The Complete Works of Claudian: Translated with an Introduction and Notes [1 ed.] 0367373645, 9780367373641, 9781032416786, 9780429353345

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Series
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Preface and Acknowledgements
1 Introduction
1.1 Claudian’s Career
1.2 Mythology and Religion
1.3 Roman History and Legend
1.4 Roman Panegyric and Invective
1.5 About This Translation
1.6 Chronology
1.7 Concordance
2 The Rape of Proserpina
Introduction
The Rape of Proserpina
The Rape of Proserpina, Book 1
The Rape of Proserpina, Book 2
The Rape of Proserpina, Book 3
3 Panegyric on Olybrius and Probinus’s Consulship and Letters to Olybrius and Probinus
Introduction
Olybrius and Probinus’s Consulship
Letter to Olybrius (Shorter Poems 40)
Letter to Probinus (Shorter Poems 41)
4 Panegyric on Honorius’s Third Consulship
Introduction
Honorius’s Third Consulship
5 Invective Against Rufinus
Introduction
Invective Against Rufinus, Book 1
Invective Against Rufinus, Book 2
6 Panegyric on Honorius’s Fourth Consulship
Introduction
Honorius’s Fourth Consulship
7 Wedding Poems. Fescennines and Epithalamium
Fescennines Introduction
Fescennine 1
Fescennine 2
Fescennine 3
Fescennine 4
Epithalamium for Honorius and Maria Introduction
Epithalamium for Honorius and Maria
8 The War With Gildo
Introduction
The War With Gildo
9 Panegyric on Manlius Theodorus’s Consulship
Introduction
Manlius Theodorus’s Consulship
10 Invective Against Eutropius
Introduction
Invective Against Eutropius, Book 1
Invective Against Eutropius, Book 2
11 Panegyric on Stilicho’s Consulship
Introduction
Stilicho’s Consulship, Book 1
Stilicho’s Consulship, Book 2
Stilicho’s Consulship, Book 3
12 The Gothic War
Introduction
The Gothic War
13 Panegyric on Honorius’s Sixth Consulship
Introduction
Honorius’s Sixth Consulship
14 In Praise of Serena and Letter to Serena
In Praise of Serena (Shorter Poems 30)
Letter to Serena (Shorter Poems 31)
15 Shorter Poems
Glossary
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

THE COMPLETE WORKS OF CLAUDIAN

This volume offers a modern, accurate, and accessible translation of Claudian’s work, published in English for the first time since 1922, and accompanied by detailed notes and a comprehensive glossary. Claudian (active 395–404 CE) was the last of the great classical Latin poets. His best-known work, The Rape of Proserpina, continues to inspire numerous retellings and adaptations. Claudian also wrote poems in praise of rulers, including the emperor Honorius and the regent Flavius Stilicho, which are essential sources for reconstructing politics and society in the late Roman empire. These poems and others are translated here, alongside an introduction offering an overview of Claudian’s career, the wider historical and political context of the period, and the poetic traditions in which Claudian wrote: mythological epic, panegyric, invective, and epithalamium. The translations, with explanatory notes, include: The Rape of Proserpina, Panegyric on Olybrius and Probinus’s Consulship, Panegyrics on Honorius’s Third, Fourth, and Sixth Consulships, Invective Against Rufinus, Fescennines and Epithalamium for Honorius and Maria, The War With Gildo, Panegyric on Manlius Theodorus’s Consulship, Invective Against Eutropius, Stilicho’s Consulship, The Gothic War, and shorter poems. The Complete Works of Claudian is a vital resource for students and scholars working on late antique literature, particularly Claudian’s work, as well as those studying the history and culture of the western Roman Empire in this period. This accessible volume is also suitable for the general reader interested in the works of Claudian and this period more broadly. Neil W. Bernstein (Professor, Classics and Religious Studies, Ohio University) is the author of several books on imperial Latin poetry, including Silius Italicus: Punica 9 (2022), Silius Italicus: Rome’s War With Hannibal (with Antony Augoustakis, 2021), and Seneca: Hercules Furens (2017).

ROUTLEDGE LATER LATIN POETRY Edited by Joseph Pucci Brown University, USA The Routledge Later Latin Poetry series provides English translations of the works of those poets writing in Latin between the fourth and the eighth centuries inclusive. It responds to the increasing interest in later Latin authors and especially the growth in courses devoted to late antiquity. Books in the series are designed to provide comprehensive coverage to support students studying later Latin poetry and to introduce the material to those wishing to read these important and often under translated works in English. The RLLP is devoted to publishing creative, accessible translations. Each volume is self-contained: introductory material contextualizes the life and output of the poet in question, and includes manuscript and editorial details; some discussion of metrics and Latinity; and a sense of how the work being translated might be interpreted (including where possible the scholarly history of the same). This section concludes, as need be, with maps and a list of any editorial changes made by the translator to the established Latin text. At the conclusion of each volume, in addition to endnotes and a works cited list, there is a general index that, beyond allowing readers to negotiate content, also serves as a glossary of names, dates, figures, places and events. Volumes hew, as much as possible, to line-for-line versions of the Latin original, so that those who come to the translations with a knowledge of Latin can orient their reading with the original. By offering English translations of later Latin poetry with comprehensive supporting material the series enables a greater understanding of late antiquity through one of its most important literary outputs. The poems are significant sources for the culture, religion and daily life of the period and clear and imaginative translations also offer readers the chance to appreciate their quality. THE COMPLETE WORKS OF CLAUDIAN Translated with an Introduction and Notes Neil W. Bernstein For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/ Routledge-Later-Latin-Poetry/book-series/LLP

THE COMPLETE WORKS OF CLAUDIAN Translated with an Introduction and Notes

Neil W. Bernstein

Cover image: L’enlèvement de Proserpine, Peter Paul Rubens (c. 1636). Historic Images/Alamy Stock Photo First published 2023 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 Neil W. Bernstein The right of Neil W. Bernstein to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-0-367-37364-1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-41678-6 (pbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-35334-5 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9780429353345 Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC

IN MEMORIAM OPTIMI PATRIS LEONARD S. BERNSTEIN (1941–2016) ‫ז״ל‬ CARISSIMIS AMATISSIMISQUE FEMINIS YI-TING WANG, DANIELLE, HANNAH, ET ISABELLE BERNSTEIN

CONTENTS

Preface and Acknowledgements 1 Introduction 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7

x 1

Claudian’s Career 1 Mythology and Religion 5 Roman History and Legend 8 Roman Panegyric and Invective 11 About This Translation 14 Chronology 17 Concordance 20

2 The Rape of Proserpina

22

Introduction 22 The Rape of Proserpina 26 The Rape of Proserpina, Book 1 26 The Rape of Proserpina, Book 2 37 The Rape of Proserpina, Book 3 48 3 Panegyric on Olybrius and Probinus’s Consulship and Letters to Olybrius and Probinus Introduction 63 Olybrius and Probinus’s Consulship 64 Letter to Olybrius (Shorter Poems 40) 73 Letter to Probinus (Shorter Poems 41) 74

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CONTENTS

4 Panegyric on Honorius’s Third Consulship

75

Introduction 75 Honorius’s Third Consulship 77 5 Invective Against Rufinus

85

Introduction 85 Invective Against Rufinus, Book 1 91 Invective Against Rufinus, Book 2 104 6 Panegyric on Honorius’s Fourth Consulship

122

Introduction 122 Honorius’s Fourth Consulship 125 7 Wedding Poems. Fescennines and Epithalamium

147

Fescennines Introduction 147 Fescennine 1 148 Fescennine 2 149 Fescennine 3 150 Fescennine 4 151 Epithalamium for Honorius and Maria Introduction 152 Epithalamium for Honorius and Maria 154 8 The War With Gildo

166

Introduction 166 The War With Gildo 171 9 Panegyric on Manlius Theodorus’s Consulship

189

Introduction 189 Manlius Theodorus’s Consulship 192 10 Invective Against Eutropius

204

Introduction 204 Invective Against Eutropius, Book 1 209 Invective Against Eutropius, Book 2 228

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CONTENTS

11 Panegyric on Stilicho’s Consulship

249

Introduction 249 Stilicho’s Consulship, Book 1 254 Stilicho’s Consulship, Book 2 266 Stilicho’s Consulship, Book 3 282 12 The Gothic War

294

Introduction 294 The Gothic War 297 13 Panegyric on Honorius’s Sixth Consulship

318

Introduction 318 Honorius’s Sixth Consulship 322 14 In Praise of Serena and Letter to Serena

344

In Praise of Serena ( Shorter Poems 30) 345 Letter to Serena ( Shorter Poems 31) 352 15 Shorter Poems

355

Glossary Bibliography Index

397 412 418

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PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book presents Claudian’s complete works in a modern, accurate, and accessible translation, in a volume that a student can afford. Its goals conform to those of Routledge’s Later Latin Poetry series, “to provide comprehensive coverage to support students studying later Latin poetry.” There is no similar volume available at present. The majority of Claudian’s works have not been translated into English since Maurice Platnauer’s Loeb Classical Library edition of 1922. Some of his works have been translated more recently but either appear in dated or inaccurate versions or expensive scholarly commentaries that are unaffordable for an undergraduate student. I am grateful for the editorial acumen of Joe Pucci and Amy Davis-Poynter, who expertly steered this volume from inception to publication. Several friends and colleagues undertook to read some or all of the manuscript and offered detailed comments and suggestions. My sincerest thanks are due to Bill Dominik, Ian Fielding, John Jacobs, Micaela Janan, Christopher van den Berg, and Catherine Ware. Kyle Gervais once more undertook Herculean labors on all aspects of the project, suggesting innumerable felicitous renderings and alternate readings. Working with Antony Augoustakis on an earlier translation (Silius Italicus: Rome’s War with Hannibal, Routledge 2021) was the ideal apprenticeship for taking on Claudian. Michael Dewar patiently discussed numerous textual issues with me. This translation would never have been completed without Michael Sisson’s ongoing mentorship in the craft, his thoughtful criticism of difficult passages, and especially his constant encouragement vale la pena! at times when it seemed anything but. Mark Halliday and Jill Rosser, extraordinary poets and teachers, patiently guided me through the world of contemporary poetry. My research assistants Miranda Christy and Colleen McLafferty provided invaluable assistance with preparation and editing of the manuscript. I would also like to thank Marcia Adams, Neil Coffee, Kate Fornadel, Loren Lybarger, Denise McCoskey,

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P R E FA C E A N D A C K N O W L E D G E M E N T S

Bill Owens, Aaron Pelttari, Mary Pendergraft, Lisa Salonen, Michael Skupin, Christopher Trinacty, Derek J.G. Williams, and the anonymous referees. I am grateful to the Ohio University College of Arts and Sciences for granting me sabbatical leave for 2019–20. The Western University Department of Classical Studies granted me a collegial part-time academic home through the Distinguished Scholar in Residence Program. My thanks to Kyle Gervais, Randall Pogorzelski, and the rest of this extremely congenial department for their hospitality. Teaching a graduate seminar on Claudian at Western offered the welcome opportunity to examine the poet’s craft up close with students and colleagues. As in every undertaking, my family’s love and support has been invaluable, especially during a seemingly endless pandemic. Dignius an uates alios exercuit unum/femineae uirtutis opus? I dedicate this translation to them with all my love and gratitude.

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1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 Claudian’s Career We cannot be certain about Claudian’s dates or birthplace. He may have been born in Alexandria, Egypt, in which case his first language was likely Greek. He seems to refer to himself as an Egyptian in some of his shorter poems where he refers to “my” Nile River, and makes reference to “the land we share in common” when addressing an Egyptian courtier.1 We do not know how Claudian arrived in Italy and came to the notice of prominent Latin-speaking patrons. As such, we cannot assign a date to his best-known work, his mythological poem on the Rape of Proserpina (Chapter 2). I have placed it first in this volume because it is his best and most famous poem. Furthermore, a leading scholar of the poem has suggested that the poem’s first book is likely Claudian’s earliest extant major work (Gruzelier 1993: xvii). What is obvious, however, is that Claudian’s talent enabled him to achieve instant and enduring popularity. His Panegyric on Olybrius and Probinus’s Consulship (Chapter 3) is the first major poem that we can date securely to the consular inauguration of January 395. Olybrius and Probinus, the young brother consuls of this year, were junior members of the Anician clan, one of the most powerful senatorial families in Rome. Approbation from these well-connected patrons may have been instrumental in bringing Claudian to the emperor’s attention. For the next eight years, Claudian produced panegyrics and invectives (works of praise and blame) in support of the Western imperial court at Milan.

1 “My Nile”: Shorter Poems 19.3. “The land we share”: Shorter Poems 22.56. Possible Alexandrian origins: Shorter Poems 22.20. A later poet, Sidonius Apollinaris, refers to Claudian as “born in Pelusian Canopus” (Poems 9.274). See Coombe 2018: 7; Mulligan 2007.

DOI: 10.4324/9780429353345-1

1

INTRODUCTION

The years preceding Claudian’s period of celebrity had been violent.2 The emperor Theodosius the Great (reigned 384–395) had fought two civil wars against would-be usurpers. In 383, several legions proclaimed the general Magnus Maximus emperor. After campaigning in Gaul, Maximus defeated the emperor Gratian in August. Since Theodosius could not suppress Maximus’s revolt, he temporarily recognized him as the Western emperor. He eventually defeated him at Poetovio (Ptuj, Slovenia) in a campaign in summer 388. A few years later, in August 392, the Frankish general, Arbogast, declared Flavius Eugenius the Western emperor. Eugenius was master of the imperial chancery and a former rhetoric teacher; he was no warlord, but a figurehead for Arbogast’s ambitions. Theodosius responded by making his eight-yearold son Honorius an Augustus, or ruler of the Western empire. Accompanied by his general, Stilicho, Theodosius defeated Arbogast and Eugenius at the Frigidus River (the modern Vipava River in Slovenia) in September 394.3 Several of Claudian’s poems, even ones written several years afterward, continue to celebrate Theodosius’s victories over the rebels. The reminders of Stilicho’s participation in these campaigns both contributed to the general’s popularity and helped the audience work through the trauma of civil war. When Theodosius died in January 395, his two sons split apart the Roman Empire. Theodosius’s older son Arcadius, aged 18, governed the Eastern Empire from his father’s court at Constantinople. His younger brother, the 10-year-old Honorius, governed the Western Empire under the direction of Stilicho from the court at Milan. Through his panegyrics of Honorius and Stilicho, and invectives against their enemies, Claudian supported the Western imperial regime. In January 396, Claudian performed the Panegyric on Honorius’s Third Consulship (Chapter 4), in honor of the young Western emperor Honorius at the court of Milan. The emperor did not rule independently, as he was only 11 years old at the time. Claudian’s poem accordingly also praises the general Stilicho, the de facto ruler of the Western Empire. Early in the same year, Claudian likely performed the first book of his Invective Against Rufinus (Chapter 5). Rufinus was the praetorian prefect of the Eastern imperial court who had recently been executed by his own soldiers, perhaps on Stilicho’s orders. In January 398, now aged 13, Honorius again took the consulship, occasioning Claudian’s Panegyric on Honorius’s Fourth Consulship (Chapter 6). 2 For overviews of the period, see Doyle 2018; McEvoy 2013; Errington 2006; Williams and Friell 1995; Matthews 1990. 3 See Zosimus 4.58.6.

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INTRODUCTION

Likely in February, he married Stilicho’s daughter Maria (aged 12). Claudian produced both an epithalamium (a poem in honor of the marriage) and a series of wedding poems called Fescennines (Chapter 7). During this period, Honorius’s regime faced its first serious crisis. Gildo, a North African nobleman, cut off the grain supply on which the city of Rome depended. Stilicho led an expedition that departed from Italy in winter 397, which conquered Gildo shortly after arriving in March or early April 398. Claudian may not have recited his poem The War With Gildo (Chapter 8) at court, but if he did so, it would have been after news of the victory reached Milan, probably in April. The following year, Claudian celebrated the scholarly lawyer Manlius Theodorus’s attainment of the Western consulship in 399 (Chapter 9). As the result of a successful military campaign against the Huns, the Eastern emperor Arcadius awarded Eutropius the consulship of 399. Through Claudian’s two-book Invective Against Eutropius (Chapter 10), Stilicho struck back at the man who had declared him a public enemy two years before. After Eutropius’s fall, Stilicho took the consulship of 400, which Claudian celebrates in the three-book Panegyric on Stilicho’s Consulship (Chapter 11). Another crisis soon followed. In 401, the Gothic king Alaric led an army into Italy; in April 402, he and Stilicho fought an inconclusive battle at Pollentia (modern Pollenzo, in Piedmont). In 402, Honorius moved the court from Milan to Ravenna to ensure safety from Gothic incursions. Stilicho then campaigned against Alaric’s Goths in 402–3. Claudian celebrates this campaign in The Gothic War (Chapter 12). Claudian’s last datable poem is his Panegyric on Honorius’s Sixth Consulship of 404 (Chapter 13). This volume closes with Claudian’s minor works (Chapter 14 and Chapter 15), a collection of more than 50 shorter poems that the poet composed throughout his career. They include a panegyric of Stilicho’s wife Serena, the adopted daughter of Theodosius and mother of Honorius’s wife Maria (Chapter 14). As we have no evidence for other works that we can securely date after 404 when Claudian delivered Honorius’s Sixth Consulship, scholars assume that the poet died shortly afterward. We would have expected a poem celebrating Stilicho’s major victory over the Gothic king Radagaisus in Tuscany in 406.4 Claudian’s main honorand Stilicho enjoyed a nearly 25-year career as a central figure in the Western imperial court. In 384, Stilicho married the emperor Theodosius’s niece and adopted daughter Serena. In 393, before

4 CIL 6.1196 = ILS 798; Orosius 7.37.17; Zosimus 5.26; Augustine City of God 5.23; Wijnendaele 2016.

3

INTRODUCTION

the campaign against Eugenius began, Theodosius elevated him to the role of commander-in-chief of the Roman army (magister utriusque militiae). Claudian repeatedly reiterates that Theodosius had appointed Stilicho as guardian of both his sons upon his death in January 395.5 This claim may have been a fiction: Claudian shows the emperor entrusting his son-in-law with the guardianship in a private conversation on his deathbed (Honorius’s Third Consulship 142–162). Stilicho’s legal position of guardian came with limitations. He did not have a license to rule Honorius’s Western empire, let alone the adult Arcadius’s Eastern empire. Furthermore, his claim of guardianship over Honorius did not gain immediate acceptance. When Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, delivered a eulogy for Theodosius 40 days after the emperor’s death, he offered no positive endorsement of Stilicho’s position.6 Arcadius’s chief ministers, Rufinus and Eutropius, opposed Stilicho during their time in power; Eutropius even had him declared a public enemy in summer 397. Modern scholars have characterized Stilicho as a “regent”, which would be an anachronistic title. McEvoy (2013: 142) offers different characterizations of the relationship between the mature commander and the young emperor: A partnership, whereby the dynastically legitimate young emperor was to rule under the guidance of his loyal guardian, Stilicho . . . It is also likely that Stilicho effectively engineered a coup upon Theodosius’s death, seizing the opportunity to claim the position of Honorius’s chief minister. Stilicho further strengthened his connections to the imperial family by marrying his daughter Maria to Honorius in early 398. Stilicho’s dynastic ambitions may have been his undoing, however. Honorius imprisoned him when a rumor arose that Stilicho intended to make his son, Eucherius, emperor, and the general was murdered on 22 August 408. Claudian’s patrons rewarded him amply. The Latin inscription at the base of a statue that once stood in the Forum of Trajan in Rome reads as follows:7 [A statue] of Claudius Claudianus, a highly regarded man. To Claudius Claudianus, a highly regarded man, tribune and notary. Among 5 E.g. Honorius’s Third Consulship 151–159, Rufinus 2.4–6, Epithalamium 305–308, Stilicho’s Consulship 2.78–87. 6 Ambrose On the Death of Theodosius 5 mentions that Theodosius left no written will. 7 CIL 6.1710 = ILS 2949.

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INTRODUCTION

his other ennobling talents, he was the most outstanding poet. Though the poems written by him are enough to provide eternal commemoration, nevertheless as witness to his loyalty and judgment, at the Senate’s request, our lords Arcadius and Honorius, the most fortunate and learned emperors, ordered a statue to be erected and located in the Forum of the Divine Trajan. A two-line epigram then follows in Greek: Virgil’s mind and Homer’s Muse in one man! Rome and her emperors have set up [a statue of] Claudian. The phrase “highly regarded man” (vir clarissimus) indicates that Claudian held senatorial rank and was thus among the leading members of the Roman elite. His title “tribune and notary” refers to positions held by administrative officials in the imperial bureaucracy. Given Claudian’s prolific and rapid production of court poetry, however, it is likely that he was not called upon to perform administrative work.

1.2 Mythology and Religion Claudian’s panegyrics are about real people and real events: consuls hold office, generals lead military campaigns, the young emperor Honorius gets married, and so forth. Yet like the Roman epic poets who wrote before him, he consistently describes this recognizably real world through reference to the Greco-Roman mythological tradition. Familiarity with this tradition is accordingly a prerequisite to reading Claudian with full understanding. I retell some of the essential stories here and provide further background information in the notes to each poem. As Claudian’s subject is often civil war, he draws on some of GrecoRoman culture’s traditional stories of mythological discord. Jupiter became king of the gods by overthrowing his father Saturn. In doing so, he ended the peaceful Golden Age when people enjoyed lives of ease, and soon after the world entered the present Iron Age where people must struggle to survive. The Gigantomachy, or battle of the Giants against the Olympian gods, presented the first challenge to Jupiter’s new reign. The enormous Giants, children of Mother Earth, piled Mount Pelion atop Mount Ossa and climbed up to the gods’ home on Mount Olympus. Jupiter hurled thunderbolts, and the other gods helped to repel the invaders. Beginning with Virgil’s Aeneid (19 BCE), Roman epics represented civil war through references to the Gigantomachy and described the emperor as the hero who 5

INTRODUCTION

would restore the world to the Golden Age. Ancient panegyric similarly described the Gigantomachy as a contest between Jupiter’s justice and the brutish Giants’ force. Claudian tells part of the Gigantomachy story directly in one of his unfinished Shorter Poems (53). He also follows the traditional allegorical comparison between Gigantomachy and civil war in his accounts of Theodosius’s struggles against the usurpers Maximus and Eugenius and Stilicho’s struggle with the Eastern consuls Rufinus and Eutropius. In handing over guardianship of his sons to Stilicho, Theodosius contemplates the possibility of further opposition to their reign by imagining the Giants and Titans breaking forth from their prisons (Honorius’s Third Consulship 159–162). Praise of Theodosius’s restoration of a Golden Age, continued under his son Honorius, occurs throughout Claudian’s poetry.8 Other myths that present a world in disorder include the story of Phaethon, who tried to drive the chariot belonging to his father the Sun. He came too close to the earth and would have burned it up in the sun’s fire had not Jupiter struck him with his thunderbolt and caused him to fall into the Po River. Phaethon, the hapless charioteer, became an example of disrupted order, whether as the result of civil conflict or the rule of a capricious tyrant. Honorius’s Fourth Consulship (62–71) compares Theodosius’s victory over Maximus and Eugenius to Jupiter’s triumph over Phaethon. Claudian can employ his mythological imagination for pure fantasy, but he often deploys mythology as comparison to the real world or allegorical commentary upon it. The poet proudly declares that Stilicho has outdone the heroes Perseus and Hercules, as his interventions have had a greater effect on the world (Rufinus 1.278–296). Though there is no explicit claim in Proserpina that a real person has outdone tradition, the narrator describes the divine gathering on Mount Olympus as if it were an assembly at the emperor’s court. The greater gods may sit in rows, while the lesser must stand, their rank determining their distance from the supreme god Jupiter (Proserpina 3.8–18).9 Furthermore, Jupiter subjects the Golden Age to criticism in this poem. Where the narrator of the panegyrics exhorts his emperor to restore the Golden Age, Jupiter observes that having all of Nature’s blessings within easy reach made human beings lazy. He accordingly made human beings hunt and gather for their sustenance and now 8 Examples include Honorius’s Third Consulship 182–188; Rufinus 1.51–54, 1.377–387. See Ware 2012: 171–230 for discussion. Charlet 1991: 2.1.181 calls Claudian’s interest in the Gigantomachy “obsessive.” 9 Ovid Metamorphoses 1.176 began this tradition by comparing Olympus to the Palatine Hill in Rome.

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INTRODUCTION

will have Ceres teach them agriculture in response to Nature’s criticisms (Proserpina 3.19–54). The poetic landscape in Claudian’s works is also full of divine figures. Every natural feature, from the mighty Ocean down to small streams, contains a divinity. Many of these figures come from earlier tradition, like Iris the personified rainbow (Proserpina 3.1–5), Amphitrite the personified Ocean, or the nymphs who inhabit trees or lakes. Mount Aetna and Mother Nature herself both speak, the Tiber River delivers a lengthy speech, and the sea nymphs are imagined bringing the empress Maria rich gifts in celebration of her wedding.10 The gods show their support for favored individuals by intervening in the natural world. The most famous example of this sort of intervention is the “bora” whirlwind that helped Theodosius win the battle against Arbogast and Eugenius at the Frigidus River by hurling his enemies’ spears back in their faces. Both Claudian and contemporary Christian writers interpreted the wind as a sign of divine favor.11 The poet also relates how the gods show their favor in less striking ways, as part of a narrative of the constant interpenetration of the divine and human worlds. In addition to the bora wind, a favorable weather omen accompanies Theodosius’s elevation of his son Honorius to Augustus (Honorius’s Third Consulship 168–211). Conversely, some of the exceptional human beings whom Claudian praises can act as gods and exert palpable effects on the natural world. Theodosius becomes a star after his death, joining a long list of Roman emperors who were deified, and he looks down beneficently at the world whose peace he has restored. Claudian forecasts a similar future for Olybrius and Probinus; their stars will aid sailors by bringing calm to the sea.12 The brave Roman sailors trust that Honorius’s authority will guide them through any storms along their way to Africa to fight Gildo (Gildo 488–504). Roman poets created narrative urgency by personifying emotions, moral qualities, and other concepts not typically endowed with personality. Among the mythological monsters of the Underworld, such as Cerberus and the Furies, we find negative character traits such as Envy, Fear, and Greed (Rufinus 1.30–40). The poet draws inspiration from contemporary visual art to personify the city of Rome as a woman whose appearance changes based on the political circumstances. She manifests herself proudly in armor to ask 10 Aetna: Proserpina 2.71–87. Nature: Proserpina 3.40–45. Tiber: O&P 209–262. Sea nymphs: Epithalamium 173–179. 11 Honorius’s Third Consulship 93–101. Christian sources include Ambrose Letters 61–62; Augustine City of God 5.26; Rufinus of Aquileia Ecclesiastical History 7.24; etc. 12 Honorius’s Third Consulship 175–182; O&P 240–246.

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INTRODUCTION

Theodosius to grant the consulship to Olybrius and Probinus. At a different time, however, she exhibits the symptoms of starvation as she begs Jupiter to relieve the famine caused by Gildo’s disruption of the grain supply.13 Speeches by Rome comprise major sections of several political poems.14 (I have used a feminine pronoun in the translation when Rome acts as a personified character; otherwise I refer to the city as “it.”) Other traditional allegorical narratives describe the figure of the poet. Claudian is a servant of Apollo and the Muses; Stilicho is alternately Apollo or Mars.15 Claudian worked at a time when Christian emperors had governed Rome for nearly a century, but polytheist senators still maintained some of their commitments to the traditional cults. The poet mostly remained silent about Christian matters, with only small exceptions in his shorter poems. Shorter Poems 32, “The Savior”, is an Easter hymn. Claudian’s invective against the cavalry commander Jacob (Shorter Poems 50), which mentions his supposedly excessive devotion to the cult of the saints, cannot be read as an anti-Christian poem, which could hardly be tolerated at Honorius’s court. Rather, it reflects criticism of “those Christians who reckon prayer and intervention by their God as sufficient against the barbarians, without spilling blood.”16 Claudian likely made this choice in order to remain popular with the polytheist senators who formed an important section of his audience. Augustine, a contemporary of Claudian, referred to the poet as “a stranger to Christ’s name”; the historian Orosius, likely following Augustine, similarly refers to him as a “most persistent pagan.”17 Yet it is clear from Claudian’s success that this aspect of his identity posed no problem to his Christian patrons, including Honorius and Stilicho. Furthermore, as the career of the fifth-century bishop Sidonius Apollinaris indicates, Christian identity posed no challenge to writing mythological poetry in the polytheist tradition.

1.3 Roman History and Legend Never let Greek or Roman antiquity cease speaking with you. 13 O&P 75–173; Gildo 17–212. 14 See also Eutropius 1.371–513, Stilicho’s Consulship 2.223–407, Honorius’s Sixth Consulship 6.356–493. For discussion, see Bernstein 2016; Roberts 2001. 15 Honorius’s Third Consulship Preface 15–18, Rufinus Book 1 Preface 11–18, Book 2 Preface 17–20. Stilicho as Apollo: Rufinus Book 1 Preface; as Mars: Rufinus Book 2 Preface. 16 Charlet 2018: 185, my translation. 17 Augustine City of God 5.26, Orosius 7.35.

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INTRODUCTION

Unroll the stories of the ancient commanders, accustom yourself to your future campaigns, bring yourself back to Italy’s past. Honorius’s Fourth Consulship 397–400 Like other Roman writers, Claudian draws on exemplary figures from earlier Roman history. Modern Western culture draws a sharp distinction between history and legend; Washington’s crossing of the Delaware River is historical, but his chopping down the cherry tree is legendary. Claudian and his contemporaries learned about a canonical set of historical and legendary figures, whom he briefly references as the passage continues: Is seeking liberty your pleasure? Marvel at Brutus. Do you condemn treachery? Fill yourself with Mettius’s punishments. Does excessive severity seem grim? Reject Torquatus’s character. Does it seem good to sacrifice yourself? Venerate the Decii rushing to their deaths. Horatius facing the enemy on a smashed bridge, or Mucius’s hand 405 in the fire, will teach you what a brave man can do, even all alone. Fabius will show you what delaying can destroy, Camillus will show, in slaughtering the Gauls, what a leader can do in a tight situation. From these examples, we learn that no misfortune can block deserving people. Carthaginian savagery extends your fame 410 forever, Regulus! Cato’s challenges outdo his successes. We learn how much sober poverty can accomplish: Curius was poor, when he conquered kings in battle; Fabricius was poor as well, when he disdained King Pyrrhus’s gold. Dictator Cincinnatus pushed a muddy plow: 415 his lictors encircled his little hut and fixed the fasces to willow posts. The consul brought in his own harvest, and long plowed his own furrows wearing his insignia. Honorius’s Fourth Consulship 401–418 Theodosius lectures his son Honorius by choosing exemplary figures primarily from the older periods of Roman history. As these individuals recur throughout Claudian’s poetry, it will help to examine their careers and the rhetorical purposes that Roman authors recalled them for. The list seems impressive and lengthy to us because these figures come from a different culture. But it represents less historical learning than we expect of contemporary high school students and does not imply any specialized study on Claudian’s part (Cameron 1970: 331–343). 9

INTRODUCTION

We divide Rome’s older past, in part following the Romans’ narrative of their own history, into the Regal period (753–509 BCE), the Early Republic (509–264 BCE), the Middle Republic (264–133 BCE), and the Late Republic (133–27 BCE). The heroes of Rome’s struggle for liberty include Brutus, who overthrew the Tarquin dynasty in 510 BCE and established the Roman Republic. Soon after, Mucius Scaevola demonstrated Rome’s willingness to resist Etruscan invasion by burning his right hand off in a fire before the Etruscan king. Cincinnatus left off plowing his own fields to serve as Dictator in 458/7 BCE. The Gallic chieftain Brennus captured Rome in 390 BCE and held it for ransom. As the Romans weighed out his payment in gold, Brennus threw his sword on the scale and called out “Woe to the conquered!” The Roman nobleman Camillus returned from exile to defeat the Gauls and was remembered as Rome’s second founder. Heroes of Rome’s wars of expansion include the Decii, who sacrificed themselves in various battles against Rome’s neighbors. The father sacrificed himself in 340 BCE in a war against the Latins, while his son imitated his father’s example in a battle against the Gauls in 295 BCE. Curius and Fabricius were commanders during Rome’s wars with the Samnites and with Pyrrhus, king of Epirus (280–275 BCE). Both were famous for their incorruptibility; exemplary stories are told of foreigners’ unsuccessful attempts to bribe them. The best-known exemplary figures come from Rome’s three wars with Carthage. Regulus was a hero of the First Punic War (264–241 BCE); after capturing him in battle, the Carthaginians sent him as a negotiator to Rome, where he argued that his fellow prisoners should not be ransomed. He then kept his promise to his captors and returned to die under torture in Carthage. At the beginning of the Second Punic War (218–202 BCE), Hannibal won a series of victories against the Roman forces. The Roman commander Fabius “the Delayer” employed guerrilla tactics against Hannibal, cutting his supply lines and only giving battle when favorable. He thereby prevented the Carthaginian general from thoroughly destroying the Roman army. Scipio Africanus was this war’s greatest commander; he conquered Hannibal’s army at Zama (202 BCE) and ended the war. Cato the Censor insisted that Carthage be destroyed in the Third Punic War, which was accomplished by Scipio Aemilianus in 146 BCE. Not all of these figures were positive examples. The legendary third king of Rome, Tullus Hostilius (imagined to reign 673–642 BCE), condemned the traitor Mettius Fufetius by tearing him apart with horses. Titus Manlius Torquatus (fourth century BCE), who condemned his son to death for disobedience in combat, served as an example of paternal authority taken too far. The emperors Tiberius (reigned 14–37 CE) and Nero (reigned 54–68 10

INTRODUCTION

CE), mentioned in an earlier passage (lines 314–320), are remembered for their personal perversions and abuses of imperial power. By Claudian’s time, these individuals from older periods of Roman history had been providing orators and historians as well as poets with a fund of examples for centuries. Cicero and Virgil had put most of the figures in the passage from Honorius’s Fourth Consulship to much the same rhetorical purposes in their works. Claudian does include some examples from the Imperial period, which began in 27 BCE and continued through his own time. But these are comparatively rare and do not generally go beyond the emperor Marcus Aurelius, whose reign ended in 180 CE, over 200 years before Honorius. Other poems present the same technique more briefly. Rome adds her voice to the praise of Olybrius and Probinus by claiming that she would not prefer the Decii, Scipios, or other heroes to them (O&P 147–149). Claudian censures Rufinus’s greed with a lecture on the virtuous poverty exemplified by Curius and Fabricius (Rufinus 1.201–203). This historical education helped to unify the fourth-century Roman elite through its focus on exemplary figures from the distant past. (Stilicho the Vandal Christian and Claudian the Alexandrian pagan well represent the Roman elite’s diversity in terms of language, religion, ethnicity, and geographical origin.) Throughout Claudian’s works, exemplary figures represent the virtues that the imperial court claimed to value. The poet invokes these exemplary figures as conceptual points of reference, either to exhort his honorands to maintain their virtuous behavior or to criticize the targets of his invectives. Constant comparison of Honorius and Stilicho to these figures helps to make them part of the same exemplary tradition.

1.4 Roman Panegyric and Invective With the exception of his shorter poems and his mythological epic Proserpina, the majority of Claudian’s works are panegyric and invective (praise of patrons and abuse of enemies). This genre presents a number of challenges to a modern English-speaking reader. Political praise and abuse more often occasions doggerel in the modern world rather than lasting poetry. The most significant obstacle to appreciating this poetry drops away once we accept that the most powerful people in the Western Roman empire took it seriously and paid handsomely for it (Rees 2012). Though the poet certainly did not intend his poetry to be put to this use, Claudian is also an unavoidable witness to his times. As other sources for this period are sparse, we depend on the poet for the reconstruction of certain official messages and events of the Western court. 11

INTRODUCTION

Claudian is decidedly not an objective reporter, but neither was anyone else who wrote in the fourth or fifth centuries. The few historiographical sources that survive are no more objective than his poetry. The poet tells us, for example, that the dying Theodosius secretly entrusted guardianship of both his children to Stilicho (Honorius’s Third Consulship 151–162). Taking this claim literally, however, misses a crucial point about its genre and performance context. Claudian was reciting words of praise before a sympathetic audience in Honorius’s court not testifying in a law court or being interviewed by a modern historian. He composed these lines in the hope of earning applause, praise, future commissions, political office, and material rewards from his patrons and was entirely successful in achieving these goals. The moment at which Claudian performed this passage certainly matters as well. This was young Honorius’s first accession to the consulship as the reigning Western emperor, and probably the first moment at which he was old enough to fully comprehend what was being said about him in public. From our perspective, the transition of power certainly did not occur this way, as discussed previously (see Section 1.1 “Claudian’s Career”). The reaction in Arcadius’s court, if they even knew or cared about Claudian’s performance, would have been diametrically opposed. We must regard the passage instead as part of the Milan court’s public relations, as part of a larger effort to seek approval among the Western aristocracy. The literary traditions of panegyric and invective are perhaps best known to non-specialist readers from Cicero’s prose speeches (mid-first century BCE). By the fourth century, however, both genres had undergone several substantial innovations. We can trace some of these developments in the Latin Panegyrics, a group of speeches composed between 289 and 389 and preserved today in a manuscript headed by the Younger Pliny’s Panegyric of the Emperor Trajan (delivered in 100).18 In the same period, Menander Rhetor (third or fourth century) composed a handbook in Greek offering guidance for the benefit of panegyric writers.19 We can see how many of Claudian’s poems reflect this traditional structure of panegyric, as well as the poet’s awareness of the conventional subjects that he must praise (e.g. Stilicho’s Consulship 1.14–17). Claudian’s first panegyrics for the brother consuls Olybrius and Probinus and the young emperor Honorius provide a convenient example of the influence of panegyric tradition. Honorius was a mere 11 years old at the time that Claudian delivered his panegyric on his third consulship, and the brother

18 See Nixon and Rodgers 1994. 19 See Russell and Wilson 1981.

12

INTRODUCTION

consuls were similarly too young to have accomplishments of their own. In praising what he can about his young honorands, such as their birthplace, parentage, education, and moral character, Claudian’s works resemble contemporary prose panegyric. The openings of his invectives follow a similar narrative structure. The first books of Rufinus and Eutropius provide the same information about their targets’ early careers but in tones of horror and outrage rather than awe and respect (Struthers 1919). Claudian created an important new innovation in Roman literature by writing long panegyrics of the emperor in dactylic hexameter, the meter also used by epic poets (see Section 1.5). His poems use the full array of epic literary devices. These include lengthy similes, intervention by the gods and allegorical figures, as well as typical scenes such as battle, sea storms, and feasting. Claudian’s contemporaries were clearly thinking of him as an epic poet when they rewarded him with a statue comparing him to the poets Homer and Virgil (see Section 1.1 “Claudian’s Career”). Earlier examples of Latin poems in praise of the emperor, such as Horace’s Odes and Statius’s Silvae from the first century, are much shorter and do not develop the conventions of ancient epic. Modern scholars accordingly term Claudian’s work “epic-panegyric” (Gillett 2012) to account for his signature contribution to the Latin poetic tradition.20 Ancient panegyric, whether prose or poetry, often featured moral instruction. Sometimes the individual being celebrated received this instruction, especially if he were a young person like the child emperor Honorius. In Section 1.3, for example, we examined Theodosius’s speech from Honorius’s Fourth Consulship, in which the father instructs his son to emulate the models presented by famous figures from Roman history. Claudian’s speakers can also instruct the audience to observe the honorand’s excellent qualities. Much of the panegyric for Manlius Theodorus, for example, praises the virtues that the consul developed by studying philosophy in retirement. The poem opens with a celebration of Theodorus’s virtue (Manlius Theodorus 1–18); later, personified Justice argues that such a virtuous man has an obligation to lead the state (135–173). The invectives offer complementary moral instruction by exhorting the audience to avoid the negative qualities exemplified by the target. Thus reflecting on Rufinus’s greed prompts the narrator to consider examples of virtuous poverty from Roman history. His exhortation leads him to the conclusion that a simple life in the country is morally superior to pursuing ambition to excess at the emperor’s court (Rufinus 1.196–219). 20 It should be observed, of course, that most of the Latin poetry produced between the second and fourth centuries has been lost. Claudian might conceivably appear less innovative if we had a complete literary record.

