Everything about Avienus totally explained
Avienus was a
Latin writer of the
4th century. His full name
Postumius Rufius Festus (qui et) Avien(i)us is mentioned on an inscription from
Bulla Regia, but "Avienus" has become the usual form of reference.
He was a native of
Volsinii in
Etruria, a highly educated man from the distinguished family of the
Rufii Festi. He was twice appointed
consul (if an inscription published by the 17th-century antiquaries
Jacob Spon and
Raffaello Fabretti really refers to him).
Famously asked what he did in the country, in a poem (erroneously attributed to him) he answered
Prandeo, poto, cano, ludo, lavo, caeno, quiesco ("I dine, drink, sing, play, bathe, sup, rest" in
Richard Lovelace's translation). There is no hint of Christianity in his written work. In fact, there's a lack of any religious undertones in his work, indicating that he may have been Agnostic.
He made somewhat inexact translations into Latin of
Aratus' didactic poem
Phaenomena.
Avienus also took a popular Greek poem in hexameters,
Periegesis, briefly delimiting the habitable world from the perspective of
Alexandria, written by
Dionysius Periegetes in a terse and elegant style that was easy to memorize for Roman students, and translated it into an archaising Latin, as
descriptio orbis terrae . Only Book I survives, with an unsteady grasp of actual geography and some far-fetched etymologies: see
Ophiussa.
Ora maritima
He also wrote
Ora Maritima ("sea coasts"), based on material adapted from the type of mariners' coasting directions called a
Periplus and rendered as poetry, resulting in a confused amateur's account of the coastal regions of the Mediterranean. His editor A. Berthelot demonstrated that Avienus' land-measurements were derived from
Roman itineraries but inverted some sequences. Berthelot remarked of some names on the Hispanic coast "The omission of
Emporium, contrasting strangely with the names of
Tarragon and
Barcelona, may characterize the method of Avienus, who searches archaic documents and mingles his searches of them with his impressions as an official of the fourth century A.D." (Barthelmy, Introduction).
Ora maritima was a work for the reader rather than the traveller, where the fourth century present intrudes largely in the mention of cities now abandoned (see
Oestriminis).
This Avienus is surely not identical with the Rufus (?) Festus who wrote,
ca. 369, an
epitome of Roman history in the genre called
breviarium:
The scholar
Theodore Mommsen identified that author with Rufius Festus, proconsul of
Achaea in
366, and both with Rufus Festus Avienus. Others take him to be Festus of Tridentum,
magister memoriae (secretary) to
Valens and notoriously severe proconsul of the province of
Asia, where he was sent to punish those implicated in the conspiracy of Theodorus. The work itself (
Breviarium rerum gestarum populi Romani) is divided into two parts, one geographical, the other historical.
For further information see Alan Cameron, "Macrobius, Avienus, and Avianus"
The Classical QuarterlyNew Series,
17.2 (November 1967), pp 385-399.
Further Information
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