river as a deceptive mirror (189-239).107 The metaphor of reflection and its problematic way of grasping the outer world is a constant in late antique thinking, both pagan and Christian. The best example is again to be found in the 13th chapter of Paul’s First Epistle to the

105. The translation is taken from Ahl (2007), 136. 106. All translations from the Bible are taken from the 2001 English Standard Version. 107. For a complementary approach to this passage see Kenney (1984), 196-201; Roberts (1984), 347 n.23; Nugent (1990), 34f.; Taylor (2009), 195-203.

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Corinthians (1 Cor. 13.12-13), one of the biblical texts most frequently quoted by Augustine of Hippo: uidemus nunc per speculum in aenigmate, tunc autem facie ad faciem; nunc cognosco ex parte, tunc autem cognoscam sicut et cognitus sum (‘for now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known’). Reality as ordinarily (nunc) perceived through senses, emotions or conceptual thinking (i.e. as thought and expressed by language) is but a pale reflection of what things really are. Thus the knowledge provided by all those mediating entities,

108. Exceptionally, the catalogue of tributaries in 349-80 has no conceptual counterpart in the first half of the poem.

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acting on reality as a distorting mirror (per speculum), is always partial (ex parte) and unreliable (in aenigmate). In order to gain an insight into how things really are (tunc autem cognoscam sicut et cognitus sum), it is necessary to attain to an extended unmediated (facie ad faciem) vision, much similar to the one attained by Ausonius in his river epiphany.109 The problem is that such non-discursive knowledge cannot be committed to words, but merely hinted at or, in Ausonius’ terms (pretty near to those of Paul), ‘spoken in part’ (pro parte loqui, 187). As might be expected, Ausonius consistently depicts the water reflections as deceptive and distorting, in an implicit contrast with his direct unutterable look at the extreme concreteness of reality in the bottom of the river (as argued above). The lexis used to characterise such dubious ‘representations’ of the outer world is eloquent by itself: fallaces…figuras (‘illusive forms’, 229); ambiguis…ueri falsique figuris (‘shapes which waver between false and true’, 239); sese amni confundit imago (‘the pictured hill blends [lit. is confused] with the river’, 198); etc. It was almost in the same period that Augustine had to deal with the Platonic problem of the falsehood of art,110 reaching quite a good understanding of the phenomenon of representation (explicitly equated with a mirror) and its intrinsic need to fake reality.111 Many of his philosophical assertions are near to those of Ausonius as described here, though of course mutatis mutandis. According to Ausonius, the greatest mistake (both of classical society and literature) is to consider reflection a reliable representation of the existing. Doing so implies the same naivety that can be found in a little girl trying to grasp her twin face at the other side of the mirror, acritically fascinated by its external likeness— that is precisely the comparison Ausonius proposes in lines 231-38. This is particularly apparent in line 234 (germanaeque putat formam spectare puellae, ‘deeming she gazes on the shape of a real girl [or “twin sister”]’), a whole theory of art on its own.112 The risk of confusing reality and its representation, les mots et les choses, is always a threat to be seriously considered. It is not precisely a rare phenomenon, but something that does happen quite frequently: see

109. From a Christian and Neo-Platonic point of view, the world as ordinarily perceived by senses and reason is but a deceptive reflection of a more profound reality, which is always unseizable and ‘différé’—in the double sense of ‘different’ and ‘deferred’, according to Derrida’s terminology. That is the first step towards the medieval allegorical drive, which not in vain originated in late antiquity with the works of Porphyry of Tyre, Prudentius, Fulgentius, Martianus Capella, Boethius, etc. 110. I use the word ‘falsehood’ in reference to Augustinian theory on that matter, directly inherited from Plato’s Republic. More suitable terms from Ausonius’ perspective would be ‘ambiguity’ or ‘deceptiveness’. 111. See e.g. August. Soliloq. 2.10.18: quia scilicet aliud est falsum esse uelle, aliud uerum esse non posse…aut unde uera pictura esset, si falsus equus non esset? unde in speculo uera hominis imago, si non falsus homo? (‘because to will to be false is one thing, and to be unable to be true is another.… Or whence would a picture of a horse be a true picture, if it were not a false horse? And whence is that reflection from the mirror a true reflection if it be not a false man?’). Translation: Cleveland (1910), 78-80. 112. For some brief remarks on this passage based on Lacan’s Mirror Stage, see Nugent (1990), 34.

