They seem oddly familiar figures (except of course, Dynamius) and their chronicler contrives to make them live.
Such is the world depicted for us by Ausonius.

But while this pleasant country house and senior common room life was going calmly on, what do we find happening in the history books?
Ausonius was a man of nearly fifty when the Germans swarmed across the Rhine in 357, pillaging forty-five flourishing cities, and pitching their camps on the banks of the Moselle.

He had seen the great Julian take up arms ('O Plato, Plato, what a task for a philosopher') and in a series of brilliant campaigns drive them out again.

Ten years later when he was tutor to Gratian he had himself accompanied the emperor Valentinian on another campaign against the same foes.

While he was preening himself on his consulship ten years later still, he must have heard of the disastrous battle of Adrianople in the east, when the Goths defeated a Roman army and slew an emperor.