Parentalia III. — Aemilius Magnus Arborius, my Mother's Brother

Natural affection bade me utter first my father's and my mother's names, and yet Arborius refuses to take third place. Though it were an outrage to mention him first and my father after him, yet again it is scarcely less to deny him the first place. So let us compromise; let him be named next, before all others, although he will be second to my father.

You, my mother's brother, and one in soul with my father, and to me who were as my father and my mother, who in my infancy, boyhood, youth, and manhood, instructed me in arts which it is a delight to have learned — you the learned gownsmen of Toulouse, that home of Pallas, made their chief, you Gaul of Narbonne — a province whose tribunal you enriched with Roman eloquence, as also the courts of Spain and Novempopulonia. Hence your fame was spread all over Europe, until Constantinople claimed you as its professor and flourished under your instruction. It was you, skilled and eloquent of speech through all its countless devices, through all its countless utterances of majesty; you, quick of wit and sure of memory; you who, when in my earliest years I was committed to your charge and pleased you well, said you needed nothing more since I was in the world. And when you avowed that I was a glory, I an honour to you and to my parents, you dictated words to be entered in the book of my destiny.

And so farewell, my uncle, in the Elysian abode appointed you: I make this offering of verse to you from the cup of your own Muses.