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for instance the derisus nauita (‘deluded boatman’, 196) trying to number the reflected vines, or the confused nautas (‘sailors’) of 222-39, deceived—and at the same time amused—by their images reflected on the river water, or, in a more abstract approach, the classical theory of sign and its psychological and cultural consequences. In this sense Ornella Fuoco has rightly suggested that the abrupt enjambment between imago (the reflection) and collis (its outer referent) in lines 198f. is rhetorically enacting the abyss between reality and its representation.113 Once more, it is the rhetorical form that betrays Ausonius’ most subtle underlying considerations, as one would expect from his undoubted stylistic mastery. As rightly suggested by Fuoco and Taylor,114 the whole passage seems to be implicitly evoking the Narcissus myth, most likely in its Ovidian rendition (Met. 3.339-510).115 This unavoidable cultural reference is certainly far from innocent or unmotivated. Narcissus’ delusion had indeed become a key epistemological metaphor in contemporary Neo-Platonism, as apparent from Plotinus himself (Enn. 1.6.8.8):116 For if a man runs to the image and wants to seize it as if it was the reality (like a beautiful reflection playing on the water, which some story somewhere, I think, said riddlingly a man [Narcissus] wanted to catch and sank down into the stream and disappeared) then this man who clings to beautiful bodies and will not let them go, will, like the man in the story, but in soul, not in body, sink down into the dark depths where intellect has no delight, and stay blind in Hades, consorting with shadows there and here. (tr. Armstrong) Much in the same vein, Pythagoreans explicitly warned against looking at oneself in the mirror or in any reflecting surface, most particularly in the waters of a river.117 The risk is always the same: getting trapped in a world of illusion and appearance. The only way out of this labyrinth of false reflections is to follow the steps of Ulysses, who, like Aeneas in the sixth book of the Aeneid, managed to escape alive from the depths of the Underworld, as well as from

113. Fuoco (1993), 349. 114. See Fuoco (1993), 352f. (with textual parallels), and Taylor (2009), 200-03. 115. On the Narcissus myth from the perspective of gaze theory see Elsner (1996). 116. An in-depth analysis of this passage and the symbolic role of Narcissus in Plotinus’ philosophy can be found in Hadot (1976) and Mortley (1998), 17-21. The translation is taken from Armstrong (1989), 257. 117. See e.g. Iambl. Protr. 24 (‘Do not look into a mirror beside a lamp’) and the ancient Pythagorean symbolon transmited by the humanist Giglio Gregorio Giraldi (apud Mullach [1860], 510 n.24): faciem in fluuio nec lauandam nec spectandam, i.e. e re fluxa et instabili specimen capi non debet (‘you should neither wash nor stare at your face in a river, that is, a general pattern should not be drawn from anything flowing and unstable’). On the influence of Pythagoreanism on Ausonius’ Mosella see Dräger (2000). On the dominant role of the mirror in ancient magical practices and beliefs see Delatte (1932).