13

INTRODUCTION

In numerous passages of Claudian, the narrative flow stops, and the poet offers lengthy descriptions of landscapes, buildings, human bodies, clothing, and physical features. Many of his Shorter Poems have no narrative but rather consist entirely of description, such as of an outstanding artwork or unusual animal. In longer poems, these ekphrastic (descriptive) passages may seem to some modern readers like mere decoration, unwelcome distractions from the forward progress of the story. Description, however, was an essential component of the fourth-century aesthetic. Visual artwork from this period also emphasized local effects, tending to isolate and foreground the individual elements of a composition at the expense of realistic representation. Michael Roberts (1989) coined the influential phrase “jeweled style” to describe the similar aesthetic found in late fourth century artwork and poetry.21 The poet expects his readers to slow down their reading, to delay their desire for immediate narrative fulfillment, and to imagine the scene that he has elaborately described.

1.5 About This Translation In keeping with the goals of the Routledge Later Latin Poetry series, I have presupposed a reader who is interested in late antique culture but has not yet studied the Latin language or has extensive familiarity with the Roman world. The introductions to each chapter highlight some of the historiographical and rhetorical aspects of the individual poems. The features of Claudian’s poetry that can carry through best in translation include his storytelling, his visual imagination, and his participation in a lengthy Roman tradition of panegyric and invective. The major goals of this translation are readability, fluency, and fidelity, in that order. The reader may judge its success at the first two goals by turning to a random page and reading, preferably aloud. I accordingly spend the rest of this section discussing my approach to fidelity, the third goal. Previous sections mentioned modern audiences’ disinclination to view political communication as serious poetry. The deep learning of Claudian’s aristocratic audience creates a second major difference in taste. These powerful people knew their literary tradition on a granular level that is very difficult for us to comprehend. Their memories were prodigious by our standards, as they typically learned many of their own classics through memorization. They would recognize phrases from earlier poems immediately and

21 See Roberts 1989; O’Hogan 2019 on the jeweled style. On ekphrasis in late ancient literature, see Webb 2009.

14

INTRODUCTION

understand their resonances and contexts. Claudian accordingly assumes that his readers are familiar both with the Greek poetic tradition, over 1000 years old by his day, and the Roman tradition, nearly 700 years old. Almost every passage of Claudian contains extensive adaptation of phrases from Homer, Virgil, Ovid, and their poetic successors.22 He glancingly mentions mythological stories and expects the reader to relate their context to his work immediately. Where it is relevant, I have discussed some of these references in the notes23 and have supplied further identifications in an extensive Glossary. However, I have had to let go discussion of Claudian’s verbal adaptation of earlier poetry. Claudian wrote most of his poetry in a six-beat line called the dactylic hexameter. (He uses different meters, however, in the prefaces, Fescennines, and in some of the Shorter Poems.) Though the hexameter always has six beats, its length may vary between 12 and 17 syllables, enabling the poet to achieve rhythmic variety across a lengthy poem written in the same verse form. Latin is a much more concise language than English, and some of its terse phrases must accordingly be unpacked with many more English words. When my translation employs lines of varying length, therefore, they do not necessarily reflect the actual length of the original Latin line, but they do gesture at its potential for variation. This choice also reflects the priority to produce a translation with an identical number of lines to the original, to facilitate use by readers consulting Claudian for reference purposes. I have opted, like most contemporary translators, for a loose line featuring English’s natural iambic rhythms, as the Latin dactylic meter sounds highly artificial in English (Phelan 2012: 45–87). Like all the Roman poets, Claudian wrote in a highly artificial idiom. Where modern readers often expect straightforward, functional communication, the Roman poets participated in a tradition where nothing can be said straightforwardly, and everything must be exaggerated. I have had to let go many of Claudian’s more exotic effects, as they would sound bizarre in English.24 Latin is an inflected language, and so poets can alter its natural word order. The alteration immediately creates the defamiliarization of natural language characteristic of poetry; it also permits the poet to strive for visual, aural, and cognitive effects. A short passage will demonstrate some of these devices: 22 To identify and explain these adaptations is well beyond the goal of this series. For detailed commentaries on Claudian’s works, see the Bibliography. 23 See, for example, why the laurel hates Apollo’s music (Proserpina 2, preface line 23). 24 For an excellent introduction to poetic effects in Latin, aimed at readers who have not yet studied the Latin language, see Fitzgerald 2013.

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INTRODUCTION

. . . rursusque cruentus Aegaeon positis aucto de corpore nodis obvia centeno vexasset fulmina motu. Proserpina 1.45–47 . . . Bloody Aegaeon would’ve freed his massive body once again from the knots that held it down, and his hundred hands would’ve opposed Jupiter’s thunderbolts. Claudian has achieved numerous successes here from careful deformation of natural word order. In line 46, the phrase positis . . . nodis (“freed from the knots”) surrounds aucto de corpore (“his massive body”), thereby creating a visual image of the chained Giant. Line 47 is a so-called “Golden” line, a particular favorite of Claudian. This is a line composed of two adjectives (obvia centeno), a verb (vexasset), and the two nouns corresponding to the adjectives (fulmina motu). The device is impossible to render in English. In Latin, it creates an effect of deferral for both listener and reader, as both must come to the end of the line to figure out what is going on. As Latin is an inflected language, its poetry is extremely concise compared to English. In the words of one great translator, “Latin does not have to use all those miserable little space-taking pronouns, articles, prepositions” that “creep in, like the termites they are, to eat away the whole fiber of a line” (Humphries 1958: 65). Speakers can express verb subjects, moods, possession, and other syntactical relationships through grammatical inflection rather than through separate words. Accordingly, I have needed nearly twice as many words to translate the passage (24 English versus 13 Latin), though the syllable count is closer (38 English versus 33 Latin). My translation is also lengthier than the original because I have added some explanatory glosses to the passage. The words “that held it down” and “Jupiter” are not found in Claudian’s original Latin. I have assumed that the reader may not recognize Claudian’s allusive reference to Aegaeon’s “knots”, nor be familiar with his conflict with Jupiter. I have used in-text explicitation frequently throughout the translation, supplying definitions and contexts not found in Claudian’s original Latin. Examples include “Lachesis the Fate” (Proserpina 1.54), “the barbarian exile Arbogast” (Honorius’s Third Consulship 66), or “Gaïnas” (Rufinus 2.384). Claudian does not identify Lachesis as a Fate, as that was very common general knowledge, nor does he name either Arbogast or Gaïnas. For the latter two examples, the poet has assumed a reader who is perfectly familiar with the contemporary situation and so does not need names spelled out for them that might detract from the rhythm or register of his poetry. The 16

INTRODUCTION

goal here has been to facilitate reading comprehension and to keep the footnotes and Glossary at a manageable length. The footnotes typically identify matters relevant to the local context, while the Glossary discusses names that reappear in more than one context. Claudian’s poem on the Aponus spring (Shorter Poems 26) shows a different kind of need for explicitation. One passage describes a crust on the thermal lake, thin yet apparently capable of being walked upon. The poet literally calls it “a trustworthy downfall” (fida ruina, line 48), an oxymoron which one scholar has termed “Claudian’s own signature.”25 The eighteenth century essayist Joseph Addison discussed Claudian’s use of paradox in greater detail, as a source of “his greatest beauties as well as faults.” This poet “loves to set his epithet at variance with its substantive, and to surprise his reader with a seeming absurdity.”26 These “pretty kinds of contradictions” are a compositional feature already found in the earlier Latin poets whom Claudian greatly admired, such as Ovid (43 BCE-17 CE) and Statius (c. 45–c. 96 CE); Claudian simply increases the frequency of its use. Paradoxes can make a puzzle for editors as well as translators, as sometimes scribes did not understand the point and substituted a more obvious word. We must then decide whether Claudian wrote something more difficult than what we find in the major manuscripts. I have endeavored not to make these passages into puzzles for the reader, though in doing so I have inevitably created a smoother reading experience than Claudian intended. I substitute more comprehensible phrases or use a note to explain the phrase’s paradox. Following editorial convention, I mark with [square brackets] lines which are likely not by Claudian but are intrusions into the text made by medieval scribes. For the most part, the text follows Charlet’s Budé edition (1991–2018), as it is the most up to date and reasonable text of Claudian. I indicate alternative readings in the footnotes only in the few places where I depart from Charlet.

1.6 Chronology 377 Birth of Arcadius. 379 Accession of Theodosius the Great.

25 Cameron 1970: 295; see also Hardie 2019: 172–173. 26 Joseph Addison, Dialogues on Medals (1726), in Addison 1853: 2.54.

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383 Revolt of Magnus Maximus. Arcadius made Augustus. 384 9 September: Birth of Honorius at Constantinople. 386 Consulship of Honorius (1st) and Flavius Euodius. Perhaps this year?: marriage of Stilicho and Serena. 387 Theodosius the Great marries Galla. 388 Revolt of Magnus Maximus. 389 Honorius made Caesar. 392 Consulship of Arcadius and Rufinus. Death of Valentinian II. Revolt of Arbogast and Eugenius. Stilicho’s campaign in Thrace. See In Praise of Serena 207–9; Eutropius 411–16. 393 Consulship of Theodosius and Abundantius. 23 January: Honorius made Augustus. Eutropius’s first attested imperial mission, to John the Monk, to derive a prophecy regarding Eugenius’s usurpation. See Eutropius 1.312–13. 394 Consulship of Honorius (2nd) and Virius Nicomachus Flavianus. Death of Theodosius’s wife Galla. Honorius travels from Constantinople to Milan. 6 September: Theodosius defeats Arbogast and Eugenius at the battle of the Frigidus River. Winter: Huns invade. See Rufinus 2.26–35. 395 Consulship of Olybrius and Probinus. January: Claudian performs Olybrius and Probinus, his first known commission. 17 January: Death of the emperor Theodosius. Accession of Honorius at Milan and Arcadius at Constantinople. 18

INTRODUCTION

27 April: Marriage of Arcadius and Eudoxia at Constantinople. Fall: Stilicho campaigns against Alaric and the Goths in Greece. 18 November: Rufinus’s soldiers murder him in Constantinople. 396 Consulship of Honorius (3rd) and Arcadius. January: Claudian performs Honorius’s Third Consulship. Perhaps this year?: Stilicho campaigns in Britain. Eutropius contrives Abundantius’s exile. 397 Winter/Spring?: Claudian performs Rufinus, Book 1. Summer: Stilicho’s second campaign against the Goths in Greece. Arcadius’s court declares him a public enemy. Late summer: Claudian performs Rufinus, Book 2. Autumn: Gildo’s revolt in North Africa. 398 Consulship of Honorius (4th) and Eutychianus. January: Claudian performs Honorius’s Fourth Consulship. Winter, perhaps February: Honorius marries Maria. Claudian performs Epithalamium and Fescennines. 9 February: Stilicho’s fleet departs for North Africa to fight Gildo. March: Stilicho’s victory at Theveste. Death of Gildo at Thabraca. April: Claudian may have performed The War With Gildo. Summer: Stilicho orders the murder of Gildo’s brother Mascezel. 399 Consulship of Manlius Theodorus and Eutropius. January: Claudian performs Manlius Theodorus’s Consulship. Spring: Claudian performs Eutropius, Book 1. Summer: Invasion by Tarbigilus/Tribigild. August: Exile of Eutropius. Assassination of the Persian shah Varanes (Bahram). See Eutropius 2.474–84. September: Claudian performs Eutropius, Book 2. 400 Consulship of Stilicho (1st) and Aurelianus. January: Claudian performs Stilicho’s Consulship, Books 1–2. February: Claudian performs Stilicho’s Consulship, Book 3. Perhaps March?: Gaïnas’s revolt in Constantinople. Perhaps this year?: Claudian’s statue erected in the Forum of Trajan, Rome. 19

INTRODUCTION

401 Birth of Theodosius II to Arcadius and Eudoxia. Alaric invades Italy. Honorius restores Rome’s walls. 402 Consulship of Honorius (5th) and Arcadius. Easter: Stilicho fights Alaric at Pollentia. Summer: Claudian performs The Gothic War. Summer?: Battle of Verona. Honorius moves the Western imperial court from Milan to Ravenna. 404 Consulship of Honorius (6th) and Aristaenetus. January: Claudian performs Honorius’s Sixth Consulship. Death of Honorius’s wife Maria. Death of Arcadius’s wife Eudoxia. Presumed retirement or death of Claudian. 405 Consulship of Stilicho (2nd) and Anthemius. Radagaisus invades Italy. 406 Consulship of Arcadius and Anicius Petronius Probus. Stilicho defeates Radagaisus at Faesulae. 407 Consulship of Honorius (7th) and Theodosius II. 408 Consulship of Anicius Auchenius Bassus and Flavius Philippus. Honorius marries Stilicho’s daughter Thermantia. Death of Arcadius. Accession of Theodosius II at Constantinople. 23 August: Execution of Stilicho. Execution of Stilicho’s son Eucherius and wife Serena. Alaric lays siege to Rome. 423 Death of Honorius.

1.7 Concordance Many scholarly sources refer to Claudian’s works, except for The Rape of Proserpina and the Shorter Poems, by number rather than by name. This 20

INTRODUCTION

Concordance identifies the poems by their full English titles, the short title used in this translation, their Latin titles, and their standard numeration. English title

Short Title

Latin title

Number

The Rape of Proserpina

Proserpina

~

Panegyric on Olybrius and Probinus’s Consulship Panegyric on Honorius’s Third Consulship

O&P

Invective Against Rufinus Panegyric on Honorius’s Fourth Consulship

Rufinus

De Raptu Proserpinae Panegyricus dictus Olybrio et Probino Consulibus Panegyricus dictus Honorio Augusto tertium consuli In Rufinum Panegyricus dictus Honorio Augusto quartum consuli Fescennina dicta Honorio Augusto et Mariae Epithalamium dictum Honorio Augusto et Mariae In Gildonem/De Bello Gildonico Panegyricus dictus Mallio Theodoro consuli In Eutropium

8

Fescennines

Honorius’s Third Consulship

Honorius’s Fourth Consulship Fescennines

Epithalamium for Honorius and Maria

Epithalamium

The War With Gildo

Gildo

Panegyric on Manlius Theodorus’ Consulship Invective Against Eutropius Panegyric on Stilicho’s Consulship The Gothic War Panegyric on Honorius’s Sixth Consulship

Manlius Theodorus Eutropius Stilicho’s Consulship Gothic War Honorius’s Sixth Consulship

21

De Consulatu Stilichonis Bellum Geticum Panegyricus dictus Honorio Augusto sextum consuli

1 6–7 2–5

11–14 9–10 15 16–17 18–20 21–24 25–26 27–28

2 THE RAPE OF PROSERPINA

Introduction Claudian’s best-known work retells a popular mythological story familiar from earlier Greek and Latin versions. The narrative of the sexual assault and abduction of the young goddess Proserpina (Persephone in Greek) by her uncle Dis (Hades), the god of the Underworld, may have originated from an ancient Greek fertility cult. The fertility goddess Ceres (Demeter) and her daughter Persephone were worshipped at Eleusis in Attica, Greece.1 The anonymous Greek Homeric Hymn to Demeter, likely composed in the late seventh/early sixth century BCE, presents the earliest full-length treatment of the story. An episode of Ovid’s Latin Metamorphoses (book 5, lines 332–678), completed by 8 CE, offers a briefer version. Claudian’s poem, though incomplete, is fuller and more detailed than either. If it is the truth that Claudian chose to abandon the poem for other projects, then that is a shame, as he has displayed startling originality within the traditional narrative framework established by the preceding tradition. In the preface to Book 1, Claudian uses a typical comparison between a sea voyage and the daring required to compose an epic poem. Book 1 then begins with a traditional invocation of the gods and a statement of the epic’s subject matter: Dis in love; his rape of his niece Proserpina; and Ceres’s quest to find her daughter (1–31). Dis, god of the Underworld, initially thinks about making war on the upper world, but the Fates persuade him to ask Jupiter for a wife instead (1.32–75). Dis then asks Mercury, the messenger of the gods, to bring his request for a wife to his brother Jupiter. Jupiter offers Proserpina, his daughter by Ceres, without her foreknowledge or Ceres’s consent (1.76–121). Ceres has concealed her beloved daughter 1 We will henceforth refer to Claudian’s characters exclusively by their Latin names: Proserpina, Ceres, and Dis.

22

DOI: 10.4324/9780429353345-2

THE RAPE OF PROSERPINA

Proserpina in Sicily, home of the volcano Mount Aetna. She goes to visit Cybele, the Great Mother of the gods (1.122–213). At Jupiter’s command, Venus, Minerva, and Diana go to visit Proserpina. The narrator describes Proserpina’s tapestry, a representation of an orderly universe. Meanwhile, Dis readies his chariot for the following day’s rape (1.214–288). The preface to Book 2 relates how Orpheus’s song ceased until Hercules liberated his homeland of Thrace. He then charmed nature with his song of Hercules’s Labors. Claudian compares his patron Florentinus (PLRE 1.362) to Hercules the liberator and himself to Orpheus the panegyrist. The mythological story may have been possibly relevant to the present day, as Stilicho was campaigning in Thrace against the Goths during Florentinus’s tenure as prefect of the city of Rome from September 395 to December 397. Claudian makes a similar comparison in the preface to Rufinus Book 1: there the narrator compares his patron Stilicho to Apollo slaughtering the Python and himself to the Muses who sang of Apollo’s victory. This dedication to Florentinus is the only piece of evidence available for assigning a provisional date to the composition of this poem. Gruzelier (1993: xvii–xx) has suggested that the poem’s first book is Claudian’s earliest extant major work, written before O&P of 395. The lack of reference to a patron or an audience in the preface to Book 1 suggests that Claudian was still seeking patronage at this time. By contrast, Cameron (1970: 452–466) assembles verbal parallels from Rufinus to argue that Proserpina was written after that poem. Neither argument has enough evidence to be determinative. Florentinus may have been dismissed after his prefecture to retirement in Gaul; the implication is that Book 2 was composed during his prefecture.2 The unfinished state of the poem may have resulted from Claudian’s popularity as a panegyrist. On this view, more rewarding commissions from higher-ranked individuals left him with no time or interest to complete his mythological poem. The opening of Book 2 shows Proserpina, Venus, Diana, and the Naiads at play on the fields of Mount Aetna. As they pick flowers, the mountain tells Zephyr the West Wind to make the slopes fertile (2.1–151). Dis then violently abducts Proserpina. The goddesses try to protect her but cannot stop him (2.152–246). The Homeric or Ovidian versions do not feature the goddesses’ attempted intervention; this narrative element inspired the Rubens painting reproduced on this volume’s cover.3 Proserpina cries out to Jupiter as she is carried down to the Underworld. Dis attempts to console her, and the Underworld rejoices as they arrive below (2.247–372). The 2 Symmachus, Letters 6.64. See Gruzelier 1993: xvii–xx for discussion. 3 The Rape of Proserpina (1636–8), by Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640), now held in the Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain.

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scene shifts to Olympus at the beginning of Book 3, where Jupiter forbids the gods to reveal to Ceres who raped Proserpina (3.1–66). Still visiting with Cybele, Ceres dreams of her daughter (3.67–136). She returns to Sicily and finds Proserpina missing. Proserpina’s nurse Electra relates how the girl was abducted (3.137–259). Ceres rebukes the gods, then laments for Proserpina as she prepares to search for her. The unfinished poem ends with Ceres’s departure from Mount Aetna (3.259–448). Claudian’s version of the narrative breaks off at this point, at the beginning of Ceres’s search for her daughter. We can supply the ending from earlier Greek and Latin versions. As Ceres wanders the world looking for Proserpina, various people host her, and she teaches them agriculture. Human beings shift from a subsistence diet of acorns to planting crops. The Eleusinian Mysteries, rituals celebrated in honor of these goddesses in Eleusis, Greece, may have been related to this mythological narrative of how human beings turned from hunting and gathering to agriculture. Claudian briefly references this story in the first lines of this poem (1.29–31), and Jupiter decrees that wandering the world teaching agriculture will be Ceres’s destiny (3.45–54). He refers indirectly to Triptolemus, prince of Eleusis near Athens, one of Ceres’s hosts. Depending on the version of the myth, either the Sun or a nymph eventually tells Ceres that Dis has abducted her daughter and now keeps her prisoner in the Underworld. In her rage, she withholds fertility from the earth. Human beings start to die of starvation until the gods strike a bargain with Ceres. Proserpina may return to her mother, so long as she has not eaten any food while in the Underworld. As Proserpina has in fact eaten six pomegranate seeds, she must stay in the Underworld for half of each year. Ceres laments for her daughter during her absence in fall and winter, during which time she withholds fertility from the earth. When Proserpina returns from the Underworld in spring, Ceres rejoices, and the crops may begin to grow once more. Ceres’s recurring grief for her daughter provided a mythological explanation for the change of seasons. Though the characters are all divine, the myth nevertheless reflects social and political realities among human beings. Noblewomen in ancient Rome were often married very young. Stilicho’s daughter Maria, for example, was 12 at the time of her marriage to the emperor Honorius. Marriages among the elite were often the result of negotiations between heads of families, and the bride’s consent was not a requirement. The noblewoman Celerina similarly felt fear rather than anticipation when she married Palladius. Claudian’s speaker Venus describes this reaction as expected in a young bride’s first marriage (Shorter Poems 25, lines 130–138). The gods’ cold-blooded, deceptive machinations in Proserpina reflect the reality that elite families 24

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could view daughters as property to be transferred for political or economic benefit. Proserpina’s grief in her new Underworld residence reflected the experience of ancient brides who were often transferred abruptly to a strange house. The story of an uncle’s abduction of his niece, furthermore, was not a fictional invention. Abduction marriages and sexual violence within the family were as ubiquitous in ancient Rome as they are in parts of the contemporary world (Evans-Grubbs 1989). Claudian has granted all of his characters far more detailed emotional lives than did the earlier poems in the tradition, and the conflicts between the characters are similarly more developed. Proserpina is both a goddess and a recognizable teenage girl, so eager to get out of Cybele’s palace with the goddesses that Venus finds her easy to manipulate (3.202–230). Claudian displays his rhetorical sophistication in Proserpina’s argument with Dis during her abduction (2.250–305). Dis’s attempt to console her, ineffective and misguided as it may be, at least differentiates him from the earlier poets’ terse figure. The exchange between Ceres and Electra (3.179–259) displays the mother’s confused emotions: grief, guilt, anger, confusion, and so forth. We are still a very long way from the sophisticated characterization seen in later Renaissance poetry, let alone in the modern novel, but we can still mark the difference between Claudian’s characters and Ovid’s. Claudian has long been admired for his powers of description. Notable examples include Proserpina’s tapestry (1.246–270) and the slopes of Mount Aetna where the rape occurs (2.71–117). Proserpina’s artistic creations further testify to Claudian’s efforts to make her a fully-realized character rather than simply a silent victim. Her creations, furthermore, take on a symbolic life of their own in the poem. Like the ornate shields carried by epic warriors, her unfinished tapestry (1.246–270) is a heroic object that serves as an emblem of the poem’s young female hero. Proserpina’s tapestry shows Nature’s creation of an orderly world from Chaos, foreshadowing for us how her own rape is about to upset the world’s delicate balance. She also weaves her own tunic, depicting the Ocean goddess Tethys nursing the infant Sun and Moon (2.40–54). Like the tapestry, the tunic shows the difference between the gods’ privileged perspectives and human beings’ more limited ones. For us, Ocean, Sun, and Moon are infinitely old, but it is plausible that a goddess in a story set in the time before agriculture could remember their infancies. Claudian makes the natural world a major subject of his narrative. The island of Sicily, where much of the poem’s action takes places, receives a lengthy initial description (1.142–178). Claudian’s Sicily is a site where mythological history, natural philosophy, and poetic tradition intersect. The Giant Enceladus, buried under Mount Aetna, causes its volcanism (1.153– 159), while ice paradoxically forms on the smoking volcano (1.166–170). 25

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Landscape features become speaking characters: Mount Aetna asks Zephyr the West Wind to spread divine dew over her slopes so that flowers will instantly grow (2.71–100). Zephyr immediately complies with her request and so transforms the mountain’s slopes into the “pleasant place” (locus amoenus), the traditional site for rape in mythological narratives (Bernstein 2011). The desirable flowers which the goddesses pick become the symbolic reflection of Proserpina’s lost virginity. The luxurious fertility of the natural surroundings contrasts with the horror of Dis’s eruption from the land of the dead and the violence of his rape. These brief and episodic descriptions of artwork and landscape are examples of Claudian’s “jeweled style” (see p. 14), thematically appropriate components of the narrative that also halt its forward progress and encourage the reader to imagine the scene in detail.

The Rape of Proserpina Preface to Book 1 Whoever built the first ship and split the deep sea and used crude oars to froth the water, and dared to trust the little craft to uncertain winds— his skill offered us paths that nature forbade. At first he anxiously handed himself over to the quiet waters, along a safe path, skirting the shoreline’s edge. Soon he started to leave the land behind, to risk the broad gulfs, and open his sails wide to the gentle South wind. But as bit by bit his headlong daring grew, his heart forgot its slothful fear. And at last his wandering ship broke into the open ocean, and pursued the sky, and mastered the Aegean’s winds and the Ionian Sea.

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My awestruck mind orders me to give forth a bold song of Dis the hellish rapist’s horses, the stars infected by the Underworld chariot, and the queen Proserpina’s dark marriage chamber deep below. Clear out of here, unbelievers! Madness has thrust my human senses from my heart, and Apollo, god of poetry, now breathes through my whole breast.

4 Reading concussa; Charlet reads congesta, “overstuffed.”

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Now I see temples moving on their trembling foundations, and fires spread forth clear light, proclaiming the god’s arrival. Now I hear a mighty roar from deep within the earth. Cecrops’s temple at Athens bellows in response, and Eleusis holds aloft its holy torches. Triptolemus’s serpents hiss and lift their scaly necks, worn out under his chariot’s curved yoke. They glide serenely by, raising their rosy crests to attend my song. Look! Hecate who takes three forms arises from far off. Gentle Bacchus, god of wine, accompanies her, flourishing ivy wreathing his hair. A Persian tigress’s skin covers him, its golden claws fastened in a knot. His Maeonian thyrsus supports his drunken steps. You gods whom measureless crowds of motionless dead serve in the desolate Underworld! All that perishes on Earth adds to your greedy hoard. The Styx’s livid waters encircle you. Phlegethon, river of fire, rolls its burning stream, and its seething waves surround you. Open your holy matters’ mysteries and your world’s secrets. What torch did Cupid use to sway Dis’s mind? How did Dis seize brave Proserpina and lead her away to possess Chaos through marriage? How many lands did her anxious mother Ceres wander through, as she ran after her in panic? How did she give people crops? As people discovered the harvest, they left off eating acorns, and Dodona’s oak retired. Once upon a time, Dis lord of Erebus caught fire. His anger swelled. He wanted to make war on the gods above, because he was the only one to lack a bride. He’d wasted so many sterile years. He was tired of being ignorant of marriage, of not knowing a husband’s joys, nor the sweet name “father.” All the monsters hiding in the deadly abyss rushed into formation and made a battle line. The Furies made them swear war against Thundering Jupiter. Tisiphone, who wore deadly snakes for hair, brandished a pine torch casting ill-omened light, and called the ghosts under arms to their pale camps. The elements almost fought once more with resisting matter and would’ve broken their laws. The Titan army deep below would’ve loosed their chains and burst forth from their prison to see the heavenly sun. Bloody Aegaeon would’ve freed 27

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his massive body once again from the knots that held it down, and his hundred hands would’ve opposed Jupiter’s thunderbolts. But the Fates took concern for the world and forbade these threats. They knelt before Dis’s throne and loosed their severe white hair at his feet, placing their hands upon his knees and weeping as suppliants do. The Sisters hold all things under their law, their thumbs draw out thread to spin Fate’s order of events, and their iron spindles unroll the long centuries. Lachesis the Fate was first to loosen her unkempt hair and cry out to fierce king Dis: “O greatest ruler of the night, emperor of the ghosts! Our looms labor for you. You provide the end and the beginning for all things, you repay births with corresponding deaths, you rule over life and death. Wherever raw materials generate new life, your gift creates it, and it’s owed to you. Through time’s foreordained turns, souls flow once more into embodied form. Don’t look to nullify peace’s confirmed laws, which we’ve given and our looms have woven. Don’t overturn brothers’ treaties by blaring civil war. Why are you raising criminal battle standards? Why open the upper world’s air to evil Titans? Ask Jupiter: he’ll give you a wife.”

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Dis blushed at her entreaties, and grudgingly held off. His grim mind softened, though it wasn’t used to being turned. Boreas, the powerful North wind, similarly arms his roaring cyclone. Glacial frost makes him look shaggy, 70 and Gothic northern hail crystallizes on his wings. He wants to blow, and his roaring gusts are ready to haul off the sea, the woods, and the fields. But if wind god Aeolus happens to try blocking him behind the bronze gate, then his empty force disappears, and the shattered wind returns to prison. 75 Dis then summoned Mercury, son of Maia, to deliver his impassioned message. The winged god from Mount Cyllene stood at his side. A cap covered his head, and he brandished his wand that brought sleep. Dis sat high up on his crude throne, and his dark majesty commanded

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respect. Disgusting decay covered his massive scepter. A cloud of deepest sorrow embittered his sublime head, a merciless expression stiffened on his hard face. His grief increased the terror he inspired. Then Dis thundered forth, and the terrified palace fell silent at the tyrant’s exalted voice. The huge guard dog Cerberus held back his three throats’ barking. The spring that supplied Cocytus, river of tears, stopped. Acheron, river of mourning, fell silent and its waters were quiet. Noise ceased on the banks of Phlegethon, river of fire.

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Dis said: “Grandson of Atlas, Arcadian Mercury, you share your divinity with upper and lower gods alike. You alone have the right to pass 90 through both worlds’ thresholds, and you have business with each. Go quickly, cut through the winds, and bring my orders to arrogant Jupiter: ‘My cruelest brother, will you have so much power over me? Has Fortune harmed me, and removed my strength as well as my heaven? If I’ve lost the daylight, does that mean I’ve lost my force and fight? Or do you think perhaps I’m lazy and sluggish, because I don’t wield the Cyclopes’ lightning or tease the air with useless thunderbolts?5 Doesn’t it seem enough that I lack the welcome light in these disgusting regions, when I suffered a third-place loss in the greatest lottery?6 Meanwhile the joyous Zodiac ornaments you, and the Bear constellations’ varied splendors embrace you, but you’ll still prevent me from getting married? Amphitrite, Nereus’s daughter, holds Neptune tight in her sea-green lap. When you get tired of hurling the thunderbolt, your sister Juno takes you to her bosom. Why should I speak of your secret affairs with Latona, or Ceres, or great Themis?7 You have so many chances to breed, and a crowd of happy children surrounds you. But I’m weeping here in my deserted court, without glory, and no offspring will console my anxious cares?

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I won’t put up with quiet any longer! I swear by Night’s origins and the terrifying Styx’s inviolate pools: if you refuse to obey my command, I’ll open Tartarus and rouse it forth, I’ll undo our father Saturn’s ancient chains, I’ll cover the Sun in shadow. I’ll destroy the universe’s framework, and bright heaven will mix with shadowy Avernus.’” Almost before Dis finished speaking, Mercury the messenger was amid the stars. Father Jupiter heard the orders and turned various thoughts over in his mind. What woman would agree to such a marriage? Who’d wish to trade the sun for Hell’s recesses? As he thought about it, a sure idea settled at last. Ceres of Mount Aetna had one beloved daughter, a flourishing girl. Lucina, goddess of childbirth, hadn’t given her a second. Her tired womb stuck fast after its first delivery, and indeed she was infertile. But Ceres held her head higher than all other mothers, and Proserpina made up for any shortfall in number. She cherished her daughter, she followed her around, more lovingly than a stern cow tracks after her calf, whose hooves have not yet worn out the field, nor have new moon-shaped horns yet sprouted on its forehead.

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By now, maiden Proserpina had grown to adolescent years, 130 and was nearly old enough to marry. Wedding torches stirred her tender modesty, and fear mingled with desire made her tremble. Suitors thronged her palace. Mars and Apollo competed for the young girl: Mars was better at using his shield, Apollo his bow. Mars offered her Mount Rhodope, Apollo Amyclae and Delos, 135 and his home at Claros.8 Juno strove against Latona to make Proserpina her daughter-in-law. Blonde Ceres looked down on both of them, and feared they’d carry off her daughter. Alas, how ignorant she was of the future! [Ceres secretly entrusted the girl, her special joy, to Sicily. She entrusted her daughter to be brought up in a faithless home.]9 140 8 The poets typically represent Mars as residing in Thrace, home of the Rhodope mountain range. The three other locations are famous cult sites of the god Apollo in Greece and western Turkey. 9 Lines 139–140 are likely not by Claudian.

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She left the sky behind and sent her to Sicily’s shores, trusting in the place’s nature. Sicily was once part of Italy, but time and the sea have changed its location. The victorious Ocean broke through its confines, its waters washed in and cut the mountains off, and a short distance kept the related lands apart. Now Nature split the three-cornered island from the companion mainland and set it against the sea. Pachynus’s headland extended forth and the cliffs spewed back the Ionian Sea’s rage. On one side, the African waters roar and strike Lilybaeum’s gulf as they rise. On the other side, the maddened Tyrrhenian Sea refuses to be held back, and smashes against opposing Cape Pelorus.

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Mount Aetna’s scorched crags rise up in the island’s middle, Aetna which will never cease boasting of the gods’ victory over the Giants. There is Enceladus’s pyre: his arms bound behind his lacerated back, 155 he breathes out sulfur unceasingly from his burning wound. Whenever he shifts to left or right the burden weighing down his rebellious neck, he tears the island from its foundation, and cities and their walls rock and totter. We may only know Aetna’s summit by sight: an ascent can’t be attempted. 160 Trees flourish on the rest of the mountain, but no farmer plows its peak. Now Aetna belches forth its inborn steam, and a pitchy cloud weighs down the polluted daylight. Terrifying upheavals strike the stars, and the mountain depletes its own resources to stoke its fires. 165 But though Aetna’s superheated fires exuberantly burn, it knows to keep faith equally with snow and ashes. Ice hardens, safe from Aetna’s massive heat.10 Its secret cold defends it, and harmless flames lick at the nearby frost, emitting smoke that’s sworn its loyalty. What ballistae whirl the boulders? What great force blocks up the caverns? What source shoots forth the lava river? Perhaps the wind rushes around closed barriers, and rages against cracked rocks

10 Mount Aetna’s ice was an ancient paradox; see e.g. Pindar Pythian Odes 1.20ff.

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as it powers through. As it looks for the way out, demanding its freedom, its gusts push in every direction and ravage the crumbling chambers below. Or the sea gushes through the mountain’s sulfury guts, hefts the boulders, and its waves catch fire under pressure.

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Ceres, the most dutiful of mothers, hid her daughter here to keep her safe. Feeling secure, she made for her Phrygian home, 180 guiding her dragons’ sinuous limbs. She sought out turret-crowned Cybele. As they passed through the clouds, the dragons swiftly furrowed their path, and their harmless venom soaked the chariot’s reins. Crests adorned their foreheads. Green markings spotted their colorful backs, and tawny gold shone amid their scales. 185 Sometimes their coils flowed through the West winds, other times they dipped lower and skimmed the fields. The wheels spread white dust over the plowed furrows and fertilized them. Ears of wheat turned golden in the rows. Crops sprung up to cover their tracks. A companion harvest clothed the chariot’s path. And now Ceres left Aetna behind, and all Sicily grew smaller when she looked back. Alas! she foresaw danger. How often her tears sprung up and stained her cheeks, how often she turned her gaze to Proserpina’s palace and broke into speech: “Farewell, land I love so much, which I prefer to Heaven. I entrust to you my own blood’s joy, my womb’s beloved labor. Worthy rewards are in store for you. You won’t endure the farmer’s rakes, and the hard plow’s impact won’t turn you. Your fields will flourish of their own accord. The oxen will retire, and farmers grown richer will marvel at the harvest offered to them.” Her golden dragons touched Mount Ida as she spoke.

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Here was the goddess Cybele’s exalted sanctuary, and her venerable temple’s holy rock. Pine trees’ dense foliage overshadowed it. Even when no storm stirred the grove, the conifers’ branches screeched raucous rhythms. Terrifying revels 205 gathered inside. Commingled choruses roared throughout the frenzied temple. Bacchic bands ululated on Mount Ida. Woods bent fearfully on Mount Gargara. The tympani checked their bellowing when Ceres appeared,

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and the choruses fell silent. The Corybantes no longer clashed their swords. Wooden flutes and bronze cymbals made no sound. Lions lowered their crests to be stroked. Cybele rushed rejoicing from her sanctuary, and bent her turreted head to be kissed.

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Jupiter had long since been watching from his lofty height. He lay open his innermost thoughts to Venus: 215 “I’ll confess the secret of my anxieties to you, goddess of Cythera. It’s been decreed long before now that lovely Proserpina shall be given in marriage to Dis, Tartarus’s king. Atropos the Fate insists upon it, and ancient Themis foretold it. Now that her mother’s out of the way, it’s time to finish this business. 220 March on Sicily, and trick Ceres’s daughter into playing in the open fields. When tomorrow morning’s dawn unfolds its purple light, arm yourself with your schemes, the ones you use to set everything ablaze— often, me included. Why should death’s final kingdom be at peace? Let no region be immune to Venus, no breast remain cold 225 among the shades below. Now let the grim Fury feel your heat. Your lustful arrows should soften Acheron, river of groaning, as well as severe Dis’s iron heart.” Venus hurried to carry out Jupiter’s orders. At their father’s command, Minerva joined her, as did Diana, whose bent bow terrifies Mount Maenalus. The path shone beneath the goddesses’ feet. A comet augurs evil the same way: slipping headlong from the sky, it trails bloody fire, a glowing omen. Sailors don’t feel safe as they gaze upon it, and punishment follows as earth’s nations see it. Its menacing trail predicts storms for ships and invaders for cities. The goddesses came to Ceres’s shining palace, which the Cyclopes’ hands had shaped. Steep metal walls rose up, the doorposts were ironclad, and steel girded the vast keep. The Cyclopes Pyragmon and Steropes had never expended so much sweat in constructing any other building. Never had their bellows exhaled such mighty blasts, nor had such a river

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of molten metal flowed from the exhausted furnace.11 Ivory sheathed the entrance hall. Bronze beams supported the roof, and columns of electrum rose up high. Proserpina’s tender song sweetened the whole palace, as she wove a gift, in vain, for her mother’s return. Her needle marked out the series of elements and her father Jupiter’s palace, how Mother Nature’s law had divided ancient Chaos, and the world’s seeds had scattered in the appropriate places. Light matter rose high, heavier stuff fell to the center. The air shone brightly as flame drove the heavens onward. The sea flowed and the earth hung suspended.

