Claudian

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Claudius Claudianus (German Claudian ; * around 370 (?), † after 404) was a well-known Latin poet of late antiquity .

life and work

Information on Claudian's biography and career can be found in the meager statements of later writers, but above all in his own poems. However, much about his person remains in the dark.

Claudian probably came from Alexandria, Egypt . When he was born is unknown. He either grew up bilingual (Greco-Latin), which would be rather unusual, or he only learned the Latin language as an adolescent in order to make a career in the Roman civil service. This was not uncommon in the 4th century, since Latin was also the language of the army, administration, court and judiciary in the Greek east of the Mediterranean. An example is Ammianus Marcellinus , who was a Greek from Antioch in Syria, but who wrote a great historical work in Latin around the same time that Claudian was also active, having previously served various emperors. Accordingly, it is conceivable that Claudian also initially made a career in imperial service, but this must ultimately remain speculation. Nothing is known about his beginnings as a poet; possibly he initially hired himself as a wandering poet (Alan Cameron) in the Greek-speaking East.

Claudian's religious affiliation is unclear and controversial: Alan Cameron , one of the leading Claudian researchers, states that Claudian makes no self-assertion and that his works were intended primarily for a Christian lay audience. Although Cameron advocates a (superficial) paganism of Claudian, other researchers regard Claudian as a Christian. In any case, Claudian does not propagate pagan values ​​in his works, and his numerous allusions to polytheism could in principle also have been due to the poetic tradition in which he belongs. On the other hand, there is no commitment to Christianity, so that it is most likely that Claudian remained intentionally ambiguous with regard to religion.

In the autumn of 394 he was in Rome, where he made a name for himself as a poet in Latin with a panegyric celebrating the appointment of the brothers Olybrius and Probinus as full consuls in 395. After the success that Claudian had with this poem, he entered 395 as court poet in the service of the new Western Roman Emperor Honorius and his mighty master Flavius ​​Stilicho . In this area, numerous enkomiastic poems were written up to 404 , celebrating the consulates of Stilichos and the emperor Honorius, their politics and their military successes, including against the rebellious military commander in Carthage, Gildo , and especially about the Goths of Alaric . Claudian also wrote the two invective ( insulting poems) In Rufinum and In Eutropium , which are directed against two influential figures at the Eastern Roman court at Constantinople , 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) was between his two sons Honorius ( West Rome ) and Arcadius ( Ostrom came to rivalries), and Claudian was a mouthpiece of the western Roman court in this struggle for supremacy in Roman Empire .

That Claudian's literary production was recognized by the highest authority is shown by the fact that he was honored around 400 (?) With a statue on the Trajan's Forum in Rome, the base inscription of which has been preserved. Even if Claudian's representations are strongly tendentious and the historical content is also often subject to the principles of an appealing literary design, his political poems are precisely historical documents of the first order because they are for the history of the Roman Empire directly after the so-called division of the Empire of 395 partly our only contemporary source. They are also of great importance for the history of Roman literature , as they further develop the traditional genre of the heroic epic and - at least as far as we know - present panegyric statements in combination with a narrative plot in a highly innovative form.

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

Claudian's trail is lost after 404. It can no longer be determined whether his death or the fall of his patron Stilicho in the summer of 408 is the cause of his silence.

reception

The somewhat mysterious personality of Claudian has inspired literary design on various occasions. In 1914, Hermann Sudermann wrote a drama entitled Die Lobgesänge des Claudian , which portrays the poet as an ambitious, mendacious and slippery court poet who, out of offended vanity, tears his patron Stilicho to ruin and perishes trying to make up for this mistake. The presentation in Hella S. Haasse's novel Een nieuwer testament (1964; English 1993 under the title Threshold of Fire ), which addresses Claudian's Egyptian origins and his successes at the Western Roman imperial court, is somewhat more balanced .

Editions and translations

  • Theodor Birt (ed.): Auctores antiquissimi 10: Claudii Claudiani Carmina. Berlin 1892 ( Monumenta Germaniae Historica , digitized version) (critical edition).
  • John Barrie Hall: Claudii Claudiani carmina . Leipzig 1985 (critical edition).
  • Jean-Louis Charlet: Claudien, Oeuvres, Tome I: Le rapt de Proserpine . Paris 1991 (Latin-French edition with annotations).
  • Jean-Louis Charlet: Claudien, Oeuvres, Tome II: Poèmes politiques . Paris 2000 (Latin-French edition with annotations).
  • Georg von Wedekind: Seals of Claudius Claudianus . Darmstadt 1868 (complete German translation).

literature

Overview representations

Overall presentations and investigations

  • Alan Cameron : Claudian. Poetry and Propaganda at the Court of Honorius. Clarendon Press, Oxford 1970.
  • Alan Cameron: Poetry and Literary Culture in Late Antiquity . In: S. Swain, M. Edwards (Eds.): Approaching Late Antiquity. The Transformation from Early to Late Empire . Oxford 2004, pp. 327-354.
  • James H. Crees: Claudian as an Historical Authority . Rome 1968.
  • Siegmar Döpp : Contemporary history in Claudian's poems . Wiesbaden 1980.
  • Marie-France Guipponi-Gineste: Claudien: poète du monde à la cour d'Occident . De Boccard, Paris 2010.
  • Hall JB: Claudian, De Raptu Proserpinae. (Cambridge Classical Texts and Commentaries, 11.) Cambridge: University Press, 1969 and 2004, ISBN 978-0-521-60930-2 .
  • Jacqueline Long: Claudian's In Eutropium or, How, When, and Why to Slander a Eunuch . Chapel Hill / London 1996.
  • Peter Leberecht Schmidt: Politics and poetry in Claudian's panegyric . Constance 1976.

reception

Web links

Wikisource: Claudian  - sources and full texts
Wikiquote: Claudian  Quotes
personal data
SURNAME Claudian
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Claudius Claudianus
BRIEF DESCRIPTION late antique poet
DATE OF BIRTH at 370
DATE OF DEATH after 404