His many other verses show his concern for his family, friends, teachers and circle of well-to-do acquaintances and his delight in the technical handling of meter.

In 328 Arborius was summoned to Constantinople to become tutor to Constans, the youngest son of Constantine the Great, whereupon Ausonius returned to Bordeaux to complete his education under the rhetorician Minervius Alcimus.

[6] In 383, the army of Britain, led by Magnus Maximus, revolted against Gratian and assassinated him at Lyons; and when Emperor Valentinian II was driven out of Italy, Ausonius retired to his estates near Burdigala (now Bordeaux), in Gaul.

[9] However, Ausonius's works have several points of interest: Collige, virgo, rosas, dum flos novus et nova pubes et memor esto aevum sic properare tuum.

Iamque fere spatio extremo fessique sub ipsam finem adventabant: | tum creber anhelitus artus aridaque ora quatit, sudor fluit undique rivis, labitur exsanguis, | destillat ab inguine virus.

And now, their journey covered, wearily they neared their very goal: then rapid breathing shakes his limbs and parched mouth, his sweat in rivers flows; down he slumps bloodless; the fluid drips from his groin.

His writings are also remarkable for mentioning in passing the working of a water mill sawing marble on a tributary of the Moselle: ....renowned is Celbis for glorious fish, and that other, as he turns his mill-stones in furious revolutions and drives the shrieking saws through smooth blocks of marble, hears from either bank a ceaseless din...The excerpt sheds new light on the development of Roman technology in using water power for different applications.

Earlier references to the widespread use of mills occur in Vitruvius in his De Architectura of c. 25 BC, and the Naturalis Historia of Pliny the Elder published in 77 AD.

The mills at Barbegal, in southern France, are famous for their application of water power to grinding grain to make flour and were built in the 1st century AD.