son of the poet Ausonius by his wife Attusia Lucana Sabina. We have no data for fixing the
year of his birth. He lost his mother while he was young; but his education was carefully
superintended by his father, who wrote "Fasti," for the use of his son, and inscribed to him
his metrical catalogue of the Caesars. Hesperius received, probably from the emperor Gratian,
who was his father's pupil, the proconsulship of Africa, which he held FLAVIANUS,
No. 5.] He afterwards held the praetorian praefecture in conjunction (as we judge from some
expressions of Ausonius) with his father. Valesius thinks they were joint praefecti praetorio
Galliarum; Gothofred, that they were joint P. P. of the whole western empire (comprehending
the praefectures of Gaul, Italy, and Illyrium), but that Ausonius usually resided in Gaul, and
Hesperius in Italy. There are extant several letters of Symmachus addressed to Hesperius; and
from one of these (lib. i. ep. 80) he appears to have been at Mediolanum (Milan), the usual
seat of the P. P. of Italy, but it is not clear that the letter was addressed to him while he
was praefect. Tillemont, who discusses the question in a careful, but unsatisfactory note,
thinks that Ausonius first held the praefecture of Italy alone, and afterwards that of Gaul,
in conjunction with Hesperius. In A. D. 384, a Count Hesperius (apparently the son of
Ausonius), was sent by the emperor Valentinian H. on a mission to Rome, which he was enabled
to see, and bear witness to the innocence of his friend Symmachus, who, through some unjust
accusations, had incurred discredit at court. Nothing is known of him after this.
Hesperius had at least three sons. One of them, Paulinus, distinguished as "the Penitent,"
author of a poem called Eucharisticon or Carmen
Eucharisticum de Vita sua (sometimes ascribed, but incorrectly, to the better known
Paulinus of Nola), was born in Macedonia about