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the treacherous arms of the sensuous Circe and her deceiving fictions. Only thus will we be able to return where we belong—our spiritual homeland, our Anchises, our inner Bordeaux (Plot. Enn. 1.6.8.8): This would be truer advice ‘Let us fly to our dear country’ [Hom. Il. 2.140]. What then is our way of escape, and how are we to find it? We shall pull out to sea, as Odysseus did, from the witch Circe or Calypso—as the poet says (I think with a hidden meaning)—and was not content to stay though he had delights of the eyes and lived among much beauty of sense. Our country from which we came is there, our Father is there. (tr. Armstrong) It is precisely in order to avoid those frequent confusions between les mots et les choses, the illusory and the real, that Ausonius seems to be keen to emphasise the postmodern idea of the absence of a real referent under its alleged verbal ‘reflection’ (et tremit absens / pampinus, ‘here quivers the far-off [lit. absent] tendril of the vine’, 194f.). Reflections—and in consequence, the language and literature made of them—are autonomous images by themselves, without a necessary link with the outer world. Therefore, the sign is itself a problematic ‘other thing’ added to the ungraspable referential world, never its literal reflection: unda refert alios, simulacra umentia, nautas (‘the wave reflects “other” sailors —wet simulacra’, 227).118 The inverted images on the water and on the surface of the child’s mirror (inuersi corporis, ‘downward form’, 224) are by themselves an evident distortion of reality, never its faithful refection. The conclusion of such verifications seems to be quite obvious: literature and, generally speaking, the realm of the word and the representation are governed by their own rules, always unconcerned with the outer-world criterion of truth/falsehood. That means that language and representation can allude—strictly speaking— just to themselves but not to an outer reality, as Derridean deconstruction would argue centuries later. ‘Through words’—Augustine of Hippo categorically states —‘we learn nothing but words, or I should rather say the sound and noise of words’ (uerbis igitur nisi uerba non discimus, immo sonitum strepitumque uerborum).119 Words are, in this sense, mere simulacra of simulacra:120 simulacra umentia (228), simulamine (229),121 signs without referents, words speaking of 118. This translation is mine. 119. August. Mag. 11.36 (my translation). On the ‘negative’ epistemology underlying Augustine’s semiotics see Cary (2008), 87-120. Cf. also Plot. Enn. 5.3.17.15-25: ‘For though the soul goes over all truths, even those in which we participate, yet she still evades us if someone wishes her to speak and think discursively. In order for discursive thought to say something, it must consider its objects successively, for such is the unfolding of thought. Yet what kind of unfolding can there be, in the case of something which is absolutely simple?’ The translation is taken from Hadot (1993), 28f. 120. Cf. Baudrillard’s theory on the ‘precession of simulacra’: Baudrillard (1994), 1-42. 121. The extreme rarity of the Ovidian word simulamen (used only here by Ausonius and just once in former literature [Ov. Met. 10.727], since its alleged appearance in Val. Flac. Arg. 6.538 is merely conjectural) emphasises by itself its underlying concept. Interestingly, in Ovid’s text, describing an

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words. In this context, it is hardly surprising that Ausonius’ most frequently used word should be precisely nomen (‘name’), as shown by Georgia Nugent.122 Ausonius, the rhetor, is genuinely obsessed with words, maybe because he knows how unutterable reality is and how unreliable the idea itself of representation proves to be (always similar to an optical illusion on the ever-changing surface of the Moselle). Like almost all late antique authors, his works explicitly underline their own artificiality, their absolute lack of originality in the sense of an ideal creation ex nihilo. His works are always keen to betray themselves by showing to what extent they are just a sum of previous texts, dispassionately appropriated and often ironically recombined. An extreme example of this would be his irreverent Cento Nuptialis.123 The starting point of such aesthetic behaviour is to be found in the profound scepticism towards representation that we are trying to depict here. As one could easily infer, their absolute lack of connection with the real world disqualifies words from predicating any truth of the existing entities. More precisely, the criterion of truth/falsehood is itself irrelevant when dealing with representations (they have their own rules and laws, only valid for the conceptual—not for the real—realm). That is exactly what Ausonius is suggesting with his provocative ambiguis fruitur ueri falsique figuris (‘the lads afloat amuse themselves with shapes which waver between false and true’, 239). That is undoubtedly a great conceptual advance in the context of classical theory of fiction and art, a polemic verification with an enormous influence in the way late antique literature had to think itself henceforth. The deliberate cancellation of the classical dichotomy between true and false enacted by line 239 ultimately refers to the two portals found by Aeneas in his way out of the Underworld (Verg. Aen. 6.89398): the gate of horn (described as the passageway of true visions) and the gate of ivory (whence pass false dreams). Like Aeneas, anyone who attempts to render such ineffable experience into words is bound to choose the gate of deluding reflections. Returning to everyday reality after having experienced a direct vision of what really is entails returning to the lies and distortions of appearance, to the world of false perceptions.124

