[2] In it, he claims Etruscan descent (me ... Etruscae gentis alumnum [5.5]); describes his youth and manhood,[3] including his friendship with Boethius, whom he apostrophizes as the "greatest investigator of great matters" (magnarum scrutator maxime rerum [3.47])—leading most scholars to date his work roughly to the middle of the sixth century[4]—and says that in his old age he was sent as an ambassador to the emperor's court at Constantinople (5.1–4).
[10] Despite its erotic content, Maximianus's verse was part of the corpus of texts used in the 11th and 12th centuries to teach schoolboys the rudiments of Latin[11] (perhaps because he discouraged the foolish desire for long life[12]), though its use for this purpose was criticized by Alexander of Villedieu: quamvis haec non sit doctrina satis generalis, proderit ipsa tamen plus nugis Maximiani.
Perhaps because of this use of the poetry in elementary education, echoes of and references to it are found in a wide variety of medieval writers, including Hugh of Saint Victor, Giraldus Cambrensis, Geoffrey of Vinsauf, Nigel Wireker, Alain de Lille, and Walter of Châtillon.
Gauricus, suppressing the distich in which the name Maximianus appears and altering the reference to Boethius, published the verse as the work of the first-century-BC poet Cornelius Gallus, whose elegies had been thought to be entirely lost.
[18] The first published English translation, by Hovenden Walker, was titled The Impotent Lover: Accurately Described in Six Elegies upon Old Age, with the Old Doting Letcher's Resentments on the Past Pleasures and Vigorous Performances of Youth.