Commenting on Claudian’s ‘political poems’, 1612/16501

Valéry Berlincourt

Summary

The prolific Neo- scholar and poet Caspar von Barth (1587–1658) wrote schol- arly commentaries on many Latin authors, among them Claudian (ca. AD 370– 404), whose “political poems” dealt with contemporary events of great significance for the court of the Western in an age of conflicts and usurpers. Comparing Barth’s early commentary on this poet (1612) and his later, much more voluminous work (1650) allows us to see how his approach changed over the years, both in his exegetical techniques and in his way of reading Claudian. In the second commentary, written in the midst of the Thirty Years’ War, Barth is little concerned with relating the historical contents of Claudian’s poems to the events of his own day. On the other hand, the later commentary is clearly differ- ent from the first in other regards. This is particularly the case in relation to its “intertextual landscape”. The commentary published in 1650 mentions and quotes many more texts, and it greatly expands their chronological and cultural range. In addition, changes occur in the use of such mentions and quotations with regard to poetics, and to imitatio in particular. The later commentary is much more sensitive than the first to “systemic” connections, that is, to ­Claudian’s recurring “imitations” of certain texts.

1. Introduction

The late-antique poet Claudianus, who seems to have been born around 370 and is presumed to have died in 404 or soon afterwards, composed numerous and varied works, among them so-called ‘political poems’. These poems feature prominent persons and events of the Roman

1 I am grateful to participants in the congress whose remarks helped me improve my argument, notably Jean-Louis Charlet, Karl Enenkel and Harm-Jan van Dam, and to Michael Dewar, who was so kind as to read and to offer comments on my text. I am also indebted to the Swiss National Science Foundation, which funded my participation in the congress as a contribution in the team research project Latin Poetry: Studies in Intertextuality directed by Damien Nelis at the University of Geneva. With a view to the thematic unity of the present volume, this written version gives more space than the oral presentation to the discussion of exegetical re-elaboration between Barth’s commentaries of 1612 and 1650. 126 valéry berlincourt empire in Claudian’s times, that is, under the rule of Theodosius (379–395) and then of his two sons, in the West and in the East. After the death of Theodosius in the year 395, Claudian aligned himself in particular with the political positions of , the powerful half- Vandal who acted as the regent of the young Honorius and aspired to control the two halves of the empire. The ‘political poems’, each several hundred lines long, addressed various levels of audience, notably the elite circles who attended the oral delivery and those men of letters who later had access to the poems when they were circulated in writing.2 They re-used in sophisticated ways much of the Greek and Latin literary traditions, especially those of epic, panegyric and invective, in an ­innovative mix.3 Claudian’s poems were very popular in the Renaissance and later on, as they had been in the Middle Ages.4 Judgement on them often com- bined praise of their poetic quality and blame for their contents, as in J.C. Scaliger’s assessment.5 These poems incited several commentaries.6

2 See Charlet J.-L., “Claudien et son public”, in Harich-Schwarzbauer H. – Schierl P. (eds.), Lateinische Poesie der Spätantike: internationale Tagung in Castelen bei Augst, 11.–13. Oktober 2007 (Basel: 2009) 1–10. Cf. Gillett A., “Epic Panegyric and Political Communication in the Fifth-Century West”, in Grig L. – Kelly G. (eds.), Two Romes: and Constanti- nople in Late Antiquity (Oxford: 2012) 265–290 on the pattern of communication distinctive of late-antique epic panegyric. 3 On Claudian and epic panegyric, see notably Schindler C., “Tradition, Transforma- tion, Innovation: Claudians Panegyriken und das Epos”, in Ehlers W.-W. – Felgentreu F. – Wheeler S. (eds.), Aetas Claudianea: eine Tagung an der Freien Universität Berlin vom 28. bis 30. Juni 2002 (Munich – Leipzig: 2004) 16–37, Schindler C., Per carmina laudes: Untersu- chungen zur spätantiken Verspanegyrik von Claudian bis Coripp (Berlin – New York: 2009) 59–172, and Gillett, “Epic Panegyric and Political Communication in the Fifth-Century West”. On the panegyric For the consuls and Probinus, with which I am concerned in this paper, cf. Wheeler S., “More Roman than the Romans of Rome: Virgilian (Self-) fashioning in Claudian’s Panegyric for the Consuls Olybrius and Probinus”, in Scourfield J. (ed.), Texts and Culture in Late Antiquity: Inheritance, Authority, and Change (Swansea: 2007) 97–133 (99–104 in particular). 4 On the reception of Claudian, see Felgentreu F., “Claudian (Claudius Claudianus)”, in Walde C. (ed.), Die Rezeption der antiken Literatur: Kulturhistorisches Werklexikon, Der Neue Pauly Supplement 7 (Stuttgart – Weimar: 2010) 253–262; Fuhrmann M., “Claudian in der Neuzeit: Geschmackswandel und Übergang von der rhetorischen zur philologischen Betrachtungsweise”, in Ehlers W.-W. – Felgentreu F. – Wheeler S. (eds.), Aetas Claudianea: eine Tagung an der Freien Universität Berlin vom 28. bis 30. Juni 2002 (Munich – Leipzig: 2004) 207–223; Reinhart M., “Text and Simultext: Borrowing Claudian in Seventeenth- Century Germany (a Case from the Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft)”, German Life and Letters 52,3 (1999) 281–296. 5 Scaliger Julius , Poetices libri septem (Lyons, Antonius Vincentius: 1561), book 6, chapter 5, 321 b D, on which see Fuhrmann, “Claudian in der Neuzeit” 214–216. 6 Besides those by Barth discussed in this paper, the most important commentaries include those by Delrio (1572), Claverius (1602), N. Heinsius (1650 and 1665, cum notis