annual funeral ritual commemorating (and re-enacting) the death of Adonis, the term simulamen is associated with the ideas of death and absence and mirrored in the previous line by the eloquent expression repetitaque mortis imago (literally, ‘the repeated image of death’). Representation (simulamen) ultimately consists in making appear as present—by means of a series of artificial and almost theatrical devices (repetita…imago)—what is actually dead and absent (mortis). Hence the intertextual dialogue of Mos. 129 with this passage, which clearly reinforces Ausonius’ stance on the problem of language and representation. 122. Nugent (1990), 36. 123. On the ‘aesthetics of the fragment’ underlying late antique centos, visual spolia and many other cultural epiphenomena see Hernández Lobato (2012), 257-317. 124. Cf. Borges (1984), 31: ‘We are not in reality. For Vergil, the real world was possibly the Platonic world, the world of archetypes. Aeneas passes through the gates of ivory because he enters the world of dreams—that is to say, what we call waking.’

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The only plausible attitude towards signs is to enjoy them precisely for what they are, and not as a blind pretention of capturing the always slippery reality or as a desperate attempt to reveal any transcendental truth. Ausonius indeed invites us just to enjoy (ambiguis fruitur ueri falsique figuris, ‘the lads afloat amuse themselves with shapes which waver between false and true’, 239; illa fruenda palam species, ‘yon is a sight that may be freely enjoyed’, 189) the sensory show that images (language) provide us with, forgetting all desire of embracing the ever absent reality, which is never to be told but to be non-discursively experienced.125 That explains the often criticised playful attitude of many late antique authors and their ironic, irreverent, self-conscious and even frivolous approach to the phenomenon of literature.126 Sure enough, late antiquity keeps an always healthy ironische Verfremdung towards the supposed transcendence of art and representation. This open vindication of the pure—almost sensuous—pleasure of forms led on occasions to an intransitive model of communication, without any actual ‘what’ to be transmitted.127 That is obviously behind the frequently misunderstood aestheticism, in other words, the esprit précieux, so typical of late antique poetics. In this sense it would be also worth remarking the continuous presence throughout Ausonius’ poem of lexis directly related to all kinds of visual and theatrical spectacles: inducant aliam spectacula uitea pompam (‘let show of vines lead on another pageant’, 152); naturalique theatro (‘natural theatre’, 156); haec quoque tam dulces celebrant spectacula pompas (‘how pleasing is the pageant which this sight affords!’, 200); etc. All in all, literature is made to be enjoyed as a sophisticated and always entertaining verbal show. If words do not lead to reality, let them be even greater. Art betrays art with a highly metaliterary device. In short, what we are dealing with here is a most peculiar anti-myth of the Cave, where Platonic concepts (words, ideas, abstractions) have proved to be deceitful illusions, while the irreducible concreteness of the existing is definitively to be considered the only reality ever, always unutterable and ungraspable. Quite mysteriously, the ultimate oneness and sacredness of all things can only be discovered by a realisation of the distinct and well-defined individuality of every single entity, as revealed by the magnifying glass of the Moselle. Ausonius, having ‘initiatically’ received that epistemological revelation, has decided to share it with us through the culturally loaded and highly ambivalent metaphor of the river, and thus deliver art from the constricting chains of traditional ideas on reality and representation. The poet himself humbly declares his intentions in the poem’s epilogue:

125. On the notion of visual delight produced by the deceitfulness of images see also Roberts (1984), 347. 126. On the role of irony and frivolity in late antique literature see Hernández Lobato (2012), 223-45. 127. Cf. the analysis of Sidonius Apollinaris’ programmatic poem (a long catalogue of negations lacking a positive term) by Hernández Lobato (2012), 401-49.

