Introduction: Pliny the Younger in Late Antiquity
History does not record who was pronounced the winner in a poetic contest between the emperor Valentinian and Ausonius, the tutor to his son Gratian. If the contest was prompted by Gratian's wedding, it would date to about 374, but our knowledge of it is restricted to Ausonius's cento nuptialis as sent in a letter to his friend Paulus a few years later, complete with prose introduction and epilogue.1 Ausonius's Vergilian cento is best known for its closing, sensationally pornographic section (101 31) after which he turns again to Paulus, in apologia; Ausonius's defensive strategy here is essentially to include himself in a catalogue of writers where clear differentiation was required between an author's publications and their moral conduct (139.1 8 Green)