Short answers, pulled from the story.
Decimus Magnus Ausonius entered the world in Burdigala, a city now known as Bordeaux, France. His father Julius Ausonius practiced medicine and traced his lineage to Greek ancestry while his mother Aemilia Aeonia descended from established land-owning Gallo-Roman families of southwestern Gaul.
Emperor Valentinian I summoned Ausonius after thirty years of teaching to instruct Gratian, the heir-apparent. When Gratian became emperor in 375, he began granting Ausonius and his family high civil honors including the title Praetorian Prefect of Gaul that same year. By 379 Ausonius himself was awarded the consulship which marked the peak of his political career before the empire fractured.
Ausonius composed Mosella as a description of the River Moselle flowing through Germany with references to winemaking within this work. These passages provide early evidence of large-scale viticulture in what is now the famous wine country around Bordeaux. Modern historians rely on these textual clues to understand economic conditions in fourth-century Gaul regarding agricultural practices along the river banks.
Ausonius mentions a water mill sawing marble on a tributary of the Moselle in passing within his works. His writings contain rare references to water mills used specifically for cutting stone where the rotary blade connects directly to the water wheel axle without requiring gearing. This provides unique literary evidence for mechanical engineering developments occurring alongside agricultural processing during late antiquity.
Critics consider his style easy and fluent yet derivative and unoriginal overall despite contemporary audiences admiring him while later historians ranked his works below Latin literature's finest examples. Edward Gibbon pronounced in Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire that the poetical fame of Ausonius condemns the taste of his age. Some scholars argue his work reflects the cultural values of late antiquity accurately while others find his approach too conventional compared to earlier masters like Vergil.