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Rutilii Claudii Namatiani De Reditu Suo Libri Duo : the Home-Coming Of

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Rutilii Claudii Namatiani De Reditu Suo Libri Duo : the Home-Coming Of TT ? ' -/ 1 J JM 1 JU 1 i-dO ,-* r ^ » I I r /-\ r-i in"- p . ( r I u I \ ; I* 1 ^ ^ Rutilii Claudii Namatiani De Reditu Suo LIbri Duo DUBLIN : PRINTED AT THF. UNIVERSITY PRESS, BY POXSONBY AND GIBBS. Rutilii Claudii Namatiani De Reditu Suo Libri Duo THE HOME-COMING OF RUTILIUS CLAUDIUS NAMATIANUS FROM ROME TO GAUL IN THE YEAR 416 A.D. EDITED, WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES, CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY, BY CHARLES HAINES KEENE, M.A. AND TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH VERSE BY GEORGE F. SAVAGE-ARMSTRONG, M.A., D.Lit. : 1907 LONDON : GEORGE BELL & SONS /TV /fo7 CONTENTS PAGE Introduction : — EUTILIUS AND THE ItALY OF HIS DaY, .... 1 Outline of the Journey — Probable Date, ... 7 Personal History of Rutilius — His Name — Title of his Poem —His Father — His Career —His Reasons for leaving Robie, . .13 Rutilius' Friends, ........ 26 Rutilius' Relations with Stilicho, . .35 Rutilius in relation to Christianity and Paganism, . 39 Places Referred to in the Poem, . .43 Rutilius as an Author, ....... 60 Manuscripts, ......... 68 Editions, Commentaries, and Versions, . .85 Acknowledgments, ........ 93 Abbreviations, ........ 96 Argument, ......... 99 Latin Text, English Translation, and Critical Notes, . 108 Explanatory Notes, ........ 171 Index, ........... 235 94278 ILLUSTRATIONS Gulf of Porto, Corsica, ..... Frontispiece, Clouds on Monte d'Oro, Corsica, . facing page 27 Island 48 of Capraria, ...... », 49 Island of Gorgona, ...... >> INTRODUCTION RUTILIUS AND THE IrALY OF HIS DaY The poem in which Rutilius Claudius Namatianus describes his lionie-coming from Rome to Gaul is of interest as well from a literary as from a historical and a topographical point of view. His lively and graphic descriptions give a vivid impression of the places he visited and of the social conditions which, owino; to weak srovernment and the raids of bar- in at the time he travelled barians, prevailed Italy ; while the high poetical level to which he rises when a suitable subject presents itself—such as the great- ness of Rome, the merits of a valued friend, or the charms— or strangeness of some natural phenomenon shows that tlie light of poetic inspiration was not yet extinct at the beginning of the fifth century a.d. " The Return," in fact, is not only the most interest- ing of the Itineraries that have come down to us, but is also a poem of considerable merit, in which the social and political effects of barbarian invasions, and also of the growing influence of Christianity, are sketched in a vivid and attractive form. At the beginning of the fifth century a.d. the state of things in both Italy and Gaul—the countries with 2 INTRODUCTION which our poem is concerned—was such as to cause no little anxiety both to possessors of property and to those who found it necessary to face the risks of travelling. It was a period when political and religious conflicts shook the fabric of society, wlien the attacks of foreign invaders endangered the tenure of property, and the struggle between the growing influence of Christianity and the rapidly weakening champions of Paganism unsettled men's minds, and cast the shadow of doubt on ancient and venerable beliefs that were closely bound up with the existing order of things. The poem contains frequent allu- to of unrest and to it sions these causes ; read with appreciation it is necessary to bear in mind what the barbarians on the one hand, and Christianity on the other, were doing to dissolve existing institutions and recast them in a new mould. Under the weak and ineffective rule of Honorius, who succeeded to the Emj^ire of the West on the death of his father, the great Theodosius, in '395, and continued his inglorious reign—residing first at Milan and after 403 at Ravenna—until the year of his death, 423, Italy suffered severely from the inroads of the barbarians, especially from the invasions led by Radagaisus, King of the Ostrogoths,^ and by Alaric, King of the Visigoths. The Vandal Stilicho, indeed, the commander-in-chief of the army of Honorius, while he lived succeeded in curbing the barbarians, defeating Alaric at Pollentia (where now stands the little village of Pollenzo with ruins of its ancient Roman theatre and amphitheatre) on Easter Day, 1 See and her Hodgkin, Italy Invaders, vol. i., part ii., page 731. EUTILIUS AND THE ITALY OF HIS DAY 3 6th of April 402, and again— according to Claudian^— at Verona in 403, and starving out Radagaisus in 405 in the mountains near Faesulae, now Fiesole, probably within sight of the tlien tiny town of Florentia, near the spot wliere Catiline had been surrounded and defeated by the armies of the Republic in 62 B.C. But