Professors I. — Tiberius Victor Minervius, the Orator

You shall be named first, Minervius, chief ornament of Bordeaux, a second Quintilian to adorn the rhetorician's gown. Your teaching in its day made glorious Constantinople, Rome, and lastly our native town; which, though it cannot vie with that pair in dignity, yet for its name alone is more acceptable, because it is our native place: let Calagurris make every claim to Fabius as her son, if the chair of Bordeaux receive no less degree. A thousand pupils has Minervius given to the courts, and twice a thousand to the Senate's ranks and to the purple robes. I, too, was of that number; but since my consulship is so great a theme, I will refrain, and praise you for yourself and not through my distinctions. Should panegyric be the field of rivalry, then must you be classed with the orator of the Panathenaicus; or if the test be to develop the mock law-suits of our schools, Quintilian must look to his laurels. Your speech was like a torrent in full spate, yet one which whirled down pure gold without muddy sediment. As for that art in Demosthenes which that great man thrice over called the orator's chief virtue, it was so strong in you that the master himself gives place to you. Shall I speak also of your natural gifts and that divine blessing, your memory, which was so prodigious that you retained what you had heard or read over once as though it were engraven on your mind, and that your ear was as retentive as a book? Once, after a long contested game, I have seen you tell over all the throws made by either side when the dice were tipped out with a sharp spin over the fillets cut out in the hollowed boxwood of the dicebox; and recount move by move, without mistake, which pieces had been lost, which won back, through long stretches of the game. No malice ever blackened your heart: your tongue, though free and full of wit, indulged only in kindly jests that held no sting. Your table showed that refinement with which a censor's code could find no fault: Piso the Frugal would not blush to call it his. Sometimes, as on birthdays or some other feast, it was furnished with greater luxury, but never so lavishly as to diminish your slender means. And when you died after six decades although you left no heir, you were mourned by me as a father and a youth.

And now, if anything survives after Fate has struck her final blow, you are living yet and not unmindful of your days gone by; or, if nothing at all remains, and death's long repose knows no feeling, you have lived your own life: we take pleasure in your fame.