Intellectual Culture And Literary Practices 329
Cassiodorus’ praise of Dionysius highlights once again the intellectual and
aesthetic values of the time: profound learning was especially admired when
coupled with eloquent style fostered by classical education.58 Classical litera-
ture formed the very fabric of cultural life: it supplied models and sources of
inspiration, and it shaped literary tastes and intellectual preoccupations of
educated people, from copying classical texts to translating documents and
composing poetry in traditional forms such as love elegies and biting epi-
grams. Ennodius’ epigrams, for instance, many of them very irreverent, let us
appreciate the range of literary interests displayed by this learned cleric who
was in the habit of advising young men on Christian virtues. In one epigram
addressed to Boethius Ennodius wrote:
In your hands the substance of a rigid sword wilts,
Even steel dissolves like flowing water.
The unwarlike right hand of Boethius renders swords soft.. .59Ennodius employed classical imagery and vocabulary rich with sexual over-
tones seemingly to make fun of the philosopher and his amorous pursuits.
It is difficult, however, to understand the meaning and purpose of this piece
without knowing about the context of its composition or the intended audi-
ence; modern scholars have interpreted it in very different ways: as a vicious
attack or a playful joke.60 Classical erotic themes and imagery also appeared in
Ennodius’ Epithalamium, in which the poet advised his friend Maximus to stop
resisting nature and get married.61
The elegies written by Maximian, a poet about whom we know very little
but who according to the prevalent scholarly opinion was a younger con-
temporary of Ennodius and Boethius, also treated themes traditional for this
classical genre: pursuit of love, abandonment of the poet by his beloved, the
indignities of old age. While paying tribute to classical poetic conventions,
Maximian’s work, with its baroque rhetorical style, reflected late antique
58 Cassiodorus, Institutiones 1.23.2.
59 Ennodius, Opusc. 339 (Carm. 2.132), p. 249, trans. in Shanzer, “Ennodius, Boethius”, p. 183:
Languescit rigidi tecum substantia ferri,
Solvitur atque chalybs more fluentis aquae.
Emollit gladios inbellis dextra Boeti...
60 An attack: Obertello, Severino Boezio, p. 36; Bartlett, “Dating of Ennodius’ Writings”,
pp. 61–2; joke: Shanzer, “Ennodius, Boethius”. On poets of Ostrogothic Italy see also Raby,
History of Secular Latin Poetry, pp. 117–27.
61 Discussed and translated into French in Maximien, Élégies, pp. 107–18.