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haec ego, … Ausonius, … audax exigua fide concino. fas mihi sacrum perstrinxisse amnem tenui libamine Musae. nec laudem affecto, ueniam peto: sunt tibi multi, alme amnis, sacros qui sollicitare fluores Aonidum totamque solent haurire Aganippen. ast ego, quanta mei dederit se uena liquoris, … latius Arctoi praeconia persequar amnis. addam urbes, tacito quas subterlaberis alueo, moeniaque antiquis te prospectantia muris; addam praesidiis dubiarum condita rerum, sed modo securis non castra sed horrea Belgis; addam felices ripa ex utraque colonos teque inter medios hominumque boumque labores stringentem ripas et pinguia culta secantem. (Auson. Mos. 438, 440, 443-48, 453-60) Such is my theme—I…, Ausonius…: great is my daring though my lute is small. Be it no sin for me to have touched lightly on thy holy stream with the poor offering my Muse affords. ’Tis not for praise I hanker: I sue for pardon. Many thou hast, o gentle stream, who use to trouble the rills of the Aonian maids and drain all Aganippe. But as for me, so far as the flow of my poetic vein shall serve,…I will pursue yet further the praises of thy Northern stream. I will tell also of cities below which with voiceless channel thou dost glide, of strongholds which look out on thee from ancient walls; I will tell also of fortresses raised for defence in times of peril, now not fortresses but granaries for the unmenaced Belgic folk; I will tell also of prosperous settlers upon either shore, and how thy waters lap their banks midway between the toils of men and oxen, parting the rich fields. (tr. Evelyn White) This epilogue clearly states that the ultimate mission of the poet is trying to say the unsayable to make it accessible to all humankind.128 As long as Ausonius lives, he will keep on praising the sacred waters of the Moselle (453), 128. See esp. 474-83 (the poem’s last lines): si quis honos tenui uolet aspirare camenae, / perdere si quis in his dignabitur otia musis, / ibis in ora hominum laetoque fouebere cantu. / te fontes uiuique lacus, te caerula noscent / flumina, te…; te…, te…colent…; te…ego…, te commendabo… (‘if any praise shall choose to breathe upon this feeble strain, if anyone shall deign to waste his leisure on my verse, thou shalt pass upon the lips of men, and be cherished with joyful song. Of thee springs and living lakes shall learn, of thee azure rivers, of thee…; to thee…, to thee…shall do reverence…; thee will I praise to…, thee will I praise to…)’.

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indefatigably challenging the limitations of human language: ‘I will tell… I will tell… I will tell…’ (454, 456, 458). Eloquently enough, the verb here thrice repeated is addam (literally ‘I will add’) instead of the more common dicam or loquar (‘I will say’). The poet, like Borges’ character in the epigraph heading this article, has finally realised that language cannot say reality (that is, replace it as its perfect counterpart, re-present it), but only be added to it as just another thing in the world. Ausonius has merely thrown a small glass of water (his poem) into the ineffable waters of the Moselle (reality): fas mihi sacrum / perstrinxisse amnem tenui libamine Musae (‘be it no sin for me to have touched lightly on thy holy stream with the poor offering [literally, ‘libation’, i.e., a ritual pouring of a liquid as an offering to a god] my Muse affords’, 443f.). The poet apologises for having poured a humble offering of words into the ineffable waters of the Moselle, that is, for having tried to carry out his impossible but necessary task. The metaphor of the river, as reality itself, is intrinsically ambivalent: for the initiand, it is a vehicle of knowledge and enlightenment, a magnifying glass always ready to disclose its many secrets; for the lay Narcissus and the Moselle’s simple sailors, it is a mortal trap of deceptive appearances and deluding reflections. It all depends on the attitude of the one who approaches its sacred waters, be it Ulysses, Aeneas, Er or the ill-fated Narcissus. The mission of humankind ultimately consists in going beyond reflections, transcending language, passing to the other side of the mirror (remember the transieram opening the poem), in order to turn it into a magnifying glass, that is, into an instrument capable of revealing what is hidden, invisible, latent, though always there: the profoundest essence of all things. Returning from such experience in the realm of the unsayable with the aim of committing it to words necessarily implies going out of the Underworld through the gate of ivory (that of false dreams),129 since a trace of falsehood is inherent in any verbal representation of the Ultimate Reality. We can only speak ‘in part’, through the deceiving game of reflections in which human language ultimately consists. The task may seem impossible, but in Ausonius’ opinion it is definitely worth a try. Universidad de Salamanca [email protected]

Bibliography Ahl, F. (tr.), and E. Fantham (introd.) (2007), Virgil: Aeneid (Oxford). Alvar Ezquerra, A. (tr.) (1990), Décimo Máximo Ausonio: Obras (2 vols.: Madrid). Armstrong, A.H. (tr.) (1989), Plotinus Vol. 1: Enneads 1.1-9 (Cambridge MA/London).

129. Verg. Aen. 6.893-98.

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