| Claudian |
Articles about Claudian |
Information AboutClaudian |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT CLAUDIAN | |
| roman era poets | |
| late antique writers | |
| late antique latin writers | |
| year of birth unknown | |
| 404 deaths | |
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A Greek-speaking citizen of Alexandria , Claudian arrived in Rome before 395 , and made his mark with a Eulogy of his two young patrons, Probinus and Olybrius, thereby becoming court poet. He wrote a number of Panegyric s on the Consul ship of his patrons, praise poems for the deeds of Stilicho, and Invective s directed at Stilicho's rivals in the Eastern court of Arcadius . These efforts resulted with such gifts as the honor of the rank of ''vir illustris'', a statue, and a rich bride selected by Stilicho's wife, Serena . Despite his Greek origins, Claudian wrote in Latin and is one of the best late users of the language in poetry. Critics consider Claudian a good poet, if not absolutely first-rate. He is elegant, tells a story well, and his polemical passages are occasionally unmatchable in sheer entertaining vitriol; but his writing is tainted by preciousness, a flaw of the literature of his time: and he is extraordinarily cold and unfeeling. From a historical standpoint, Claudian's poetry is a valuable, however distorted, primary source for his period. Since his poems do not record the achievements of Stilicho after 404 , scholars assume he died in that year. The historical or political poems connected with Stilicho have a separate manuscript tradition to the rest of his work, and this is believed to indicate that they were published as a separate collection, perhaps by Stilicho himself after Claudian's death. His most important non-political work is an unfinished Epic , ''De raptu Proserpinae'', whose three extant books are believed to have been written in 395 and 397 . WORKS
SEE ALSO EXTERNAL LINKS The text of Claudian
Secondary sources
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