“Attius Patera, The Elder, The Rhetorician- Patera, renowned speaker, although in years you outpaced the men named earlier, seeing that your prime was in the age next before my own, and that in my youth I saw you in your old age, you shall not lack the tribute of my sad dirge, teacher of might rhetoricians. If report does not lie, you were sprung from the stock of the Druids of Bayeux, and traced your hallowed line from the temple of Belenus; and hence the name borne by your family: you are called Patera; so the mystic votaries call the servants of Apollo. Your father and your brother were named after Phoebus, and your own son after Delphi. In that age there was none who had such knowledge as you, such swift and rolling eloquence. Sound in memory as in learning, you had the gift of clear expression cast in sonorous and well-chosen phrase; your wit was chastened and without a spice of bitterness: sparing of food and wine, cheerful, modest, comely in person, even in age you were as an eagle or a steed grown old.”

Decimus Ausonius, Roman poet, 3rd century

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