He died in 395 and within twelve years of his death the host of Germans had burst across the Rhine, 'all Gaul was a smoking funeral pyre', and the Goths were at the gates of Rome.

And what have Ausonius and his correspondents to say about this?
Not a word.

Ausonius and Symmachus and their set ignore the barbarians as completely as the novels of Jane Austen ignore the Napoleonic wars.
3.

SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS Going, going....

Some thirty-five years after the death of Ausonius, in the midst of the disastrous sixth century, was born Sidonius Apollinaris, Gallo-Roman aristocrat, father-in-law of an emperor, sometime prefect of Rome and in the end Bishop of Clermont.