Claudian

Claudius Claudian (short Claudian; * 370 ();? † after 404) was the most important Latin poets of late antiquity.

Life and work

For information about Claudians biography and his career we are dependent on the meager statements of later writers, and especially to his own poetry, so much that his person is concerned, remains in the dark.

Claudian probably came from the Egyptian city of Alexandria. When he was born, is unknown. He grew either bilingual ( Greek and Latin), but this would be unusual, or he learned the Latin language only as an adolescent, to make a career in the Roman civil service. Such was not uncommon in the 4th century, as Latin and the Greek East of the Mediterranean was the language of the army, the administration, the Court and the judiciary at the time. An example is Ammianus Marcellinus, who was a Greek from Antioch in Syria, but at the same time, which also had Claudian, a large historical work written in Latin, having previously served various emperors. Thus, it is conceivable that also Claudian first career made ​​in the imperial service, but it must ultimately remain speculative. We know nothing about his beginnings as a poet; maybe he hired himself first as a wandering poet ( Alan Cameron ) in the Greek-speaking East.

Claudian religion is unclear and controversial: Alan Cameron, a leading researcher Claudia, notes that Claudian does not self-expression and his works were probably intended primarily for a Christian lay audience. Although Cameron pleads for a ( superficial ) Paganism Claudian, other researchers consider Claudian but as Christians. In any case Claudian propagated in his works no pagan values ​​, and its numerous allusions to the polytheism may have been due in principle also the poetic tradition in which he is classifying. On the other hand, is specifically lacking even any commitment to Christianity, so it's probably most likely that Claudian was intentionally ambiguous in regard to religion.

In the autumn of 394 in any case we find him in Rome, where he was profiled with a panegyric, which celebrates the establishment of the brothers Olybrius and Probinus as ordinary consuls of the year 395 as a poet in Latin. After the success, the Claudian had with this poem, he joined 395 as a court poet in the service of the new Western Roman Emperor Honorius and his powerful army Flavius ​​Stilicho master. In this area came to 404 enkomiastische numerous poems, which the consulate of Stilicho and the Emperor Honorius, its policies, its military successes, including against the rebellious military commander in North Africa, Gildo and in particular on the Goths of Alaric King's army celebrate. Likewise Claudian wrote both invectives ( insulting poems) In Rufinum and In Eutropium, which are directed against two influential figures at the Eastern Roman court at Constantinople Opel, namely the praetorian prefect Flavius ​​Rufinus (in office 392-395 ) and the chief chamberlain Eutropius (in office 397 - 399 ): After the death of the Emperor Theodosius I ( 379-395 ), it was between his two sons, Honorius ( Westrom ) and Arcadius ( Ostrom ) came to rivalries, and Claudian was a mouthpiece of the Western Roman Court in this struggle for supremacy in the Imperium Romanum.

That Claudians literary production has been recognized by the highest authority, evidenced by the fact that he was honored by 400 (?) With a statue in the Forum of Trajan, whose base inscription is preserved. Even if Claudians representations are strongly biased and the historical content is often subject to the principles of an attractive literary creation, his political poems contemporary historical documents but precisely because of the first rank, as they for the history of the Roman Empire just after the division of the kingdom of 395 partly our form only contemporary source. Also for the history of Roman literature, they are of great importance as they develop the outmoded genre of heroic epic, and - at least to our knowledge - panegyrical in highly innovative form of statements in combination with a narrative plot present.

In addition to the contemporary historical poems of Claudian numerous smaller occasional poems ( carmina minora, eg Phoenix ) and his mythological epic De are raptu get Proserpinae ( Rape of Proserpina ), the The Rape of the Ceres daughter Proserpina (Greek Persephone ) by the god of the underworld Pluto reported. Both the emergence of background as well as the interpretation of the poem are highly controversial in research. The same applies to the fragments of the gigantomachy, a poem in Greek, which is also included in the collection of the poems of Claudian. It is undisputed, however, that Claudian is one of the most important Latin authors of late antiquity.

Claudian track disappears after 404 Whether his death or the fall of his patron Stilicho in summer 408, the cause of his silence is, can no longer make.

The somewhat mysterious personality of Claudian has variously inspired literary design. Hermann Sudermann wrote in 1914 a drama entitled The hymns of the Claudian that draws the poet as ambitious, hypocritical and slippery court poet, of his patron Stilicho tears of injured vanity into ruin and perishes in the attempt to make up for this error. Something is more balanced representation in Hella S. Haasses novel Een Nieuwer testament (1964; Engl under the title Threshold of fire in 1993. ) Discussed, the Claudian Egyptian origin, and its success on the Western Roman imperial court.