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Nor was the tapestry a single color. Proserpina used gold to light the stars, and purple to pour the depths. Gems set the shoreline 255 in relief, and skillfully embossed threads made the pictured waves swell. You would’ve thought the waves were smashing seaweed on the rocks and creeping up the thirsty sands, raucously thundering. She included the world’s five zones:12 red thread picked out the middle zone, oppressed by heat. The scorched region lay deserted, 260 and the unyielding sun parched the tapestry’s fibers. Regions full of life were on either side, where a gentle balance prevailed to make them habitable. At the furthest extremes, she drew out two torpid zones and fouled them in unending winter. She used eternal cold to darken the threads. 265 Proserpina also depicted her uncle Dis’s holy regions, and the ghosts that would spell doom for her. Nor was an ill omen lacking: tears suddenly wetted her cheeks, as if foretelling her future. She’d even begun to wind the Ocean’s glassy waves into the tapestry’s furthest edges. But the door opened, and she saw the goddesses entering. She abandoned her unfinished work. A purple blush stained her snowy face. Her clear cheeks burned as pure modesty’s torches lit them up. Glorious ivory doesn’t glow so bright when a Lydian woman dyes it in Sidonian purple.

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11 Reading fornace; Charlet reads cervice, “neck.” 12 Romans divided the world into five climatic zones: two frozen ones at the north and south extremes, two temperate ones, and the hot equatorial zone. See, for example, Virgil Georgics 1.233–239; Pliny Natural History 2.172.

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The sun had sunk in Ocean, moist Night had spread sleep, and its dark blue chariot had brought peaceful relaxation. Now Dis heeded his brother’s notice and worked his way to the upper world’s air. The hateful Fury Allecto yoked 280 his savage horses to his chariot. They graze on Cocytus’s pastures and wander through Erebus’s dark fields. They drink tranquil Lethe’s stagnant pools, and wretched forgetfulness foams on their drugged tongues.13 There was Shadow, whose eyes flashed cruelly; Underworld, swifter than an arrow; splendid Night, glory of Styx’s stable; 285 and Avenger, branded with Dis’s own mark. They were standing yoked before the palace doors, neighing fiercely as they foresaw tomorrow’s joy, the coming plunder. The Rape of Proserpina, Preface to Book 2 Orpheus once took his leisure and let his songs rest. He set down his ivory lyre and long neglected it. The Nymphs lamented that their comfort was now gone, while the sad rivers missed his sweet music. Wild animals got their savage natures back. The cow feared the lion, and begged the hushed lyre’s help. Even rugged mountains wept for Orpheus’s silence, as did woods that often followed his Thracian lyre. Then Hercules was sent from Inachian Argos, and brought peace to the world while journeying to Thrace. He overthrew bloodthirsty Diomedes’s dire stables and fed his man-eating horses grass instead. Then Orpheus the bard rejoiced in his country’s time of joy! He took up his unused lyre and played its tuneful strings. His smooth plectrum sounded the inactive chords, and his rejoicing thumb worked the noble ivory pick. The moment they heard his song, the winds and waves subsided. The Hebrus River quieted and slowed its icebound waters. Mount Rhodope’s ridges stretched forth, thirsting for the song, and Mount Ossa bent forward and shook off its cold snows. Tall poplar trees came down from Mount Haemus and left it bare, 13 See the Glossary for these locations in the mythical Underworld.

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and the loving pine tree accompanied the oak. Although the laurel hated Apollo’s art of music, it came as Orpheus’s voice enticed it.14 Kindly hunting dogs nuzzled fearless rabbits, and the lamb pressed its flank right against the wolf. Does played harmoniously with striped tigers, and stags didn’t fear the African lion’s mane. Orpheus sang of Hercules’s stepmother Juno, who goaded him to his deeds, and the monsters that his brave hand had subdued; how the fearless boy, fiercely laughing, showed his terrified mother the snakes he’d crushed. “The bull that shook Crete’s cities”, Orpheus sang, “didn’t scare you with its bellowing, nor did the anger of Cerberus, Hell’s guard dog, nor the lion that returned to Heaven’s starry vault, nor the boar, Mount Erymanthus’s glory. You loosed the Amazon’s girdle, your bow struck the Stymphalian birds, you led three-bodied Geryon’s cattle from the land of the setting sun, you threw down his multiple limbs, and you came home a conqueror so many times over from just one enemy. It didn’t help Antaeus to fall to earth, nor the Hydra to grow new heads, and the deer’s swift feet didn’t rescue her.15 Cacus’s flames died; Busiris’s blood reddened the Nile river; you laid the cloudborn Centaurs low and drenched Mount Pholoë in their blood. Libya’s gulfs marveled at you, the great Ocean was in shock when heaven’s weight pressed down on you. The sky rested more securely on Hercules’s neck, as the sun and stars circled around your shoulders.” The Thracian bard Orpheus sang of these deeds. But you, Florentinus, are another Hercules to me. You make my lyre move,

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14 These trees were once women whom the gods assaulted, and the description of their emotions foreshadows the upcoming rape of Proserpina. Pan pursued the nymph Pitys, who became the pine tree; Apollo pursued Daphne, who became the laurel. See Propertius Elegies 1.18.20; Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.500ff. 15 For Hercules’s mythological opponents, see the Glossary. For a different catalog of Hercules’s Labors, see Rufinus 1.284–296.

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you rouse the Muses’ caverns that rested long in sleep, and you lead the peaceful choruses in circling dance.

The Rape of Proserpina, Book 2 The day, not clear yet, sent forth rays to strike the Ionian Sea. Light shimmered over trembling waves, and wandering flames danced on the blue waters. And now, mind full of daring, her caring mother all forgotten, Proserpina made for the well-watered fields, prey to Venus’s tricks. Thus the Fates commanded. Three times the doors sang out a warning as she made their hinges turn; three times, aware of fate, Mount Aetna mournfully cried out and gave a frightening roar. Yet no omens, no prodigies could hold back Proserpina: her sisters joined her and walked together. Venus went ahead, overjoyed by her trick, intent on her mighty desire. Her mind ran over the upcoming rape. She’d soon turn dire Chaos, conquer Dis, and lead enslaved ghosts in a massive victory parade. She’d braided her hair into numerous curls, divided by a Cypriot pin. Her husband Vulcan had labored over a gem-encrusted brooch, which bound her purple robe. Diana, Arcadian Lycaeus’s shining queen, rushed after her, as did Minerva, whose spear defends King Pandion’s Athens. These goddesses were virgins. Minerva was keen for harsh combat, Diana frightened wild animals. Minerva’s tawny helmet carried an engraved image of Typhon, half-alive, half-dead: his upper part had been destroyed, but his lower part flourished. Her spear was the size of a tree, and its terrible steel surged through the clouds. She arranged her shining robe to cover only the Gorgon’s hissing head. But Diana had a gentle appearance, and her face looked much like her brother Apollo’s. You would think that she had his eyes and cheeks, and the only difference was their sex. Her bare arms shone. She’d loosed her untamed hair to fly around in the light breeze. She’d unstrung her bow and let its string rest. Her quiver hung behind her back. A double knot put a crimp in her Cretan tunic, which stretched 37

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down to her knee. Delos wandered as the fabric moved, floating across the surrounding golden Ocean.16 Between them came Proserpina, now her mother’s glory, soon to become her grief. She headed through the grass, keeping pace with the goddesses, equal in her dignity and height. If she carried a shield, she’d look like Minerva; if arrows, then Diana. She’d hitched up her tunic and clasped it with a smooth jasper brooch. Her weaving skill had never achieved happier results: threads had never come together so harmoniously on any loom, nor depicted figures with so much truth. She’d made the Sun, born from Hyperion’s seed, along with his sister the Moon, working them in similar style but different in appearance. They brought the dawn and nightfall. Tethys the Ocean gave them cradles, and consoled the crying infants in her bosom. The shining children glowed in her blue lap. On her right arm, Tethys carried the puny Sun, his light not yet massive, nor loftily crested with mature rays. Proserpina pictured him as gentler in his youth, and he spewed forth a thin flame as he cried. On his left, his sister the Moon drank milk from Tethys’s glassy breast. A little crescent was sprouting on her forehead. Proserpina luxuriated in this rich garb. The Naiads accompanied her, friendly bands pressing round her on either side. These Naiads dwelled in Crinisus’s springs, Pantagia that whirls boulders, and Gela that gives its name to its city. Camerina’s sluggish marshes fed them, as did Arethusa’s waters, and the foreign Alpheus River’s. Cyane stood out, towering over the whole crowd.17 They were like the lovely band of Amazons who exult, tossing aside their curved shields, whenever the virago Queen Hippolyte has devastated the North, and leads her snow-white squadrons in triumph after battle. Either they’ve laid low the blond Goths,

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16 For Delos’s wandering, see the Glossary. 17 Crinisus, Pantagia, and Gela are Sicilian rivers. Camerina is a town in southern Sicily. Cyane was a Sicilian water nymph. For Alpheus and Arethusa, see the Glossary.

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or perhaps their Thermodontic18 axes have smashed the frozen Don. These Nymphs also resembled Maeonian ones who celebrate Bacchus’s rituals. The Hermus River nurtures them, and they run, dripping gold, along their father’s banks. In his cave, the god rejoices, and generously tips his flowing urn.19 From her grassy slope, Mount Aetna, mother of flowers, caught sight of the divine throng. She called on West Wind Zephyr, who sat in a curving valley: “O most welcome father of springtime, as you pass lustfully by, you rule throughout my fields. and your constant breezes always moisten the seasons. See this gathering of Nymphs! See Thundering Jupiter’s exalted descendant, who has deigned to play in our fields! I beg you now, come here and help. Be willing now to make the blossoms sprout on every bush, to make fertile Mount Hybla jealous and admit that we surpassed its orchards. All that emanates from Panchaia’s incense-bearing woods, the sweet smells the far-off Hydaspes River offers, what the long-lived Phoenix gathers from the furthest cultivators, when it seeks its beginnings anew on its longed-for pyre:20 infuse these into my veins, and nurture my fields with your generous breeze. I hope the goddesses’ divine hands will think my flowers worth picking, and choose to adorn themselves with my fields’ wreaths.” Mount Aetna stopped. Zephyr shook his wings, dripping fresh nectar, and his fecund dew fertilized the soil. Spring’s blush followed him everywhere he flew. Grass swelled all over the ground, and the serene sky lay open. Zephyr gave the roses bloodstained brightness, the hyacinths a darker color, and painted the violets a sweet rusty hue. What belts binding up the Persian monarch’s robes are tricked out with such gems? Assyrian bronze

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18 The modern Terme River in Samsun Province, Turkey, imagined in antiquity to be one of the possible homes of the Amazons. 19 River gods were typically depicted carrying urns, from which they were imagined to pour the river’s water. 20 Reading busto; Charlet reads saeclo, “age.” For the mythical Phoenix, see Shorter Poems 27.

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cauldrons don’t dye wool with such rich colors, and Juno’s peacock doesn’t spread wings so variegated. Nor do the rainbow’s countless changing colors crown a gathering storm, as its curving path traces a damp trail and shines between the parted clouds. Yet the place’s beauty outdid the flowers. A slight swelling curved the plain, and along a gentle rise it grew into a hill. A spring sent swift streams from living pumice and lapped the dewy grass. The forest branches’ coolness blunted the parching sun, and reclaimed some winter from the midday heat. The fir trees were fit for ships, the cornels for combat spears, Jupiter loved the oaks, and the cypresses could roof tombs. Honeycombs filled the ilexes, and the laurels foretold the future. Here the boxwoods nodded their thickly curled heads, the ivy crept, and there the vines coiled round the elms. A lake lay not far off, which the Sicilians called Pergus. A leafy fringe of woods screened it, and its waters close by ran pale. It let your eyes look into its depths, and the bright water didn’t block your view. It was clear to the bottom, transparent the length of the stream, and revealed its secrets down below. [Here the rejoicing crowd passed through the flowering fields.]21 Venus encouraged them to pick flowers. “Come on now, sisters, while the morning sun begins to heat the air, while my Lucifer22 rides his dewy chariot to moisten the golden fields.” As Venus spoke, she picked the anemone, token of her mourning for Adonis. Then the rest of her companions attacked the colorful fields. You’d think Mount Hybla had sent forth swarms of bees to plunder the thyme. The “kings”23 move their honeycomb battle camps. Their buzzing armies, sent out from a beech’s hollow bole, gather honey from carefully chosen plants. The Nymphs stripped bare the field’s glory. One wove pale lilies with dark violets. Tender marjoram crowned another. 21 This line is likely not by Claudian. 22 A pun on Lucifer, the “Light-Bringer”, another name for the planet Venus. 23 The Romans thought that queen bees were actually male “king” bees.

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Roses starred one as she walked, privet flowers turned another white. 130 They also snipped the hyacinth that wept with grieving marks, and the narcissus. Once both were gorgeous boys, and now they were spring’s outstanding buds. Hyacinthus was born at Amyclae, Narcissus on Mount Helicon. Apollo’s discus accidentally struck Hyacinthus, while love for himself tricked Narcissus at the pool. 135 Apollo god of Delos struck his own forehead, while the Cephisus River broke his reeds as he mourned his son Narcissus.24 Proserpina, Ceres’s sole hope, burned hotter than the others in her eager zeal to pick the flowers. Her osier baskets smiled as she filled them with wilderness spoils. Now she wove flowers and crowned herself, all unaware 140 this was a fateful omen of her marriage bed. Minerva, goddess who rules war trumpets and weapons, turned to light games, and relaxed her fighting hand that breaks up brave columns and uproots strong walls and gates. She set aside her spear, donned unaccustomed wreaths, and taught her helmet to become gentle. 145 The iron helmet was a plaything, its warlike terror yielded, and blossoms tamed the lightning on its crests. Diana, whose dogs track scents on Mount Parthenius, didn’t shun the dancing. She only wanted to place a wreath atop her unruly hair to hold it back. While these young women’s 150 games were taking place— Look! A sudden crash resounded, towers smashed together, and cities, shaken to their roots, were overturned. The cause wasn’t apparent: only Venus recognized the reason for the mysterious upheaval. Though terrified, she rejoiced amid her fear. And now Dis, ruler of the dead, was seeking his way along dark tunnels beneath the earth. His heavy horses trampled groaning Enceladus. The chariot’s wheels slashed the Giant’s huge limbs. His crushed neck struggled to carry both Sicily and Dis together. Weakly he tried to move and block the axle with his tired snakes. The smoking wheel rim swept over his sulfury back.

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24 These young men were both transformed into flowers after their deaths. Hyacinthus died when Apollo’s discus struck him, while Narcissus fell in love with his own reflection and wasted away while staring at it.

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A hidden sapper similarly advances on an unaware enemy, tunneling under the field beneath their foundations, his secret path crossing their close-guarded walls. A triumphant crowd bursts into the deceived citadel, imitating the earthborn Giants. Just so Dis, Saturn’s third heir, yearned to get out under his brother Jupiter’s heaven. His chariot wandered as he scanned the pathless recesses, but none lay open. Cliffs blocked him on all sides, their solid framework holding back the god. Dis couldn’t tolerate delay. Angrily he struck the rocks, his scepter like a battering ram. Sicily’s caves resounded, the Lipari Islands recoiled, shocked Vulcan deserted his forge, and fearful Cyclopes threw down their thunderbolts. Anyone stuck on the Alpine glaciers heard the earthquake, so did anyone swimming the Tiber, which Latin trophies hadn’t yet crowned, and anyone paddling the Po River in an alderwood canoe.

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It was like when a marsh covered Thessaly, as cliffs shut in the Peneus River and made it pool.25 180 The submerged fields couldn’t be farmed. Then Neptune’s trident struck the opposing mountains. The strong blow gashed Ossa’s peak and it leaped away from cold Olympus. It loosed the waters from their prison, breaking open a path, restoring the river’s route to the sea, and the land to the farmers. 185 Dis’s hand conquered Sicily and shattered its tough bonds. An immense chasm gaped wide, terror suddenly appeared in the sky, and the stars deserted their trusted paths. The Great Bear bathed in the forbidden water, and fear hurried on the lazy Plowman.26 Orion recoiled; Atlas grew pale as he heard the horses’ whinnies. Their foul-colored breath blotted out the bright skies, and the sun frightened them; usually they thrived

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25 Herodotus Histories 7.129.5 reports the Thessalians’ belief that Neptune separated the mountains with an earthquake; other authors credit Hercules (e.g. Lucan Civil War 6.343–349). 26 For Ursa Major, the Great Bear constellation, not setting in the Ocean, see Homer Odyssey 5.269–274. For Boötes, the Plowman constellation, as “slow” or “lazy”, see Ovid Metamorphoses 2.176–177.

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in endless darkness. They stood fast and champed their bits, stunned by the sight of a better sky, and struggled to turn the chariot pole and head back to fearful Chaos.

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Then the horses felt the whip upon their backs, and learned to tolerate the sun. They rushed faster than a wintry torrent, and swifter than a javelin launched from a thong. A Persian’s spear does not fly so fast, nor the South wind’s assault, nor a troubled mind’s unstable focus. Blood heated their bits, their deadly breath defiled the air, and their spit infected the polluted sand.

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The Nymphs fled. Proserpina begged the goddesses for help as the chariot swept her up. Minerva unveiled the Gorgon’s face, and Diana nocked an arrow and hurried forth. They wouldn’t yield to their uncle Dis. All were virgins: that drove them to fight and made the fierce rapist’s crime seem worse. He was like a lion who seizes a heifer, the glory of the stable and the herd. His claws tear at her guts, lay them bare, and he indulges his madness all over her limbs. He stands fast, clotted blood fouling him, and shakes the tangles from his mane, caring nothing for the shepherds’ useless rage. “Tyrant over a worthless crowd”, Minerva said, “worst of your brothers, where have your Furies’ cursed whips and torches driven you? Why are you daring to leave your home and defile the sky with your hellish chariot? You have the ugly Dirae,27 and Lethe’s other goddesses, and the grim Furies— these are fit to marry you. Leave your brother’s domain, keep off another god’s possession, get out of here and be satisfied with your darkness. Why are you mixing the living with the buried dead? You foreign invader, why are you trampling on our world?” So Minerva screamed. Her menacing shield struck the horses eagerly rushing by, and the obstruction slowed them. She pushed on them, making the Gorgon’s snakes hiss, and her outstretched crest overshadowed them. She readied 27 The Dirae were Underworld demons who punished wrongdoing.

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her ash spear to strike; it lit up the dark chariot opposing. She would’ve cast the spear, had not Jupiter hurled his ruddy winged thunderbolt from highest heaven and kept the peace. He thus revealed himself as Dis’s father-in-law. A wedding song thundered 230 from parted clouds, and lightning confirmed the marriage as a witness. The goddesses yielded unwillingly. Latona’s daughter Diana groaned as she checked her bow, and said: “Remember us, and farewell forever! Respect for our father Jupiter stops us from giving aid, nor can we oppose him to defend you. Greater authority defeats us—we confess it. Your father conspires against you, and he’s handed you over to the silent dead. Alas! You won’t see your dear sisters, who long for you, nor your chorus of friends. What bad luck took you from the world above and condemned the stars to such grief? Casting nets amid Mount Parthenius’s dens, or carrying quivers no longer pleases me. Let the carefree boars foam wherever they like, and let the savage lions roar unharmed. Taygetus’s ridges shall mourn you, as will Mount Maenalus, ceasing their hunting, and sad Cynthus shall long grieve.28 Even my brother Apollo’s shrine at Delphi shall fall silent.”

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Meanwhile the swift chariot carried off Proserpina, her hair sweeping loose in the South wind. She struck her own arms in grief, and her useless complaints burst forth to the clouds above: “Father Jupiter, why didn’t you hurl thunderbolts forged by the Cyclopes’ hands? Are you happy to hand me over to the cruel shadows, to thrust me from all the world? Does no familial duty sway you? Have you no fatherly intentions? What crime did I commit to rouse such rage in you? When the Giants’ rabid uprising seethed at Phlegra, I didn’t lead troops against the gods. It wasn’t my strength that made icy Ossa carry snowy Mount Olympus.29 What crime did I ever attempt? What fault am I guilty of to be thrust in exile to Erebus’s vast gulf? 28 See the Glossary for these Greek mountains. 29 For the Gigantomachy, see the volume introduction, Section 1.2.

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Other rape victims were more fortunate, no matter who seized them— at least they enjoy the Sun that’s common to all. But Dis denies me my virginity, along with the sky, and steals my modesty, along with the daylight. I’m leaving the earth behind, a captive enslaved to the Styx’s tyrant. I picked those flowers for evil, and disdained my mother’s advice! I discovered Venus’s tricks too late! O mother! Whether the boxwood flute shrills its Phrygian song around you in Ida’s valleys, or you inhabit Mount Dindymon, where the bloodstained Galli ululate, and you’re watching the Curetes brandish their swords—30 save me from destruction! Restrain this madman, hold back this savage bandit’s deadly reins!” Proserpina’s words and beautiful tears conquered ferocious Dis. He felt first love’s emotions. He used his rust-colored cloak to wipe her tears, and he consoled her sad grief with his gentle voice: “Proserpina, don’t let your spirit yield to dismal cares, don’t torment yourself with meaningless fear. You’ll gain a greater kingdom, and you won’t endure marriage to an unworthy husband. I am Saturn’s son! The universe’s workings serve me, and my power stretches through the immense void. Don’t think you’ve lost the daylight. We’ve other stars, other worlds. You’ll see a purer light instead, and marvel all the more at Elysium’s sun and its pious worshippers. There’s a more precious era here, where the golden race dwells. We’ve got the Golden Age forever—what the upper world deserved only once. You’ll have soft meadows, and eternal flowers (that your Mount Aetna didn’t bring forth) exhale amid better winds. There’s also a rich tree in a dark grove, glittering gold weighing down its shining branches. You’ll have these holy things, you’ll possess a fortunate harvest, and golden fruits will always make you rich. But I’m mentioning trivia. Whatever the clear air embraces, the earth nourishes, the sea’s waters roll,

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30 See the Glossary for these places associated with the goddess Cybele and her worshippers.

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the rivers turn, the marshes feed—all living things alike will yield to your dominion, all that dwell beneath the moon, the seventh planet to circle our air,31 and divide mortal affairs from the eternal stars. Purple-clad kings will come beneath your feet. They’ll put aside their wealth and mix with the paupers’ crowd, as death makes all equal. You’ll condemn the guilty, and offer rest to the dutiful. You’ll be the judge, and force the wicked to confess their life’s evil crimes. Take the Fates as your servants, along with the Lethe River: whatever you’ll desire, let it be destiny.” As Dis spoke, he urged the triumphant horses forward, and entered Tartarus in a gentler mood. The dead souls came together, as numerous as the leaves that the violent South wind shakes from the trees, the raindrops it gathers from the clouds, the waves it breaks, the sands it whirls. All time’s centuries rushed headlong and packed together to see the famous bride. Dis calmly entered soon after, and let a gentle smile soften his face. He was most unlike himself. Mighty Phlegethon rose up as his masters entered. His whole face flowed fire, and his shaggy beard dripped flaming rivulets. Handpicked servants ran quickly out of the crowd. Some took charge of the lofty chariot, undid the reins, and discharged the horses to their familiar pastures. Others held out a canopy, spread boughs over the doorway, and raised refined draperies around the bridal chamber. A chaste throng of Elysium’s matrons surrounded the queen, and their gentle conversation relieved her fear. They tied back her disheveled hair, and veiled her face to hide her troubled modesty. Death’s pale kingdom rejoiced, the buried folk celebrated, and the ghosts relaxed for the wedding feast. The spirits wore wreaths and held a pleasant party. 31 See note to Honorius’s Third Consulship 168.

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Unaccustomed song broke through the murky silences. The groaning quieted. Erebus’s squalor lightened of its own accord, and let eternal night thin out a bit. Minos’s urn stopped turning uncertain lots, and no whips cracked.32 Criminal Tartarus put off punishments and took a breath. No mourning made it howl. Suspended Ixion’s wheel didn’t whirl him headlong. The jealous water didn’t pull away from Tantalus’s lips. [Ixion was set free, Tantalus found his water.]33 Tityos at last raised up his massive limbs and uncovered nine acres of the disgusting field— he was so huge! The vulture that slowly dug at his dark flank was unwillingly dragged away from his drained chest, and grieved that the flesh it tore grew back no longer.34 The Furies forgot crimes and their terrifying rage. They got drinking bowls ready and their hair’s fearsome snakes drank wine. As they set these threatening monsters aside now and gently sang, [they stretched out friendly snakes to full cups,]35 a changed light kindled their ill-omened torches. Then Avernus’s deadly current was at peace, and birds crossed over safely, and Ampsanctus36 held back its blasts. The whirlpool’s torrent stopped and fell silent. They say then Acheron’s pools changed and swelled with fresh milk, and ivy flourished as sweet wine flowed through Cocytus. The Fate Lachesis didn’t break her threads, nor did confused laments drown out the holy choruses. Death didn’t wander over the earth, and no parents lamented at funeral pyres. Sailors

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32 Minos was one of the judges of the dead. 33 This line is likely not by Claudian. 34 Ixion, Tantalus, and Tityos were mythological opponents of the gods who were punished in the Underworld. Ixion attempted to rape Juno and was bound on a fiery wheel. Tantalus killed his son Pelops and served him as a meal to the gods; he was “tantalized” by food and water that he could not reach. Tityos attempted to rape Latona; a vulture ate his liver which perpetually regrew. 35 Gervais (2020) removes this line and reads infaustas, “ill-omened”, in line 347. The manuscripts read festas, “festive.” 36 This lake in southern Italy, modern Sorgente Mefita, emits noxious vapors and so was thought to be connected to the Underworld.

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didn’t die in the waves, soldiers didn’t fall to spears. Cities flourished, immune to grievous death. Old Charon, ferryman of the dead, crowned his scraggly hair with reeds, and sang as he rowed his empty boat. And then the Underworld’s own Evening Star came forth. Proserpina was led to her marriage chamber. Night stood by as her attendant, stars adorning her bosom. She touched the bed and sanctified the marriage omens in a perpetual union. The blessed souls exulted in song, in sleepless celebration, and under Dis’s roof they began a prelude: “Proserpina, our mighty Juno,37 and you, Dis, brother and son-in-law of Thundering Jupiter, learn to sleep together in unanimous partnership. Twine together your shared vows in each other’s arms. Already lucky offspring come forth; already happy Nature expects future gods. Add new divinities to the world, and bring forth what Ceres longs for—grandchildren.”

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The Rape of Proserpina, Book 3 Meanwhile Jupiter ordered Iris, rainbow goddess, girdled with clouds, to gather the gods from all over the world. She glided on the breeze in her colorful flight and called forth the sea gods, chastised the Nymphs for their delay, and summoned the rivers out of their wet caves. They rushed anxiously, fearfully, to learn what cause stirred up the peaceful gods, what matter had to be handled with such upheaval. As the starry palace opened, they were commanded to take their places, their ranking kept in order. The heavenly gods occupied the first row of seats; the sea lords took the second: gentle Nereus, and Phorcys whose hair shone white. The final row held Glaucus, half-man, half fish, and Proteus the shapechanger had to keep himself to one appearance. The honor of seating also extended to the aged rivers; the younger crowd, a thousand streams, stood like ordinary folk. The wet Naiads leaned upon their clear-flowing fathers,

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37 The goddess Juno, wife of Jupiter, was queen of the gods. The wedding celebrants identify Proserpina, as Dis’s wife, as queen of the Underworld.

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and the Fauns silently marveled at the stars. Then severe Father Jupiter began to speak from high Olympus: “Human affairs, which I’ve long since neglected, have once more taken over my concerns. We experienced my father Saturn’s peaceful reign, and a lazy age’s senescence. It pleased me afterwards to apply the spurs of careworn life to people long since sunk in my father’s sleep. That way the crops wouldn’t grow of their own accord on untended fields, woods wouldn’t flow with honey, nor wine brim in pools, nor roar into wine cups the length of the riverbank. I don’t begrudge people—it’s not right for gods to envy them, or cause them harm. But luxury turns people aside from the honest path, and abundance muddies human minds. Poverty, mother of invention, should challenge their lazy spirits to seek out the world’s hidden ways, little by little, so their intelligence may create new skills, and develop them through practice. Now Nature presses on me, complaining mightily to ease the humans’ burden. She calls me merciless, a harsh tyrant, and fondly recalls the age my father ruled. She cries out that she’s wealthy, but I’m stingy—that I want blight disfiguring fields, thickets filling farmlands, and I wouldn’t crown the year with harvests. Nature had been a mother to mortals before this time. Now she says her ways have suddenly been changed, and she’s become a grim stepmother.38

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‘How has it helped people,’ Nature asks, ‘to derive their intelligence from heaven, to lift their heads up high, if they must wander trackless lands like cattle, if they smash acorns for their common sustenance?39 Does this kind of life please you—hidden40 in forest glades, no different from the beasts?’

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38 The Romans described stepmothers as proverbially wicked. 39 The Romans imagined that primitive people lived on a diet of acorns. 40 Reading abdita. Charlet reads addita, “devoted to.”

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and resolved to turn people aside from their primitive diet of Chaonian acorns. Ceres is still ignorant of her misfortunes, and with her fierce mother whips Mount Ida’s lions. It is decreed that frenzied grief must drive her across sea and land, until proof that her daughter has been found brings her joy, and she bestows the crops. Her chariot must be swept through the clouds, spreading ears of wheat as yet unknown to people, and her sky-blue dragons must endure the Athenian yoke.41 But if any god dares to reveal the rapist’s name to Ceres— I swear by my empire’s might and the world’s deep peace— whether it’s my son, or sister, or wife, or one of my army of daughters—even Minerva, who boasts she’s born from my head—that god will feel my angry aegis. From far off,42 they’ll feel my thunderbolt’s blow, they’ll regret being born a god, and yearn to die. While they’re still suffering the wound, I’ll hand them over to Dis, my son-in-law, so they can endure the kingdom they betrayed, and they will know whether Tartarus is united in support of its own cause.43 This decree has been ordained. Let Fate flow unchanged in this path.” Jupiter spoke, and his terrifying nod shook the stars. But far off, beneath the rocks of Cybele’s cave where weapons echoed, Ceres had long been unworried and at peace. Now unmistakable images of the evil that struck her daughter were terrifying her. Night redoubled her fear, and Proserpina died in all her dreams. Now she trembled as enemy weapons pierced her daughter’s guts, now her clothes changed and turned dark, now sterile ash trees bloomed amid her halls. And there stood a laurel tree, best beloved in the whole grove, whose chaste leaves overspread virgin Proserpina’s bedchamber. Ceres saw it cut from its deepest roots, and dust defiling its untended branches. When she asked about this devilry, the weeping Dryads told her that the Furies had conquered it with Tartarus’s axes.

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41 See the introduction to this poem for Triptolemus, the prince of Eleusis. 42 Reading iratam procul aegida. Charlet reads iratum procul aegide, “will feel my anger, despite her aegis.” 43 I.e. the offending god will learn that the Underworld has no sympathy for them but will punish them as well.

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But then, Proserpina’s face surfaced in her mother’s dream, a messenger with no deceit. She appeared bound up in brutal chains, hidden away in a prison’s dark recesses. She looked nothing like the girl Ceres had trusted once to the Sicilian fields, nothing like the one the goddesses had seen in Aetna’s rosy valleys. Her hair, once prettier than gold, was ragged now, and night had darkened the fire in her eyes. The cold had drained and bleached her rosy blush, her proud face’s fiery glory, and the pitchblack kingdom’s darkness had tinged her limbs whose paleness once outdid snow. So Ceres gazed doubtfully and could barely recognize her. She said: “What crime did you commit to warrant so many punishments? Where did this ugly leanness come from? Who has such savage power over me? Why do your tender arms merit hard steel shackles, barely fit for wild beasts? Are you mine, are you my daughter? Or does an empty ghost deceive me?”

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Proserpina replied: “Alas, mother, you’re hateful, you forgot about your ruined daughter! Your soul’s savagery outdoes tawny lionesses! Could you have forgot me so completely? Am I your only daughter, yet so despised? Certainly ‘Proserpina’ must be a sweet name 100 to you, I who am now, as you see, shut in this horrid abyss, worn down by punishments. You luxuriate in dancing, heartless mother: even now you riot around the Phrygian cities! But if you haven’t thrust motherhood completely from your heart, and a Caspian tigress didn’t give birth to me, holy Ceres, but you— 105 then I beg you, rescue your wretched daughter from these caverns and take me back to the world above. If the Fates forbid me to return, then at least come and see me.” So Proserpina spoke, and tried to stretch forth her trembling hands. The iron’s wicked force stopped her, and the chains’ shaking disrupted Ceres’ sleep. The vision made her freeze. She rejoiced that it was false, and grieved she couldn’t hug her daughter. Out of her mind, she leaped straight from the shrine, confronting Cybele, and said: 51

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“I’ll delay no further now in Phrygia, holy mother: looking after my dear child calls me back at last. She’s at an age when she’s prey to all kinds of tricks. Those towers aren’t trustworthy enough for me, even if they were constructed in the Cyclopes’ forges. I’m afraid that rumor has betrayed my hiding place, and Sicily conceals my secret trust too carelessly. The region’s fame is too well known, and that scares me. I need to find an obscurer dwelling on another shore. Thanks to Enceladus’s groans and his neighboring flames, our hiding place can’t remain unmentioned. Often ill-omened dreams with various figures forewarn me also, and no day goes by without threatening some grim portent. How often the golden wreaths have fallen from my hair all by themselves! How often blood has spurted from my breast! Large streams of tears burst over my face, even against my will, and my hands, out of my control, strike my stunned chest. If I want to blow the boxwood flute, it groans funereally. If I shake the tympani, they return the sound of mourning. Oh! I’m afraid these omens portend some truth! Oh, these long delays have been harmful!”

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Cybele replied: “May the winds carry these meaningless words far off. Thundering Jupiter isn’t so lazy! He’d send thunderbolts on his daughter’s behalf. 135 But go anyway and return home, and may no misfortune disturb you.” Ceres left the temple on the spot. No speed was enough for the rushing goddess. She complained her dragons went too slow, and whipping their wings unjustly, one after another, she pushed them on, looking for Sicily when she hadn’t left Ida. 140 She was afraid of everything and hoped for nothing. Just so, a bird sweats anxiously when she entrusts her tender chicks to a lowly ash tree and goes off to get food. She thinks about them constantly while she’s gone: what if the wind shakes the flimsy nest out of the tree? what if it’s lying out there for men to steal, or as prey for snakes? 145 The watchmen had gone off and left the palace unguarded. The doors hung open, no one cared about the hinges, and the silent palace’s mournful appearance was evident. Ceres didn’t wait to survey the devastation. She tore her cloak 52

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and broke the ears of wheat, ripping them from her hair. Her tears wouldn’t flow, voice or breath wouldn’t come forth from her mouth, and trembling shook her bones’ innermost marrow. She tottered as her steps faltered. She threw open the doors and wandered the empty rooms and desolate halls. She recognized her daughter’s half-destroyed loom, its tangled threads, the shuttle’s interrupted craft. This divine work had perished, and a daring spider’s sacrilegious weaving was filling the empty space.

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Ceres didn’t cry or mourn the evil. She only planted kisses on the loom, and the threads broke off her stifled complaints. She pressed 160 to her breast, as if they were her daughter, the shuttles worn down by her daughter’s hands, along with the wool bundles she’d tossed aside, and all the toys the girl had scattered as she played. Ceres surveyed the chaste bedroom, the deserted bed, wherever her daughter had once sat. 165 She was just like a herdsman astonished by his emptied stable. African lions, raging unexpectedly, or pillaging armies have attacked his herd. He comes back too late and surveys the devastated pastures, and calls out and begs for his bullocks: they won’t respond. But Ceres caught sight of Electra, who lay in a hidden part of the palace. She was her daughter’s loyal nurse, most famous of the Ocean’s ancient Nymphs. Her sense of duty equaled Ceres’s. She’d been used to carrying little Proserpina in her tender bosom. She’d take her from her cradle and lead her to highest Jupiter, and sit the girl down to play at her father’s knee. Electra was Proserpina’s companion, her guardian, like her second mother. She’d undone her hair, tore at it, fouled it with dust, and grieved her heaven-dwelling nursling’s rape. At last, sad Ceres let loose her sighs, and didn’t hold them back. She approached Electra and said: “What’s this devastation I see here? Who’s plundered me? Does my husband Jupiter still reign, or have the Titans taken over the sky? Whose hand would dare such deeds while Thundering Jupiter still lives? Has Typhoeus’s neck burst through Inarime? Has Alcyoneus shattered Vesuvius’s ridges, 53

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his shackles, and run on foot through the Tyrrhenian Sea? Or have my neighbor Mount Aetna’s jaws burst open and pitched forth Enceladus? By any chance, is Briareus, swarming with his hundred arms, attacking my home?44 Oh, where is my daughter now? Where are my thousand servants? Where is Cyane? What power thrust aside the winged Sirens? Is this your loyalty? Is it right to look after other people’s children this way?” The nurse trembled, and her grief gave way to shame. She’d rather have died than endure this wretched mother’s look. She froze, and long delayed telling about the unknown perpetrator and the evident disaster. She hardly got this out at last: “If only the Giants’ maddened army had caused this devastation! Shared misfortunes touch us more lightly. But the goddesses, much less your sisters than you think, conspired thoroughly in our downfall. You see the gods’ plots, the wounds inflicted by relatives’ hatred. Heaven’s far more deadly to us than Phlegra!45 Our peaceful home was flourishing. The girl didn’t dare to cross our threshold, or visit the green groves. Your orders held her back. The loom was her work, the Sirens were her leisure. She enjoyed chatting with me, we slept in the same room, and played innocent games in the halls. Then Venus suddenly appeared. I’m not sure who showed her, how she found out our hiding place. Just so we wouldn’t suspect her, she brought Diana and Minerva along as her companions. Venus gave a great laugh straight off and faked being happy, and hugged Proserpina again and again, and called her ‘sister’ over and over, and complained her mother was so hard on her. Ceres preferred to condemn such a beauty to this hiding place, forbidding her to chat with goddesses, banishing her far from her father’s stars. These evil words delighted our naive girl, and she got a feast ready, with plenty of nectar. First she tried on Diana’s dress

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44 Ceres imagines that the Giants have broken loose and tried a second assault on heaven. For the Gigantomachy myth, see volume introduction, Section 1.2. 45 The site of the mythical Gigantomachy.

