CLAUDIAN I 1 I 1 1 1 I I 1 1 1 I I I I 1 1 1 1 I I I Translated by I I MAURICE FLA INAIIHR I I I I @ Igjfgjfmifgjfgjfgjrej Mmmmmmmmmmm^Mmmm E
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mmmmmMimmmmmmmmmmsmsmmjMmMM 1 m LOEB CLASSICAL LIBRARY i i i i 1 CLAUDIAN i 1 I 1 1 1 i i 1 1 1 i i i i 1 1 1 1 i i i Translated by i i MAURICE FLA INAIIHR i i i i @ igjfgjfmifgjfgjfgJrEJ mmmmmmmmmmm^mmmm e CLAUDIUS CLAUDIANUS, Latin poet of great affairs, flourished during the joint reijJns (a.i). 394—5^ onwards) of the brothers Uonorius (Lmperor in the West) and Arcadius (in the Hast). Apparently a native of Greek Alexandria in H^vpt, he was, to judge by his name, of Roman descent, though his first writings were in Greek, and his pure Latin mav have been learned by him as a foreign language. About A.n. 39^ he moved to Italv (Milan and Rome) and though really a pagan, became a professional court- poet compos- ing for Christian rulers works which ^i\ us important knowledge of Honorius' time. A panegyric on the brothers Probinus and Olvbrius (consuls together 39^) was fol- lowed during ten years by other poems (mostly epics in hexameters): in praise of consulships of Honorius (a.d. 39^, 398, 404); against the Byzantine ministers Rufi- nus (396) and Lutropius (399); in praise of the consulship (400) of Stilicho (Honorius' guardian, general, and minister); in praise of Stilicho's wife Serena; mixed metres on the marriage of Honorius to their daugh- ter Maria; on the war with the rebel Gildo in Africa ( 398); on the Getic or Gothic war (402); on Stilicho's success against the Goth Alaric (403); on the consulship of Manlius Theodorus (399); and on the wedding of Palladius and Celerina. Less Continued on back jlap 87 1 Clduciiari C laud i an, Fi. 400. (J 1 a u ci i n n , 267638 vol.1" NY PUBLIC LIBRARY THE BRANCH LIBRARIES I MM 3 3333 14817 6015 LL The New'&rij: Public Library Afltor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations The Branch Libraries MID-MANHATTAN LIBRARY MM j j Literature & Language Dept. 1^1^ 455 Fifth Avenue New York, N.Y. 10016 Books and non-print media may be returned to any branch of The New York Public Library. Music scores, orchestral sets and certain materials must be returned to branch from which borrowed. All materials must be returned by the last date stamped on the card. Fines are charged for overdue items. p^^^ ^^^^2 Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/claudian01clau THE LOEB CLASSICAL LIBRARY FOUNDED BY JAMES LOEB EDITED BY G. P. GOOLD PREVIOUS EDITORS T. E. PAGE E. CAPPS W. H. D. ROUSE L. A. POST E. H. WARMINGTON CLAUDIAN I LCL 135 CLAUDIAN WITH AN ENGLISH TRANSLATION BY MAURICE PLATNAUER IN TWO VOLUMES I HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS LONDON, ENGLAND First published 1922 Reprinted 1956, 1963, 1976, 1990 ISBN 0-674-99150-8 Printed in Great Britain by St. Edmundsbunj Press Ltd, Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk, on wood-free paper. Bound by Hunter 6 Foulis Ltd, Edinburgh, Scotland. - CONTENTS OF VOLUME I PAGB INTRODUCTION ....... vii POEMS PANEGYRIC ON THE CONSULS PROBINUS AND OLYBRIUS ,..,.. 2 THE FIRST BOOK AGAINST RUFINUS PREFACE ....... 24 BOOK I ....... 26 THE SECOND BOOK AGAINST RUFINUS— PREFACE ....... 56 BOOK II ....... 58 THE WAR AGAINST GILDO BOOK I .... * . 98 AGAINST EUTROPIUS BOOK I . - . .138 BOOK 11: PREFACE . ,178 BOOK II . .184 V • CONTENTS PAQB FESCENNINE VERSES IN HONOUR OF THE MARRIAGE OF THE EMPEROR HONORIUS . 230 EPITHALAMIUM OF HONORIUS AND MARIA PREFACE ....... 240 EPITHALAMIUM ... ... 242 PANEGYRIC ON THE THIRD CONSULSHIP OF THE EMPEROR HONORIUS (a.D. 396)^ PREFACE ....... 268 PANEGYRIC ,...., 270 PANEGYRIC ON THE FOURTH CONSULSHIP OF THE EMPEROR HONORIUS (a.D. 398) . 286 PANEGYRIC ON THE CONSULSHIP OF FL. MANLIUS THEODORUS (a.D. 399) PREFACE ....••• 336 PANEGYRIC . ..... 338 ON STILICHO'S CONSULSHIP (a.D. 400)— I 364 BOOK ..... vi INTRODUCTION Claudius Claudianus may be called the last poet of classical Rome. He was born about the year 370 a.d. and died within a decade of the sack of the city by Alaric in 410. The thirty to forty odd years which comprised his life were some of the most momentous in the history of Rome. Valentinian and Valens were emperors respectively of the West and the East when he was born, and while the former was engaged in constant warfare with the northern tribes of Alamanni, Quadi and Sarmatians, whose advances the skill of his general, Theodosius, had managed to check, the latter was being reserved for unsuccessful battle with an enemy still more deadly. It is about the year 370 that we begin to hear of the Huns. The first people to fall a victim to their eastward aggression were the Alans, next came the Ostrogoths, whose king, Hermanric, was driven to suicide ; and by 375 the Visigoths were threatened with a similar