Avienus


Avienus was a Latin writer of the 4th century AD. An inscription from Bulla Regia, a former Roman city located in modern-day Tunisia, reports his full name as "Postumius Rufius Festus who is also Avienius". He was a native of Volsinii in Etruria, 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 this Avienus.
Famously asked what he did in the country, he answered Prandeo, poto, cano, ludo, lavo, caeno, quiesco:
Avienus made somewhat inexact translations into Latin of Aratus' didactic poem Phaenomena. He 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 students, and translated it into an archaising Latin as his Descriptio orbis terrae. Only Book I survives, with an unsteady grasp of actual geography and some far-fetched etymologies: see Ophiussa.
He wrote Ora Maritima, a poem claimed to contain borrowings from the 6th-century BC Massiliote Periplus.

Rufus Festus

This Avienus may be identical with the Rufus Festus who wrote, ca. 369, an epitome of Roman history in the genre called breviarium.
The scholar Theodor 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 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 is divided into two parts, one geographical, the other historical.

Editions

;Commentaries, monographs and articles