Born: Claudius Claudianus in Alexandria, Egypt, c. AD 370. Family: Married in c. AD 404. Career: Went to Rome before 395, then lived in Milan for five years, from c. AD 395; became a successful court poet under the western emperor Honorius. He was a favourite of and spokesman for General Stilicho, defender of the Roman empire against the Goths and the Vandals. Died: Rome c. ad 404.
Publications Collections
[Works], edited by Ludwig Jeep. 2 vols., 1876-79; also edited by Theodor Birt, in Monumenta Germaniae historica, vol. 10, 1892, Julius Koch, 1893, and J.B. Hall, 1985; edited and translated (prose) by Maurice Platnauer [Loeb Edition], 2 vols., 1922; translated by A, Hawkins, 2 vols., 1817.
Works
De raptu Proserpine, edited by Ludwig Jeep. 1874; also edited by J.B. Hall, 1969; edited and translated by Claire Gruzelier (with commentary), 1993; as The Rape of Proserpine, translated by Leonard Digges, 1628, reprinted 1959; also translated by Jabez Hughes, 1714; Jacob G. Strutt, 1814; Henry E.J. Howard, 1854; Martin Pope, 1934.
Eidyllia, as The Phoenix of Claudian, translated by Arthur Smith(?). 1714.
Epigrammata, as De Sene Veronensi, translated by Andrew Symon. 1708.
Epithalamium for the Marriage of Honorius, translated by H. Isbell,in The Last Poets of Imperial Rome. 1971. In
Eutropium, edited by P. Fargues. 1933.
In Rufinum, edited by Harry L. Levy. 1935; translated as Rufinus; or, the Favourite, 1712; as Elegant History of Rufinus, translated by Jabez Hughes, in Miscellanies in Verse and Prose, 1737; commentary by Harry L. Levy, 1971.
Panegyric on the Third Consulate of Honorius, translated by William Warburton. 1724.
Panegyric on the Fourth Consulate of Honorius, edited and translated by William Barr. 1981. Panegyricus de sexto consulatu Honorii Augusti, edited and translated by Michael Dewar, 1996.
Critical Studies:
Claudian as an Historical Authority by James Crees, 1906; The Influence of Ovid on Claudian by Annette Hawkins Eaton, 1943; Secular Latin Poetry by F.J.E. Raby, 1957; The Use of Images by Claudius Ctaudianus by Peder G. Christiansen, 1969; Claudian, Poet of Declining Empire and Morals by Oswald A.W. Dilke, 1969; Claudian: Poetry and Propaganda at the Court of Honorius by Alan D.E. Cameron, 1970; Prolegomena to Claudian by J.B. Hall, 1986; A Concordance to Claudianus edited by Peder G. Christiansen, 1988; Claudian’s In Eutropium, or, How, When, and Why to Slander a Eunuch by Jacqueline Long, 1996.
Claudian most deserves fame for resuscitating the secular traditions of Latin hexameter poetry. Roman historical and mythological epic, having thrived during the era of Virgil and Ovid, lapsed after that of Silius Italicus and Valerius Flaccus at the close of the 1st century AD. Claudian was not the first poet of the 4th century to revive these forms, but he was the most popular and influential.
Claudian was not born into Latin traditions, but in the Greek-speaking Egyptian metropolis of Alexandria. Like others of the same background, he became an itinerant hired poet (see Alan Cameron, ”Wandering Poets: a Literary Movement in Byzantine Egypt” in Historia, 14, 1965); but Claudian, uniquely, travelled West. He first published in Rome on the New Year of 395, panegyrizing two young nobles of the ancient capital who had been named consuls for that year. To have a panegyric in verse revolutionized western fashion. Claudian also ingeniously turned the traditional structure to focus neither on the consuls themselves nor on the emperor who appointed them, but on their famous and recently deceased father Probus. He not only earned his commission for the immediate occasion, but also bid for patronage among Roman aristocrats who honoured Probus’ memory.