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and weapons, and her tender fingers tried out the bow. Next, as Minerva praised her, her head tried to fill her helmet with its shaggy crest, and struggled to carry her huge shield. First Venus, making trouble, talked up Aetna’s fields and countryside. Craftily she mentioned the flowers nearby, over and over, and played dumb, asking what made the place famous. She refused to believe that winter didn’t harm the roses, that in the cold months, spring still blossomed with plants from other seasons, and the groves didn’t fear the angry Plowman constellation’s chill.46 While Proserpina was agog, burning with desire to see the place, Venus won her over. Oh, how unstable young folks are, while their character’s still forming! How useless my laments were, how pointlessly my prayers poured from my mouth! She trusted in her sisters’ protection and rushed out in spite of me. Her attendants, the Nymphs, followed in a long line. They went to the hills always clothed in grass, and they picked flowers at first light, when dew sits chilly on the peaceful fields, and the violets drink in sparse moisture. But after the sun pushed higher to the middle of the heavens, look! Foul night seized hold of the sky. The horses’ hoofbeats and the wheels’ crashing made trembling Sicily shake. We couldn’t identify the charioteer. Either he brought on death, or he was Death itself. Pale gloom seeped over the grass, the streams dried up, rust infected the fields, and nothing survived the horses’ exhalation. I saw the privets turn pale, the roses die, the lilies shrivel. He turned the reins to head back home, clattering as he went. The chariot led away its own darkness as light returned to the earth. Proserpina was nowhere to be seen. The goddesses had accomplished their intention, and they didn’t stick around. We found Cyane half dead in the middle of the field. Her garlanded neck lolled back, and the blackened wreaths were wilting on her forehead. We ran straight up to her, and inquired about her mistress’s misfortune,

46 See note to 2.190.

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for she’d stood closest to the disaster: What did the horses look like? Who was driving them? She said nothing. A poison had afflicted her with silence, and she dissolved into water. Liquid dripped from her hair, her feet disappeared and became dew, her arms poured down and soon a clear spring was lapping at our feet. The other Nymphs ran off. The Sirens flew away on swift wings, to dwell on Sicilian Pelorus’s shore. This crime angered them and so they turned their tuneful lyres, no longer harmless, into deadly threats. Their tempting voices bind ships, and oars stop when the sailors hear the song. Now I’m left alone in the house, to measure out my old age in grief.” Ceres was hanging on her words, still in suspense. Out of her mind, she shuddered at each moment as if it hadn’t happened yet. Then she twisted her gaze away. Raging in her heart, she went of her own accord47 to confront the heavenly gods. Just so a Hyrcanian tigress shakes steep Mount Niphates, when a fearful horseman carries off her cubs to become the Persian king’s pets. She rushes swifter than her husband the West Wind, and all her anger spreads across her vivid stripes. Now she’s about to swallow the man down her vast throat—and then her reflection in a glass mirror slows her.48 In the same way, mother Ceres raged all over Olympus, roaring: “Give her back! I wasn’t born from a wandering river, I’m not one of the common Dryads. Turreted Cybele bore me to Saturn, same as you. Where have the gods’ rights, where have heaven’s laws fallen? What good will living honestly do? Look! Venus, so well known for her modesty, dares to show her face after her husband caught her in his trap!49 Did that fine nap and chaste bed give her such courage? Did she earn this through prudish embraces? It’s no wonder she thinks nothing’s shameful after that.

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47 Reading ultro. Charlet reads uultu, “face.” 48 See Pliny Natural History 8.66 for this claim. 49 Venus’s husband Vulcan bound her and Mars in a magical net when he caught them in adultery. See Homer, Odyssey 8.

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What are you maiden goddesses up to? Have you completely forgotten the honor due to virginity? Have you changed your minds so thoroughly? 280 Now you’ve become Venus’s accomplices, the rapist’s assistants? Oh, both of you are fit to be worshipped in Scythian temples, at altars thirsting for human blood! What is the reason for such madness? Which one of you did my Proserpina ever harm, even with the slightest word? I’m sure she thrust you, Diana, from your beloved woods, 285 or snatched away your promised battles, Minerva! Did her chatter get boring? Or perhaps she begged annoyingly to join your dances? But, in fact, she lived far off in empty Sicily, just so she wouldn’t burden you. What good did it do to hide her? No quiet can soothe 290 your bitter jealousy’s rage.” Ceres rebuked everyone in this speech. But the goddesses—because awe of their father forbade them— either kept quiet or denied all knowledge, and answered the mother with tears. What could Ceres do? She gave ground, beaten, and slipped into humble prayers: “Forgive me if devotion 295 to my child made me arrogant, if I did something more flagrant than suits a grieving parent. I’m throwing myself at your knees, as a pitiful suppliant. I just want to know my lot. That’s all I want: to experience my grief without doubts. I want to know what form this evil takes. Whatever misfortune 300 you’ve given me, let it be known, I’ll endure it, and I’ll consider it Fate, not a crime. I beg you, indulge me, let a mother see her daughter, I won’t ask to take her back. Keep a sure grip on what your hand seized, whoever you may be. I grant you your prey. No need to fear. But if the rapist outwitted me, and made some agreement, 305 then you can surely tell me, Latona. Perhaps Diana confessed it to you. You know what childbirth is like, what fear mothers have for their children, and how much love. You yourself gave birth to twins, but she’s my only child. I hope you’ll always delight in Apollo’s hair this way, that you’ll pass eternity as a happier mother 310

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than me. Now great flows of tears are soaking your cheeks. What’s worth crying about and yet keeping silent? Alas for me—they’re all going away! Useless woman, why are you delaying further? Don’t you see it’s open war with heaven? Why don’t you look for your daughter on sea and land? I’ll get ready to hunt all over the world, I’ll head tirelessly down its hidden paths. I’ll yield up not a single hour, I’ll have no rest, no sleep, until I find my stolen child. Even if she’s sunk off Spain in the Ocean’s bosom, or lies surrounded in the Indian Ocean’s depths, neither ice on the Rhine nor the Riphaean Mountains’ cold will hold me back, and the Syrtes’ changing currents won’t delay me. I’m resolved to break through the South Wind’s border, and track down the North Wind’s snowy palace. I’ll tread on Mount Atlas where the Sun first sets, and my torch will light up the Hydaspes River. Let criminal Jupiter see me wandering through fields and cities, let Juno be satisfied in her rival’s defeat. Vaunt over me, rule arrogantly in heaven, celebrate your tremendous triumph over Ceres’ child.” Ceres said this and slipped down to her familiar Aetna’s ridges, to make torches for her labor of wandering at night.

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There was a grove near the Acis River, which shining Galatea often prefers to the sea; swimming beautifully, she cuts across the river. The grove was thick, and its interlaced branches covered Aetna’s peaks wherever possible. It’s said that after battle, Father Jupiter set down 335 his bloodstained aegis and brought his captured spoil there. The woods gloried in arms taken at Phlegra, and victory clothed the entire grove. Here hung the Giants’ gaping jaws, their enormous hides, and their faces were nailed to the trunks, still 340 fiercely threatening. Here and there, bloodless piles of dragons’ massive bones were bleached white, and their stiff hides still seethed from many thunderbolts. Each tree prided itself on a great foe’s name. One tree’s bent limbs could barely support the swords that hundred-handed

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Aegaeon brandished. Another exulted in Coeus’s dark spoils, a third displayed Mimas’s weaponry, and Ophion’s armor weighed down a fourth tree’s limbs. But a tall fir tree, overshadowing all the rest, carried the smoking plunder of Enceladus himself, the Giants’ great king.50 It would’ve collapsed, weighed down by the load, had not a nearby oak propped up the tired tree. The place was fearsome and sacred for this reason, and the ancient grove was left alone, as it was sacrilege to disturb the divine trophies. No Cyclops dared to pasture his sheep there, or harm the trees, and Polyphemus himself fled from the holy shade. Yet this place didn’t slow Ceres down. Rather, its awe enraged her further. She brandished an axe and went on the attack, ready even to strike Jupiter himself. She hesitated: should she fell the pines, or cut down less knotty cedars instead? She examined suitable trunks, and their straight stem’s line, and tested the branches with dedicated effort. A merchant who plans to carry goods far across the ocean likewise builds his ship on land and prepares to risk his life in storms. He measures beech trees and alders, and puts unfinished timber to various uses. Long boards will provide the yard-arm for swelling sails, strong wood is better for the mast, the supple kind preferable for oars. Wood that tolerates the marsh should be fitted to the keel. On a nearby knoll, twin cypresses raised their untouched heads. The Simois River doesn’t admire such trees on Mount Ida’s ridges, nor does the Orontes that sustains Apollo’s grove lap such trees on its fertile banks. You’d think that they were sisters, by the way they stood forth, their brows at the same height, their twin crowns looking down on the grove.

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These trees pleased Ceres for her torches. Swiftly she girded up her robe and attacked both trees, armed with an axe, baring her arms to strike each in turn. She leaned on them with all her strength 50 These Giants attempted to overthrow Jupiter and were destroyed at the mythical battle of the Phlegraean Fields. See volume introduction, Section 1.2.

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as they trembled, and toppled them. Together they trailed ruin, and together their foliage collapsed, and they lay on the field, lamented by Fauns and Dryads. Ceres embraced them both, just as they were, and hefted them up high. She loosened her hair in back and climbed the seething volcano’s slope. She overcame the heat and the rocks that none had crossed before, and trod on sand offended by her steps. Fierce Megaera likewise rushes to light deadly yew trees for her crimes, whether she seeks Cadmus’s Theban walls, or hurries to savage Thyestes’s Mycenae.51 The ghosts and the shadows both give way as Tartarus resounds to her iron footsteps, until she stands beside Phlegethon’s waves, and ignites her torch in its full flood.

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After Ceres came to the burning volcano’s mouth, straightaway she turned her head aside, and ignited the cypresses, thrusting them in the middle of its jaws. She covered the chasm on all sides, and blocked the roiling gulf of flames. 395 The mountain thundered as she held back the fire, and fire god Vulcan struggled as she shut him in. Blocked steam couldn’t exit. The conifers’ tops shook and new ash made Aetna grow. The branches crackled as they took in sulfur. So the torches wouldn’t go out during her long wanderings, 400 Ceres ordered them always to stay sleepless and undying. She doused the wood in the magic juices that the Sun uses to water his horses, the Moon her bullocks. And now Night’s silences unfolded sleep returning over the earth. Ceres began her long quest, tearing at her bosom, and said as she walked: “I hadn’t hoped to carry this kind of torch for you, Proserpina. Rather, I had the wish that every mother has, that you’d be married, and we’d carry torches in celebration, and sing the wedding song in heaven before everyone’s eyes. Look how Fate whirls even us gods, and Lachesis savages us with no distinction!

51 See the Glossary for these victims of the Fury.

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How recently I was exalted, and how eagerly suitors gathered round me! What prolific mother didn’t yield to me, thanks to my one child? You were my first joy, you were my last: because of you, I was considered fertile. Oh, my glory, my repose, a mother’s joyous pride. While you flourished, I walked like a goddess, I was in no way lesser than Juno, while you were safe. Now I’m wretched and despised. And this pleased your father Jupiter. But why do I credit him with my tears? I ruined you cruelly, I confess it— I abandoned you and left you all alone, prey to enemy attackers. No wonder! I was enjoying raucous dances, not caring a bit, and I was happily yoking up Phrygian lions amid clattering arms—while you were being raped. Hear now the punishment I’ve earned. Look, wounds gash my face, and deep furrows redden on my chest. Look, I’ve inflicted many blows on my womb, which forgot you. Where in the world shall I look for you, beneath what part of the sky? Who’ll be my guide? What tracks will lead me? What chariot was it? Who was its fierce driver? Did he dwell on earth or sea? What traces can I find of the swift wheels? I’ll go, I’ll go, wherever my feet will take me, wherever chance will command me. So may Dione be abandoned and look for Venus. Will my exploit succeed? Will I be allowed to hug you once more, my daughter? Do you still have that same charm in your cheeks, the same bright beauty? Or sadly, perhaps I’ll see you as you came to me at night, as I saw you in my dreams?” Thus Ceres spoke, and made her way at first from Aetna, cursing the flowers that caused her downfall, and the site of the rape itself. She followed clues spread along the chariot’s path, and pointed her torches to investigate the fields in fuller light. Her tears wetted each wheel rut; she groaned at every one. Wherever she went on the ocean, her shadow swam on the tawny waters, and the torches’ furthest rays struck Italy and Africa. The Tyrrhenian Sea grew bright, and the Syrtes sandbars gleamed as the water caught fire.

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She made for Scylla’s caverns far off, whose dogs drew back. Some were awestruck and fell silent, others were not yet scared, and barked . . . The unfinished poem breaks off here.

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3 PANEGYRIC ON OLYBRIUS AND PROBINUS’S CONSULSHIP AND LETTERS TO OLYBRIUS AND PROBINUS Introduction The subjects of Claudian’s panegyric, Flavius Anicius Hermogenianus Olybrius and his brother Probinus, were the consuls of the year 395. Claudian makes much of the fact that brothers had not held the consulship before. There were, in fact, some earlier examples of brother consuls,1 but if Claudian or his audience were aware of these facts, they did not let it disturb his major theme. These brothers were likely teenagers at the time that Claudian performed this poem, and therefore they were too young to have any accomplishments of their own. Claudian accordingly devotes the bulk of his panegyric to praise of members of their prestigious family and of the emperor Theodosius.2 Olybrius and Probinus were members of the Anician family, who dominated the politics and cultural life of the city of Rome for generations (Cameron 2012). As Jerome remarked (Letters 130.3), “the representatives [of that family] have seldom or never been unworthy of the consulship.” These young men were the sons of Sextus Claudius Petronius Probus (PLRE 1.737) and Anicia Faltonia Proba (PLRE 1.732–33). Probus (c. 328–390) was praetorian prefect four times and consul in the year 371. The historian Ammianus Marcellinus regarded him as a corrupt power broker, but his negative verdict is as partisan as Claudian’s encomium.3 Probus’s younger son, Anicius Petronius Probus, held the consulship in 406. This panegyric begins with an address to the sun that opens another year with the consulship occupied by a member of the Anician family. The

1 Examples include Sextus Quintilius Valerius Maximus and Sextus Quintilius Condianus (consuls in 151 CE) and Flavius Eusebius and Flavius Hypatius (consuls in 359 CE). 2 See the volume introduction, Section 1.4. 3 See Ammianus Marcellinus 27.11; McCoy 1985.

DOI: 10.4324/9780429353345-3

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narrator compares the Anician family’s brilliance to the moon’s light that outshines the constellations (1–28). He then praises the brothers’ father Probus for his fame, political offices, and generosity as a patron. Probus’s children, however, have outdone their father by occupying the consulship earlier than he (29–70). Rome, here personified as a warrior goddess, goes to the emperor Theodosius to request the consulship for them. She finds him resting from his victory over Arbogast and Eugenius at the Frigidus River. The narrator praises Theodosius, and Rome praises Olybrius and Probinus (71–173). After Theodosius gives his assent, their mother Proba weaves consular robes for her sons (174–204). Jupiter sends a thunderbolt to signify his approval. The Tiber River summons the Nymphs and other Italian rivers to prepare the celebration (205–265). The narrator concludes by praying for a prosperous year (266–279). Sometime later, Claudian addressed two brief verse letters to each of the brothers (Shorter Poems 40 and 41). The poet humorously reproaches each of his patrons for not writing to him. The complaints are not serious but part of a long tradition of Roman letter writing, in which friends emphasize their affection for one another and desire for renewed connection (e.g. Pliny Letters 2.2). Claudian’s reference to his future successes (41.16) suggests that he wrote these poems probably not long after delivering the panegyric. His reference to his Muse Thalia changing into a Roman toga (41.14), moreover, suggests that the panegyric for the brother consuls was his first commission to write a Latin poem.

Olybrius and Probinus’s Consulship Sun, your fiery reins embrace the world, and your inexhaustible motion turns the recurring ages. Scatter better beams upon this day.4 Let your yoked horses, manes elegantly combed, rise to lift the chariot’s axle, exhaling rosy fire, froth covering the reins. Now let the year turn new steps for brother consuls, and let the joyful months seek their beginnings. You know the Auchenian line, and the powerful Annians are not obscure to you.5 For these men often lead you as you renew your course, and they add their names to your path.

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Fortune does not hold her favors in suspense for these men, nor does she know how to change her ways. Rather, guaranteed honor proceeds for all their family. Ask about any man you like from this line: he certainly descends from a consul. They count their forefathers by the fasces they held, and their renewed nobility always flourishes. Their descendants follow the same destinies, keeping an unbroken course under a similar law.

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None of the state’s first men tries to boast that he is their equal, though Rome may flourish with their ancient ancestors’ statues, and the brilliant Senate may gird them. But the first seat must be left 20 to the Auchenians, and others may compete for the right to second place. No differently the constellations yield to the Moon, which reigns in the quiet northern sky. When her brother Sun’s light strikes the Moon, her circle glows with reflected fires that contend with his. Then Arcturus’s crest grows dim, then the tawny Lion’s 25 anger fades. Now the Bear shines only rarely, and disdains being hidden by the Plow. Now weak Orion, his armor overshadowed, marvels at his disarmed hand. Which one should I address first? Who wouldn’t know of Probinus the Elder’s deeds, or would be ignorant of grandfather Olybrius’s superlative praise?6 Probus’s glory still lives and fills people’s ears, spread about by traveling rumors. The coming years shall not be silent about him nor will passage of time snatch it away in a cloud of ignorance. Fame carries him across the sea and through the Ocean’s remote turnings and the Atlantic’s bays. Whoever the Sea of Azov nourishes under the freezing sky has heard of him, as have the torrid zones’ inhabitants who drink the Nile’s source. Probus’s courage mastered Fortune, and his head never swelled, even as his circumstances lifted him high. Though luxury surrounded him, his mind nevertheless knew how to keep its strength untouched by vice.

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6 Praise of ancestors was a standard element of panegyric. This passage praises the young men’s grandparents: their paternal grandfather Probinus the Elder (consul in 341; PLRE 1.735) and their maternal grandfather Quintus Clodius Hermogenianus Olybrius (PLRE 1.640–2).

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Probus7 didn’t hide riches away in dark caves, nor condemned his wealth to the shadows. Instead, more bountiful than the rain, he typically enriches crowds of countless people. Indeed, as if a dense cloud poured forth his gifts, you could always see his house flowing with people: men constantly entered poor and exited rich. Probus’s hand swiftly poured forth golden gifts, outdoing the Spanish rivers. What miner tearing open the earth marvels thus at the gold he’s dug from the toppled hills? He pours out as much glorious wealth as the Tagus River’s stream, which drips rough veins of ore, as much metal shines on the Hermus’s invaluable banks, and as many tawny sands as the rich Pactolus deposits amid the Lydian fields. Even if my mouth sent forth a hundred voices, and Apollo’s varied inspiration rushed through my hundred breasts— I couldn’t relate all of Probus’s deeds, nor tell in order how many peoples he ruled, how often he came to the highest office’s summit. With wide authority, he held Italy’s reins, Illyria’s coast, and Africa’s farmland. But his children have outdone their father, and they alone deserve to hear themselves called Probus’s surpassers. Probus didn’t get such honor when he flourished in youth’s early years, nor was he consul with his brother. No lengthy effort of seeking higher office has tired you out, no anxious hope drives on your minds, no long-held desire spurs your hearts: you have begun at the endpoint. Barely a few old men have merited your beginnings. You have won the race even before youthful fuzz shadows your tender cheeks, and adolescence clothes your smiling faces in down. I beg you, Parnassian Muse, to teach your ignorant poet: which god granted such a gift to both young men? Warlike emperor Theodosius had opened up the fearful Alps,8 and pushed back the enemy, his strength like lightning. Rome then desired to give worthy thanks to Probus:

7 For Probus’s acts of generosity as a patron, see CIL VI 1756. 8 After the battle of the Frigidus River in September 394.

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she eagerly prepared to go and win over the emperor on behalf of Probus’s children. Shock and horrible Fear, her attendants, yoked up her flying chariot. They always accompany Rome, roaring breathlessly, when she goes to war, whether she attacks the Persians or her spear disturbs the Hydaspes River. 80 One bound the wheels to the axle; the other yoked the horses with iron and taught them to obey the rigid bit. Rome, who owns the sky over her conquered kingdoms, leaped aboard. She imitated virgin Minerva’s ways: she didn’t allow a fancy arrangement for her hair, nor did a curved choker soften her neck. She left her right side exposed, her snow-white arm protruding. Her breast was daringly uncovered, and a jeweled brooch held her robe’s loose fold. A strip of purple on her sword belt marked out her white chest. Courage mixed with grace, and rigid awe armed Rome’s beautiful purity. Bloody crests’ ruddy glow extended over her menacing helmet. Vulcan had used all his skill to ornament her shield, whose terrifying light outdoes the Sun. On it could be seen the loving father Mars, his children Romulus and Remus; also the dutiful Tiber River and their nurse the wolf.9 The Tiber was fashioned in electrum, the boys in gold, the wolf in bronze; Mars glittered in adamant. Then the horses shot forth, quicker than the swift East wind. The West wind shrieked and the clouds lightened, as the wheels gashed them, cutting a pathway through. They didn’t delay, but straightaway, in a single glide, they reached the place they sought. There, at the furthest border, the Alps’ curving gorges narrow the way, and heaped boulders stretch forth, the strongest barriers. No hand may open the path here; only the emperor may make his way; the hopes of the two tyrants were denied.10 Here smoked half-destroyed towers and wrecked city walls.

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9 In Roman mythology, a she-wolf nursed the infant Romulus, founder of Rome, and his brother Remus. 10 See the volume introduction, Section 1.1, for the defeat of Maximus and Eugenius.

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Slaughter piled up in a heap and leveled the deep valley with the ridge. Bodies drowned in blood stagnated, and the dead overwhelmed the ghosts below. Not far away, conqueror Theodosius took his seat on a couch of grassy turf. He rejoiced in the completed battle, leaning his shoulders against a tree. The cheering earth crowned her master, as grasses sprung up higher to form his couch. Sweat still seethed over his limbs, he panted constantly, and his serene face shone under his helmet.

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Theodosius was just like fearsome Mars, who reclines on Gothic fields after devastating the Gelonians in fatal destruction. 120 Bellona removes Mars’s armor, Bellona looses his dust-covered, overheated horses. She lifts his spear, the enormous cornelwood tree trunk, and its splendor strikes the Hebrus River with trembling light. As Rome split the air to stand before the emperor, the mountain resounded, aware of her presence, and the dark grove shrunk back at her majesty. Ruler Theodosius spoke first: “Friendly goddess, mother of the laws, spreading your rule far and wide over the sky, consort devoted to Thundering Jupiter: come tell me, what is your reason for coming? Why are you leaving behind Italy’s citadel and your part of heaven? Tell me, greatest of states! I wouldn’t back off,11 even from enduring toil in Libya’s heat or suffering amid the Sarmatian northwest wind’s freezing cold, if you should wish it, Rome. For you, we’ll go to any shore, and we won’t fear any weather, not Meroë at summer solstice, and we’d attempt crossing the Danube in winter.”

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Then queenly Rome replied: “Famous leader, I’m not unaware what your victorious army achieved for Italy. Once more, you mastered the threat of enslavement and mad rebellion: both fell before you in similar triumphs. But, I beg you,

11 Theodosius lists the boundaries of the Roman empire: Libya in Africa, Sarmatia in what is now Ukraine, Meroë in Ethiopia, and the Danube River that marked the boundary between Rome and Gothic peoples.

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along with the recent liberty you have given us, add one further gift, if true reverence for us remains with you: I have two young brothers from exalted blood, Probus’s dear children. When they were born on a festival day, I tended them in my bosom. I myself gave the little ones their cradle, when childbirth goddess Lucina released their mother’s blessed burden and the stars brought forth the great delivery. I wouldn’t prefer the glorious Decii or the brave Metelli to these young men, nor the Scipios who mastered the ferocious Carthaginian Hannibal, or Camillus’s family, deadly to the Gauls.

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Olybrius and Probinus flourish in the Muses’ studies, and their eloquence 150 overflows lavishly. Indulging in laziness holds no pleasure for them, nor elaborate banquets, nor does loose living attract them, nor does lustful youth relax their morals. Rather, their fiery adolescence displays an old man’s spirit with its serious concerns, and their mature hearts restrain them. 155 We ask you to offer them the good fortune that they take as their own from their birth, to appoint them as consuls for the coming year’s future course. I don’t ask anything wrong, nor will you give them anything unexpected. Their family demands it as their custom. Give your nod: so may the Scythian Araxes River obey me, 160 and both banks of the Rhine, and after I conquer the Persians, may Babylonian Semiramis’s towers fear my battle standards. So may the astonished Ganges River flow through Roman towns.” Theodosius replied to her: “You command what I desire, goddess, and you ask for what I wish too. You don’t need prayers to see these things through. Has forgetfulness so buried my mind that it’d pain me to remember Probus? Under his rule, we saw all Italy and its tired people rise again. It’ll be winter on the Nile, and the dark Indus River shall be condemned to frost, and deer will wander across it; Thyestes’ banquet will terrify the interrupted day once more, which will turn back to its dawning in its flight, before Probus can be absent from my thoughts.” The emperor had spoken, and a swift messenger was already flying back to Rome. Straightaway choirs sang out, and voices resounded 69

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from the seven hills, as tuneful applause struck them. The youths’ revered mother Proba rejoiced, and her practiced thumb prepared a gilded consul’s robe, and a belt that shone with silk thread which the Chinese harvest from supple branches, plucking the leafy fleece from trees bearing this fabric.12 Proba drew out the thin silk strands across the long golden threads, forcing the strands to roughen with hard metal.

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Shining Latona likewise offered purple clothing to her divine children, when they returned to Delos’s holy places, the land that fostered them, once the island no longer wandered across the ocean.13 185 Diana left the wild uplands and desolate Mount Maenalus, where her unerring hunting tired out her bow. Apollo brought weapons still dripping with the slaughtered Python’s dark blood. Then the friendly island licked 190 their familiar feet, the Aegean Sea smiled more gently at its fosterlings, and its caressing current attested to its joy. So Proba adorned her children in outstanding apparel. Proba does honor to the world; through her children, Roman power grows. You would think that Chastity herself had come down from the sky 195 and stood among us, or Juno, summoned by holy incense, turned her eyes to Argive temples. No page from ancient books recalls such a woman, no Latin trumpets sing of one like her, nor Greek antiquity. She is worthy to be Probus’s wife; for he towers above other husbands, as high as she stands above women’s gatherings. 200 [As if the sexes competed with one other, to see what each could accomplish, they chose this pair. Let Mount Pelion be silent about the Nereid Thetis’s marriage. O mother who gave birth to two consuls, and her fortunate womb, which produced names for the years!]14 Olybrius and Probinus carried the scepters in their hands and fitted on 205 their stiff togas. Greatest Father Jupiter split the clouds to give a sign. The pulsating clouds thundered prosperous omens, 12 The Romans thought that the Chinese harvested silk from trees; see e.g. Pliny Natural History 6.54. 13 For Delos’s wandering, see the Glossary. 14 These lines are likely not by Claudian.

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whirling welcome light throughout the sky. The Tiber River heard the sound in his arched caves, as he sat in a low valley. He pricked up his ears and hesitated, wondering where the crowd’s sudden uproar came from. Immediately he left his pale grassy chambers and his mossy bedroom, and he entrusted his master’s urn15 to the Nymphs. Sea-green eyes flecked with blue marks, recalling his father Ocean, shone in his shaggy face. Curly grass packed thickly on his neck, and reeds, his hair, grew abundantly all over the top of his head. The West wind couldn’t break these reeds, nor the sun burn them to death in summer’s heat. Rather, full of life, they sprouted leaves and embraced his head, immortal like him. Bull’s horns rose up from his temples,16 dripping noisy rivulets. Water trickled over his chest, a stream dripped from his shaggy forehead, and clear springs unfurled from his beard. A cloak covered his powerful shoulders, which his wife Ilia had woven as she worked the glassy loom below the waves. There is an island lying in Romulus’s Tiber, where the river flows between the city’s two halves, and separates them with its channel. Towers built on the banks loom on either side, rising to steep heights. Standing on the bank, Tiber saw his wish suddenly fulfilled: he saw the whole Senate packed around the united brothers as they went to the Forum. From far off, he saw the consuls’ brandished axes shining and the double fasces raised from a single house’s threshold.17 The sight stunned Tiber, and for a while expectant joy held back his voice. Soon he began to speak:

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“Look, Spartan Eurotas River, if you can boast that your currents raised men like these. What could the fake swan bring forth to equal this, although his sons Castor and Pollux knew how to compete 15 See note to Proserpina 2.70. 16 River gods could be imagined to wear horns on their heads, as with the Hebrus River at Eutropius 2.164. 17 The fasces, which contained axe blades, were symbols of the consuls’ political power. Attendants called lictors carried the fasces when the consuls appeared in public.

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with the tough boxing glove and to guard ships from savage storms?18 Look at my new offspring, who shine brighter than Leda’s stars, 240 behold my citizens. The Zodiac already longs for their arrival and readies heaven for these future stars. Then Olybrius will rule across the night sky, shining in Pollux’s stead, and Probinus’s flame will shine, replacing Castor’s. These new gods will rule over ships, and when they grant 245 the wind, the sailor will guide his ship on a calm sea. Now I’m pleased to offer libations to these gods, to drink much nectar to loosen my heart’s care. Now gather your snow-white troops, Naiads, and cover my whole spring with violets. Let the woods bring forth honey. Now change 250 my waters to wine, so my river runs drunk. Now, of their own accord, may well-watered streams pour fragrant balsam through the fields. Let one of the streams run and invite the native rivers to a party at my hospitable table. Whoever pours down from Italy’s mountains and customarily drinks the Alpine frosts, swift Vulturnus and Nar stinking of sulfur, Ufens with its slow meanders, and Po that suffered the loss of Phaethon’s fall, and Liris that brushes golden Marica’s oak trees, and Galaesus that smoothes Tarentum’s fields.19 My waves will always celebrate this day of honor and rich feasting will always commemorate it.” Thus Tiber spoke. The Nymphs followed their father’s command and prepared the house for feasting. The watery palace shone, dyed in shining purple, the tables covered in gemstones.

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18 The god Jupiter took the form of a swan when he raped the Spartan princess Leda. Her sons Castor and Pollux, the Dioscuri, were imagined to appear during storms to aid sailors in the form of St. Elmo’s fire. Tiber foretells that Olybrius and Probinus will become new constellations, worshipped as divinities after their death. 19 The Vulturnus River (modern Volturno) flows through Campania into the Tyrrhenian Sea. The Nar River (modern Nera) is a Tiber tributary. The Ufens (modern Ufente) runs through Latium into the Tyrrhenian Sea. Phaethon fell into the Po River after Jupiter’s thunderbolt struck him. The Liris (modern Garigliano) flows on Campania’s northern border into the Tyrrhenian Sea. A grove sacred to the nymph Marica stood near modern Minturno on the river’s northwest bank. The Galaesus (modern Galeso) flows through Taranto in southeast Italy.

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O time well marked out by these brothers’ names, O fortunate year under blood-related masters, begin to turn the Sun’s labor through the four seasons. Let your winter proceed first, not sluggish from cold, nor clothed in white snow, nor bitter with chill blasts, but heated by the warm South wind. Then straightway let there be calm spring, and let the clear West wind’s milder breeze paint golden meadows. Let the summer clothe you in harvests, and in autumn, be surrounded by dripping grapes. A glory nobler than any era touches you alone, for it’s never been recalled through all past time that you had brother consuls. All earth shall speak of you. The Hours20 shall inscribe your names in various flowers, and the Fasti will lead your names perpetually into the infinite ages.

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Letter to Olybrius (Shorter Poems 40) What should I think? You send me not a word, and no greeting from your hand comes back to me? Is writing a chore? But who’s got such a gift for speaking, whether you’re writing poetry or thundering like Cicero? Your money admits it’s outdone by your mind’s fortune, and your resources of speech far surpass your wealth. Or is it that you can’t find letter-bearers? But they never stop kicking up dust on the Flaminian Way. When your inspiration’s flowing, and you’ve got people to carry your words, what reason have you got left—unless I’m beneath your notice? So (can we believe it?) you despise your poet, you’re faithless, and being apart has weakened your love for me? Have you forgotten me? Now the sun will set on India’s Hydaspes River, and rise on the Spanish coast. Gothic frost will turn Ethiopian Meroë white, and the shining Bear constellation will wash in the forbidden sea.21 And if my love now makes

20 The Hours (Horae) were goddesses that represented the seasons. 21 See note to Proserpina 2.189.

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Olybrius ill, then Orestes’s loyalty meant nothing.22 So come now, quit delaying, and cheer me up, your friend who’s far away. Teach me with your abundant eloquence. Rush lots of your letters to me down their talkative path, and they’ll make their way into my books and my soul. Augustus thought humble Virgil worth writing to:23 would my poems ever bring you shame? Farewell!

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Letter to Probinus (Shorter Poems 41) When will you end the silence between us, I beg you? When will your welcome letter give a precious reply? Is it better to say that I’m fearful or that you’re proud? The accusations hit both of us. The days have gone flowing by, and each of us is ashamed to be the first to write, and so we end up instead with these endless delays. But what should I do? Respect for you forbids me to go first, but from the other side love commands me to write. Let love win out!

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“Fortune favors the bold”, as the ancient poets’ proverb says: with that to guide me, I won’t hesitate to speak, although you’re silent. 10 Or if you accuse me of too much daring, if it looks to you like I’m deeply at fault, at least I won’t bear the burden of ingratitude. During your consulship, I first drank from Latin poetry’s springs, and Thalia, my Greek Muse, changed into a Roman toga. I took my omens from when you began to hold the fasces, 15 and I will owe all my later successes to you. And so, be moved, I ask you, reply to me at last, and always flourish in your father’s privileged state, Probinus. Farewell!

22 Orestes and Pylades were proverbial examples of loyal friends. 23 The emperor Augustus (reigned 27 BCE-14 CE) commissioned Virgil (70–19 BCE) to write the Aeneid, Rome’s greatest epic.

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4 PANEGYRIC ON HONORIUS’S THIRD CONSULSHIP

Introduction In this short panegyric, performed in Milan in January 396, Claudian celebrated Honorius’s third accession to the consulship. The poet faced the same challenge as he had the previous year in his panegyric of Olybrius and Probinus. The 11-year-old honorand1 had been emperor for less than a year after his father Theodosius’s death in January 395. He had been under Stilicho’s firm control, and he had no accomplishments of his own to praise. The court was also likely digesting the very recent news of the murder of Arcadius’s minister Rufinus by his own troops at Constantinople on 27 November 395 (see Rufinus). Just as Claudian had praised the brother consuls primarily through their parents, so too this poem reflects the legacy of Theodosius.2 Like a newly hatched eagle chick tested by its father, both emperor and poet have been tested and proven their worth (see the Preface). Claudian then narrates Honorius’s upbringing. Unlike his older brother Arcadius, his father was already emperor when he was born, and he grew up playing with the plunder that Theodosius brought home from his numerous campaigns (1–38). Theodosius raised his son to endure the soldier’s life, and related stories of the campaigns of his own father, the Elder Theodosius (39–62; see Glossary). When Arbogast’s and Eugenius’s uprising occurred, Honorius begged to accompany his father to war (63–82). Claudian highlights the fact that Theodosius had appointed Honorius to his second consulship earlier in 394, and so it could technically be said that he conducted his campaign against the rebels under his son’s auspices (83–92).

1 Honorius was born on 9 September 384; see Socrates Ecclesiastical History 5.12. 2 See the volume introduction, Section 1.4.

DOI: 10.4324/9780429353345-4

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Claudian celebrates divine intervention at the Frigidus battle (6 September 394) in the form of the “bora” wind, which hurled the enemy’s spears back against them (93–101). Where the poem credits the traditional Olympian gods, numerous sources narrated this event as a clear sign of God’s favor for a Christian emperor.3 Arbogast committed suicide after the battle, and Theodosius returned to Milan in triumph (102–141). Rufinus’s death, as Cameron observes (1970: 44), could be seen as part of this divine mandate. Opponents of Theodosius and Stilicho would be struck down. The most important political claim in the poem, however, occurs in its narration of an imagined deathbed scene in which Theodosius entrusts Stilicho with the guardianship of both his sons (142–162). As observed in this volume’s introduction, this position gave Stilicho no legal right to govern Honorius’s Western empire and no effective power over Arcadius and the Eastern empire. Nor did contemporaries such as Ambrose, bishop of Milan, recognize Stilicho’s authority. Cameron (1970: 41) imagines courtiers being startled awake by Claudian’s words, but it is difficult to believe that he was springing any sort of surprise upon his audience. Poets did not bring the news. Rather, it is far more likely that Claudian simply reiterated the successful achievement of consensus behind Stilicho’s leadership, at least in the West and at least during Honorius’s minority. The panegyric’s final movement narrates the transformation of Theodosius into a star and his beneficent surveillance from heaven as his sons restore the Golden Age (163–188). The world and its gods now serve the brother emperors: Vulcan forges weapons for them, Neptune facilitates their sea voyages, and India and Persia submit to their rule (189–211). Though appeals to legal technicalities such as Honorius’s consular auspices and the gods’ manipulation of the weather may not be to our taste, they were similar to the praise delivered by contemporary prose panegyrists. Cameron (1970: 41) wonders if the audience kept a straight face, but it is clear that Claudian’s debut at the imperial court was successful. It is likely that Stilicho commissioned Claudian, either directly or through an intermediary, to write the two-book Invective Against Rufinus. The court then welcomed Claudian back in January 398 to deliver a much longer panegyric on Honorius’s fourth consulship. Preface Eagles don’t raise their newborn chicks before they test them in the sun and get the sky’s judgement.

3 For the bora wind, see the volume introduction, Section 1.2.

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When the young birds break through the shell and leap out, and the mother eagle’s warmth cracks the gaping eggs, right away the father turns the featherless hatchlings to the sun, and orders them to gaze straight toward it and endure its flames. He employs the burning rays and light that governs all to test his children’s strength and intelligence. In his fatherly anger, his savage claws strike whichever one hides their eyes and turns away their degenerate gaze. But he’ll raise the one whose eyes endure the testing fires, whose nobler gaze withstands the sun. He’ll become the birds’ ruler, the thunderbolt’s inheritor, and he’ll carry the three-pronged lightning for highest Jupiter.4 Great Rome dares to send me as well to its god, as I’ve been often tested in the Muses’ caverns. I’ve already earned the emperor’s ears, the royal palace, and my lyre sounds forth before Honorius Augustus’s judgment.

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Honorius’s Third Consulship Let Romulus’s fasces take up your third year’s beginning, and let a warrior’s third triumphal procession lead forth your curule chair. Let a year of greater celebration commence, and in the consular style, may Indian gemstones ennoble the rich purple robes. Let the consul’s robe replace his armor, 5 the lictor make the rounds of the tents, and the consul’s axes return to the battle standards.5 And you, Honorius, who rule your father’s world with equal care as your brother Arcadius in the East, go forth under favoring omens. Begin the sun’s new path, the sky’s hope and prayer, you whom the court nursed 10 from your first moments of life. The army nurtured you, amid laurel-crowned triumphs, as drawn spears glittered. Your lofty Fortune took no notice of private households; it gave you your kingdom at birth. Power you would inherit took you in its arms. You were a child worthy of reverence in your Tyrian purple robe. 15 Soldiers carried victorious eagle standards as they attended your birth, 4 For eagles testing their young, see Pliny Natural History 10.10. For eagles carrying Jupiter’s thunderbolt, see Pliny Natural History 2.146. 5 See note to O&P 233.

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and offered you a cradle amid their spears. As you were being born, fierce Germany trembled along the entire Rhine River, and the Caucasus Mountains shook their woods in fear. In Ethiopian Meroë, they put aside their quivers and confessed your divinity, and drew their useless arrows from their hair.

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As a little boy, you crawled over shields, and freshly seized royal plunder furnished your toys. You were the first to embrace your fierce father Theodosius after his bitter battles. Whenever he came home hot with northern slaughter, turning 25 his battle standards back from the conquered Danube River, you asked for part of the plunder:6 Scythian bows or belts seized from the Gelonians, Dacian spears or Suebian reins. Theodosius often laughed and lifted you on his glittering shield— you loved it—and hugged you to his panting breast. 30 You had no fear of his sword, and his helmet’s grim brilliance didn’t frighten you. You stretched out your arms to the top of his crest. Then Theodosius rejoiced and said: “Jupiter, king of starry Olympus, let my son come home to me this way after smashing his enemies. Let him plunder Hyrcania’s wealth, or magnify himself by slaughtering 35 the Assyrians. Just like this, sword bloody, worked up, panting nonstop, war’s welcome dust spattering him— let him bring back captured arms to his rejoicing father.” When soon your legs grew strong and you walked straight, your father didn’t permit unmanly laziness nor rest made weak by luxury, nor lazy sleep. Rather, he guided your young limbs through hard labors, and built up your tender strength into a tough nature. You endured savage cold, didn’t yield to heavy rainstorms, tolerated the summer sun, and swam across madly roaring torrents. Your climbing mastered the mountains, your running the plains, your leaping the valleys and hollows. You also passed the nights awake, lying on your shield,

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6 Reading partem; Charlet reads patrem, “your father’s plunder.” In 386, Theodosius campaigned against the Ostrogoths led by Odotheus as they attempted to cross the Danube River to invade Thrace; see Honorius’s Fourth Consulship 625–635. In 391–2, he campaigned with Promotus and Stilicho against the Goths in Macedonia; see Rufinus 1.316–322; Stilicho’s Consulship 1.91–115.

