Kenney_and_Clausen B.M.W.(eds.) - Get a Free Blog

POETRY
looked like; and of Stilicho we know only that his hair was white (Bellum
Geticum 459—60 emicuit Stilichonis apex et cognita fulsit \ canities, probably the
last passage of Claudian ever to be quoted in the House of Commons).
Claudian's descriptive passages are based upon rhetoric and reminiscence, not
upon observation. His poetry is shot through with echoes not only of Lucretius
and Virgil and Ovid, but of Lucan and Statius and Silius Italicus. But he rarely
quotes directly and he often fuses together reminiscences of two or more
classical poets. Sometimes the classical echo was meant to add depth to his
own expression. But it would be unwise to suppose that the Roman Senate
or the imperial court could pick up and appreciate in the course of a recitation
every fleeting allusion to earlier literature, as some scholars have tended to
suggest. Rather he was himself so steeped in classical poetry that the quotations
and allusions came unbidden to his pen. His deep familiarity with classical
Latin poetry is reflected in his vocabulary, which has few neologisms, in
his syntax, which is scarcely affected by the spoken language of his time,
and in his prosody, which scarcely ever departs from classical rules, in
spite of the tendency of living speech to neglect phonological distinctions of
vowel length.
Claudian is described by Augustine as a Christi nomine alienus and by
Orosius as paganus peruicacissimus {Civ. Dei 5.26, Hist. adv. pag. 7.35.21).
Both men were his contemporaries, though neither can have known him
personally. But it is by no means certain that they were right. He wrote an
Easter hymn, De Salvatore, which is really rather a poem offering Easter
wishes to Honorius. Otherwise his poetry has no trace of Christian expressions
or allusions, and is filled with traditional references to the Olympians. But
this is a matter of literature, not of life. It is striking that when Claudian first
came to Rome he enjoyed the patronage of a senatorial family that had long
been Christian, and that he then became court poet at the intensely Christian
court of Honorius. He may well have been a nominal Christian. And if he
was a pagan, his attachment would not be to the official cult of the Roman
pantheon, which still had a powerful appeal to senatorial aristocrats like
Symmachus, but to the Isis and Sarapis cults of his native Alexandria. In any
case Christianity did not affect his poetic persona.
His 'official' poems appear to have been issued in a collected edition at the
instigation of Stilicho between 404 and 408. The Raptus Proserpinae and the
various minor poems survived separately.
The virtues and the shortcomings of Claudian's style may be exemplified
by two passages, one of encomium, the other of invective.
Proxime dis consul, tantae qui prospicis urbi, 130
qua nihil in terris complectitur altius aether,
709
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