The imperial court at Milan took up the bait. Claudian next celebrated the third consulate of the Western emperor Honorius in 396. Not only did he praise Honorius and forecast favourably for the year, as the occasion required, but he also introduced a hero behind the throne. Between the resplendent scene of Honorius’ triumphal arrival at the Western court and the concluding prayers for worldwide triumphs of the Roman empire under Honorius’ joint rule with his brother Arcadius, he inserted a scene in which Honorius’ and Arcadius’ father Theodosius entrusts the care of both sons to his son-in-law, the general Stilicho. This historically dubious claim, superfluous to the panegyric structure, launched a theme which Claudian continued to pursue in political poems for the next eight years: exaltation of Stilicho as the true preserver of Roman values and glory. Alan Cameron has argued that Claudian did not simply admire Stilicho but was actually commissioned to portray him flatteringly before Western aristocrats ( Claudian: Poetry and Propaganda at the Court of Honorius). Cameron’s interpretation has been accepted widely if not universally (see the reviews of Diegmar Dopp, Anzeiger fur die Altertumswissenschaft, 28, 1975, and Christian Gnilka, Gnomon, 49, 1977); but certainly Stilicho did receive favourable press from Claudian, and manuscript evidence suggests that Stilicho sponsored collection and republication of Claudian’s poems after he died (see J.B. Hall, Prolegomena to Claudian). Claudian’s long tenure as court poet also guaranteed his works illustrious audiences.
The political relevance of many of Claudian’s poems and his own social prominence, however, only made his work conspicuous. His artistry secured them long-lived popularity, just as it had secured his prominence. His major poems divide between three books of an unfinished mythological epic, De raptu Proserpine (The Rape of Proserpine), and historical or political poems; they include panegyrics of Honorius and other Western consuls including Stilicho; invectives against ministers of Arcadius who were hostile to Stilicho; poems celebrating Honorius’ marriage to Stilicho’s daughter, and epics that display Stilicho’s triumphant generalship. All are dominated structurally by visual tableaux, reported speeches, and expostulations in the poet’s own voice; this emphasis exceeds the norms of classical epic but resembles contemporary Greek epic and encomiastic poetry.
Claudian stirred emotions with full rhetorical verve. He drew out his central themes, finding ever newer points of view. His invective against the eunuch Eutropius, for example, calls attention to his emasculation in more than 60 separate passages. They range from explicit references, to meditations on effeminacy, to extended portraits casting Eutropius in the female roles of an abandoned heroine (burlesqued), a decaying bawd, and a bibulous old nursemaid. Modern critics sometimes deplore the endlessness of Claudian’s fluency, but contemporary audiences clearly delighted in the panoplies of ideas and images that it spread. Michael Roberts has illuminated a late antique aesthetic preference for brilliance in poetic descriptions and construction as well as in visual arts (The Jewelled Style: Poetry and Poetics in Late Antiquity, 1989). The triumphal processions of Honorius in the panegyrics for his third, fourth, and sixth consulates provide lush examples with gleaming robes, glittering armour, and dragon-banners that rustle and hiss in the wind like real snakes.
The majority of Claudian’s minor poems, elegant and fashionable epigrams, describe marvels of both nature and art. In ”The Gothic War,” a flash of light from Stilicho’s white hair first tells the anxious Romans that they will soon be rescued, and shows how excitingly such details can figure in epic narrative. Curiously, this latter item almost alone in Claudian’s poetry reveals what anyone looked like. Eutropius’ ghastly decrepitude, insect-ridden scalp and flapping wrinkles, which contrasted with his gorgeous consular robes, demonstrate Claudian’s use of description not for its own sake, but for its emotional impact. His dense allusions to earlier Roman poets display a poetic consciousness of the past that would also have stirred the emotions of listeners equally imbued with poetical traditions. They reinforce Claudian’s explicit emphasis on Roman themes in his political poems and operate no less in the mythological The Rape of Proserpine (Gualandri, 1969, and Moroni, 1982).
Claudian’s poems perfectly fulfilled the sensibilities of his age. They consequently reinforced them and set a trend for subsequent Latin epic. He can be particularly credited with reviving the epic form in Latin; in his political poems he fused it so successfully with encomium as to have invented a new genre, which later generations of poets perpetuated (Heinz Hofmann, ”Uberlegungen zu einer Theorie der nichtchristlichen Epik der lateinischen Spatantike,” Philotogus, 132, 1988). His political poems are thus seminal as well as vivid aesthetic documents, and, incidentally, major historical sources.