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drinking melted snow from your helmet. Now you shot arrows from your bow, now missiles from your Balearic sling.

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He also recounted your grandfather Theodosius’s deeds, the better to fire great love of warfare in you. Searing Libya’s shore feared him, as did Thule where ships cannot go. He mastered the light-armed Moors, and the Picts, whose “pictured” name isn’t false.7 His wandering sword chased after the Scots, 55 and his daring oars smashed the North Sea’s waves. Winning double trophies on both sides of the world, he shone forth, treading sands washed by both oceans. Your grandfather gave you these spurs to courage, these seeds of glory, these examples. Achilles was no quicker at drinking in 60 the old Centaur Chiron’s teaching, as he learned javelin skills, or lyre songs, or healing herbs. Meanwhile loyalty was shaken. Civil war thundered once more, and discord shook an uncertain world. Oh, the gods’ crime, a disgrace for the long ages! The barbarian exile Arbogast possessed the West’s cities, and gave Roman power to his abject client Eugenius. And now Theodosius had embarked on his journey, and gathered the East’s furthest peoples: whoever the swelling Euphrates passed by, the Halys encircled, or the Orontes River enriched. The Arabs left their incense plantations, the Medes the Caspian Sea, the Armenians the Phasis River, and the Persians Mount Niphates. How mad you were for war at that time, Honorius, how ardent to follow your father! How great the desire that burned your breast to hear the battle horns you yearned for, and to delight in the battlefield’s bloody storm, and bury your feet in corpses! You were just like a lion cub, who’s sheltered in his tawny mother’s cave, used to feeding at her breasts. When he senses that claws are growing on his paws, a mane on his back, and teeth in his mouth, then he refuses peaceful meals, and leaves his cliff behind. He burns to accompany his African father, threaten the stables, and devour a slaughtered bullock’s back.

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7 Romans referred to the peoples who lived north of Hadrian’s Wall, the northern boundary of the Roman province of Britannia, as the Picts (Picti). Claudian appears to be the first Latin author to relate the name Picti to the Latin word pictus (“pictured”), in reference to their extensive tattoos (see also Gothic War 417–418). See Isidore Etymologies 19.23.7.

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Theodosius halted you, and handed over the reins of state, ornamenting your hair with the holy crown it deserved.8 Your outstanding sense of duty showed itself in your unformed years, and your age yielded to your spirit. Everyone lamented that you received the empire so late. A swift victory occurred under your auspices. Both of you fought: you used your destiny, your father his hand. Thanks to you, the Alps no longer looked easy to invade, and sticking to fortified camps didn’t help a cautious enemy. Their hope for the cliff’s defense collapsed, and tearing aside the boulders laid bare their hiding places.

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Thanks to you, the North wind’s cold blasts from the peak threw down the opposing armies and turned their javelins back against their throwers. A whirlwind pushed back the spears.9 95 O Honorius, wind god Aeolus loves you so much! He sent armed storms from his caverns for you, air fought on your behalf, and winds banded together at the trumpet’s call. The Alpine snows ran red, the Frigidus River’s waters changed course and smoked. The crowd of corpses would’ve stopped them, 100 had not the rapid tide of blood aided the current. But Arbogast, that fierce discoverer of crimes, had deeply pierced his own flank, more than once, and his two blades seethed. At last his just hand had turned avenging anger against himself. And now liberty was restored. Nature asked Theodosius’s godhead to retire and return to heaven, throwing open the stars’ golden citadel for him. Atlas bowed his head, sensing the incoming emperor’s weight. Yet Theodosius put off trusting to the heaven that desired him, until he could pass down a pacified world to you in person.

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And you didn’t delay: eagerly you rose up from the Thracian shores, daring to pass through the barbarian armies, no fear in your face. You left behind Mount Rhodope’s boulders, which Orpheus’s music had brought to life, and Mount Oeta’s cliffs, which Hercules’s pyre 8 By contrast, Zosimus 4.58.1 claims that Theodosius did take Honorius with him on his campaign. 9 For the bora wind, see the volume introduction, Section 1.2.

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had condemned. After that, you crossed Mount Pelion, which Thetis’s marriage had made famous. The lovely Enipeus River and high Mount Dodona marveled at you, where the Chaonian oaks spoke once more and directed their songs to you. You sailed along the Illyrian shore, your wheels wore out Dalmatia’s fields, and you counted the Trojan Timavo River’s pools.10 Italy’s lofty-walled cities rejoiced as your arrival sanctified them. The Po knelt to worship you, and ordered its current to run gently to win your favor. The tree nymphs, used to grieving for their brother Phaethon’s crashed chariot, called back their dewy amber.11 And then how many young people, how many mothers, disdained modesty in their eagerness to see you! Severe old men jostled with boys when you were carried on your father’s loving lap through downtown Rome, your shared victory laurel wreathing your dutiful chariot. Who wouldn’t believe they saw the Morning Star with the rosy Sun, or Bacchus and Thundering Jupiter shining together?

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From every direction, the army’s crested ranks seethed, and each man sang your praise in his own language. Their bronze armor’s light dazzled our eyes, and their naked swords, like Mars the war god’s crop, 135 doubled the day’s brightness. They stood out for their bows, or brandished spears for fighting from afar, or lances for close combat. Some raised winged eagle banners, others displayed dragons with painted necks. As the South wind whipped the banners, many a furious serpent swelled amid the clouds, and came to life 140 as it took in the breeze, and seemed to hiss amid the varying gusts.12 As they came to the palace, Theodosius commanded everyone to disperse to their houses, and gave these orders to his son-in-law: “Warlike Stilicho, you’ve proven your strength under arms, 10 The Trojan refugee Antenor was imagined to have passed by the Timavo on his way to found the city of Padua. 11 For Phaethon, see Glossary. 12 For these serpent banners, see Rufinus 2.175–177, 2.364–365; Honorius’s Fourth Consulship 545; etc.

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your loyalty to me in peacetime. What have I done in war without you? What triumph did I earn without your sweat? Together we stained the Thracian Hebrus River with Gothic blood, together we laid low the Sarmatian cavalry.13 Together we stretched our tired limbs on the Riphaean snows and our chariot wheels furrowed the frozen Danube River.

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So come now, since heaven’s court calls me, take on my duties, and raise my children all by yourself. Protect these two brothers with your hand. By the marriage that made us family,14 by that blessed night, by the torches which the queen herself raised at your wedding, and the bride 155 she led from our conjoined court—take on a father’s character, and raise the growing children, your leader’s, your father-in-law’s. And now I shall go to the stars without worry, since you’re their guardian. If Typhoeus should smash through his mountain and leap from the waves, if Tityos should free his limbs, 160 if mad Enceladus should throw down Aetna and roar—15 Stilicho will oppose them and they’ll fall.” Theodosius said no more, and just as he was, he marked a clear path across the clouds, and entered the Moon’s sphere and left behind the Great Bear’s threshold, and flew toward Venus’s gentle breezes. From there he traversed the Sun’s path, Mars’s harmful fire, serene Jupiter, and stood at the supreme citadel, where Saturn’s zone freezes along its cold path.16 The sky’s framework loosened and the fiery doors opened of their own accord. The Plowman readied the Bear’s arch, and girded Orion opened the Southern gates. They welcomed

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13 Reading Sarmaticas; Charlet reads Delmaticas, “Dalmatian”, but we do not know of a contemporary campaign in Dalmatia. Ammianus Marcellinus 29.6.15 describes a campaign of Theodosius in 374 against the Sarmatians, though he does not mention Stilicho’s participation. 14 In 384, Stilicho married Serena, Theodosius’s niece and adopted daughter. 15 As at Proserpina 3.180–88, Theodosius imagines the Giants breaking loose and trying a second assault on Olympus. For the Gigantomachy myth, see volume introduction, Section 1.2 “Mythology and Religion.” 16 Romans identified these celestial bodies as the seven “planets” and placed their orbits in this traditional order.

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in Theodosius, the new star, and in turn they waited in suspense to see which part of the sky he wanted, which stars he deigned to join, or what region he’d orbit. O heavenly honor, Theodosius, once the earth’s glory, your Ocean receives you when you set, exhausted, in your birthplace, and Spain washes you with its familiar waves. Fortunate father, when you reveal your first rising, you see Arcadius. When you climb higher, the sight of Honorius delays your fiery setting. In whichever sky you turn your wandering course, you pass through your sons’ dominion. They rule your united people with calm minds and mature governance, and they refashion the ages anew from better metal.17 Greed laments, bound up in hellish chains, and mad Ambition has been exiled with its gold. Money doesn’t dominate, nor can gifts that corrupt the senses prevail. Only virtue merits power. Unanimous brothers, sea and land are owed to your destinies, whatever slipped through your grandfather’s hands, or your father’s conquests left over. Vulcan forges arms for you, and his Cyclopes labor on their Sicilian anvils. Brontes chisels countless devices into your shield, and Steropes hurries to set a high peak on your thundering helmet, while Pyragmon fashions your breastplate. The smoky Lipari Islands groan as fire flows through their caverns.18

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Neptune pastures green seahorses for you on the Ionian’s seaweed, who can carry you across the blue ocean’s surface. They run across the wavetops, moving so smoothly, that their hooves don’t notice the foam, nor disturb the billows. 200 Already I see you capturing Babylon, and forcing the frightened Parthians into flight that isn’t feigned. Now Bactria is under your laws, the Ganges River turns pale as you enslave its banks, and the humbled Persians discard their jeweled outfits. 17 For the Golden Age myth, see the volume Introduction, Section 1.2 “Mythology and Religion.” 18 For the Cyclopes, see the Glossary.

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Go now to the Don River’s source, the frozen North, go through seething Libya, overcome the Sun’s heat and find the Nile’s hidden springs. Run past Hercules’s Pillars and Bacchus’s boundaries: whatever the sky embraces will be under your rule. The Indian Ocean will give you precious conch shells, the Indus River will supply ivory, Panchaia perfumes, and the Chinese silks.

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Introduction Flavius Rufinus (PLRE 1.778–781) enjoyed an extremely successful career under the emperor Theodosius as Master of Offices in 388 and consul in the year 392. Beginning in the same year, he became Praetorian Prefect of the East, an office comparable to vice-emperor.1 He prosecuted numerous powerful courtiers, whose fates Claudian recalls in a catalog of Rufinus’s crimes. (As is often the case, we have primarily hostile accounts surviving to us, and so cannot fully reconstruct the narratives behind either Rufinus’s rise or his successful prosecutions.) The zenith of Rufinus’s career came in 394 when Theodosius left Constantinople to confront the revolt led by Arbogast and Eugenius and appointed Rufinus as his son Arcadius’s guardian.2 Theodosius’s death and Arcadius’s accession to the Eastern throne appear to have changed Rufinus’s fortunes. The praetorian prefect attempted to marry his daughter to Arcadius in an effort to secure his position and perhaps establish a dynasty. At the instigation of the emperor’s chamberlain Eutropius, Arcadius instead married Eudoxia on 27 April 395, three months after his accession. Among their children would be Theodosius II, the heir to the Eastern throne. Eudoxia had become the general Promotus’s ward after the death of her father, the Frankish courtier Flavius Bauto, sometime before 388.3 Promotus had recently died on campaign in Thrace in late 391.4 We may observe, therefore, that the marriage of Arcadius and Eudoxia 1 See Theodosian Code 11.30.16; Cameron and Long 1993: 5; Jones 1964: 448–462. 2 Eunapius Fragments 62–63; John of Antioch Fragments 188, 190. See Cameron and Long 1993: 5. 3 For Eudoxia, see Doyle 2018: 108–111. For Eutropius’s role as intermediary, see Zosimus 5.3. For Eudoxia’s parentage, see Philostorgius 11.6; for Promotus, see PLRE 1.750–1, Zosimus 5.3.2; for Bauto, see PLRE 1.159–160. 4 Zosimus 4.51 accuses Rufinus of causing Promotus’s downfall.

DOI: 10.4324/9780429353345-5

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represented a victory for Eutropius over Rufinus. Stilicho, Rufinus’s Western counterpart and rival, pursued the same dynastic strategy successfully, at least in the short term. He successively married his daughters Maria and Thermantia to the emperor Honorius, hoping thereby for a grandson that would inherit Honorius’s throne. Eutropius, meanwhile, would profit from his influence over Arcadius to become consul—and later the target of an invective by Claudian (see Eutropius). Meanwhile, Gothic armies raided Greece and the Balkans during the years of Rufinus’s ascendancy. Alaric the Gothic king had cooperated with Theodosius in the campaign against Arbogast and Eugenius in 394. However, his forces then devastated Greece and besieged Constantinople in 395, prompting the negotiation with Rufinus narrated in this poem (2.36–85).5 Stilicho confronted the Goths with a joint army of Eastern and Western legions. As Claudian relates, an order then came from the Constantinople court not to pursue Alaric. Claudian represents this order as a treasonable “stab in the back” imposed on an innocent Arcadius by the nefarious Rufinus. Other possibilities are more likely, though Claudian suppresses them because they did not reflect well on Stilicho. Cameron (1970: 159–168) focuses persuasively on discipline and loyalty issues. Stilicho’s army was composed of units who had faced each other the year before at the Frigidus battle. There was no guarantee that they had laid aside their hostilities. The army contained a significant percentage of Gothic soldiers; did Stilicho worry about ordering them into a battle against other Goths? Furthermore, the Eastern provinces were under threat; the Eastern troops could have been recalled to answer what their leaders perceived as a more pressing need. The Eastern legions returned to Constantinople where they murdered Rufinus on 27 November 395 (Zosimus 5.7.5). We do not know the full story of the “stab in the back” involving Alaric, nor who was ultimately responsible for Rufinus’s murder. Eutropius seems the most likely suspect, as he was on the spot, powerfully connected, and benefitted the most by taking Rufinus’s position. The troops could also have murdered their commander on their own initiative. Philostorgius (11.3) splits the difference, attributing the soldiers’ motives partly to their obedience to Stilicho’s instructions and partly to their hatred of Rufinus. Stilicho may certainly have given the troops the suggestion, as Claudian implies, but he was hundreds of miles away at the time of the murder and received no benefit. Whatever Stilicho’s actual involvement, he certainly did not object to Claudian’s reiteration of

5 See Heather 1996: 138–146. Alaric would return for a similar negotiation with Eutropius in 397; see Eutropius.

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his responsibility two years afterward.6 The consequence was that Eutropius took Rufinus’s place, and from Claudian’s perspective he was an even worse courtier (see Eutropius). Claudian likely performed Invective Against Rufinus Book 1 close in time to the murder, and Book 2 in summer 397 (Cameron 1970: 76–78). In the Preface to Book 1, Claudian’s narrator compares Stilicho’s defeat of Rufinus to the god Apollo’s killing of the Python, an enormous snake. Apollo shot the Python near Delphi, and then celebrated to the Muses’ song.7 Throughout Claudian’s poetry, mythological creatures like the Python, Giants, and Titans are set against Jupiter, the forces of divine order, and their human defender Stilicho. Here Stilicho is the new Apollo and the narrator the servant of the Muses. In the poem that follows, Stilicho will have to deal with a new mythological enemy—Rufinus the new Python, roused to action by the demonic Furies.8 The narrator opens Book 1 by relating how he used to see wicked people like Rufinus prosper, and so he began to believe that chance rather than providential design governed the world (1.1–24). Rufinus’s downfall, however, reassures him that the world was only in a temporary imbalance. He thereby sets out a familiar ancient philosophical question: does a providential deity control the world, as the Stoics argued, or do events happen at random, according to the Epicureans? Epicureanism no longer had many adherents by Claudian’s day. The Roman poetic tradition knew this complex philosophy best through Lucretius’ poem On the Nature of Things, written in the first century BCE (Cameron 1970: 326–331). Claudian focuses on the central notion that historical events are not under anyone’s control but rather occur through the random “swerve” of atoms. By contrast, the Stoics appealed to order. Stoicism was not a religion, nor were the Stoics monotheists like the Christian members of Claudian’s audience. But they did speak of a providential “Reason” (Logos) that kept the world orderly and appealed as evidence to predictable natural events such as planetary motion and the change of seasons. The narrator returns to this idea late in the poem when he claims that Fortune has tried, however inadequately, to repay Rufinus’s crimes through his grisly death (2.421–427). The Fury Allecto convenes a council of demons in the Underworld and threatens to make war on the gods because she is frustrated by the Golden Age under Theodosius. Her sister Megaera suggests sending her nursling Rufinus to corrupt the world instead (1.25–122). This scene was influential for later 6 See Gildo 304–305 and Cameron 1970: 90–92. 7 See also O&P 188–189. 8 See volume introduction, Section 1.2 “Mythology and Religion.”

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poets. John Milton’s epic Paradise Lost (1667) features a similar council in Hell that deliberates over making war against Heaven and eventually decides to send Satan to bring sin into the world (Silk 1977). The narrator then relates the course of Rufinus’s career. He follows a conventional pattern for panegyric but inverts the tone.9 Everything Rufinus does to ascend to power is evil and corrupt, beginning with his fostering by an evil demon. Megaera sends Rufinus from Elusa in Gaul (modern Eauze, France) to Theodosius’s court at Constantinople (1.123–175). Rufinus grows powerful through corruption, bribery, and extortion. The narrator first lectures him on the virtues of the simple life and then catalogues some of Rufinus’s crimes (1.176–258). He describes Rufinus’s attacks on three important officials.10 In September 392, he presided over the trial of Flavius Eutolmius Tatianus (PLRE 1.876–8), praetorian prefect of the East and consul in 391, and his son Proculus. As a means of making the Lycian Tatianus’s punishment exemplary, Rufinus passed a decree that excluded the Lycians from holding office, described as “abolishing their people’s name” (1.233). This decree was repealed on 31 August 396 (Theodosian Code 9.38.9). Claudian next describes (1.238–41) Rufinus’s prosecution of Lucianus, Count of the East in 393. According to Zosimus 5.2, Lucianus feuded with the emperor’s uncle Eucherius. Rufinus brought Lucianus to trial and had him condemned to death by being beaten on the neck with leaden balls. Finally, Claudian narrates the execution of Proculus, prefect of Constantinople from 388 to 392. His father Tatianus was made to watch (1.246–7) and then was banished.11 Stilicho bravely resists and saves the Roman empire from Rufinus’s tyranny (1.259–307). In the narrator’s eyes, this deed makes Stilicho a greater hero than Perseus and Hercules, who only saved a few individuals and regions. Rufinus incites an invasion by numerous non-Roman peoples, the most fearsome of whom are the nomadic Huns. Stilicho prays to Mars, who immediately joins him in combat (1.308–353). At the book’s close, Megaera taunts personified Justice, who promises that Honorius will come and restore the Golden Age (1.354–387). As observed earlier, Claudian likely delivered Book 2 in summer 397, 18 months after Rufinus’s murder. In the Book’s preface, Apollo and the Muses are safe once more after Stilicho’s campaign in Greece, and the commander now listens to the poet as Mars listened to the Muses after battle. After Theodosius’s death, Rufinus incites further invasions by the Goths, who 9 See volume introduction, Section 1.4 “Roman Panegyric and Invective.” 10 See Cameron and Long 1993: 180; Barnes 1984; Cameron 1970: 81–82. 11 See Asterius Homily 4.9.3; Eunapius History fragment 59.

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devastate Greece (2.1–54). Rufinus brings embarrassment on the Romans by negotiating with the Goths, even dressing like one of them. The people of Constantinople call out to Stilicho to save them (2.54–100). Stilicho assembles a multi-ethnic army, which the narrator compares to the massive army that Xerxes raised to invade Greece in the fifth century BCE. The Goths prepare to meet him in Thessaly (2.101–129). Rufinus panics and asks Arcadius to help him escape from Stilicho. He threatens to bring Arcadius down with him and forces him to order Stilicho to withdraw rather than engage in battle against the Goths (2.130–170). The narrator claims that the Goths would not have been able to devastate Greece if Stilicho could have given battle. The commander instead obeys Rufinus’s order and sends the Eastern contingent back to Constantinople (2.171–219). As observed above, Claudian reflects the Western court’s partisan view that this order was a “stab in the back.” Stilicho should have been commended for his loyalty rather than criticized for his failure to conquer one of Rome’s worst enemies. The army protests that Stilicho should ignore the order and send them into battle. The Eastern legions promise to remain loyal as they return to Constantinople. They keep their plan to overthrow Rufinus secret as they return to Heraclea (2.220–292). Rufinus believes that Stilicho will be unable to cross the Alps and celebrates with his cronies (2.293–322). Ghosts of Rufinus’s victims appear to him at night and offer ambiguous omens of his defeat (2.323–347). The soldiers assemble the next morning in the Hebdomon plain outside Constantinople. They surround Rufinus like an animal in the arena and tear him apart. The narrator claims that Fortune has made up for Rufinus’s crimes through the murder (2.348–427). The crowd then joins in trampling Rufinus. They cut off his hand and pretend to beg with it, mocking his insatiable greed (2.427–453). In the Underworld, the ghosts of Rufinus’s victims drag him to the tribunal to be judged. Minos, one of the judges of the dead, compels wicked people to be reborn in animal bodies. He lists the traditional punishments of the great sinners of mythology and condemns Rufinus to experience every one of them (2.454–527). Claudian draws on a long-standing tradition of rhetorical invective to aim a number of conventional insults against his target. He claims the demonic Fury Megaera raised Rufinus as a child, a motif also found in contemporary prose speeches.12 He compares his enemy to a disease, just as Cicero 12 For example, Pacatus called the rebel Magnus Maximus’s brother Marcellinus a “Megaera of civil war” (Latin Panegyrics 2.35.1), while Themistius makes a more general argument that “nurslings of the Furies . . . attack the world . . . whenever it is prosperous” (Oration 7.90C-D). See Cameron and Long 1993: 278–280.

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had done to his opponents Catiline and Marc Antony in the first century BCE.13 A number of undesirable traits characterize Rufinus, such as his insatiable greed (1.183–219), cruelty (1.220–258), and cowardly anxiety (2.130–140, 2.324–335). He has no feeling for his fellow human beings; when he foresees his impending defeat at Stilicho’s hands, he does not mind dying so long as he can bring Arcadius and the rest of the world down with him (2.11–21, 2.164–168). Rufinus’s story contributes to a Golden Age narrative that stretches across several of Claudian’s poems. Honorius and Theodosius have restored the Golden Age. Evildoers like Megaera and her puppet Rufinus may briefly stand against it, but the forces of order, under their champion Stilicho, will always defeat them in the end.14 Preface to Book 1 When Apollo’s bow overcame the Python, its heaving limbs sprawled over Mount Cirrha’s slopes as it fell. Its coils once covered mountains, its maw gulped down rivers, and its bloody crests touched the stars. But now Mount Parnassus was liberated. Its grove began to rise up, set free from the dragon’s coils. Its trees grew straight. Though the Python’s massive body had long smashed the ash trees, now their leaves unfolded fearlessly to the winds. Serpent poison had often foamed on the Cephisus River, but its clear waters flowed more purely now.15 The whole region called out “Io Paean!”,16 every field sang of Apollo, and more potent gusts of air whirled the god’s prophetic tripods.17 The gods from far off heard the Muses’ song, which brought them together in the caverns of severe Themis, goddess of justice. Now our master’s missiles have killed another Python, and a holy band has gathered to hear my lyre. Stilicho preserves a stable world for the brother emperors: he directs peace with justice, and weapons with strength.

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13 Rufinus 1.304; see, e.g. Cicero Against Catiline 1.30, Cicero Philippics 2.55. 14 See the volume introduction, Section 1.2 “Mythology and Religion” and Ware 2012: 207–220. 15 The place names (see the Glossary) refer to areas around Delphi in central Greece, where Apollo had a major oracular site. 16 Paean was one of Apollo’s epithets, and a paean was a song of triumph. 17 Referring to the subterranean exhalations of gas that were believed to inspire the Pythia, Apollo’s oracular priestess.

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Invective Against Rufinus, Book 1 Often my doubtful mind pondered the question whether the gods care for the earth, or no ruler exists, and mortal affairs drift according to uncertain chance. I once inquired into the world’s fixed rules: the sea’s ordained boundaries, the year’s transitions, the alternation of day and night. Back then, I thought a god’s plan had settled all things: the law that moves the stars, makes crops grow at different times, the sun’s light fill the changing moon, its own light fill the sun. The shores stretched out to meet the waves, and Earth balanced upon its axis. But then I saw such darkness roiling human affairs, and violent people enjoying long success, and dutiful people suffering oppression. My belief then shattered and collapsed. Against my will, I followed another philosophy’s path. Epicureans claim that atoms run with meaningless motion, and throughout the great void Fortune, not design, makes new combinations from them. They’re ambiguous about the gods: either they don’t exist, or they’re unaware of us.18

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At last, Rufinus’s punishment relieved this turmoil, and absolved the gods. Now I won’t complain that unjust men accede to power’s summit. Rather, they rise on high to fall harder when they collapse. Reveal for your poet, Pierian Muses, from what beginnings such a plague broke out.

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Once, Envy’s goads burned terrible Allecto, when she saw cities far and wide at peace. Straightaway she called her hellish sisters to a repulsive council at the Underworld’s dark threshold. Erebus’s countless evils, which Night birthed in a sinister delivery, came together as one. There was Discord, nursemaid of war, demanding Famine, death’s neighbor Old Age, and Disease unable to endure itself. There was Envy getting anxious about others’ prosperity, Grief lamenting

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18 See the introduction to this poem.

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as it tore its clothing, Fear, and blind Daring rushing headlong. There was Luxury, destroyer of wealth, whom unfortunate Poverty humbly follows, always sticking close by. Sleepless Anxieties came in a long line, embracing their mother Greed’s disgusting breast. This varied band filled up the iron benches, and a monstrous gathering packed the savage court.

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Allecto stood amid the crowd and ordered silence. She pushed to her back the snakes that blocked her view and let them wander round her shoulders. Then she let loose the anger she’d shut deep in her chest, and shouted rabidly: “Are we going to let the centuries move forward on this tranquil path? Are we going to let people live in such good fortune? What new-found mercy corrupted our ways? How did our inborn madness die? What good are our useless whips? What’s the point of arming ourselves with these dark torches? Jupiter bars us from the sky, Theodosius from the earth— we’re too lazy, damn it! Look! A golden age is being born, the ancient race is returning. Harmony, Virtue, Piety, and Loyalty wander with their heads held high, singing about their outstanding victory over our people.

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Oh, the heartache! Justice herself has slipped down to earth through the clear air. She triumphs over me, pulling out crimes by the root, calling forth oppressed laws from shadowy prisons. But are we going to stagnate, forever dishonored, thrown out of every kingdom? Recognize at last what suits the Furies. Take up your customary power, and settle on an abomination worthy of such a gathering. Now I want to attack the stars with hellish clouds, and use my breath to violate the day. I want to loose the deep sea’s reins, break the riverbanks, send in floods, upset the world’s stability.”

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on the gods above, a minority upheld Dis’s rights.19 Dissension fed their muttering. Just so the deep sea’s quiet remains disturbed, although the wind’s died down. Swells still continue raging, and receding breezes’ spent traces float through the uncertain surge. Evil Megaera soon leaped up from her grim seat. Her puppets were insane Shrieking, the soul’s accursed Error, and Anger frothing maddened spit. She drank nothing but criminal blood shed in families, drained by a father’s sword, poured forth by brothers. The sight of her had terrified Hercules, and defiled his bow that protected the earth. She’d guided Athamas’s hand to shoot arrows, and danced like a wild Bacchant through Agamemnon’s palace, enjoying a succession of murders. Under her auspices, wedding torches had united Oedipus and his mother, Thyestes and his daughter.20 Then Megaera made a horrifying speech: “Comrades, it’s wrong to lift our battle standards against the gods, and I don’t think it’s possible. But perhaps you’ll be happier harming the world, and directing a common destruction against its peoples. I have a freak more monstrous than any Hydra, swifter than a mother tigress, more violent than the South wind, keener than the Harpies, more changeable than the shining waves. When Rufinus first fell from his mother’s body, I took him to my bosom. As a little boy, he often crawled onto my lap and looked for my breast. Childishly he cried as he threw his arms around my lofty neck. My snakes licked him, their forked tongues shaping his soft limbs. As I passed down my deceptions and harmful skills, he learned to fake sincerity, disguising menacing

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19 After exiling his father Saturn, Jupiter divided the world with his brothers. Jupiter took the sky, Neptune the sea, and Dis the Underworld. The minority faction predicts a loss in the war, which would cause Dis to lose his rights. 20 The Furies compelled Hercules and Athamas to attack their families. Clytemnestra killed her husband Agamemnon; their son Orestes killed his mother and was then driven mad by the Furies. See Glossary for Oedipus and Thyestes.

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intentions, concealing fraud under a flattering smile, even as savagery filled him and avarice burned him up. The Tagus River’s precious flood couldn’t satisfy Rufinus, along with Tartessus’s sands or the tawny Pactolus’s golden waters. He could drain the whole Hermus River and still burn with greater thirst.21 How skilled he was at deceiving minds and stirring loyal companions to hatred! If mankind’s ancient race had produced a person like this, Theseus would shun Pirithous, offended Pylades desert Orestes, and Pollux would loathe Castor.22 I myself confess that I’m outdone. His swift intelligence excels his teacher’s. I won’t delay you further with talk: all by himself, he’s mastered every crime that we can do. If your gathering finds this decision suitable, I’ll bring him forth to the highest leader’s royal court. Though Theodosius be sterner than Numa, though he even be a Minos, he’ll yield, and our apprentice’s plots will turn him.”23 Shouts of approval followed Megaera’s speech. Everyone raised their sinful hands and praised the suffering she’d discovered. A blue snake belted her robe, and adamant tied back her hair as she made for deafening Phlegethon. From the burning river’s scorched bank, she ignited a huge pine tree in the pitchy stream. She beat her wings swiftly through torpid Tartarus. There is a place where Gaul lays open its furthest shore right against the Ocean’s waters. It’s said Ulysses used blood libations there to rouse the silent dead. There the flying ghosts’ thin whirring and mournful complaints can be heard. Farmers see pale shades,

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21 These rivers were the traditional sites for gold production in the Roman world: the Tagus River (modern Tajo) in Spain, the Hermus and the Pactolus (the Sart Çayı and Gediz Rivers in Turkey). See O&P 48–54. 22 Megaera boasts about Rufinus’s powers of dissension by claiming that he could divide two pairs of exemplary friends who risked death to save each other, as well as the exemplary brothers Castor and Pollux. 23 Megaera compares the emperor to legendary lawgivers. Numa was the second king of Rome; see the Glossary for Minos.

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and corpses’ outlines wander about. There demon Megaera leaped forth. She polluted the sun’s gentle rays as she departed, her terrifying scream splitting the sky. Britain heard the deadly roar, and the noise shook the Gallic Senones’ fields. The Ocean whirled backward and stood still. The Rhine River threw away its urn and froze. Then the snakes on Megaera’s head turned to white hair of their own accord. She impersonated an old crone and furrowed wrinkles into her severe cheeks. She faked a slow stride as she barged into Elusa,24 looking for a long-familiar house. She stood for a while, eyes full of jealousy, admiring a man still worse than her. Then Megaera said:

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“Does laziness make you happy, Rufinus? Are you wasting 140 your youth’s flower on your ancestral farm, without any glory? Alas! You don’t know what the Fates, what the stars are granting you, what Fortune is preparing. If you’ll listen to me, you’ll dominate the whole world. Don’t disrespect my old woman’s body. For I have magical powers, and the fire within me perceives 145 the future. I know what song the Thessalian witches use to steal the moon’s radiance, what power wise Egypt’s signs have, by what art the Chaldaeans rule the gods they call forth. Juices flowing from trees are no mystery to me, nor are deadly herbs’ powers: 150 all lethal plants that flourish in the Caucasus, that grow in spring on the Scythian cliffs, the herbs that fierce Medea and crafty Circe collected.25 Often I’ve used nighttime sacrifices to worship horrifying ghosts and Hecate herself. I’ve dragged out buried corpses to prolong their lives with spells. My song’s killed many people, though the Fates were still spinning their lives’ threads. I’ve forced oak trees to wander and the winds to stand still. I’ve reversed rivers, making them flow back to their sources.26

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24 Modern Eauze, France. 25 Thessalian witches and Chaldaean astrologers were proverbial examples of supreme magical power. Medea’s magic tamed a dragon and rejuvenated her aged father-in-law Aeson, while Circe transformed human beings into animals. 26 Megaera lists the typical powers ascribed to ancient witches.

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In case you think I’m speaking empty words— look how your house has changed.” Megaera stopped. A wonder! Snowy marble columns began to enrich the house, and suddenly precious metal shone on the beams. These tricks seduced Rufinus, who greedily feasted his eyes in wild elation. Midas also swelled at first with joy, when everything he touched turned to beautiful gold. But after his food hardened, and he saw the drink in his cup held fast like ice, then he felt the gods’ gift was bitter, and he cursed his desire for the hated gold.

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And so, his spirit overcome, Rufinus said: “I shall follow wherever you call me, 170 whether you’re a human being or a god.” He left his country and headed at the Fury’s command to the Eastern cities. He passed the Clashing Rocks that once ran together, the straits the Argonauts’ oars made famous. He came to Constantinople, the exalted city where the Bosporus glitters and separates Asia from the Thracian shore. 175 As Rufinus completed his long journey, led by Fate’s evil thread, he slipped into Theodosius’s famous court. Straightaway flattery sprung up, justice departed, all things went up for sale. Rufinus revealed secrets, deceived clients, and sold offices lobbied from the emperor. He inflated accusations, he fed fire in many breasts, and he worsened a tiny injury by provoking it. The Ocean isn’t aware of the countless rivers it receives— here it drains the deep-waved Danube River, there it drinks the sultry seven-mouthed Nile— yet it always stays one and the same. Just so, torrents of gold couldn’t satisfy Rufinus’s burning greed.

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Whoever had a gem-encrusted necklace, or carefully tended estates, would become Rufinus’s prey. A productive farm spelled destruction for its master. Farmers feared their soil’s harvests. Rufinus pushed 190 men from their homes, and thrust them from their ancestral domains. Either he seized their property while they were still alive, or claimed it 96

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as their heir. He heaped up wealth in piles, and his one house swallowed up the world’s ruin. Whole populations were forced to serve him, and crowded cities submitted to his personal rule. 195 Where are you rushing off to, crazy man? Though you possess both Oceans, though Lydia opens its golden rivers to you, though you add Croesus’s throne to Cyrus’s tiara,27 you’ll never feel rich, your gains will never satisfy you. The man who desires more is always destitute. 200 Fabricius rejected kings’ bribes, contenting himself with honest poverty. The consul Cincinnatus sweated at the heavy plow, and a small shack housed the fighting Curii.28 For me, this kind of poverty is more exalted, and houses like these are grander than your palaces. Your harmful luxury seeks out vapid banquets; the earth offers me a feast free of charge. Your wool sucks up Tyrian dye, and purple saturates your embroidered clothes. Here flowers shine, and the meadow’s natural variation gives vivid pleasure. Cushions rise up high on shining couches in the court. But in nature, the soft grass stretches forth, and no troubling anxieties disturb sleep. There, a crowd of morning greeters thunders through broad halls.29 Here, birds sing and flowing rivers murmur. It’s better to live on little: Nature gave everyone the power to be happy, if we know how to use it. If we’d learn this, we’d enjoy a simple way of life. War trumpets wouldn’t roar, spears wouldn’t come shrieking by, the wind wouldn’t rattle ships, nor siege engines city walls. Rufinus’s thirst for crime, and his unholy desire for fresh victims, burned in him. No shame held him back from attacking

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27 Croesus, a sixth century BCE king of Lydia, was proverbially wealthy. The Persian emperor Cyrus the Great (c. 600–530 BC) vastly expanded his empire, including conquering Croesus. 28 Fabricius refused bribes during the war between Rome and King Pyrrhus of Epirus (280–275 BCE). See Glossary for Cincinnatus. The Curii were examples of frugality. Manius Curius Dentatus won a victory that ended the Third Samnite War during his consulship in 290 BCE; he later fought against the Gauls and Pyrrhus’s invasion. 29 Roman clients were often required to visit their patrons for the morning greeting called the salutatio. See Eutropius 2.64–67 for an example.

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and coercing. Perjury wove constant flatteries. He shook hands on deals that he’d soon break. If anyone once denied him anything from all he demanded, swollen madness shook his savage heart. 225 What lioness struck by a Gaetulian javelin ever raged like him, or Hyrcanian tigress springing on a Persian hunter, or serpent that someone trod on? Rufinus wore away the gods’ majesty through false oaths, and he had no respect for hospitality. Killing a wife, and her husband along with her, and then their children, 230 didn’t satisfy his hatred. It wasn’t enough to slaughter the relatives, nor to exile their friends. He worked to raze their entire city to the ground, and to abolish their people’s name. Nor did Rufinus kill people quickly. He enjoyed excruciating them cruelly before they died. He prepared tortures, chains, dark jails, 235 and held off the executioner. Oh, this mercy was madness, more vicious than the sword: sparing a life to hand it over to suffering! Was death too little? He’d attack on fallacious pretexts, and he’d sit as judge when prosecuting his astonished victims. Lazy in other matters, crime made him move fast. He hunted victims relentlessly, even down back roads 240 deep in the country. The Dog Star’s burning heat didn’t hold him back, nor a winter storm’s north wind roaring from the Riphaean mountains. Hyperactive anxiety twisted his savage heart, in case someone was escaping the executioner’s sword, in case the emperor took pity and made him lose some opportunity for crime. A victim’s youth couldn’t dissuade him, 245 nor could their old age sway him. The executioner raised his axe, and young men’s heads fell from their dripping necks, before their fathers’ faces. An aged former consul survived and was banished, after his son was killed.30 Who could tell so many deaths in a narrative, who could mourn these unspeakable slaughters?

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30 Referring to Tatianus’s banishment and Proculus’s execution; see the introduction to this poem.

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Tradition doesn’t tell that monsters ever did such horrible things: not Sinis’s pine tree at the Isthmus of Corinth, nor Sciron’s vast cliff, nor Phalaris’s bronze bull, nor Sulla’s jail. In comparison, Diomedes’s horses would seem gentle, Busiris’s altars merciful, Cinna dutiful, Spartacus mild, when set against Rufinus.31 Terror at his secret hatred had cast down everyone. They fell silent, held back stifled groans, and were afraid to seem indignant.

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But this fear couldn’t shatter great-hearted Stilicho’s courage. In the middle of the world’s whirlwind, he alone bore arms 260 against the rapacious beast Rufinus and his deadly jaws. A winged horse’s swift flight didn’t carry Stilicho; riding Pegasus didn’t help him. He brought the peace everyone wished for. He was the only bulwark against danger, the only shield stretched forth against the savage enemy, a haven 265 for refugees, a battle standard against madness, a fortress keeping good people safe. Up to this point, Rufinus had been threatening. Now he stopped still and fled in cowardly retreat. Likewise a torrent swollen with snowmelt whirls boulders, overturns the forest, and tears down bridges. 270 Boulders block it and break its impetus, until it foams, seeking its way forward, and its wave resounds as it strikes the mountain. How may I praise you worthily, Stilicho, you who set your shoulders against a world that was almost falling and collapsing? The gods have shown you to us, like a favoring star 275 to a fearful ship, an exhausted craft that storms shatter on either side, and drag it blindly after overpowering the helmsman. They say that Perseus, Inachus’s descendant, overcame Neptune’s monster in the Red Sea—but his wings protected him; none carried you, Stilicho. Perseus fought using the Gorgon’s head that transformed men 280 into stone: no Medusa’s head with snaky hair defended you. 31 The narrator lists eight traditional examples of criminality, alternating mythological and historical figures. The mythical villain Sinis catapulted his victims into the air by bending a pine tree, while Sciron threw men off cliffs; Theseus killed both criminals. See the Glossary for Phalaris, Sulla, and Busiris. Diomedes was a mythical king of Thrace who fed his victims to his man-eating horses. Cinna (died 84 BCE) opposed Sulla in a civil war and was murdered by his own soldiers. Spartacus (died 71 BCE) led a slave revolt in south Italy.

