(c. 310 - c. 395)
Having gained renown for his success in Latin prose and verse competitions, the rhetorician Ausonius was selected to become tutor for Gratian, a future emperor. After his pupil was murdered, he retreated to the country, where he wrote poetry and became a dutiful correspondent to other pupils destined to dot history books, such as Paulinus of Nola.
Miscellany
As a result of technological advances and shortages of enslaved workers, water power became used more widely in the Roman Empire around the late third century; the earliest known depiction of a water-powered stone sawmill was produced around this time in Hierapolis. Later, in 371, the poet Ausonius wrote an ode to the Moselle River: “He turns his millstones in furious revolutions and drives the shrieking saws through smooth blocks of marble.”
The merchant always has fresh losses to expect, and the dread of base poverty forbids his rest.
—Decimus Magnus Ausonius, c. 390