Claudian

Works of Claudius Claudianus - German translation by Georg Freiherr von Wedekind, 1868

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

A Greek-speaking citizen of Alexandria and probably not a Christian convert, Claudian arrived in Rome before 395. He 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 Claudian 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

The Abduction of Proserpina (ca. 1631) by Rembrandt was influenced by Claudian's De raptu Proserpinae

• 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: Phoenix, Epithalamium Palladio et Celerinae; de Magnete; de Crystallo cui aqua inerat

See also

• Allegory in the Middle Ages

Editions

• Dewar, Michael (ed. & transl.) Claudian Panegyricus de Sexto Consulatu Honorii Augusti (Oxford Clarendon Press, 1996).
• David R. Slavitt (tr.), Broken Columns: Two Roman Epic Fragments: The Achilleid of Publius Papinius Statius and The Rape of Proserpine of Claudius Claudianus, with an Afterword by David Konstan (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997).
• Baier, Thomas and Anne Friedrich (ed., trans., comm.), Claudianus. Der Raub der Proserpina (Darmstadt: WBG (Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft), 2009) (Edition Antike).

Bibliography

• A. Cameron, Claudian. Poetry and Propaganda at the Court of Honorius (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970).
• A. Cameron, “Claudian Revisited,” in F.E. Consolino, ed., Letteratura e Propaganda nell'occidente Latino da Augusto ai regni Romanobarbarici, Atti del Convegno Internazionale, Arcavacata di Rende, 25–26 maggio 1998 (Saggi di Storia Antica 15) (Rome: [L'Erma] di Bretschneider, 2000), 131–133.
• B. Mulligan, "The Poet from Egypt? Reconsidering Claudian's Eastern Origin," Philologus 151, 2 (2007), 285–310.
• S. Ratti, "Une lecture religieuse des invectives de Claudien est-elle possible?" AnTard 16 (2008), 177–86.
• Widu-Wolfgang Ehlers (ed.), Aetas Claudianea. Eine Tagung an der Freien Universität Berlin vom 28. bis 30. Juni 2002 (München/Leipzig: K.G. Saur, 2004).
• P.A. Miller, Subjecting Verses: Latin Love Elegy and the Emergence of the Real (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004).
• Marie-France Guipponi-Gineste, Claudien: poète du monde à la cour d'Occident. Collections de l'Université de Strasbourg. Études d'archéologie et d'histoire ancienne (Paris: De Boccard, 2010).

External links

Editions

• Complete Latin text and English translation (Platnauer, 1922 at LacusCurtius)
• Critical edition, Latin (Michael Hendry)
• Claudianus, Der Raub der Proserpina, hg. Thomas Baier and Anne Friedrich (Darmstadt: WBG (Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft), 2009) (Edition Antike).

Secondary sources

• Resources for the Study of Claudian (Bret Mulligan)