the relief thus given to the lands of tlie Empire was slight and of brief duration. Even before the death of Stilicho a host of barbarians invaded Gaul, crossing the Rhine at Mayence on the last day of the year 406. These barbarians consisted chiefly of three races, the Vandals, the Suevi, and the Alans—the first two Teutonic, the third probably of Tartar or Turanian origin. Gibbon thinks they were the remains of the army of Rada- gaisus, of which force he infers from a statement in the Chronicon Imperiale of Tiro Prosper two-thirds were not involved in the disaster of Faesulae. From this view of Gibbon's Dr. Hodgkin" dissents, as he thinks all the troops of Radagaisus perished or were sold as slaves. In whatever way, however, the body of raiders was constituted, they soon reduced to desola- tion the regions whose previous peaceful prosperity the poet Claudian describes with entliusiasm (saying that Germany had been brought into such a state of subjection and civilization that the traveller sailing ^ VI. Cons. Hon. 201 sq. Tu quoque non parviim Getico, Verona, triumpho Adjunqis cumidum ; nee plus PoUcntia rebus ContuUt Ausoniis aut moenia vindicis Astae. The engagement at Verona is not men- writer tioned by any but Claudian. See Hodgkin, Italy and her Invaders, vol. i., part ii., page 724. -1. c, page 783. b2 4 INTRODUCTION down the Rhine was fain to ask himself which was ^ the German, which the Roman shore), and carried the terror of their arms over the greatest part of the seventeen provinces of Gaul, as far as the ocean, the Alps, and the Pyrenees. We learn from onr poet (I. 37 sq.) that the state of Italy was little better than that of Gaul—at least in the parts of it he would have had to traverse if he had followed the land route on his journey to Gaul— and this we can well imagine. The first invasion of Alaric in 400, and the ravages of Radagaisus in 405, had rudely dispelled the confidence the inhabitants of Italy felt in the traditional impregnabilit}^ of their country; and the second invasion of Alaric in 408, his three successive sieges of Rome in that and the two following years, and the ultimate capture and sack of the city by his troops, brought destruction and terror into the heart of Italy. It is true that the Goths made a short at Rome— only— stay some three or at most six days and, as there was much plundering to be done in the time, it is unlikely they did as serious permanent damage to the city by the destruction of mere buildings as some writers- would have us believe. Indeed, Professor Dill^ points out that the poem of Rutilius itself furnishes a most convincing argument to this effect in farewell to the ; for, bidding city, he speaks as though he still saw the crowded iLaud. Stil. 1, 220 sq. Cons. Stil. 2, 186 sq. - Such as Jerome, Procopius, Pliilostorgius. See Hoclgkin, 1. c, page 798. 2 Roman Society in the last century of the Western Empire, pages 257 sq. RUTILIUS AND THE ITALY OF HIS DAY 5 monuments of her glory, and as though his eyes were dazzled by the radiance of her glittering fanes. Yet the disaster of the sack was a terrible one city's ; and the deep impression it produced on the minds of the provincials is testified by various allusions in the writings of St. Jerome and St. Augustine, who, in their distant abodes at Bethlehem and in North Africa, were no indifferent onlookers. Indeed, St. Augustine's ' ' well-known work The City of God furnishes a good illustration of the widespread eli'ect of the news of the capture of Rome. In his Retractationes^ he describes the origin of the book. It seems the Pagans endeavoured to connect the overthrow of Rome with the of the Christian and so growth religion ; widespread was the feeling, and so important did St. Augustine think it to refute the belief, that he devoted his spare time during thirteen years to composing the great work, in twenty-two books, in which he endeavours to refute the belief that the prosperity of mankind depends on Polytheism, and seeks to establish the truth of the Christian religion. Passing on from Rome, the Goths ultimately reached Reggio, which proved the limit of their advance, as the ships they collected at that place—to invade Sicily, as some historians say, or Africa, according to the more probable statement of Jordanes— were dashed to pieces b}" a storm. At Cosenza, near Reggio, Alaric died in 410 a.d., and was buried under the waters of the river Busento that encircles the town, which was temporarily diverted from its course to allow of his interment in the bed of its channel. ' Hodgkin, 1. c, page 803. 6 INTEODUCTION Alaric was succeeded by his brother-in-law, Ataulfus, under whose command the Goths in 412 withdrew from Italy and entered Gaul, where, at the city of Narbonne, in 414, Ataulfus married Galla Placidia, the daughter of Theodosius, having, after long negotiations, obtained the consent of her brother Honorius to their union.
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