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Cheap lust for Andromeda lashed to the rock spurred Perseus on:32 for you, Stilicho, the Romans’ safety. Let antiquity be silent! You have outdone it. Let antiquity stop comparing Hercules’s deeds with yours. A single forest fed the lion of Cleonae; the savage boar’s tusks devastated only one Arcadian woodland. Antaeus fought back each time he fell to the Earth, his mother, but caused no harm outside Libya’s borders. The thundering bull made only Crete resound, and the green Hydra besieged only Lerna’s swamp. This monster Rufinus made not just one swamp, not just one island tremble. Rather, wherever people lived subject to Roman rule, they shivered from the Spanish coast right up to the Indian Ganges. Three-bodied Geryon, and Cerberus, Hell’s frenzied guardian, couldn’t add up to this evil. Nor would the Hydra’s force and Scylla’s hunger and the Chimaera’s flame combined.33

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For a while there was an exalted contest, which morals made unequal, between Stilicho’s virtues and Rufinus’s crimes. Rufinus threatened to cut off someone’s head: you blocked him, Stilicho. He stripped rich men bare: you restored the needy victims’ property. Rufinus knocked down houses: 300 you built them back up. He ignited wars: you won them. He was just like an incipient disease that worsens in bad air, and feeds first on the cattle’s limbs. Soon after it carries off peoples and cities, and when hot winds blow, it exudes deadly plague into the poisoned rivers. In this way, the zealous bandit Rufinus didn’t rage at individual targets, 305 but aimed his threats at royal scepters, and burned to overthrow Roman power by killing off all its soldiers. Now Rufinus stirred up many peoples: he roused the Danube, received the Scythians in alliance, and left the remaining territory prey to enemy arms. 32 Perseus killed a sea monster to rescue the Ethiopian princess Andromeda. 33 The Chimaera was a monster whose body was composed from a lion, a goat, and a snake. See the Glossary for Antaeus, Geryon, Hydra, and Scylla. For a different catalog of Hercules’s Labors, see Proserpina Book 2 Preface.

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The Sarmatians came down joined with Dacian troops, the daring Massagetans, who wound horses to drink their blood, the Alans, who drink from their ancestral Sea of Azov, and the Gelonians, who love to tattoo their bodies with steel.34

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Rufinus gathered these foreign forces. He forbade us to defeat them, made up reasons for delay, and put off the appropriate time for battle. 315 Earlier, Stilicho’s hand laid low the Gothic troops, as vengeance for Promotus’s death.35 One part remained, weaker and easier to capture. Then criminal Rufinus, traitor to the empire, conspired with the Goths, delayed the impending battle, and deceived the emperor. 320 He was going to bring in the Huns’ help: he knew they’d be present at the battle, and soon would join themselves to Rome’s hated foes. The race of Huns36 lives in furthest Scythia, where it turns toward the sun’s rising, across the cold Don, the most famous river of all that the Bear constellation nurtures. Their clothing is grim, and their bodies 325 are an obscene sight. Hard labor never breaks their spirits, they hunt their food, and they avoid planting grain. For fun, they cut their faces open, and they think it noble to swear by parents that they themselves have murdered. Horses are like kinfolk to the Huns. The hybrid cloudborn Centaurs didn’t join their double nature better. Their mobility is the keenest 330 as they ride in no apparent order, and their return rush is a surprise. Yet fearless Stilicho approached them at the Hebrus’s foaming waters, and he prayed before the war trumpets and the battle line: “Mars, whether you’re sprawled on cloudy Mount Haemus, or Rhodope white with frost, or Athos, once troubled 335 by Persian ships, whether Pangaea that dark holm oaks overshadow has you—gird for war with me, and defend

34 The narrator catalogs the non-Roman forces whom Rufinus supposedly stirred up against Stilicho’s army in 391–2; see the introduction to this poem. Alaric led the Goths, an east Germanic people. The Scythians, Sarmatians, Massagetans, Alans, and Gelonians were all peoples of the Eurasian steppes. 35 Zosimus 4.51 reports the ambush of Promotus in Thrace in 391. 36 For contemporary perceptions of the Huns, see Ammianus Marcellinus 31.2.2–11.

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your Thracian people. If favoring glory should come to me, as a gift to you, I’ll dress an oak tree in enemy spoils.” Father Mars heard these words and rose from Haemus’s snowy cliffs, and shouted to rouse his swift servants: “Bring me my helmet, Bellona, and fasten the wheels on my chariot, Fear. Terror, harness my swift horses. Get your hands moving quickly. Look! My Stilicho arms for war. He enriches me with trophies, as is his custom, and he hangs enemy crests from a tree. Our war trumpets always sound together, as do our signals to give battle, and I yoke my chariot to follow his camp.”

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Thus Mars spoke and leaped on to the battlefield. From one side, Stilicho scattered the enemy formations far and wide, 350 from the other side Mars did the same. They were matched in shields and might. A helmet stood on each one’s head, bristling with starry crests. Their breastplates grew hot as they ran, and many kills sated their spears. Meanwhile Megaera, even keener in pursuing her wish, and luxuriating in many evil deeds, caught sad Justice in a citadel, and attacked her first in evil words: “Look at your old quiet and how you think the renewed ages have come back again in strength! See how my power has yielded and there is no more room for the Furies! Turn your gaze here, see how many city walls lie consumed by barbarian flames, what slaughters Rufinus offers me, how much blood, how great the carnage that nourishes my snakes.

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Leave human beings behind. They’re my business. Head for the stars, return to autumn’s familiar regions, where the Zodiac signs turn toward the South. The spot next to the Lion, a summer constellation, 365 and cold Libra’s boundaries has long since been open for you.37 And if only I could chase you through the sky’s huge vault!”

37 The constellation Virgo, which occupies the region between Leo (the Lion) and Libra, was the mythological personification of Justice.

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The goddess Justice replied: “Crazy woman! You won’t rave any longer. Your man Rufinus will be punished, and the avenger whom he deserves is already at hand. Now Rufinus tires out earth and the sky itself, 370 but when he dies, not even a paltry handful of dust will cover his body. Soon Honorius, promised to a happy age, will be here, no lesser than his courageous father or his shining brother. He’ll subdue the Persians, his spear will wear down the Indians. Kings shall come beneath his yoke. His horse will tread down 375 the frozen Phasis River, and the Araxes will be forced to endure its bridge. And then, Megaera, heavy iron chains will tie you up, banish you from the daylight, and shut you in the abyss’s deep recess. We’ll disarm your snakes and shave them off your head. Then everyone will hold the earth in common, and no boundaries will mark off fields. The hooked plow won’t split the furrow, and the reaper will rejoice as crops suddenly spring up. Oak trees will shower honey, pools of wine will flow here and there, and lakes of olive oil. Purple-dyed clothes won’t be a distinction, but rather flocks will suddenly turn purple, astonishing their shepherd. Throughout the ocean, green seaweed will laugh as pearls sprout around it.”

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Invective Against Rufinus, Preface to Book 2 Throw open guarded Mount Helicon, Muses, return and throw it open. Your choruses may now go forth! No hostile war trumpet’s wretched blast disrupts your song throughout the Boeotian fields. You also, Apollo of Delos, garland your avenger Stilicho with flowers, now fear’s been banished and Delphi is secure. No barbarian’s polluted mouth drinks from the Castalian spring, the waters that foretell fate.38 The Alpheus River ran red far and wide, and the waves carried war’s bloody traces through the Sicilian strait. Arethusa wasn’t there, but she sensed the new triumphs, and felt the Gothic slaughter. Blood was its witness.

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38 The Castalian spring on Mount Helicon was imagined to provide poets with inspiration.

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After your immense responsibilities, Stilicho, let rest follow, and allow my lyre to relax your heart. Don’t be ashamed to interrupt your lengthy labors and to decree a short delay for the Muses’ sake. They say that after war, even unconquerable Mars rested his tired limbs at last on the Thracian snows. He set aside his spear, forgot his nature, and in a milder mood let the Muses’ rhythms bring peace to his ears.

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Invective Against Rufinus, Book 2 After father Theodosius had conquered the Alpine invaders and defended Italy’s kingdoms, Heaven embraced him, placing him in the seat he deserved, and shone brighter as his star joined it. And now Roman rule was given into your care, Stilicho, as was the state’s summit. Theodosius entrusted both his sons’ majesty to you, and both courts’ armies.39 But savage crimes don’t allow for quiet, and throats that blood pollutes aren’t willing to go dry. Once more, Rufinus’s accursed wars began to set the world on fire, and his habitual upheavals disturbed the peace. Rufinus said to himself: “How shall I protect my fragile hope of survival? What trick can I use to thrust aside so many waves? Hatred oppresses me here, soldiers surround me there. Alas, what should I do? No forces succor me, nor any emperor’s affection. Emerging dangers rise up from all sides, and drawn swords glitter at my neck. What’s left except to drown everything in grief never seen before, and to drag innocent peoples along with my own downfall? I’m happy to die amid the world’s collapse. Universal destruction will console me for my death. I’m not afraid, I won’t retreat early: I won’t give up power till I give up my life.” Rufinus spoke these words. As if Aeolus loosed the chains from the winds, so he removed the barrier and poured forth peoples and opened the path for war. He spread destruction across the globe, distributing evil so no region would remain free of violence. 39 For this exaggerated claim, see volume introduction, Section 1.1 “Claudian’s Career.”

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Some people rushed across the fierce Danube’s frozen surface, and their chariot wheels smashed waters more used to oars. Others proceeded through the Caspian Gates,40 and Armenia’s snows, across an unexpected pass, and invaded the East’s riches. And now Cappadocia’s pastures 30 were burning, as was Mount Argaeus, father of swift horses. Now the deep Halys River ran red, nor could the Cilicians defend themselves on their forbidding mountains. Syria’s lovely expanses were devastated, and enemy warhorses trampled down the Orontes’ peaceful banks, accustomed before this to choruses and songs from happy crowds. 35 This was why Asia mourned. Gothic troops took Europe for their sport and spoil, right up to leafy Dalmatia’s boundaries. All the land which lies between the Pontus’s changeable currents and the Adriatic’s waves lay devastated, emptied of herds, abandoned by farmers. It resembled seething Libya, always baking in the sun, which human cultivation doesn’t know how to tame. Thessaly’s fields were ablaze. Mount Pelion fell silent as the shepherds fled. Fire devastated Emathia’s crops No one was left to mourn losses in Pannonia or Thrace’s pitiable walls or Mysia’s fields. The raiders came each year, and farmland lay open to their fury. Familiarity with these evils had removed the sense of shock. Alas! Great matters perished from such small causes. Rule sought and preserved with so much blood, which leaders’ countless labors had brought about, which Roman hands created over so many years— in the briefest moment, one cowardly traitor overturned it. There was also a city, Constantinople, said to be great Rome’s equal, which looked down upon Chalcedon’s facing sands. The nearby war’s terror didn’t rouse it, but the city saw shining torches coming nearer, raucous trumpets blaring,

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40 The Caspian Gates are likely the Darial Gorge at the base of Mount Kazbek between present-day Russia and Georgia.

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and spears aimed and launched straight for its roofs. From their posts, some watchmen oversaw the walls, others hurried to yoke ships together to defend the port.

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Yet fierce Rufinus rejoiced inside the besieged city and exulted at these evils. He looked down from a tall tower’s height at the shameful spectacles on the nearby battlefield. Young women walked in chains. A half-dead man sunk in the blue waves. Another fell as he ran, struck by a sudden wound.

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A third breathed out his last beneath the very gates. White hairs didn’t grant an old man mercy. Mothers’ breasts dripped with their children’s blood. Immense pleasure rose up within Rufinus, and he laughed often. His only regret was that he hadn’t killed them with his own two hands.

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Rufinus saw everything far and wide burning at his command, and he rejoiced at such crime. He didn’t deny that he loved the enemy. He boasted that their camps lay open to him alone, that only he was granted the ability to conduct diplomacy. Every time he went out to negotiate an unheard-of treaty, 75 associates mobbed him, armed bands of clients ringed him, obeying him as they marched under his private battle standards. Amid them, Rufinus tied a tawny hide around his breast, so he’d seem exactly like a barbarian. He faked the look by holding reins, an immense quiver, a resounding bow, 80 and his clothing clearly showed his loyalties. Though he directed both chariots and Roman justice,41 Rufinus felt no shame to assume the Goths’ disgusting habits and clothing, forsaking the toga, the Latins’ outstanding dress. Rome’s laws, held prisoner, grieved for their judge, who wore animal pelts. 85 How the faces in the crowd looked then! How they murmured in secret! For these wretched people were not even allowed to weep unpunished, or soothe their grief in conversation. They said: “How long will we bear this deadly yoke of slavery? What end will ever come to our harsh fate? Who will rescue us from such grief, or the empire’s 90

41 As praetorian prefect of the East.

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deadly whirlwind? The barbarians drive us on one side, Rufinus on the other. They deny us sea and land. The Goths have greatly devastated the countryside, but greater fear wanders within our walls. Alas! Your country is collapsing, Stilicho. Help us at last. Here for certain are your beloved children, your house; here auspices were first taken for your marriage.42 Here the court raised lucky torches for you at your wedding. We long for you! Come alone if you have to. Battles will cease once you’re spotted, and the greedy monster Rufinus’s madness will fall away.” Such storms harassed the disturbed East. But as soon as the West winds first banished winter, and departing snows began to lay the cliffs bare, Stilicho left Italy’s regions in tranquil peace. He roused both his armies and hurried toward the rising sun. He included both Gallic and Eastern troops in separate companies. Never had such forces come together under a single command, nor speakers of so many different languages. On one wing were curly-haired Armenian detachments, loose knots tying up their brightly colored clothing. On the other, fierce blond Gauls accompanied the army, men from the swift Rhône and slower Saône River. The Rhine’s whirlpools had tested some in their youth, and the Garonne’s waters nurtured others. This river runs backwards more rapidly each time the Ocean’s mighty wave pushes against it.43 They all had the same intention. Their hearts set aside their recent suffering. The defeated people weren’t hateful, nor the conquerors arrogant.44 Unrest persisted, civil war’s trumpets had recently sounded, and warlike anger was even then still hot. Yet they worked together for their outstanding leader’s favor.

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42 Stilicho married Serena at Constantinople in 384. See Stilicho’s Consulship 1.76–88 and In Praise of Serena 181–5. 43 Flowing through southwest France and northern Spain, the Garonne River features an unusual tidal bore, where the incoming tide flows up the river channel against the direction of the current. 44 Honorius pardoned those who had fought under Arbogast and Eugenius at the Frigidus River. See Theodosian Code 15.14.11–12 (18 May, 17 June 395); Zosimus 4.58.6.

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They say an army like this, drawn from the whole world, 120 followed Xerxes as one. They drained wandering rivers, their missiles shaded out the sun, their fleet passed through a mountain, and the marching soldiers didn’t touch the covered water.45 Stilicho had hardly crossed the Alps, and already the barbarians didn’t venture further. Trembling at his coming, they gathered 125 on a single plain in Thessaly, enclosed the pastureland, and surrounded it for safety. Then they used a double ditch with alternating stakes to fortify an insurmountable rampart. As a makeshift wall, they thrust forward wagons covered in slaughtered cattle hides.46 But from far off, Rufinus recoiled in bloodless horror. Paleness transformed his cheeks. He stood still, face frozen, pondering: should he run away, or surrender and seek pardon? Should he enroll himself among such enemies? What good now were his wealth, his vast pile of tawny gold, the purple columns propping up his atrium, those massive buildings that stretched up to the stars?

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Rufinus heard of Stilicho’s advance. He counted the days and measured his remaining life by the journey’s distance. His future destruction tortured him. He got no sleep. Often, out of his mind, he shook himself from bed. He was punished by his fear of punishment. 140 But he returned to his madness, and he resumed his monstrous talent for wrongdoing. He entered the wealthy palace’s holy doors, and mixed prayers and threats as he addressed Arcadius: “By your brother’s royal crown, by your divine father’s deeds, by the flower of your youth, I beseech you: save me from the sword! Let me escape Stilicho’s cruel hands. Gaul has conspired and come to kill me. Whatever land the furthest Ocean bounds, if any peoples wander beyond the distant Britons,

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45 When the Persian king Xerxes invaded Greece in 480 BCE, his army drank up the Echeidorus River and threatened to block out the sun with arrows at the battle of Thermopylae. He dug a canal through the Mount Athos peninsula and built a pontoon bridge over the Hellespont so that his soldiers’ feet did not touch the water. 46 Claudian describes the carrago, a Gothic tactic of circling the wagons for defense. See Vegetius Epitome of Military Science 3.10.

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they’re up in arms against me. They believe they need such forces just to capture me! So many troops come after my one head.

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Where did this thirst for blood come from? Stilicho arrogates the sky’s two halves for himself, both East and West, and he wants none to be his equal. He commands everything to submit! He rules Italy, coerces Africa, commands Spain and Gaul. 155 Neither the sun’s orbit, nor Nature itself can contain him. Now Stilicho alone has the resources Theodosius raised here, and those he received after the war. He doesn’t care to return what he’s once possessed.47 Stilicho indeed enjoys tranquil peace—his siege oppresses us! Why does he try to invade your region? Let him cross back over Illyria’s border, send back the Eastern forces, and divide both brothers’ arms equally. You should be heir not only to your father’s scepter, but to his army as well! But if you neglect to rescue me from death, and you make no effort to stop it, then I swear by the dead and by the stars: it won’t be my head only that rolls! Another man’s blood will mix with mine. I won’t go alone to the Underworld ghosts, nor will the conqueror laugh at my funeral without anxiety!” After Rufinus spoke, he dictated a treasonous letter, and swiftly sent a messenger to bring the unwilling emperor’s extorted words.48 Meanwhile Stilicho rejoiced as he drew nearer the enemy. Their ramparts stood with not much battlefield between them, and his voice fired up troops already eager to fight. The Armenians took the left wing, and he located the Gauls on the right. You would’ve seen froth heating horses’ reins, and clouds of dust rising up. Lances waved and lofted purple serpent banners far and wide, their wandering flight raging across the sky.49

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Steel’s brightness filled Thessaly, and the wise Centaur Chiron’s cave shone, as did the river that baby Achilles crawled around, 180 47 I.e. after the campaign against Arbogast and Eugenius. See the introduction to this poem and O&P 107–139. 48 Claudian exonerates Arcadius and attributes treason entirely to Rufinus. He offers similar justifications at Stilicho’s Consulship 1.112–15, 2.78–81. 49 For the serpent banners, see the note to Honorius’s Third Consulship 141.

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and Oeta’s grove. Cries thundered from snowy Mount Ossa, and the battle’s crash redoubled as it struck Olympus.50 The soldiers’ courage swelled. They burned to attack, caring little for their lives. Neither cliffs nor deep rivers would block their way. They’d overthrow everything in their headlong rush.

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If an army with courage like this had been sent into combat at that time, Greece wouldn’t have been betrayed and seen such slaughter. The Peloponnese would’ve flourished in war’s absence, and fields would still stand in Arcadia and Sparta. The enemy wouldn’t have burned Corinth, its double seas 190 wouldn’t have smoldered, nor would the Goths have dragged Athenian mothers in savage chains.51 That day could’ve put an end to our destruction, and taken away the causes of future crime. How great a triumph jealous Fortune snatched away! The royal order to retreat arrived amid the cavalry charge, 195 amid the very battle trumpets, and came to the ears of Stilicho under arms. He was stunned. Massive anger and grief overwhelmed the man at once. He was amazed that cowardly, dangerous Rufinus was yet allowed such power. His divided thoughts turned over uncertain outcomes. Should he carry through the battle, or walk away from his brave undertaking? 200 He burned to remedy Illyria’s losses, but he feared to oppose his orders. Obedience smashed the spurs of courage. Public benefit persuaded him on one side, fear of hatred on the other. At last, Stilicho indignantly raised his hands to the stars and spoke words from deep in his breast: 205 “Oh gods! Does Rome’s ruin still not satisfy you? Are you happy tearing this empire out by the roots? Have you resolved to destroy the ages in this single collapse? Have you tired of the human race? Then take the reins off the sea, and let it burst freely on the fields. Or let Phaethon, veering

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50 The Centaur Chiron raised the hero Achilles in his cave on Mount Pelion; he would grow up to fight in the Trojan war. Nearby Mount Ossa was the site where the Giants attempted to attack the gods on Mount Olympus. Claudian thereby associates Stilicho’s proposed assault on the Goths with the Gigantomachy. See the volume introduction, Section 1.2 “Mythology and Religion.” 51 For Alaric’s devastation of Greece, see Zosimus 5.5.5, 5.6.5.

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off his proper track, lose control of his wandering chariot’s reins.52 Why do this through Rufinus? I’m ashamed the world’s collapsing because of this man. I’m being called back from the middle of a war (oh, the heartache!), forced to lay my drawn sword down. Cities that will burn, walls that will fall, I swear by you: I yield so far as I’m concerned, and leave the wretched earth to its collapse. Turn your battle standards, commanders, let the Eastern troops go home. We must obey. Let the battle horns fall silent. Hold back your arrows. Spare the enemy before us—Rufinus orders it!” At these words, all the formations roared as one, louder than Italian waves striking Ceraunia, louder than the drenching Northwest wind’s thunder. The soldiers refused to be dismissed, and demanded the battle that had been seized from them. Both Eastern and Western troops defended their outstanding leader, and each force claimed him for itself. They competed in great love for him, their insubordination drew praise, and excited devotion in both camps. They were moved to cry out together: “Who strikes the naked blade from my hand, the javelin from my arm? Who orders me to unstring my bent bow? Who dares to impose laws on drawn swords? Once courage has been fired up, it doesn’t know how to quiet down. Now javelins thirsting for barbarian blood fly by themselves, and by itself my raging blade leads my hand, my sheath refuses a dry sword. I won’t put up with this! Will our dissension always benefit the Goths? Look! Civil war’s specter manifests once more. Why are you separating blood-related battle lines, Rufinus, Eagles once harmonious? We’re an indivisible body, and we’re conjoined. We’ll follow you, Stilicho, wherever you go. I’ll accompany you to Thule, condemned beneath the northern sky, or even as far as Libya’s burning sands. If you seek India’s waters and the Indian Ocean’s bays,

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52 See the volume introduction, Section 1.2 “Mythology and Religion”, for the Phaethon myth.

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I’ll come to drink the Hydaspes River, rich in gold. If you order me to tread the South Wind’s path, and the hidden banks where the Nile is born, I’ll turn my back on the rest of the world. My country’s wherever Stilicho pitches his tent.” Then their commander forbade them: “Stop, I ask you, hold back your eager hands. Let this menacing mass of hatred subside. Victory isn’t worth it, if it looks like I conquered for my own benefit. You, my faithful soldiers, once my comrades— you must go.” Stilicho said no more, and turned his path, like a lion who withdraws empty-mouthed, eager to return. Bands of shepherds push him aside with torches and many spears. His mane hunches down, he shades his lowered eyes, and his sad roar splits the fearful woods. The Eastern legions raised a mighty cry as they saw themselves separated and left on their own. Freely flowing tears drenched their helmets. Gasps halted their constricted voices, and shook their breastplates’ tight fittings. They cried out: “Alas! We’ve been betrayed, forbidden to follow our beloved commander. Best of leaders, do you despise your own men’s hands, which war goddess Bellona so often proved victorious? Are we so worthless? Why is the West, which deserves you as its ruler, so much luckier? What joy can we take in seeing our country again at last, our beloved children, or tending our treasured households? There’s nothing sweet without you, Stilicho. Now we must survive that tyrant Rufinus’s fearful storm. I bet he’s readying unspeakable treachery. He’ll hand us over as slaves to disgusting Huns or ruthless Alans. Our strength isn’t all gone, and we don’t lack the skill to wield a sword. Though you may remain in the West, under the setting sun, yet you’ll always be my leader, Stilicho. You’ll know our loyalty, even when you’re gone.

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We’ll slaughter a victim long owed to you. Our promised sacrifice will appease you from far off.”53 The lamenting soldiers left Thessaly’s shores, and came to the Macedonian border, and entered Thessalonica’s walls. Deeply hidden grief stuck in their hearts, 280 and fed their silent anger for revenge. They looked for the right place to exercise their hatred, a fitting time for killing. Among so many young men, not one could be found whose careless words betrayed his menacing heart. What posterity, what future age won’t marvel 285 that such a huge crowd kept silent about its plan? Or that they covered up so great a deed, or that their minds’ passion didn’t burst forth, even as they chatted on the march and drank together? The mighty army observed the same self-control, and the ranks kept their secret. They rushed over Mount Haemus, left Rhodope behind, and headed through the Thracian highlands, until they came to Heraclea, the city named for Hercules.54

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Rufinus learned that Stilicho had stepped down, and that his own troops were drawing closer. He held his head high in triumph, thought he was entirely safe, and burned to seize the royal scepter. 295 He shouted to rouse his client conspirators: “We’ve won! We’ve kicked out Stilicho! Now we’ve got an easy path to the throne. We’ve nothing to fear from enemies. Who could beat me now, defended by such a great army, when Stilicho feared to conquer me all alone? Who could withstand my forces, when he didn’t defeat me unarmed? 300 Go on now, Stilicho, from a safe distance, plot a death for me you won’t achieve, so long as the greatest span of earth divides us, and the Ocean’s waves roar between us. So long as I’m alive, you won’t be permitted to cross the Alpine ridges. Try and hit me with a javelin from there! Go look for weapons, 305 fierce Stilicho, which could reach from Italy to my Constantinople’s walls. 53 The Eastern legions promise to murder Rufinus as if he were a ritual victim sacrificed for Stilicho. 54 Heraclea Perinthus, modern Marmara Ereğlisi, 90 km west of Constantinople.

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Don’t memories of earlier attempts deter you, or their examples? Whoever tried to come against me and boasted he escaped my hands? I thrust you from the center of the world, even as I stripped you of your mighty army. Now it’s party time, my friends, time to get ready massive gifts, and gold for my new legions.55 Tomorrow the sun will rise prosperously on my wishes: the emperor himself will desire what he once refused, and he’ll be forced to assign part of his kingdom to me. For me alone it’ll happen: I’ll dodge both the private citizen’s role and the tyrant’s reproach.” After his speech, Rufinus called together an infamous council of villains, who thrived on constant plundering. One cause made them Rufinus’s allies—they considered nothing forbidden. Their crimes forged their bond of friendship. Already celebrating, they promised themselves other people’s wives. They bargained with each other, all in vain, which cities each one would seek, which ones they’d gobble up.

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Night began to put human labors to rest, deep in its bosom, and sleep spread its lazy wings. 325 Anxieties had long tormented Rufinus’s wretched mind. He slipped into sleep. His soul had barely begun to rest, when right away he saw dire spirits mocking him— the men he’d put to death. One shone brighter than the others and seemed to say to him: “Get out of bed! Why brood anxiously 330 over so many matters? This day will bring peace to the state and an end to your strivings. You’ll return, higher than the whole crowd, and the happy people’s hands shall carry you home.” The ghost sang riddles. The omen’s hidden meaning deceived Rufinus, and he didn’t grasp the prophecy: his head would be fixed on a pike. 335 Already the Morning Star’s rays were grazing Haemus’s peak, and the sun rushed more than usual, hurrying on its swift chariot, eager to see Rufinus’s death at last. He jumped out of bed, and ordered the palace, which could hold a vast crowd, 55 Imperial forces were used to receiving large cash gifts (donatives) upon the accession of a new emperor.

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to glitter with royal decorations for the banquet. His own image would be struck on cursed gold, which he’d distribute after achieving his desired wish.

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Rufinus went to salute the troops returning from the battle. He already swelled like a monarch, he set himself higher than the emperor, and he gently tossed his head with effeminate gestures. 345 He was certain of his rule, as if imperial purple had long since clothed his body, and a crown with shining gems encircled his temples. By a narrow part of the city, heading toward the south, the Hebdomon plain lay open.56 The sea flanked the rest, and only let a slender path separate it. Here the avenging army, armor shining, set out its formations. The infantry stood fast on the left wing. From the other side, the cavalry struggled as their horses demanded to push forward, and held the bits to restrain them. Crests nodded fiercely from other soldiers’ helmets, and they rejoiced as trembling colors glittered from their shoulder caparisons, which steel shaped and clothed. The flexible plates, joined skillfully, came to life by covering soldiers’ limbs.57

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It was a terrifying sight! You’d think iron statues moved, and living metal figures breathed. Their horses wore similar armor. 360 Their ironclad foreheads menaced, and they lifted ironclad shoulders, protected against wounds. Each person stood in their own place. They were a joy that frightened viewers, a gorgeous terror. On their banners, multi-colored dragons, coils loosened, grew tame as the wind died down. 365 Emperor Arcadius saluted the honored companies first. Rufinus followed, trying to hoodwink everyone with his usual tricky speech, praising the soldiers’ loyal fighting arms. He called each one by name and announced that their sons 56 The Hebdomon (modern Bakırköy) was a seaside suburb of Constantinople, along the Via Egnatia. 57 Ammianus Marcellinus 16.10.7–8 offers a similar description of troops who marched in the triumph of the emperor Constantius (337–61 CE). These included cavalry in full mail (clibanarii) and troops carrying serpent banners.

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and fathers were safe. Meanwhile, they eagerly made many demands, 370 lying just like him. They circled widely around his back, and began to join the ends of their lines together. Rufinus didn’t notice as they ringed him. The space around him began to shrink as the wings closed together and the men conjoined their shields. Little by little they curved to surround him. A hunter 375 likewise uses an enormous net to surround green groves, and the fisherman drives astonished fish to shore. The sea’s despoiler pulls in the net’s fine-spun turnings, and draws tight its gaping mouth. The soldiers shut out all others. Rufinus, all excited, didn’t yet know he was surrounded. He seized the tardy emperor’s robe and strongly rebuked him: he should get up on the high tribunal already and declare him the sharer of his scepter and his comrade in office. Then the soldiers suddenly drew their swords. Gaïnas’s mighty voice roared from above:58 “Worst of all men! Did you hope, Rufinus, you could even fit slaves’ chains on us? Don’t you know where I’ve returned from? Am I really going to listen as your peon— I who’ve restored rights and liberty to others? Twice we won a civil war, twice we shattered the Alps. So many wars have taught us never to serve a tyrant.”

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Rufinus froze. He’d no hope of escape. A crop of iron points glittered all around him. Hampered from left and right, he stuck fast, stunned by the ring of men brandishing swords. He was like a wild beast, kidnapped just now from its ancestral mountains, exiled from its lofty groves, 395 and condemned to the arena games. The frenzied animal makes a charge. The opposing hunter cries out to encourage it. He drops to one knee and aims his hunting spear. The animal fears the sound. It arches its neck to look at the amphitheater benches. The huge crowd’s noise stuns it. One soldier, more inclined to daring, jumped out from the ranks. 400 He drew his sword and fiercely wounded Rufinus, while assaulting him 58 For Gaïnas (PLRE 1.379) as the commander who gave the order for the murder, and for Rufinus’s dismemberment, see Zosimus 5.7.4–6. Claudian does not name him in this poem. Gaïnas was a Gothic commander recruited by Theodosius; he would go on to overthrow Rufinus’s successor Eutropius. See Eutropius introduction.

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in words: “You boast that you’ve thrust Stilicho aside, but he strikes you through my right hand. He’s gone, but with my sword, he pierces your guts.” Thus the soldier spoke and thrust a deserved blow through Rufinus’s flank. That man’s hand was lucky, that first drained such evil blood 405 and measured out vengeance for an exhausted world! Soon everyone’s spears dug at Rufinus’s corpse, and they tore apart his trembling limbs. One body warmed so many spears. They thought it shameful to go home with weapons dry. Some ripped apart Rufinus’s greedy face and eyes still living, 410 others slashed his arms and tore them off. One man sliced off his feet, another wrenched his shoulder from its socket, a third broke up his shattered back’s curves. One by one, they uncovered his liver, his heart’s vessels, his lung’s heaving lobes. There wasn’t space enough for all their anger, nor room 415 for all their hatred. They could barely let him go once murder ceased. Weapons spread throughout his corpse. Mount Cithaeron ran red like this when the Maenads dragged Pentheus, or when virgin Diana suddenly turned Actaeon into a horned stag, as he caught sight of her, and handed him over to his frenzied Molossian hounds.59 420 Did you hope, Fortune, that this killing would heal your crimes, and through this punishment did you strive to balance the favor you’d wrongly shown Rufinus? You paid back thousands of deaths with this one. Come now, share Rufinus with the lands he terrorized. Give his head to the Thracians. The Greeks deserve his trunk. What can be given to the rest? Individual limbs won’t be enough to make up for all the murdered peoples. Safe at last, the crowd emptied from the city walls and surged forward. Age didn’t restrain old men, nor modesty hold back young women. Wives widowed by Rufinus rushed out to take joy in revenge, along with mothers who’d lost children. Eagerly they abused his corpse. They loved to trample

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59 The narrator compares Rufinus to two mythological victims who came into conflict with the gods and were punished by being torn apart by their loved ones. Pentheus denied that Bacchus was a god. He was punished by being torn apart by the Maenads, maddened women who worshipped the god, including his own mother Agave and his aunts. Actaeon accidentally caught sight of the naked goddess Diana as she bathed. She punished him by turning him into a stag, and his hunting dogs tore him apart.

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his lacerated limbs, to tread on him, dye their feet in his blood and leave footprints. They burned no less to hurl rock after rock and smash his monstrous head, which nodded from a javelin point, as they headed back to the walls in the procession that he’d earned. They made a game out of Rufinus’s right hand: it wandered around begging money, and paid for his greedy spirit’s crimes through this terrible recompense. They forced the fingers to move, manipulating the sinews to imitate a living man’s grasping.60

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Everyone should abandon trust in high position, 440 and learn the gods are deceitful, their powers treacherous. Rufinus’s hand was ready to hold an imperial scepter, and the nobles had so often bent to kiss it as his suppliants.61 For a long time, the hand lay unburied, torn from his wretched body, and continued to demand ghostly tribute after his death. 445 Whoever carries his head high from too much luck, let him look upon Rufinus, scattered and trodden on— this man who built pyramids for himself, and a mausoleum that outdid all other temples, as an ornament for his departed spirit. Rufinus thought he’d be swathed in imperial purple: now his naked body’s food for birds. Look, there he lies, the man who owned the world now lacks a small patch of earth. Stray dust covers only parts of him, so often buried but never fully. Heaven sensed Rufinus’s death, earth removed the criminal burden, and the stars breathed once more. His ghost weighed down Hell’s lake. Father Aeacus shuddered and Cerberus barked, harassing him even as he entered.62 Then the victims’ souls killed during his savage rule pressed around him. Roaring threateningly, they dragged him to

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60 Jerome Letters 60.16.1 and Philostorgius 11.3 both relate how the soldiers set Rufinus’s head on a pole and used his hand as a prop for simulated begging. 61 The nobles similarly kiss Eutropius’s hand at their morning greeting (salutatio); see Eutropius 2.64–67. 62 Aeacus was one of the three judges of the Underworld, along with Minos and Rhadamanthus (mentioned in the following lines). Cerberus was the guard dog of the Underworld, whose job was usually to keep the dead from escaping.

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the dark judge’s urn:63 just as disturbed bees swarm together against the shepherd’s face as he plunders their sweet honey. They beat their wings and aim their stingers, girding for battle behind a slender rock’s defense. They defend their beloved pumice crevices, their fissured home, and the swarm turns to shield the honeycombs. There is a place in Hell where Cocytus and Phlegethon mingle together their unlucky waters. Both riverbeds are hideous: Cocytus turns waves of tears, Phlegethon fire. A tower rises up between the rivers, closer to the flames. Solid adamant reinforces its left side, which bathes in fire. It cuts through Cocytus’s waters on the right, weeping grimly, and it too mourns, swept by the flood of tears. The generations of people come here after their lives are done. No distinction, no honor conferred by Fate remains here. The needy commoner jostles the king, shorn now of his empty title.

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Distinguished on his high throne, Minos the judge investigates the charges, and separates the guilty from the just. When he meets people who refuse to confess, he soon hands them over to his brother Rhadamanthus, right beside him, who whips them cruelly. When at length Minos has examined thoroughly 480 the course of their deeds in the world above, and all their actions, he matches their punishment to their merits, and forces them to endure a mute beast’s shackles. He sends violent men’s souls into bears, thieves into wolves, and puts liars into foxes. The sluggard who wished to laze in luxury, always shiftless, weighed down by wine, overdoing sex— Minos thrusts his soul into a disgusting pig’s fat limbs. The chatterer used to revealing secrets, who gossiped more than he ought, is carried off to dwell underwater with the fish, where eternal silence will balance out

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63 Minos draws a lot for each dead person from an enormous urn and then proceeds to judge their cases.

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excessive talk. When sinners have completed various sentences in a thousand shapes, and washed at last in Lethe, Minos calls them back to begin once more in human form. While Minos was resolving cases, the harsh business of Hell’s Forum, and was investigating former criminals in order of arrival, 495 he caught sight of Rufinus far off and surveyed him with his stern gaze. His throne shook to its base as he spoke: “The gods’ plague has come here, the insatiable inundation of gold! You dare everything for ready money! And you sell justice relentlessly—for me, that’s the greatest crime. 500 You treacherously roused the Northern peoples to war. Thanks to countless slaughters, Lake Avernus’s gulf narrowed and Charon the ferryman’s exhausted from poling full boats!64 You madman, are you going to deny what’s plain to all? Look! Your stains are burned into your hideous breast, and your vice’s image 505 is fixed there. Your crimes can’t cover themselves. I want to inflict every type of torture upon you:65 a boulder will loom over you and threaten to fall, a swift wheel whirl you, water rush away to trick you and fool your parching thirst, even as your mouth floats in the stream. The vulture will abandon Tityos, 510 its meal, and head over to linger forever on your guts. Though all the others who suffer these tortures—how small a fraction of your crimes they committed, Rufinus! Did Salmoneus who dared the thunderbolt ever do anything like you, or Tantalus’s boastful tongue, or Tityos who sinned with forbidden love? 515 Gather up all their deeds, you’ll still outdo their number. What punishment could fit such crimes? What can I find at last that equals them all, when even the individual deeds defy a penalty? Take this disgrace to the dead away from the crowd of ghosts.

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64 Lake Avernus, a volcanic crater in south Italy, was a mythological entry point to the Underworld. Charon ferried the dead across the Styx River. 65 Minos catalogues the tortures of mythological sinners. Sisyphus was condemned to push a boulder up a cliff; Jupiter struck Salmoneus with a thunderbolt after he pretended to be the supreme god. For the others, see note to Proserpina 2.335–337.

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It’s enough just to catch sight of him. Now spare my eyes, and cleanse Hell’s halls. Drive him with your whips across Erebus and the Styx, order him to the empty Abyss, below the Titans’ shadows and Tartarus’s depths, and our Chaos, where dark Night’s foundations hide. Sunk there down deep, he’ll gasp, while Heaven turns the stars, while the winds strike the shores.”

