Gaius Valerius Flaccus (died ca AD 90) was a Roman poet who flourished in the "Silver Age" under the emperors
Vespasian and Titus and wrote a Latin Argonautica that
owes a great deal to Apollonius of Rhodes more famous epic.
He has been identified on insufficient grounds with a poet friend of Martial (1.61.76), a
native of Padua, and in needy circumstances; but as he was a member of the College of Fifteen, who had charge of the Sibylline
books (1.5), he must have been well off. The subscription of the Vatican
manuscript, which adds the name Setinus Balbus, points to his having been a native of Setia in
Latium. The only ancient writer who mentions him is Quintilian (10.1.90), who laments his recent death as a great loss; as Quintilian's work was finished about
90 AD, this gives a limit for the death of Flaccus.
His only surviving work, the Argonautica, dedicated to Vespasian on his setting out for Britain, was written during the siege, or shortly after the capture, of Jerusalem by Titus in 70 AD. As the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD is
alluded to, its composition must have occupied him a long time. The Argonautica is an epic
poem intended to be in eight books, written in traditional dactylic
hexameters, which recounts Jason's quest for the Golden
Fleece. The poem's text, as it has survived, is in a very corrupt state; it ends so abruptly with the request of
Medea to accompany Jason on his homeward voyage, that it is assumed by most modern
scholars[1] that it was never finished. It is a free
imitation and in parts a translation of the Argonautica of Apollonius of
Rhodes, "to whom he is superior in arrangement, vividness, and description of character" (Loeb Classical Library). The
familiar subject had already been treated in Latin verse in the popular version of Varro
Atacinus. The object of the work has been described as the glorification of Vespasian's achievements in securing Roman
rule in Britain and opening up the ocean to navigation (as the Euxine was opened up by the
Argo).
In 1911, the compilers of Encyclopaedia Britannica remarked, "Various estimates have been formed of the genius of
Flaccus, and some critics have ranked him above his original, to whom he certainly is superior in liveliness of description and
delineation of character. His diction is pure, his style correct, his versification smooth though monotonous. On the other hand,
he is wholly without originality, and his poetry, though free from glaring defects, is artificial and elaborately dull. His model
in language was Virgil, to whom he is far inferior in taste and lucidity. His tiresome display of
learning, rhetorical exaggeration and ornamentations make him difficult to read, which no doubt
accounts for his unpopularity in ancient times."
The first printed edition was in 1474. Increased interest in the last decades has resulted in a full-length general
introduction,[2] two new editions, in 1997 (Liberman) and
2003, and commentaries by H.J.W. Wijsman, 1996 (Book V) and 2000 (Book VI), F. Spaltenstein, 2002 (Books I and II), and Adrianus
Jan Kleywegt, 2005 (Book I)[3] which attempts to amend the
faulty text.
Notes
References
External links
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