fate. Hemmed in by the advancing flood of Huns and the stationary power of Rome this people, after a vain attempt to ally itself with the latter, was forced into arms against her. An indecisive battle with the generals of Valens (377) was followed by a crushing Roman defeat in the succeeding year (August 9j 378) at Adrianople, where vii INTRODUCTION Valens himself, but recently returned from his Persian war, lost his Hfe. Gratian and his half-brother, Valentinian II., who had become Augusti upon the death of their father, Valentinian I., in 375, would have had Uttle power of themselves to withstand the victorious Goths and Rome might well have fallen thirty years before she did, had it not been for the force of character and the military skill of that same Theodosius whose successes against the Alamanni have aheady been mentioned. Theodosius was summoned from his retirement in Spain and made Augustus (January 19, 379). During the next three years he succeeded, with the help of the Frankish generals, Bauto and Arbogast, in gradually driving the Goths northward, and so relieved the barbarian pressure on the Eastern Empire and its capital. In 381 Athanaric, the Gothic king, sued in person for peace at Constan- tinople and there did homage to the emperor. In the following year the Visigoths became alhes of Rome and, for a time at least, the danger was averted. Meanwhile the West was faring not much better. Gratian, after an uneasy reign, was murdered in 383 by the British pretender, Magnus Maximus. From 383 to 387 Maximus was joint ruler of the West with Valentinian II., whom he had left in command of Italy rather from motives of policy than of clemency ; but in the latter year he threw off the mask and, crossing the Alps, descended upon his colleague whose court was at Milan. Valentinian fled to Thessalonica and there threw himself on the mercy of Theodosius. Once more that general was to save the situation, viii ; INTRODUCTION Maximus was defeated by him at Aquileia and put to death, while Arbogast recovered Gaul by- means of an almost bloodless campaign (388). The next scene in the drama is the murder at Vienne on May 15, 392, of the feeble Valentinian at the instigation of Arbogast. Arbogast 's triumph was, however, short-lived. Not daring himself, a Frank, to assume the purple he invested therewith his secretary, the Roman Eugenius, intending to govern the West with Eugenius as a mere figure-head. Once more, and now for the last time, Theodosius saved the cause of legitimacy by defeating Eugenius at the battle of the Frigidus ^ in September 394>. Eugenius was executed but Arbogast made good his escape, only to fall a few weeks later by his own hand. Theodosius himself died on January 17, 395, leaving his two sons, Arcadius and Honorius, emperors of the East and West respectively. Arcadius was but a tool in the hands of his praetorian prefect, Rufinus, whose character is drawn with such venomous ferocity in Claudian's two poems. Almost equally powerful and scarcely less corrupt seems to have been that other victim of Claudian's splenetic verses, the eunuch chamberlain Eutropius, who became consul in the year 399. Both these men suffered a violent end : Eutropius, in spite of the pleadings of S. John Chrysostom, was put to death by Gainas, the commander of the Gothic troops in the East Rufinus was torn to pieces in the presence of Arcadius himself by his Eastern troops. ^ The instigator of 1 Cf. vii. 99 et sqq. * V. 348 et sqq. S. Jerome {Ep. Ix.) refers to his death and tells how his head was carried on a pike to Constan- tinople. ix INTRODUCTION this just murder was Claudian's hero, Stilicho the Vandal. Stihcho, who had been one of Theodosius' generals, had been put in command of the troops sent to oppose Alaric, the Visigoth, when the latter had broken away from his allegiance to Rome and was spreading devastation throughout Thrace, Macedonia and Thessaly. He was successful in his campaign, but, upon his marching south into Greece, in order to rid that country also of its Gothic invaders, he was forbidden by Rufinus to advance any farther. There can be Uttle doubt that the murder of Rufinus was Stihcho's answer. In spite of a subsequent victory over Alaric near Elis in the year 397, Stilicho 's success can have been but a partial one, for we find the Visigoth general occupying the post of Master of the Soldiery in Illyricum, the withholding of which office had been the main cause of his defection. Possibly, too, the revolt of Gildo in Africa had something to do with the unsatisfactory termination of the Visigothic war. It is interesting to observe the dependence of Italy on African corn, a dependence of which in the first century of the Christian era Vespasian, and right at the end of the second the pretender Pescennius Niger, threatened to make use.