Claudian

Claudian (Claudius Claudiānus) (d. c. AD 404), the last great Latin poet in the classical tradition. He was born at Alexandria in the late fourth century AD and came to Italy before 395. Although a native Greek speaker, he turned to composing in Latin and became immediately successful as a court poet under Honorius, the young emperor in the West, writing in hexameters a number of eulogies of him and his ministers and, in particular, a three-book panegyric of the general and regent Stilicho. (The date of his death is inferred from his silence about Stilicho's achievements after 404.) He also wrote poems savagely abusing Honorius' political enemies, mostly in the eastern empire (ruled by Honorius' young brother Arcadius), attacking in particular Rufinus, the guardian of Arcadius, and the eunuch Eutropius, Rufinus' successor. He wrote an (incomplete) epyllion of 526 lines on the defeat of Gildo who led an uprising in Africa, and another on Stilicho's defeat of the Visigothic king Alaric at Pollentia (Pollenza). In these poems Claudian shows sincere enthusiasm for the Roman empire, great technical and rhetorical skill, and a vigour at times reaching high eloquence, although both his panegyric and his invective are extravagant. He makes abundant use of allegory and mythological episode and allusion. In addition to the political poems he wrote an epithalamium and four shorter poems for Honorius' marriage to Stilicho's daughter Maria. His finest work, as it seems today, is The Rape of Proserpine, divided into four books, of which 1, 100 lines survive; he tells with great charm the familiar story of Proserpine's abduction by Pluto in the field of Enna. He also wrote a number of short pieces, idylls and epigrams, mostly in elegiacs (see METRE, GREEK 4), on a great variety of subjects—the Nile, the phoenix, a porcupine, a lobster, a statue, a landscape, etc. The best-known is the idyll on the ‘Old man of Verona’, imitated from Virgil's description of the old gardener of Tarentum (Georgics 4. 125). Although Honorius' court was Christian, Claudian's poetry shows a predilection for the old pagan religion and it is probable that he remained unconverted. He was honoured for his work by a bronze statue erected in the Forum of Trajan, the inscription from which has survived and is in Naples.

Works of Claudius Claudianus

Claudian (lat. Claudius Claudianus) was a Roman poet, who worked for Emperor Honorius and the latter's general Stilicho.

A Greek-speaking (probably pagan) citizen of Alexandria, Claudian arrived in Rome before 395, and made his mark with a eulogy of his two young patrons, Probinus and Olybrius, thereby becoming court poet. He wrote a number of panegyrics on the consulship of his patrons, praise poems for the deeds of Stilicho, and invectives directed at Stilicho's rivals in the Eastern court of Arcadius. These efforts resulted with such gifts as the honor of the rank of vir illustris, a statue, and a rich bride selected by Stilicho's wife, Serena.

Despite his Greek origins, Claudian wrote in Latin and is one of the best late users of the language in poetry. Critics consider Claudian a good poet, if not absolutely first-rate. He is elegant, tells a story well, and his polemical passages are occasionally unmatchable in sheer entertaining vitriol; but his writing is tainted by preciousness, a flaw of the literature of his time, and his being extraordinarily cold and unfeeling.

From a historical standpoint, Claudian's poetry is a valuable, however distorted, primary source for his period. Since his poems do not record the achievements of Stilicho after 404, scholars assume he died in that year. The historical or political poems connected with Stilicho have a separate manuscript tradition to the rest of his work, and this is believed to indicate that they were published as a separate collection, perhaps by Stilicho himself after Claudian's death.

His most important non-political work is an unfinished epic, De raptu Proserpinae, whose three extant books are believed to have been written in 395 and 397.

Works

• Panegyricus dictus Probino et Olybrio consulibus
• De raptu Proserpinae (unfinished epic, 3 books completed)
• In Rufinum ("Against Rufinus")
• De Bello Gildonico ("On the Gildonic revolt")
• In Eutropium ("Against Eutropius")
• Fescennina / Epithalamium de Nuptiis Honorii Augusti
• Panegyricus de Tertio Consulatu Honorii Augusti
• Panegyricus de Quarto Consulatu Honorii Augusti
• Panegyricus de Consulatu Flavii Manlii Theodori
• De Consulatu Stilichonis
• Panegyricus de Sexto Consulatu Honorii Augusti
• De Bello Gothico ("On the Gothic War" of 402-403)
• Lesser poems: Epithalamium Palladio et Celerinae; de Magnete; de Crystallo cui aqua inerat

See also

• Allegory in the Middle Ages

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Claudian

The text of Claudian

• Complete Latin text and English translation (Platnauer, 1922 at LacusCurtius)
• Critical edition, Latin (Michael Hendry)

Secondary sources

• Resources for the Study of Claudian (Bret Mulligan)

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