Ausoniana

Extract

InC.Q. XXVII. 178–181 Mr. S. G. Owen has raised some interesting questions, but it may be doubted whether he has in every case discovered the correct solution.

Panntalia 30, 6: quaeque sine exemplo in nece functa uiri. Mr. Owen's pronece removes the hiatus, but I think has no other merit. The sense ‘a death for a death,’ even if not necessarily or best represented by repetition of the same term, is at least not happily represented by such combination of euphemism with dysphemism; ‘in place of the slaughter of her husband, she finished her days.’ Read funere, and you get an expression characteristic of this school; Paulinus of Pella (whose poem is readily accessible in the Loeb Ausonius) applied it to death; patris de funere functi 236, ‘of my father's death,’ i.e. funere defuncti, cf. 241 defuncti patris. But Paulinus of Nola applied it also to a vicarious death, Christus … morte mea functus, carm. 31, 191 (35, 189 Migne). Both were pupils of Ausonius (the grandson unofficially).