Festus Avienus

Rufus Festus Avienus is a senior official and Latin Poète of the end of the 4th century, born with Volsinii (Bolsène) in Étrurie, under Théodose Ier.

By supporting the conservation and the diffusion of the texts and traditional traditions, he wants to support the pagan religion.

He is the author of freely transposed and adapted scientific poems Greek models:

Aratea Phœnomena and Aratea Prognostica , dactylic paraphrases in hexameters like the models, but with double dimensions, Phenomena and Forecasts , poems of Aratos de Soles;
Descriptio orbis terrae (" tower of Terre"), description of the Earth according to the Periegesis of Denys Périégète in hexameters dactylic like the model;
the Ora maritima , according to a Greek model lost into senary iambic or of a translation of writers Carthaginian. This work describes the inland seas, and the only fragment which reached us is the First Book, which contains the description of the coasts of the the Mediterranean since the strait of the Columns until Marseilles. The Ora maritima constitute the oldest preserved description of Western Europe, and evoke the coasts of the south of the Gaulle.
three small pieces of poetry:

AD Flavianus Myrmecius to ask him grenades,
Of cantu Sirenum on the song of the sirens,
AD amicos agro on the occupations of the countryside.

Its Œuvres was published in Madrid, by Petrus Melian, 1634, in-4, and inserted in the Poetœ undervalue , of Johann Christian Wernsdorf; they were translated into French by Eugene Despois and Edouard Saviot, 1843 (in the collection Panckoucke).

Partial sources

Pierre Larousse: Large universal Dictionary of the XIXe century , 15 volumes, (1863-1890)
Gustave Vapereau: Dictionary of the literatures (1876);
Louis Gabriel Michaud: old and modern universal Biography (35 vol. 1773-1858);

Texts and translations of works of Avienus

Some original texts, here
Translations of complete works, here

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