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6 PANEGYRIC ON HONORIUS’S FOURTH CONSULSHIP

Introduction Claudian performed this poem in January 398, two years after his previous panegyric on Honorius’s third consulship. His success at that earlier occasion had evidently endeared him to the court, as this poem is three times longer than the earlier one. Yet the young emperor, now 13 years old, still had no more accomplishments in his own right than he had had two years before. Claudian accordingly focuses on the boy’s ancestry, upbringing, education, and relationship to the gods. The centerpiece of the poem is Theodosius’s lecture on kingship, similar to the prose speech On Kingship performed by the Greek orator Synesius in the following year for Honorius’s brother Arcadius. The advice given in both speeches is entirely conventional, and both authors likely drew on the tradition of such speeches represented for us by works such as Pliny the Younger’s Panegyric on the Emperor Trajan and Dio Chrysostom’s Oration on Kingship.1 The poem opens with a description of Honorius’s consular procession (1–17),2 then narrates selected episodes from the career of Honorius’s grandfather, the Elder Theodosius (18–40; see Glossary). This Spanish aristocrat, father of the emperor Theodosius the Great, served as a general under the emperor Valentinian I (reigned 364–375). The Elder Theodosius campaigned against the Picts in 367–9 and against the Alamanni in 370.3 In 372, the Mauretanian nobleman Firmus revolted against the Roman governor of the province of Africa. Valentinian sent the Elder Theodosius to

1 See Ware 2013. As Cameron (1970: 321–323) observes, interaction between Claudian and Synesius is unlikely, given the mutual hostility of the courts they worked for. 2 Claudian describes other consular processions at Manlius Theodorus 276ff and Stilicho’s Consulship 2.396ff. 3 Ammianus Marcellinus 27.8.3, 28.5.15.

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suppress the revolt, which he completed in 374.4 Firmus’s brother Gildo remained loyal, meanwhile, and so received Firmus’s estates (see Gildo). Claudian then turns to focus on the career of Honorius’s father, Theodosius the Great (41–121). He highlights the emperor’s repulse of Gothic invaders (49–71), who had been active in Thrace, Moesia, and Pannonia at the time of his accession (Zosimus 4.24.4). Theodosius’s next accomplishment was his defeat of the would-be usurpers Maximus and Eugenius (72–121).5 Through an indirect reference, the poet alludes to the murder of the emperor Valentinian II (reigned 375–392), likely by Arbogast (75–76). Theodosius’s most significant claim to imperial legitimacy was his connection to this previous emperor, which he had gained by marrying Valentinian’s sister Galla in 387. Valentinian’s death was accordingly a formative moment for Theodosius’s regime. The poet then narrates Honorius’s birth and childhood, foretold by good omens throughout the empire (121–168). He then proceeds to a particular sign of the gods’ favor, the weather omen accompanying Theodosius’s elevation of Honorius to Augustus in January 393 (168–211).6 This moment occurred as Theodosius departed for his campaign against Arbogast and Eugenius, which he completed in fall 394. Before the emperor departs, he lectures his son on ruling the empire (212–418). This lecture enunciates a number of traditional arguments. In contrast to the Persian monarchy, Roman emperors rely on virtue, not ancestry (211–226). Emperors must control their vices, such as anger, desire, and lust, as they can only rule others if they first rule themselves (227–268). The emperor’s actions always become matters of public knowledge, and so he cannot hope to keep his vices secret (269–275). He can best protect himself through acting dutifully and gaining his people’s affection, while a tyrant will always be the victim of fear. The emperor rules best by example, demonstrating to the people how he subordinates himself to his own laws (276–302). According to his father, Honorius must remember that he is ruling Romans, the people who themselves rule a world empire, not the Eastern peoples whom they characterized as servile. Romans have traditionally risen up against tyrants, such as the Tarquins, or condemned the memory of tyrannical emperors such as Nero. Trajan, remembered as the “best” emperor after Augustus, should provide the example for Honorius to follow (303–320). As the supreme military commander, the emperor must master

4 Ammianus Marcellinus 29.5; Zosimus 4.16. 5 See the volume introduction, Section 1.1 “Claudian’s Career.” 6 Marcellinus Chronicle for the year 393 also narrates this omen.

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military tactics, drill his troops, and keep them accustomed to endurance (320–352). Honorius interrupts his father’s lecture and begs him to take him with him on campaign so that he can put his father’s military principles into action (352–369). Theodosius compares his son to Alexander the Great, who similarly begged his father Philip to take him on campaign. Honorius, however, must remain to watch over the empire in his father’s absence (369–395). He should study the great examples from the Roman past (396–418).7 A simile compares Theodosius to an old sea captain who teaches navigation to his son (419–427). Now a star, Theodosius looks down upon the earth that his son rules so competently (428–438). The focus then shifts briefly to Stilicho’s mission to the Germanic peoples on the Rhine frontier, an episode for which Claudian is our only extant source (439–459). Stilicho then makes an expedition to Greece in 397, following on his earlier unsuccessful expedition in 395 (see Rufinus 2.171–256). He confines Alaric’s Goths on Mount Pholoë in Arcadia; Claudian tactfully forbears to mention that Alaric then escaped the blockade (460–487). Claudian resumes praise of Honorius’s justice, which features the vigorous uprooting of corruption (488–517). The young emperor’s appearance recalls his father Theodosius, and he demonstrates his complete mastery of martial skills, especially horsemanship (518–564). The poet then returns to the consular procession with which the poem opened.8 Honorius resembles the statue of an Egyptian god paraded in Memphis (565–583), and his opulent attire receives praise (584–610). He performs the traditional ritual of freeing a slave to signify the liberty enjoyed by the Roman people (611–618). The narrator recalls Theodosius’s victories during Honorius’s earlier consulships and gives the example of his campaign against Odotheus and the Gruthungians (619–637). The general Promotus had defeated the Gruthungians in 386; while Promotus was legally subordinate to his emperor, Theodosius in fact had little to do with this victory.9 As in Honorius’s Third Consulship (83–92), Claudian sustains the narrative that Theodosius conquered under his son’s auspices. He closes the poem in a similar fashion, with a prediction that Honorius will achieve his own triumphs, marry, and conquer the world (638–656). The mention 7 Discussed in the volume introduction, Section 1.3 “Roman History and Legend.” 8 See Charlet 1991: 43. Barr (1981: 89) has suggested that the scene could represent Honorius’s triumphal procession into Milan in late 394 to celebrate Theodosius’s victory at the Frigidus, also narrated at Honorius’s Third Consulship 126–141. 9 See Zosimus 4.35, 4.38–39; Marcellinus Chronicle for the year 386.

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of Honorius’s marriage to Stilicho’s daughter Maria, which could have occurred as early as the following month, previews Claudian’s next set of poems, the Fescennines and Epithalamium for the couple. Though the bride’s name was likely known to the audience already, Claudian teasingly leaves a series of riddles in the final lines. Birt (1892 ad loc.) observed that the words Marius (642), “husband” (mariti, 646), and “sea” (mari, 648) all point to the name of Honorius’s intended.

Honorius’s Fourth Consulship Once more the year wears royal auspices, and enjoys its familiar court even more proudly. The fasces return and suffer no delay in private households, and exult that emperor Honorius is now consul. Do you see how the foremost generals and powerful lawmakers take up senatorial garb? How the legion has changed their outfits, and marches forth, closely wrapped in their togas? They briefly put aside battle standards and follow Romulus’s banners. The Eagles yield to the consul’s lictors, toga-wearing soldiers laugh, and the court shines amid the camp. The emperor’s Palatine entourage surrounds war goddess Bellona herself. Now she’s taken off her helmet and shield, and put on a consular robe, her shoulders ready to carry the holy curule chair. War god Mars, don’t be ashamed that your peaceful hand is carrying laurel-wreathed axes, or that you’ve exchanged your glittering breastplate for a Latin toga, so long as your iron chariot’s parked, and your horses play amid the Po River’s pastures. The Ulpian clan10 wasn’t unworthy of respect, nor known just recently for warfare. This Spanish house spread royal crowns throughout the world. No trivial stream merited such a dynasty: the Ocean was their cradle. The future rulers of earth and sea fittingly sprung from the world’s measureless originator.11 Your grandfather Theodosius came from here. As he raged after his combats in the north, Africa added victory laurels

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10 The emperor Trajan (see Glossary) was a member of the Ulpian clan. Theodosius’s family traced their ancestry back to Trajan; see Aurelius Victor Epitome 48.1. 11 Romans imagined that the Ocean encircled the entire world.

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won from the Massylians. He made camp on the Scottish snows, and endured Libya’s midday heat while wearing his helmet. Terror of the Moors, conqueror of the British coast, he devastated north and south alike. What good did eternal frost do these people, or the skies’ chill, 30 or their unknown sea? The Orkney Islands dripped with Saxon blood, Pictish gore heated Thule, and cold Ireland wept over masses of dead Scots. What heat could stop a brave man? He rushed through the Ethiopians’ wasteland, and ringed Mount Atlas with unfamiliar troops. 35 He drank from virgin Minerva’s Lake Triton, saw the Gorgons’ bedchamber dripping poison, and laughed at the Hesperides’ plain branches—legend had enriched them with gold. He burned Juba’s palace, his sword halted Firmus the Moor’s rage, and he destroyed Bocchus’s ancient retreat. 40 But your father far surpassed your grandfather’s glory. He brought the Ocean beneath his scepter, and made the sky’s border enclose his realm, all the space from Cadiz to the Tigris, and between the Nile and Don Rivers. Yet he acquired these territories through countless victories, not as his inheritance, nor through bribery. Rather, his courage made him a worthy choice. Of its own accord, the imperial purple offered itself in supplication. He was the only man asked who deserved to rule. Once barbarians rushed over grieving Mount Rhodope, and shook it deeply. The north emptied out and poured its peoples over us in a confounding whirlwind. The Danube River spewed forth battles all along its banks, Gothic wagons crushed great Moesia, and blond armies covered the Thracian fields. The affliction was universal. Everything tottered from the blow, or would soon collapse. One man stood fast against so many deaths, extinguished the torches, restored their fields to farmers, and rescued cities from the jaws of death. Rome’s name wouldn’t have even been a shadow, if your father hadn’t taken up this mass that threatened to collapse. 126

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His sure hand relieved the troubled ship from universal wreck. The world’s order would’ve been destroyed, as when the crazy chariot dragged Phaethon far and wide.12 The day raged and rays too close scorched earth and sea. The Sun ran to his fierce13 horses and gave his familiar call. After they recognized their master’s voice, a better ruler restored the world’s harmony and framework. He regained control of the chariot and set a limit to the fires. Just so, the East was handed over to Theodosius and kept safe. But the empire’s other part was not handed to him: he took it twice by force, and won it twice through danger.

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Two tyrants broke forth, committing various crimes in the western regions. Fierce Britain sent forth Maximus, while the German outlaw Arbogast took Eugenius as his personal servant.14 Both men dared the unspeakable, and both were drenched 75 in their innocent master’s blood.15 The novelty of it persuaded Maximus to dare his deed, and his example made Arbogast cautious next time around. Maximus was frantic to revolt, Arbogast planned ahead and looked for safety. One dissipated his forces, the other carefully collected them. One ran around everywhere, the other shut himself in a fortress. 80 They were different, but death made them the same. Neither could avoid disgrace, and both fell amid flying spears. Both lost their exalted bearing, had their imperial insignia torn away, and so returned to their ordinary appearances. Hands shackled behind their backs, they lowered their necks to the executioner’s readied sword, 85 and they begged for pardon and their lives. Oh, their lack of shame! Such close ranks had just recently moved at their nods, the uncertain world had just hung in their balance, and they didn’t fall as enemies to a conqueror, but as criminals to a judge. Theodosius’s voice

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See the volume introduction, Section 1.2 “Mythology and Religion.” Reading torvis, referring to the horses. Charlet reads torvus, which would refer to the Sun. See the volume introduction, Section 1.1 “Claudian’s Career.” Maximus defeated the emperor Gratian in 383, while Arbogast murdered the emperor Valentinian II in 392.

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condemned as defendants the tyrants he pursued in battle. 90 Both tyrants’ commanders perished: of his own accord, one jumped from his ship into the waves, another killed himself with his own sword.16 The Alps hold one man’s corpse, the sea the other. The avenger bestowed this consolation on his slaughtered brothers: both murderers fell. A sacrificial victim of equal status appeased the emperors’ shades. 95 He gave these offerings to their graves, and the blood they were owed placated the two young men’s purple-clad ghosts.17 These triumphs confirmed justice, and taught that the gods are present. Let the coming ages learn that there’s nothing a dutiful man can’t conquer, and nothing’s safe for evildoers. 100 Theodosius got there before the rumor did and announced his own arrival, and made a long journey without blowing his cover. He struck down both tyrants without warning, and left the closed mountain passes like open plains. Pile up mighty boulders, raise up towers, surround yourself with rivers, hide behind massive forests, 105 combine Mount Garganus and the snowy Apennines, mixed in with the Alpine cliffs, throw in Mount Haemus, and the Caucasus’s crags, pile Mount Pelion on Ossa: you’ll never make a bulwark for crime, and the avenger will get through. All obstacles drop away before a better cause. 110 Yet Theodosius didn’t forget citizens’ rights, nor fiercely savage his surrendering opponents, nor choose to brag over a defeated enemy. He was kindly to prayers, overflowing with dutifulness, and he rarely punished. He didn’t bring anger into peacetime: after battle, hatred ended when fighting did. It helped to be captured 115 when Theodosius defeated you: chains which would’ve brought bitter slavery benefitted many of the defeated. He distributed great wealth, eagerly handed out offices, and was happy to turn people’s fates to good. And so they loved him, his powerful strength came from devoted soldiers, and their loyalty to his children long endured. 120

16 Andragathius, Maximus’s cavalry commander, jumped from his ship and drowned at the battle of Poetovio (Sozomen 7.13–14; Zosimus 4.47.1). Arbogast committed suicide after the battle at the Frigidus River (Zosimus 4.58.6). 17 The half-brothers Gratian and Valentinian II, sons of the emperor Valentinian (reigned 364–375).

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From this origin, Honorius, you were nobly born, given life along with your majesty, and you endured none of the commoner’s pollution. Your palace admitted everyone, but produced you alone of its own accord, and you grew up fortunate in your father’s imperial purple.18 Profane clothing never soiled your limbs; they rested in holy folds of fabric. Spain’s gold-bearing waters brought forth your father, while the Bosporus rejoiced in raising you. Your origins arose on the West’s threshold, but the Dawn’s land was your nurse. The world’s two sides competed for such a child, and both claimed you for their own citizen. Hercules’s and Bacchus’s glory upholds Thebes, while Latona’s Delos sticks to Apollo’s birth, and Crete boasts that little Jupiter crawled on it. The region that gave the world your divinity is better than Delos, and more famous than Cretan Dicte’s coasts. Narrow shores wouldn’t have been enough for our lord, nor would Mount Cynthus’s inhospitable rocks, a hard cradle, harm your limbs.19

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Your mother rested on gold, surrounded by gems, as she gave birth to you on a Tyrian purple couch. Ritual cries resounded through 140 the palace at your holy birth. What proofs there were then of your future! Such bird songs, so many flights across the sky! How the prophets talked then! The horned god Ba’al Hammon broke his silence for you, as did Delphi, long since quiet. The Persian Magi sang of you, the Etruscan augurs felt your presence, 145 and the Babylonians shuddered while examining the stars. The old Chaldaean astrologers were stunned, and the Cumaean caves, the wild Sibyl’s temple, thundered once more. Cybele’s Corybantes didn’t circle you, clashing bronze, as you were born;20 rather, your troops stood all around in their shining armor. 150 Infant Honorius was all the more imperial when surrounded by battle standards. He sensed the helmets worshipping him, and he cried fiercely in reply to the trumpets.

18 Honorius was born while his father Theodosius was already emperor, while his older brother Arcadius had been born before his father’s accession. 19 Claudian lists the traditional birthplaces of four gods and heroes. 20 A reference to Jupiter’s birth, which these divinities attended.

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The same day gave you life and rule. You were carried forth from your cradle as a consul, and your name was inscribed on the Fasti as soon as you received it. The year that brought you forth was given to you.21 Your mother dressed her little boy herself in a consul’s attire, and taught you to crawl to your first curule chair. You grew up adored, held to sacred breasts, in the goddesses’ immortal bosoms. Often Diana hung up her Maenalian bow and her huntress’s quiver, as honor for you in your youth. You often played with Minerva’s shield, and wandered without worry all over her golden aegis, and fearlessly handled her tamed serpents. Even back then the queen would often veil your head, as her husband rejoiced. Hurrying to fulfill your wishes, she gave you your crown in anticipation. Then she lifted you in her gentle arms, and held you out to your mighty father for a kiss. Your offices weren’t delayed; from being a Caesar, you became an Augustus, made equal with your brother right away.22 Never did the gods exhort us more surely, never were heaven’s omens so clear and present. A storm had wrapped the daylight in dark clouds, and a south wind had gathered heavy rain. But soon, when the soldiers had lifted you up and shouted as usual, the sun dispersed the clouds. You received your scepter, and the world its daylight, at the same moment.23 Freed from darkness, the Bosporus could see Chalcedon on its other side. Nor did only nearby places shine brightly, but all Thrace shrugged off and pushed away its clouds. Pangaea shone, and unaccustomed sunbeams sparkled on the Sea of Azov. It wasn’t the north wind or a hotter sun that banished clouds: this was the light of your rule. A prophetic brightness

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21 Honorius was born 9 September 384, in the consulship of Richomer and Clearchus; his first consulship would not in fact begin until January 386. 22 Arcadius had been an Augustus since 383; Honorius was made an Augustus in January 393, immediately before Theodosius’s departure for campaign. 23 For the comparison of the new consul to the sun, see O&P 3.

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covered everything, and Nature smiled upon your serenity. Your marveling people also saw a bold star appear, in broad daylight, not to be doubted, nor shining faintly 185 with a dull trail, but as bright as the Plowman constellation.24 Its fire showed forth, a guest in the sky at an unfamiliar time, and it could be recognized when the moon was concealed. Either it was your mother, the empress Flacilla, or perhaps your divine grandfather, the Elder Theodosius, shining forth, or the bright stars hurried to see you, 190 and the sun gave way and allowed them to share the sky. It was clear what these signs foretold. Ascanius’s future power shone forth for him, when a sudden light burned harmlessly on his hair, and prophetic brightness poured down from his Trojan head and wreathed his temples.25 But heavenly flames lit up as your omens, Honorius. Young Jupiter likewise went from his cave in Mount Ida to stand in heaven’s citadel, now his dominion, and received from Nature the gods as his subjects. His cheeks were not yet sprouting peach fuzz, nor was his hair that would one day shake heaven flowing down his neck. His inexperienced arm next learned to hurl the thunderbolt and split the clouds.

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The omen made your father happier. Proud that his sons had equal power, he returned, supported by you two, and he embraced you, resplendent in a familial chariot. 205 The twin Spartan Dioscuri, Leda’s sons, sit the same way with their father, highest Jupiter. In each one shines aspects of his brother, in each his sister.26 Their matching golden cloaks unfurl; their starry hair is the same. Confusing them pleases Thundering Jupiter,

24 Boötes, the Plowman constellation, contains seven stars. These include Arcturus, the fourthbrightest star in the sky, which may justify translations of quantus that refer to the star’s size and brightness. 25 Ascanius was the son of Aeneas, the mythical founder of Roman civilization. In Virgil’s Aeneid (2.671–704), fire surrounds his head to signify his destiny. 26 Leda’s daughters by her husband Tyndareus were Clytemnestra and Helen, the most beautiful woman of Greek mythology.

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and her ignorance pleases their unsure mother too. The Eurotas River can’t distinguish between its own nurslings. As the palace welcomed you back, your father spoke with you about establishing stable rule over the world: “If Fortune had given you the Persian empire’s throne, beloved boy, and Eastern lands far and wide worshipped you, and a barbarian tiara rose above your Arsacid brow, then exalted ancestry would be enough, and nobility alone could keep you safe as you dissipated into luxurious decadence. But the situation is far different for the Roman court’s emperors. They should rely upon their virtue, not their bloodline. Virtue allied to a powerful fate is all the greater and more useful, but trivial when hidden. How could virtue buried in darkness help an unknown man? It’s like a ship without oars, a lyre that’s fallen silent, or a bow that no one draws. Yet no one will find virtue unless he knows himself first and calms his soul’s unstable surges. It takes long journeying to get there. Learn about the world what each person learns for themselves. Prometheus27 mixed heavenly and earthly material when he fashioned our limbs. He stole a pure mind from Father Jupiter on Olympus, and imprisoned it and tied it down, though it resisted. And since he couldn’t make human beings any other way, he added two more souls. Two died with the body and perished, the other persisted alone, survived the funeral pyre, and flew forth. He planted this soul in the head’s lofty tower, to ordain our efforts and oversee our labors. He placed the other souls below the neck, in a suitable location to wait on their master’s instructions. Craftsman Prometheus was indeed concerned to avoid mixing sacred with profane, so he distributed the soul’s components and divided their seats.

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The sanguine heart’s region beneath the chest guards anger, steeped in flames, eager to harm, rushing itself along. Inflaming rage swells it, chilling fear 27 The Titan Prometheus created human beings from clay and stole fire from Olympus to improve their lives; see also Eutropius 2.490–501. The three-fold division of the soul originates in Plato’s Republic. See Cameron 1970: 326–331.

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contracts it. When anger drags everything along with itself and madly denies the limbs their rest, it calls on the lungs’ assistance and moistens its fury, so that the swollen fibers hurriedly soften.

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But desire, seeking everything for itself and ready to offer nothing, recedes into the liver, forced into its lowest tracts. Desire tries to get its fill like a monster opening 250 enormous jaws. Sometimes its whip torments us with greed’s anxieties, other times it burns with lust’s spurs. Now desire rejoices, but soon it sadly grieves. Once satisfied, it starts demanding again, and comes back more powerful than a divided Hydra. Therefore if someone can calm these upheavals, 255 he’ll give his pure mind an unshakeable temple. You can rule far and wide, beyond the furthest Indians, and the Persians, the soft Arabs, the Chinese may worship you. But if you are fearful, if you desire what’s shameful, if anger leads you, then you’ll endure slavery’s yoke. You’ll put up with unfair laws inside yourself. You’ll only hold all things under your rule when you can rule yourself. The downward path leads to worse, too much freedom tempts you to luxurious decadence, and encourages unbridled debauchery. When lust is always at hand, living chastely is a bitter lot, and we find it harder to control our anger when we assign punishment. But restrain your impulses: don’t think about what you’re permitted to do, but what action will be fitting, and let respect for honorable behavior master your mind. Meanwhile, I’ll constantly remind you: be aware that you live at the entire world’s center, and your deeds are done openly before all its peoples. It’s never possible to keep a king’s vices secret. Fate’s most exalted light lets nothing hide; it enters through every concealment, and rumors explore closed recesses. First and foremost, be dutiful. Even if we’re outdone in every other role, our mercy alone can make us equal with the gods. Don’t act hesitant 133

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or suspicious, don’t be untrue to your friends or eager to hear gossip. If an emperor cares about such things, he’ll be afraid of empty noises, anxious every moment. No garrison, no spearmen standing around you, can keep you as safe as your people’s love. Don’t extort their affection: you’ll get it through mutual trust and offering your support without strings. Don’t you see that love holds together our most beautiful world, and that the conjoined elements eternally work together without compulsion? The Sun’s content with its middle path, the Ocean with its shores. The sky constantly encircles and moves the land, but its pressing weight neither crushes, nor yields.

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An emperor who frightens others is even more frightened himself. 290 Leave that fate for tyrants. They’re jealous of outstanding people, and slaughter the brave ones. They live guarded by swords, surrounded by poisons, their towers totter, and they shake with fear as they threaten others. You should play the part of a citizen and a father. Your decisions should be for everyone, not for yourself, and the people’s wishes should move you, not your own. 295 If you command and decree a law that must be universally upheld, you should be the first to submit to your own orders. That way the people will become more respectful of fairness, nor will they refuse to endure when they see the law’s author himself obeying. The world conforms to its leader’s example, nor do the emperor’s 300 pronouncements shape our views as much as his lifestyle. The fickle crowd28 always changes along with its leader. When you’ve accomplished all this, remember: don’t feel contempt for lesser people, and don’t try to pass beyond human limitations. Arrogance can ruin an outstanding character. I’m not handing down docile Sabaeans to be your slaves, I’m not making you master of Armenia, nor am I giving you

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28 Though earlier sources use the Latin phrase mobile vulgus, this passage is the likely origin of the English word “mob.”

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the Assyrian people, whom queen Semiramis once ruled. No, you are to rule the Romans, who have long ruled over everything, who didn’t put up with the Tarquins’ arrogance or Julius Caesar’s laws. The annals speak of ancient leaders’ crimes; their disgrace will cling to them forever. Who does not condemn Julius Caesar’s monstrous line throughout the ages? Who overlooks Nero’s dire murders, or the foul cliff at Capri that perverted Tiberius owned?29 Trajan’s glory will persist, not so much because he conquered the Tigris and made the defeated Parthians a province of our empire, or because triumph carried him to the high Capitol after smashing the Dacians, but because he was gentle to his own country. Don’t leave off following Trajan’s example, my son.30 If the war trumpet resounds, first use hard training to ready your army and prepare them for savage combat. Don’t let a seasonal break or confinement in winter quarters make your troops weak and lazy. Place your camps in a healthy place, and put a vigilant garrison on the rampart. Learn where the formation will be dense, where the wings can be stretched out evenly or turned back in. Learn what battle lines are suitable for mountain terrain, which for fields, which valleys are good for ambushes, which roads are rough. If your enemy trusts in his walls, then load your ballistae to smash them. Hurl the boulders! Strike the rushing ram and the sheltered tortoise against the gates.31 Young soldiers should emerge from excavated trenches and rush forth. If a long siege delays you, beware of feeling safe and letting go of your goal, nor think that you’ve actually shut in your enemy. Celebrating has been deadly for so many.

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29 The emperor Nero (reigned 54–68 CE) executed numerous Roman aristocrats. Capri is an island in the Bay of Naples. The emperor Tiberius (reigned 14–37 CE) retreated there midway through his reign and reportedly engaged in sexual perversion. 30 Claudian cites Trajan’s conquests in Dacia and Persia; see the Glossary for Trajan. 31 The sheltered “tortoise” (in Latin, testudo) refers to a Roman military tactic. The front line of the phalanx held their shields in front of them, while the men behind them held their shields above their heads, forming a tight protective barrier resembling a tortoise’s shell.

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They’ve perished as they’ve scattered and unwound in sleep. Victory has often harmed an unwary army.

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Don’t let your massive encampment overflow with royal delights, nor let luxury under arms draw unwarlike servants to the battle standards. Don’t yield to blustering south winds or to rainstorms, don’t use a golden umbrella to keep away the heat 340 or turn away the consuming sun.32 Eat the food you find along the way. Sweating equally alongside your followers comforts them. If you come to a steep mountain, be the first to climb it. If you need to chop down a forest, don’t be ashamed to take up your axe and knock down an oak tree. 345 If you must march over a stagnant swamp, your horse should test the waters first. Your chariot should cut over rivers bristling with ice, and you should swim to slice through clear streams. Guide your horse right to the middle of cavalry formations; when you’re on foot, stand with the infantry. If you’re their comrade, then your men will go forth more readily. They’ll do welcome and outstanding labor, if you’re there to witness it.”

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Theodosius was about to say much more, when Honorius broke in: “For my part, I’ll bring all these things about, if only the gods favor my undertakings. The people and the realm you entrusted to me will see that I’m no different from my brother, or from you. 355 But why don’t I test through experience what you are teaching me? You’re surely heading now for the frozen Alps. Take me with you as a companion. Let our arrows—please permit it—pierce tyrant Eugenius. Let our bow (allow me!) make barbarian Arbogast grow pale. Italy has been subjected to a bitter bandit’s rage—should I put up with that? 360 Should I let Rome be enslaved to puppet Eugenius? How long will I be thought a child? Won’t it touch my heart that imperial power

32 Contrast Leo’s luxurious campaign in Eutropius 2.376–455.

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has been defiled, as well as my duty to avenge my relative’s bloodshed?33 I want to ride through the carnage. Give me my weapons right away! Why object about my age? Why accuse me of being unequal 365 to the fight? Pyrrhus was my age when he overthrew Troy all by himself and showed himself no worse than his father Achilles.34 Finally, if I can’t join the army as their leader, I’ll come along just as a common soldier.” Theodosius exchanged sweet kisses with his son and admiringly replied: “You’ve asked something praiseworthy, but 370 your desire is too hasty. Your stronger time of life will come. Don’t hurry. You haven’t yet measured out ten harvests, but you’re undertaking matters grown men fear. I recognize your mighty character’s signs. It’s said that Alexander the Great, who conquered Eastern King Porus, would cry amid his happy companions 375 when he heard so often of his father Philip’s successes: would his father’s courage leave him anything to conquer? I see these stirrings in you. Let it be right for your father to make this promise: you will be as great. You don’t owe your kingdom to my favor, as Nature already gave it to you. Bees similarly venerate their newborn king 380 on the soft meadows.35 He’ll lead the buzzing ranks one day. They seek jurisdiction over honey for him and pass over the honeycombs. A young bull similarly claims his pasture: his horns have not yet grown, yet already he boldly leads his herd. So put off battle until you are a young man, and patiently watch over my place, along with your brother, while I make war. Let the unpacified Araxes River fear you, and the swift Euphrates, let the whole Nile be yours,

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33 Honorius refers to Arbogast’s murder of Valentinian II. Theodosius married Valentinian’s sister Flavia Galla in 387; she died in 394. See the introduction to this poem and Honorius’s Third Consulship 74–76. 34 The mythological Greek hero Achilles died attempting to conquer Troy. Pyrrhus, his son, completed the conquest of the city. 35 The Romans thought that queen bees were actually male “king” bees. See Proserpina 2.125.

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as well as the lands the sun bathes at its rising.36 If the Alps should lie open to me, if my juster cause 390 should have a fortunate outcome, you’ll be there and you’ll take charge of the regions that I reclaimed. Courageous Gaul will listen to your laws, and you will rule equitably over our own Spaniards. Then I shall depart, secure in my fate and happy in my achievements, and the two of you shall rule both sides of the world. 395 Meanwhile, pursue the Muses, while your soul is in a softer state, and let it read what it will soon imitate. Never let Greek or Roman antiquity cease speaking with you. Unroll the stories of the ancient commanders, accustom yourself to your future campaigns, bring yourself back to Italy’s past. 400 Is seeking liberty your pleasure? Marvel at Brutus. Do you condemn treachery? Fill yourself with Mettius’s punishments. Does excessive severity seem grim? Reject Torquatus’s character. Does it seem good to sacrifice yourself? Venerate the Decii rushing to their deaths. Horatius facing the enemy on a smashed bridge, or Mucius’s hand 405 in the fire, will teach you what a brave man can do, even all alone. Fabius will show you how delaying can shatter the enemy. By slaughtering the Gauls, Camillus will show what a leader can do in a tight situation. From these examples,37 we learn that no misfortune can block deserving people. Carthaginian savagery extends your fame forever, Regulus! Cato’s challenges outdo his successes. We learn how much sober poverty can accomplish: Curius was poor, when he conquered kings in battle; Fabricius was poor as well, when he disdained King Pyrrhus’s gold. Dictator Cincinnatus pushed a muddy plow: his lictors encircled his little hut and fixed the fasces to willow posts. The consul brought in his own harvest, and long plowed his own furrows wearing his insignia.” Theodosius gave these teachings to his son, like an old sea captain whom storms have often tested with their changeable winds. Elderly now and tired

36 These rivers formed the eastern and southern boundaries of the Roman Empire. 37 See the volume introduction, Section 1.3 “Roman History and Legend.”

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of the ocean, he entrusts his ship’s watery reins to his son, and teaches him the skills and situations: which stars should guide his hand, how the rudder can cheat the waves, what marks distinguish clouds, what faithless treachery the clear sky hides, what the setting sun reveals, what wind wounds the discolored moon and makes her lift an enraged face.

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Great father Theodosius, look upon us now, wherever you are shining, whether in the southern hemisphere, or if the northern Big Dipper deserves you, look: your wish is being fulfilled. Now your son equals you in merit, 430 and what’s even more desirable, he outdoes you. [Relying on your Stilicho, whom you yourself gave to these brothers]38 As you left, you gave him Stilicho as his shield and defender. There’s nothing he’d refuse to endure on our behalf, no danger he wouldn’t take on himself, no hard journey, 435 no peril on the sea. He’ll dare to conquer Libya’s rough deserts on foot, and as the humid Pleiades are setting, he’ll enter the Gaetulian waters amid the Syrtes sandbars. Yet first of all you ordered Stilicho to pacify the Rhine and calm down its fierce peoples. He flew on a swift horse, no entourage crowding his side, where Raetia raises up cloud-bearing Alps. He went forth—such was his confidence—and came to the hostile banks unaccompanied. All along the river, you would’ve seen astonished kings hurry to bow their heads. The Sygambrians spread their blond hair before our leader Stilicho, the Franks fearfully murmured prayers, and threw themselves on the ground. Alamannia, our suppliant, swore by Honorius in his absence, and implored your name. The fierce Bastarnians came, as did the Breucterians who inhabited the Hercynian Forest. The Cimbrians departed their broad swamps, and the enormous Cheruscans left the Elbe River.39

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Stilicho accepted their various entreaties and took his time to agree when asked. He gave them peace instead of a hefty reward. Treaties with the Germans

38 This line is likely not by Claudian. 39 Claudian lists various Germanic peoples.

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brought honor to the ancient Drusi,40 but their outcome in war was uncertain, and they earned them through many disasters. Who can remember us conquering the Rhine through fear alone? Stilicho’s one journey gave you what others could only earn through lengthy wars. After he pacified Gaul’s border, you encouraged him to prop up Greece’s ruins. Sails cover the Ionian Sea, and the winds strain to bend so many sheets, and sea god Neptune, his waves gentle, follows the fleet that rescued Corinth. The boy Palaemon, long since in exile from the Isthmus’s shores, seeks the port once more in safety, along with his mother Ino.41

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The Goths’ camps swim in blood as their young men dressed in hides are cut down. Disease kills some, others the sword. Lycaeus’s forests and Erymanthus’s shady groves don’t provide enough fuel as countless pyres burn. Mount Maenalus, stripped bare by the steel, rejoices that its forests are burning for this reason. 470 Let Corinth shake off its ashes, let Spartans and Arcadians stamp their feet safely on bloodless heaps of corpses, and let exhausted Greece breathe now that it’s paid its penalty. No people are more widely spread out than the Scythians who live beneath the northern sky. Mount Athos was small, and Thrace was narrow, 475 when they passed through. Thanks to you and your leaders’ strength, they were smashed, and the few survivors now mourn for themselves. Although the world barely afforded enough room for this crowd, they hid on one mountain, Pholoë. Shut inside their rampart, dehydrated, they asked for the water denied them. Before this, 480 Stilicho had turned the nearby stream to a different channel, away from these enemies. He’d ordered the river to change its course, pass through unfamiliar backwaters, and marvel at new valleys. 40 Beginning in 12 BCE, Nero Claudius Drusus Germanicus (38–9 BCE) led the first major campaign across the Rhine River. He was assisted by his brother, the future emperor Tiberius (reigned 14–37 CE). 41 Palaemon’s father Athamas went mad and tried to kill both him and his wife Ino. They jumped into the sea and were turned into gods.

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Why wonder that you overcame these obstacles, when of their own accord the barbarians desired to serve you? The rebellious Sarmatians sought to take your oath, the Gelonians threw away their deception and fought for you, and the Alans passed over into Latin rights.

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Just as you choose brave men with ready spirits for war, so in peacetime you appoint just men and you watch over your choices for a long time, nor do you hurry them along with frequent successors. 490 We know the magistrates who rule us, and we enjoy the blessings of both peace and war, whether warlike Romulus leads us, or gentle Numa.42 Swords don’t hang over us, nobles aren’t slaughtered, public accusations aren’t fabricated, and gloomy exiles aren’t thrust out of their country. 495 Endless taxes have stopped their hateful increases, and there are no ill-omened proscriptions. The auctioneer doesn’t sell seized goods to greedy people, his voice doesn’t summon the buyers, and private losses don’t increase your treasury. You’re generous with praise, but not a spendthrift with your gold. 500 Unbought loyalty endures, and payment doesn’t bind men’s hearts. The army works hard for its own child, and the soldiers that nursed you love you still. And then, how great the care you take for Rome, how steadfast and enduring your reverence for the senators! Ancient right is being confirmed, and the laws once more take up 505 their venerable respect. Old laws are emended, and new ones are added. The Athenian state sensed that Solon was such a man, and law similarly made Sparta powerful in war. [Sparta was fortified by severe Lycurgus, and so disdained city walls.]43 Under your rule, what small case, what judicial error’s overlooked? Who’s more just in making an end to doubtful cases, and leading forth the buried truth from its hiding place? How great your sense of duty, your rigorousness, and your mighty soul’s gentle force! No fear moves your mind lightly, no new wonder moves it easily. How learned your wit,

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42 Roman legends celebrated Romulus, the first king of Rome, for his military victories. Numa, the second king, was remembered for giving the city laws and religious rituals. 43 This line is likely not by Claudian. See the Glossary for Solon and Lycurgus.

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how restrained your speech! Ambassadors respect your responses, and your serious character conceals your youth. How greatly your father Theodosius shines in your face! How fierce your graceful brow, how welcome your exalted modesty’s magnificence! And already you fit into your father’s helmet, already you try to brandish 520 your grandfather’s spear. Your first attempts promise that your hand will be mighty in war, and keep the impatient Romans’ wishes waiting. What a glorious sight, when you stride forth wearing your buckler, its scales all golden, your crest flashing and larger than your helmet! Mount Rhodope’s streams likewise washed young Mars 525 when he first sweated with his Thracian lance. What strength in your spears, or how accurate your bow when you fire your Cretan arrows! You aim unerringly for a wound, and you can’t miss the designated target. You know the Cretans’ manner of shooting their arrows, 530 what skills Armenians use, not to trust retreating Parthians.44 Gorgeous from sweating in Amphion’s gymnasium, Hercules likewise tested his arrows and Theban shafts against wild beasts. One day he’d master the Giants and bring peace to the sky. He always came home bloodstained 535 and brought his kills to Alcmena, his rejoicing mother. Apollo was as great when he laid out the dark-blue Python, who coiled round the forests and crushed them as he collapsed. When you gallop on your horse and play war games, who could twist their course more flexibly, who could aim their lance 540 more keenly, who’d be better at wheeling for a sudden return? The Massagetans couldn’t match your skill, nor the Thessalians who train on their fields, nor the Centaurs themselves, those half-men half-horses. The cavalry wings accompanying you can hardly keep up, nor can the flying ranks, and behind your back the breeze swells their glittering dragon banners. 545 As your spurs first heat your horse, its flaring nostrils catch fire, its hooves no longer feel the sand below, and its unruly mane spreads over its shoulders. 44 The Parthian cavalry typically retreated while firing, often to devastating effect.

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Its harness ornaments shake, the golden bit smokes in its foaming jaws, and its heaving jeweled bridle sweats blood. Your labor, its dust, your hair shaken loose all ennoble you. Your brilliant purple clothes drink up the sun, and the folds shimmer as they take in the wind. If horses chose their masters,45 Arion raised in the Nereids’ stables would ask freely for your whips. Cyllarus would reject Castor and serve under your reins, while Xanthus would spurn blond Achilles. Pegasus himself would offer you obedient wings, and willingly carry you. He’d throw off Bellerophon’s reins and endure your better weight. Even swift Aethon, Aurora’s messenger, whose whinny puts the stars to flight, whom rosy Lucifer rides—he gets jealous when he looks down from heaven and sees you on horseback. He’d rather chomp your foaming bit!

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Now also, how we saw you arrayed, what marvels we saw 565 in your triumphal procession! Dressed in your consular garb, more outstanding than usual, you processed among the Ligurian people. You were lifted on high amid toga-clad cohorts, and select young men together offered their arms to carry you, their heavenly burden. Memphis likewise often carries forth 570 its gods among the crowd. The statue, indeed a small one, goes forth from the sanctuary. Below it, many linen-clad priests pant under the supporting poles, their sweat attesting to the god’s divinity. Rattles resound on the Nile’s banks, Egyptian flutes lead out Pharos’s rhythms, 575 and the Apis bull lowers his horns and moos.46 All the nobles, all Italy and the Tiber’s descendants, attend your rites. They all come together in one place, whoever’s great in the world, whoever you or your father granted

45 The narrator catalogs mythological horses: Arion (see Glossary); Cyllarus, ridden by Jupiter’s son Castor; Achilles’s horse Xanthus (“Yellow”, Iliad 19.404–424); the winged horse Pegasus, who carried the hero Bellerophon; and Aethon (“Blaze”), one of Aurora the Dawn’s horses. 46 See the Glossary for Pharos and the Apis bull.

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honors. As consul, you’re surrounded by many consuls, and you rejoice in welcoming the senators as your comrades. The Tagus River’s illustrious offspring crowd around you, as do Gaul’s learned citizens, and Rome along with the whole senate.

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Young men carry your golden seat on their necks, and new adornment makes your divinity weightier. Indian jewels roughen your robes, 585 and emeralds glow amid the fabric’s precious threads. It contains amethysts and shining Spanish gold, whose hidden flames balance dark-blue jacinth. Raw material’s appeal wouldn’t suffice for such a garment: the needle enhances its merit, and metals bring the pictured work 590 to life. Many a jasper ornaments the portrait, and Red Sea pearls breathe amid various figures. What ambitious distaff could soften such hard stuff under the fingers? Or what shuttle’s skill, what rugged looms wove jewels’ threads into fine cloth? 595 Who explored the warm ocean’s trackless waves and raided sea goddess Tethys’s bosom? Who found the rich seaweed’s pearls amid the burning sands? Who joined the stones to the purple robes? Who mixed the fiery gems from the Red Sea and from Sidon? The Phoenicians bestowed the coloring, 600 the Chinese the threads, the Hydaspes River the bulk. If you went through Maeonia’s cities arrayed like this,47 Lydia would bring vine-covered thyrsi for you, and Nysa would bring its choruses. Bacchus’s celebrants wouldn’t be sure who to go wild for. Tamed tigers would walk into your chains. 605 Dressed in fawn skin set with Red Sea gems, Bacchus likewise led his chariot and turned his Caspian tigers’ necks under their ivory yokes. The satyrs danced around him, the Maenads loosened their hair, and tied up their Indian captives in conquering ivy. Invading palm trees covered the drunken Ganges. 610 See now: shouts resound on the joyful tribunal as you enter the Fasti for the fourth time. Liberty plays through her annual omens, as our law celebrates a custom traced back to Vindex.48 A slave 47 The wine god Bacchus (Dionysus) was imagined to conquer India with his companions soon after his discovery of wine. See the Glossary for Lydia and Nysa. 48 Livy From the Founding of the City 2.5 refers to this slave as Vindicius, freed by Brutus the first consul in 509 BCE. He offered freedom in exchange for information about a plot to

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set free from his master’s yoke is led forward and goes forth more securely after a welcome slap. The slave’s sad condition disappears after his master strikes his face. His cheeks redden as he becomes a citizen, and promised by a vow, this lucky injury removes the whips from his back. Romulus’s state hopes for prosperous times to come in your name. Past examples help us trust in future ones: each time he made you the start of the year’s path, your father Theodosius won a victory laurel.49 The Gruthungians once dared to chop a forest into skiffs to sail across the Danube. Three thousand alderwood boats full of monstrous troops rushed across the river. Odotheus was their leader. Your life was just beginning; your first year smashed this great fleet’s efforts. The sunken vessels fell; the northern fish never fed more fully on floating bodies. Corpses overwhelmed Peuce Island.50 The current could barely carry away the barbarian blood as it ran through the Danube’s five mouths. Your father confessed he brought back King Odotheus’s rich spoils and armor for you. Under your second lucky auspices, you brought the civil war to a conclusion. The world should owe the Gruthungians’ fate and the tyrant’s defeat to you. In your consulship, the Danube pushed mountains of blood. [In your consulship, your father smashed the Alps.]51 But if you had once been the author of your father’s successes, now you will oversee your own. Triumphs always come along with your consular garb, and victory follows your fasces. Be our consul always, I pray, and pass far beyond the number held by Marius and old Augustus.52 What joy to the world,

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restore the Tarquins’ monarchy. A ritual reenactment of this scene, featuring the freeing of a slave, became part of the consular inauguration ceremony. See also Eutropius 1.310–311. For a similar claim, see Honorius’s Sixth Consulship 11–15. Claudian is tactfully silent about the events of 396, Honorius’s third consulship, when Alaric’s Goths rampaged through Greece. Peuce is an island in the Danube delta, near modern Romania. It was the homeland of the Gothic king Alaric (Honorius’s Sixth Consulship 105–106). This line is likely not by Claudian. Gaius Marius (157–86 BCE) was consul seven times, the emperor Augustus (reigned 27 BCE-17 CE) 13 times.

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when peach fuzz begins to creep over your cheeks, when night, as maid of honor, holds out the torch to celebrate your marriage! What queen shall be pledged to your marriage bed, who shall 645 come forth, shining in royal purple, to such a husband’s embrace? Who’ll be the daughter-in-law of so many gods, her dowry the whole sea and all its lands? How loudly the wedding song will resound, beyond the West wind’s boundaries and the East’s! Oh, if only I were allowed to sing the wedding song 650 at your bedchamber, and say that you’d become a father already! The time will come, when you will cross the Rhine’s mouth in victory, and your brother Arcadius, loaded down with captured Babylon’s Persian spoils, will mark the year’s beginning conjointly with greater consular togas. The long-haired Suebians will sweat before your fasces, 655 and furthest Bactria will tremble at your brother’s axes.

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Fescennines Introduction Honorius married Stilicho’s daughter Maria early in 398 (Zosimus 5.28) when both were very young; he was 13 and she was likely no older than 12. In honor of the occasion, Claudian produced both the short Fescennines and the longer Epithalamium. Fescennines were bawdy songs which wedding celebrants improvised and sang in gentle mockery of the bride and groom. Claudian’s poems are neither bawdy nor spontaneous, however, and they are written in a variety of meters that differ from the panegyrics’ dactylic hexameter. The first poem praises the emperor Honorius as both lover and warrior. Mothers would prefer him to their own children, cities to their famous descendants. His remarkable beauty would cause even goddesses to prefer him to their usual lovers, Amazons who shun men to fall in love with him, and men to willingly follow his rule. In the second poem, Claudian evokes a peaceful world in springtime. The Eastern and Western courts are in harmony, and no rough winds blow. The happy news of the wedding reaches as far as Spain, where the bride’s family originates. The third poem focuses on Stilicho, the bride’s father, who wears a wreath instead of his customary helmet. His tight connection to the royal couple precludes all jealousy from the marriage. Stilicho was in need of the support offered by this and other poems. As the result of his expedition to Greece in summer 397, Eutropius had persuaded Arcadius’s court at Constantinople to declare him a public enemy (Zosimus 5.11). The second and third poems drop hints as to the bride’s identity (she comes from Spain, and Stilicho is her father), but Claudian does not name Maria until the final line of the fourth poem. The fourth poem returns to Honorius’s identification as lover and warrior to describe his wedding night as a bloodstained “conquest” of his defenseless bride. The violence of the scene appears shocking to us; as discussed in the introduction to Proserpina, however, the Romans had no notion of sexual consent. As Wasdin (2014: 61) observes, DOI: 10.4324/9780429353345-7

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“Honorius is seen as victorious, and his victory is compared to a military action, but only Stilicho is actually a leader of troops.” The third poem makes Stilicho’s dynastic pretensions as clear as possible: he intends to be the grandfather of the next emperor. Though Honorius would eventually marry both of his daughters, he never gave Stilicho the grandchild he hoped for.

Fescennine 1 O emperor, lovelier than a shimmering star, you aim your arrows more surely than the Parthians, you ride more commandingly than the Gelonians. What praise will be worthy of your lofty mind, worthy of your incandescent beauty? Leda would’ve preferred you to her son Castor, Thetis chosen you over her own Achilles. Delos confesses that you outdo Apollo, and Lydia believes Bacchus inferior to you. When you eagerly direct your horse, who’s excited to chase prey, past tall holm-oaks, and the wind plays with your loose hair, of themselves the animals will fall to your missiles. The lion will rejoice that your sacred hand wounded him, and welcome your spear, prouder still in death. Venus rejects Adonis returning from the dead, Diana refuses Hippolytus recalled to life. After your hard work, you’ll desire to escape the burning Dog Star’s heat under a plane-tree’s green shade or in a chilly cave. When you relax your tired body in sleep, such great passion will burn the Dryad nymphs! How many overheated Naiads, hesitantly approaching, will steal secret kisses! Though a man were rougher than the bitter Scythians, and his heart raged wilder than the beasts, wouldn’t he freely choose to endure your service, when he came face to face with your shining beauty? Who wouldn’t willingly seize the chains and ask for a yoke on his free neck? 148

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If you’d gone over the Caucasus’s snowy cliffs, lovely as you are, against the cruel Amazons with their crescent shields, their cohort would leave their battles and recall their sex. Forgetting about her father Mars amid the blaring trumpets, Hippolyte would weakly put aside the axe she brandishes. Her breast half-bare, she’d undo the girdle that she’d denied to mighty Hercules. Your beauty would win the war all by itself.

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The bride is truly blessed. She’ll soon make you her man, and in first love she’ll join herself to you.

Fescennine 2 Come, earth, all crowned with nuptial springtime, celebrate your master’s marriage. Let every grove sing, along with the rivers, let all the ocean sing. Favor us, Ligurian plains, favor us, Venetian hills. Let the Alpine peaks suddenly dress themselves in rose bushes, let the frost turn red. Let the Adige River echo with choruses, and the Mincio stream whisper gently as it winds through the reeds, and the Po’s alders, dripping amber, play in response. Let feasting resound along the Tiber River, its Romans now well-nourished.1 Happy that her master’s wishes are fulfilled, let golden Rome garland her seven hills. Let the far-off Spanish hear, from where the court’s seed flows, where a house, full of victory laurels, trusting in its rule, can hardly count all its triumphs. 1 For Gildo’s threat to Rome’s grain supply, see Gildo.

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The husband’s father comes from here, as does the bride’s mother. The line of Caesars, divided into two parts, returns to its holy origin. Let foliage adorn the Baetis River, and the Tagus swell with gold. Let Ocean, the family’s ancestor, revel in his glassy caves.

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Let the brothers’ kingdoms, East and West, applaud together. Let peaceful cities play, those that shine at the sun’s rising and at its setting. Quiet down, north winds, and mad northwest winds! Let the noisy South Wind be silent. May the West Wind alone rule this triumphant year.2

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Fescennine 3 A helmet usually shines on your hair, Stilicho: now twine a soft wreath in it. Let war trumpets fall silent and the lucky torch of marriage banish savage Mars far from here. Let the bloodline drawn from the palace return once more to the palace, through a father’s duty. Join these children with your powerful right hand. You were once an emperor’s son-in-law, now, in turn, you will be an emperor’s father-in-law. What madness will jealousy have now? Or what pretext will be furnished to envy? Stilicho is both the father-in-law and the father.

2 For the beneficent West Wind, see Proserpina 2.71–87.

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Fescennine 4 The Evening Star, whom Venus loves, is rising up from her Mount Idalion, lifting its fires for the wedding. Now the bride’s fearful, her modesty is troubled, now her veil betrays inexperienced tears. Don’t hold off, young man! Get close and attack, even though she’s untamed and may rend you with her fingernails. No one enjoys spring’s perfumes, nor steals Mount Hybla’s honey from its hiding places, if he worries about his forehead, if he’s afraid of thorns. Thorns defend roses and bees protect their honey. Challenging reproaches increase joys, and passion that shrinks back burns hotter. Stealing a kiss from a crying bride tastes better. How often you’ll say, “To me, this is sweeter than ten victories over the blond Sarmatians!” Let your breasts breathe forth new loyalty, and hand a lasting marriage torch to your senses. Put your hands in nuptial bonds, joined as tight as ivy surrounds a leafy Italian oak, or supple vines press down upon a poplar. With both your tongues, exchange your lovers’ whispers constantly, sweeter than the complaining turtledove’s. And as you unite your souls through kisses, catch each other’s breaths as you sleep. Your royal embraces shall warm your purple-covered couch, and the virgin bride’s blood will stain more nobly the coverlets gleaming with Tyrian dye. Then leap victorious from the soaking bed, displaying your wounds from the nighttime battle. All night long, the flutes shall play their music, and the lascivious crowd, set free from severe laws, shall glory in permitted partying. Soldiers, mingle and play with your leaders, girls, mingle and play with the boys. Let this shout resound in the heavenly sky,

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this shout, among earth’s peoples, across the seas: “Gorgeous Honorius is marrying Maria!”

Epithalamium for Honorius and Maria Introduction Like the Fescennines, this longer poem celebrates the royal wedding. The preface narrates the wedding of the mortal Peleus and the sea goddess Thetis. The Centaur Chiron raised their son Achilles, who fought in the Trojan war. Claudian does not spell out the implication, but clearly hopes that Honorius and Maria will produce a child as heroic as Achilles, who might be helpful in repulsing the Roman empire’s numerous enemies. The comparison between Maria and the sea goddess Thetis is implicit in her name, which recalls mare, the Latin word for “sea.” Claudian continues the maritime theme in his subsequent mythological narrative (175–227) involving a number of gods associated with the sea: Venus, Triton, Cymothoë, and the Nereids. As the poem opens, Honorius suffers from his separation from his fiancée Maria, for whom he feels passionate love. The narrator compares him to the young Achilles (1–19), who spent part of his childhood disguised as a young woman on Scyros to avoid the Trojan War. Like Achilles, Honorius is a lover for now, but soon he will be a warrior. As Wasdin (2018: 167) observes, “the young emperor thus represents the two potential sides of the groom, as idealized and eroticized youth (Achilles) and potent and fortunate father (Peleus).” In a poignant soliloquy, Honorius complains about the delay to their marriage and details the qualities that make him suitable for Maria. They are related through his grandfather, the Elder Theodosius. Furthermore, Stilicho “owes” him Maria as repayment for Theodosius’s “giving” his niece Serena to him in marriage (20–45). We should note the language of property transfer (36–37) as the theme of exchanging women continues through the poem. The transfer of the Nereid Cymothoë in the mythological episode that follows (135–144) reasserts the theme. The poem then shifts back to mythological narrative. Cupid, the god of love, travels to his mother Venus’s home on Cyprus. The narrator describes Venus’s luxurious estate and her palace at length (46–96); this passage is a prime example of the “jeweled style” (see p. 14). Claudian’s “realm of Venus”, with its personifications of the various emotions felt by lovers, inspired numerous imitations in Renaissance literature (Braden 1979). Cupid brags that he has conquered Honorius; Venus springs into action and sends him and his brothers to bring Triton the sea god (97–134). Cupid finds Triton attempting to assault the Nereid Cymothoë and promises her as payment for Triton’s services. The sea god escorts Venus to Honorius’s court at Milan, accompanied by Nereids who bring wedding gifts (135–179). At Milan, roses sprout on the soldiers’ battle-standards, and Venus orders 152

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celebration in place of military drills. Her attendants decorate the palace and marriage chamber, including battle spoils captured by Honorius’s male ancestors (180–227). Meanwhile, unaware of the preparations, Maria studies with her mother Serena. The women’s beauty stuns Venus (228–250). Venus urges Maria to marry Honorius. She praises the bride’s beauty and prepares her outfit (251–288). A comparison to an excited stallion expresses Honorius’s delight. The soldiers recall how Theodosius gave Serena to Stilicho and describe Maria’s marriage as a return on this exchange. They praise Stilicho’s virtues and his leadership. They pray for bright futures for his other children, Eucherius and Thermantia, and a son for Maria and Honorius (289–341). Like The Rape of Proserpina, the poem reflects a society where women had little agency over their bodies or marriages. Affection was not a requirement for marriage for Roman aristocrats. Marriage’s main purpose, in their view, was to arrange the transfer of property and political power and to produce sons who would inherit them (Treggiari 1991). That is one reason Roman parents often betrothed their children very young; Honorius was 13 at the time of his marriage, while Maria may have been 12. The goal of producing a son was even more important for an imperial dynasty, and Honorius would fail to achieve it in both of his marriages. Preface When Mount Pelion readied for a wedding and formed an arch, the hospitable land couldn’t host so many gods. Thetis’s father-in-law, ocean-dwelling Nereus, and his abundant crowd of daughters competed to prolong the day in feasting. Chiron offered the shared drinking bowl to Jupiter, and gently curled his equine lower half beneath him. The Peneus River transformed its cold waters into nectar and foaming wine poured over Mount Oeta’s cliffs. The Muse Terpsichore’s lusty thumb moved easily over the lyre, as she led gentle choruses into the caves. Her songs didn’t displease the gods, nor Thundering Jupiter, since they knew the soft rhythms matched their wishes. The Centaurs and the Fauns resisted. What lyre’s song could move Rhoetus or stiff-necked Pholus?3

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3 These Centaurs, mythical half-man, half-horse creatures, were symbols of violent, uncivilized behavior.

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Dawn had returned to the sky seven times, and the Evening Star, relighting its fire, had seen as many choral dances finish. Then Apollo picked up his lyre, that masters stones, that draws ash trees forth, and he tried a nobler song. On the sacred strings, he promised Achilles would come forth and he sang of slaughter at Troy and its Simois River. The joyful marriage song resounded on leafy Mount Olympus, and Mount Othrys and Ossa echoed queen Thetis’s name.

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Epithalamium for Honorius and Maria Honorius drank in unfamiliar fires when young Maria was promised to him. Inexperienced as he was, he’d burned with love’s first surge. He didn’t know where this new heat came from, nor what his sighing meant. He was just starting out in love and still quite ignorant. He didn’t care any more about his hunting horse, nor his arrows, 5 he wasn’t interested in hurling his javelin. His whole mind wandered to Maria’s face, which love had painted for him. How often sighs broke forth from his inmost being! How many times blushes ignited on his face, confessing his secret, and his hands, without his guidance, wrote her blessed name. And now Honorius prepared gifts 10 for his bride. He chose ornaments that were pretty enough, but shone less than Maria: whatever the venerable empress Livia4 had once worn, and the divine emperors’ proud daughters-in-law. Honorius was heartsick with hope and rebuked the delays. The long days seemed to stand still, and the Moon seemed not to guide her lazy chariot. 15 The Scyrian maiden Deidamia likewise burned for tender Achilles, still unaware his girl’s clothing was a deception. She taught his warlike hands to guide the thread, and used her rosy thumb to arrange his Thessalian hair, which Troy’s Mount Ida would soon fear.

4 Livia Drusilla (59 BCE-29 CE) was the wife of the emperor Augustus and mother of Tiberius, Augustus’s successor.

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Honorius also lamented privately to himself: “How long will my respected 20 father-in-law delay my wishes? Why does he put off joining me to Maria, whom he promised me, and refuse to fulfill my chaste prayers? I didn’t follow kings’ luxurious habits in asking for an image, so that a pandering picture might circulate through countless houses announcing her beauty for my marriage. Nor would I choose 25 an uncertain love match from various beds, and entrust my lofty marriage to lying wax.5 I didn’t rush to seize a bride already betrothed to someone else in marriage, but one long since engaged to me, and left to me by her father’s orders. Through her mother, we share a common grandfather 30 and a single origin. As a suppliant before Stilicho, I set down my majesty and played a suitor’s role. I sent my nobles out from the palace’s holy threshold to plead my case, ones who held power second after mine. I confess, Stilicho, I didn’t ask for something small. Yet I certainly deserved this, as an emperor born from the emperor 35 who bound you to him as his son-in-law. He gave you his brother’s daughter, and you owe him Maria. Pay her over as the interest you owe my father. Return his family to the palace. Her mother, perhaps, would be more amenable to my request. O, my uncle’s daughter, whose name I have inherited as his heir, the torrential Ebro River’s sublime glory, 40 sister through descent, my mother through dutifulness to me. I was entrusted to you as an infant, and I grew up on your lap, and you were like my mother Flacilla, except for giving me birth. So why do you keep your children apart? Why don’t you hand your daughter down to your young foster child? Will the longed-for day come? Will our wedding night ever happen?” 45

5 Romans used wooden tablets covered with wax to write notes. There may also be a reference to images of potential brides made from wax.

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Such complaints soothed Honorius’s wound. Cupid laughed and flew gently across the sea to inform his mother Venus, and he proudly unfurled his wings to their full length. A jagged ridge overshadows Cyprus’s eastern shore, inaccessible to people’s tread. It looks down upon Proteus’s bedchamber at Pharos, and the Nile river’s seven mouths. White frost doesn’t dare to clothe this mountain, the winds fear to strike it, or the clouds to harm it, and so it is free for Venus’s luxury. It’s banished the year’s harsher part, and eternal spring’s indulgence unfolds there. A golden fence surrounds the mountain, which rises to a plateau, and tawny metal protects the fields. They say Vulcan bought his wife Venus’s kisses with these walls. He offered this outstanding citadel as service to his wife. Within shone the fields, constantly in flower, though no hands worked them. The West Wind was farmer enough. A shady grove admitted no birds, unless the goddess, their judge, approved their songs in advance. Birds that pleased her enjoyed the tree branches, while those that failed departed. Leaves lived for Venus, and every fruitful tree loved one another in turn. Palms nodded in mutual agreement. Poplars breathed heavily for love of other poplars, and plane trees called to other plane trees, and alders to alders. Two springs poured forth, one sweet, the other bitter, and a poisoned infusion corrupted the honey. It’s rumored Cupid arms his arrows from this source. Thousands of his brothers, all bearing quivers, played at its edge. This soft tribe of Loves had similar faces and matching attire. The Nymphs gave birth to them; but golden Venus birthed Cupid only. His bow rules the gods and heaven and the stars, and he deigns to shoot the greatest kings, while his brothers shoot ordinary people. There were other divinities too: here dwelled Unruliness, no knots tying her down; Anger, easy to turn; All-Nighters, drenched in wine; inexperienced Tears; and Paleness that lovers find attractive. Boldness tottered through its first crimes, 156

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there were pleasant Fear and insecure Pleasure, and lusty Perjuries flew by on the light winds. Amid them, Youth petulantly tossing its haughty head thrust Old Age from the grove. Far off, the goddess’s palace reflected the sun’s rays and turned green beneath the forest’s cover. Vulcan god of Lemnos built this as well from gems and gold, and mixed his art in with the precious material. On emerald beams, he rested columns cut from a sapphire cliff. Beryl walls and smooth jasper thresholds rose up, and you’d tread agates, found unworthy, on the ground. A rich area in the middle for sweet-smelling cultivation offered perfumed harvests. Here was a crop of soft balm, there ripe cassia. Indian cinnamon swelled, vines flowered with moist spices, and supple balsam dripped in a sweating stream. After Cupid completed his lengthy journey on the wing and landed, he strode arrogantly to the palace and entered boldly. Venus happened to be sitting on her shining throne, having her hair done. The Graces stood to her left and right. One washed the goddess’s hair with bountiful nectar draughts, another used an ivory comb with many teeth to furrow it and make twisted braids. A third tied the back into various knots, and properly divided it into circles. She was careful to leave one part seemingly neglected, and the apparent error was more charming. Venus didn’t need a mirror’s judgment for her face. Her reflection appeared throughout the whole palace, which captured it wherever she gazed. While she scrutinized individual details, and approved highly of herself, she caught sight of her son’s shadow as he arrived, and she hugged the fierce boy to her ambrosial bosom. “Why are you so excited?” she asked. “What battles have made you sweat, you wicked boy? Who lies sprawled from your arrows? Did you make Thundering Jupiter moo once more among the Phoenician cattle? 157

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Or did you master the Sun? Did you call the Moon back to a shepherd’s cave?6 You look like you’ve conquered a tough god, a great one.” 115 Hanging on his mother’s kiss, Cupid replied: “Mother, rejoice! I’ve brought home a massive trophy. Honorius has felt my arrow now. You know Maria, and her father, General Stilicho, whose spear protects Italy and the Gauls. Famous Serena’s reputation isn’t hidden from you either. Hurry, give your nod to their royal vows, join them in marriage.”

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Venus pushed her son off her lap,7 quickly tied back her hair, and hitched up her flowing robe. She girded on her belt, which breathes forth her gentle divinity, which she uses to tame rivers swollen by rain, 125 to calm the sea, the winds, and the angry torrents. She stood on the beach and addressed the Cupids, her small fosterlings: “Which one of you, boys, will slip over the glassy waves, and call swift Triton here, so he can carry me over the deep? He’s never come before for so great a purpose. We’re heading for a holy marriage. Everybody, go look for him, quick as you can, whether he’s sounding his conch around the Libyan waters, or shattering the Aegean Sea. Whoever finds him and brings him back will get a golden quiver as a reward.”

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After Venus spoke, the crowd scattered and went out 135 to explore the sea. Triton went beneath the waves near Karpathos, and attacked the resisting Nereid Cymothoë. She was afraid of the wild sea monster and rushed away as he followed. The slippery nymph avoided his tough arms. Cupid watched and called out: “Hey! You couldn’t hide 140 your tricks under the deepest waves. Get ready to carry our mistress Venus, and you’ll have a willing Cymothoë, who now pulls away from you. She’s no trivial reward for your effort. Come now for this payment.” 6 Venus rapidly references three mythological stories: Jupiter’s rape of Europa in the form of a bull, the Sun’s rape of Clytie, and the Moon’s rape of the shepherd Endymion as he slept. 7 Reading remouit. Charlet reads refouit, “cuddled.”

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The fierce half-beast broke forth from the waves. His wet hair swept over his arms. Cloven hoofs with shaggy bristles extended from where the sea monster met the human parts of him.8 Three times his chest heaved, and on the fourth breaststroke, he cut through Paphos’s sands. Sea monster Triton bent himself back into a bow to shade Venus. Then he strewed dark roses to soften his back, which was stiff with live barnacles. Venus propped herself up, and sailed in this cabin. Her pale feet only grazed the water. Her entourage, the winged Loves, spread out behind her, and their choruses shook the tranquil sea. They scattered wreaths all over Neptune’s palace. Leucothea, Cadmus’s daughter, played, while Palaemon used roses to rein in his dolphin. Nereus wove strands of seaweed alternating with violets, and Glaucus tied back his white hair with immortal herbs.9 When the Nereids heard the news, they came riding on various beasts. The Tartessian tiger fish, the Ocean’s monster, carried one after a fish deposited her. A fierce ram, the Aegean Sea’s terror, whose forehead shatters ships, carried another. A third swam propped on a blue sea-lion, while another embraced the grey seal carrying her. The Nereids10 competed to pile up new wedding gifts. Cymothoë gave a belt, Galatea a precious necklace, and Spatale brought a crown inlaid with heavy jewels, which she herself had chosen from the Indian Ocean’s depths. Doto suddenly plunged and brought up corals, plants while underwater, gems after coming forth from the waves. The throng of naked Nymphs encircled Venus, and as they clapped all together, their voices followed her:

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“We beg you to bring Maria this finery, these gifts of ours, as one queen to another. Tell her that Thetis never merited

8 The narrator imagines Triton as being part man, part bull, and part sea monster. 9 The narrator mentions various Greek sea gods: Leucothea and her son Palaemon were transformed into gods after being driven mad and jumping into the sea. See the Glossary for Nereus and Glaucus. 10 The Nereids all have significant names: Cymothoë means “Swift Wave”, Galatea “Milky”, Spatale “Luxury”, and Doto “Giver.”

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such things, nor her sister Amphitrite when she married 175 our chief god Neptune. Let Stilicho’s daughter know the Ocean’s pledged to her, let her recognize the sea’s her servant. We often carried her father’s fleet, those conquering ships, when he came to avenge Greece’s destruction.”11 And now Triton’s foaming breast had pushed through to the Ligurian shore, and he’d unfurled his tired coils over the water. Straightaway Venus flew aloft and came to Milan’s city walls, which the Gauls had built. They displayed a sow’s hide covered in wool.12 At Venus’s coming, the clouds were struck and receded, and the Alps shone amid pure north winds. The soldiers couldn’t name the reason for their happiness, yet still rejoiced. Flowers reddened on their battle standards, and their spears suddenly sprouted leaves and came to life.

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Venus addressed her retinue: “My companions, hold Mars off a bit: leave the palace free for me alone. 190 Keep their breastplates’ fiery horror far away, and let the sheaths conceal their threatening swords. Let the warlike Eagles and savage dragon banners stand still, and may it be right today for the army to yield to my battle standards. Let flutes play in place of war trumpets, and lyres sing 195 something soft and festive instead of the tuba’s din. Let men feast during their watches, let wine breathe in the mixing bowls amid their weapons. May royal majesty relax its terrible superiority, power not disdain to associate with ordinary people, and nobles mix with the crowd. May joy let loose the reins 200 and not be ashamed to laugh at the severe laws. Marriage god Hymen, pick out some torches for the celebration; Grace, some flowers; Harmony, weave twin crowns. Split up, winged troop of Loves, and hurry wherever need calls you, and don’t let any laziness slow you down. Some of you, arrange chains to hang many lamps

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11 A reference to Stilicho’s campaign in Greece in 397. 12 The sow covered in wool reflects a false understanding of Mediolanum, Milan’s Latin name.

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for the coming night. Others, go and strew my myrtle over the shining doorposts. Some of you sprinkle draughts of nectar throughout the palace, and kindle Arabian incense in the fire. Others, spread out Chinese silks dyed tawny crocus, and lay out Sidonian purple tapestries on the floor. Another group will make up the marriage bed, skillfully weaving jeweled thread, while the top rests on decorated supports. Go beyond what rich Lydia built for Pelops, beyond what the Bacchants constructed for Bacchus from his Indian plunder and dark palm trees. Heap all their ancestors’ spoils in the bedchamber: whatever Honorius’s aged grandfather took after defeating the Moors or the Saxons, whatever his fearsome father won from countless wars, as Stilicho accompanied him. Heap Gelonian and Armenian tribute, and what Meroë sent, encircled by the furthest Nile, whose people decorate their hair with arrows.13 Add what Persia sent from the Achaemenids’ Tigris River, when it supplicated Rome to purchase peace.14 Pile noble treasure and barbarian wealth high in their chamber, and bring every triumph to the bedroom.”

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Thus Venus spoke and headed unannounced for the bride’s house. Maria had no notion of her upcoming marriage and didn’t know why torches were being prepared. She was listening to her revered mother’s talk 230 and drinking in her character and learning from her old-fashioned example of chastity. She also kept on unrolling Greek or Latin books. Her mother was her teacher. They were reading whatever old Homer, or Thracian Orpheus, or Sappho of Mytilene played on her lyre.15 Latona likewise taught Diana, and gentle 235 Mnemosyne, goddess of memory, handed down instruction

13 For this motif, see Honorius’s Third Consulship 21 and Stilicho’s Consulship 1.254. 14 The Achaemenid dynasty were ancient rulers of Persia. The passage refers to the negotiations between Theodosius and Shapur III over Armenia, concluded by 387. See Orosius 7.34; Matthews 1975: 178. 15 Three early Greek poets.

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in her cave to her obedient daughter Thalia. Then from far off brightness increased, and sweeter air swept through the astonished house. Enticing fragrance poured from Venus’s hair. Soon the goddess revealed her divinity and confirmed belief. Then Venus stopped, thunderstruck. She marveled first at the girl Maria’s face, then at her blonde mother’s snow-white headbands. Maria was like the crescent moon, her mother like the full. The daughter was rising up like a young laurel tree under its flourishing mother: though small now, it promises mighty branches and future foliage. They were like twin roses that rule Paestum’s fields,16 growing from a single stalk. One has grown fully under the broad day, and luxuriates in the expanse, saturated with spring dew. The other hides in its bud, and doesn’t dare to let the sun touch its tender leaves. Venus stood before Maria and greeted her gently: “Greetings, heavenly Serena’s noble daughter, child of great emperors, who shall bear emperors. I’ve left my home in Cypriot Paphos for you, eager to complete all these efforts and cross all these seas for you. You shouldn’t endure a private household’s lower status any longer, nor should young Honorius keep feeding the fires he’s put off so long. Accept your family’s destiny, take up your crown again, that you’ll pass down to your children. Come back into the palace your mother came from. Suppose that you had no family ties to the throne: even if you had been a stranger to royalty, your appearance could’ve earned you the kingdom. What woman’s face was ever closer to the scepters? Whose features will be more worthy of the court? No roses could equal your lips, no snow your neck, no violets your hair, no fire your eyes. How gently your eyebrows’ shadow comes together, joining the space between. How proper the balance of your blush, not too much blood drowning the paleness. Your fingers outdo the Dawn’s, your shoulders Diana’s, you’re even 16 A city southeast of Naples.

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more beautiful than your mother. If Bacchus in love was able to mark the sky with Ariadne’s crown as a wedding gift, why shouldn’t the stars crown a more beautiful woman?17 Now the Plowman constellation is weaving starry wreaths for you, and Heaven is giving birth to stars as honor for Maria.18 275 Oh, you’ll be joined to a worthy man, and become consort in mighty rule across the world! Now the Danube will honor you, and the various peoples will adore your name. Now the Rhine and Elbe Rivers will serve you. You’ll go as queen amid the Germanic Sygambrians. Why should I count the peoples around the Atlantic Ocean’s bays? 280 The whole world will give you wedding gifts together.” Thus Venus spoke, and she fitted the finery, which the cheering Nereids had just given her, around Maria’s neck and shining limbs. The goddess herself used pins to do up Maria’s hair, and arranged her clothes. She tied the veil herself on the young bride’s hair. 285 And now the procession resounded outside the doors, and the holy chariot that would carry the bride shone brightly. The emperor burned to meet her, and longed for the slow-moving sun to set. Honorius was just like a noble horse stirred up by love’s first whiff. He swells up, shakes his curved neck’s gorgeous mane, and dashes across Pharsalus’ plains. His nostrils on fire, he calls out the familiar rivers as he whinnies. Good hope for offspring pleases the herdsmen, and the herd rejoices in its handsome stud. Meanwhile the army, dressed in white, laid aside its arms, rejoicing around Stilicho, father of the bride. No standard bearer nor soldier ceased raining down flowers on him, covering their general in a purple cloud. Wreathed in laurel and myrtle, they sang out:

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17 The wine god Bacchus raped the Cretan princess Ariadne on the island of Naxos and made the crown that he gave her into a constellation (Corona Borealis). 18 For the motif, see O&P 242–6 and Honorius’s Third Consulship 163–74.

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“Holy father Theodosius, whether Olympus’s sky embraces you, or you dwell in Elysium’s valley, where souls get their reward: look, Stilicho has fulfilled his promise to you. Now a welcome exchange has been completed. He’s repaid his own betrothal, and made a return on the marriage he accepted. He gave your son what you, the father, gave to him.19 Blessed Theodosius, you’ll never regret your judgment, nor will your final act of duty deceive you. You chose a worthy man, who merits trusting with so great an emperor’s children, along with the reins of state.

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We could mention the battles fought under Mount Haemus and the combat that made the Strymon River smoke with blood,20 310 how Stilicho distinguished himself with his shield, his might when thundering against the enemy—if marriage god Hymen didn’t forbid us. So now we’ll sing what suits this moment. Who’s got better judgment than Stilicho, who knows equity and justice better? Qualities typically distinct come together in you: strength and intelligence, prudence and courage. 315 Whose brow is more serene, who better fits the height of Roman power? Whose breast could better take on such great concerns? If you stand in the crowd, whoever sees you will shout: “It’s him, it’s Stilicho!” His authority’s lofty appearance vouches for itself and offers itself to view. His voice isn’t fierce, 320 he doesn’t fake an arrogant step, his movements aren’t shameless. Others try for authority and work at simulating it— Nature has given it to you. Your modesty and lovely self-discipline shine forth as one. White hair has come early to increase the respect owed to your features. Seriousness befits 325 old age, as strength does youth; against the norm, both stages of life have marked you with their own distinctive qualities. This man has adorned Fortune. You never lifted a spear for harm, nor stained your sword in a citizen’s neck. You didn’t create any hatred through fear, nor let favor loosen the reins of state. We love and fear you equally. Our fear itself

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19 Referring to Theodosius’s betrothal of Stilicho and Serena. 20 Referring to Stilicho’s Thracian campaign in February 398; see the introduction to this poem and Stilicho’s Consulship 1.131–132.

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shows our love for you, the laws’ most just steward, glorious peace’s most faithful guardian, best of leaders, most fortunate of fathers. We confess we owe more to our master, because he’s your son-in-law, unconquerable Stilicho. Garland your head with a wreath, put aside your precedence and join our dance. So may your son Eucherius outdo his father’s courage, and may golden Thermantia see a similar marriage. So may Maria’s womb increase. So may Honorius’s little son, born to the emperor’s purple robe, sit on his grandfather’s knee.”

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8 THE WAR WITH GILDO

Introduction Gildo was a North African nobleman, the son of the Mauretanian king Nubel. His brother Firmus led a rebellion which the Elder Theodosius suppressed in 372–4.1 Gildo remained loyal to the Romans and accordingly received his brother’s massive estates. In 385/6, Theodosius appointed him Commander-in-Chief for Africa (magister utriusque militiae per Africam), a Roman province whose territory corresponded to modern Tunisia, northeast Algeria, and the western coast of Libya. The emperor would later arrange the marriage of Gildo’s daughter Salvina to his wife Flacilla’s nephew Nebridius (Jerome Letters 79.2). In summer 397, Gildo cut off the supply of grain which his province sent to the city of Rome (Symmachus Letters 4.54). Centuries before this, Rome’s nutritional needs had outgrown what its hinterland could supply, and the city depended on importing grain from western North Africa to feed its people. It had earlier imported grain from Egypt as well, but that region now supplied Constantinople exclusively. Rome’s inhabitants depended upon free grain distributions from the massive silos all over the city and tended to riot when they did not receive them (Symmachus Letters 7.38). Without the African grain supply, moreover, Italy would have had to undertake considerable reorganization of infrastructure and supply routes and would probably have emerged greatly diminished. Gildo had had many years to observe the Roman empire’s divisions before making his move. After Stilicho’s campaign against the Goths in Greece, the powerful Eastern courtier Eutropius had Stilicho declared a public enemy in summer 397. Eutropius’s ambitions seem to have been the same as Stilicho’s: he wanted to control both the Eastern and Western 1 See Honorius’s Third Consulship 51–62; Honorius’s Fourth Consulship 24–40.

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courts. The consequences could have been considerable for the Western Empire if Honorius and Stilicho had been unable to restore the grain supply, while Egypt would continue to provide food for Constantinople. One ancient source (Zosimus 5.11) accordingly suggests that Gildo acted because of an overture from Arcadius. Gildo’s daughter Salvina’s marriage gave him strong ties to the Eastern court, and so he may have believed that he was demonstrating loyalty to the senior emperor Arcadius after Honorius’s guardian had been declared a public enemy.2 Alternately, he could have observed that breaking with the Milan court, due to Stilicho’s apparent weakness, presented an opportunity for him to rule his own lands without interference. Claudian does not commit himself definitively in his multiple narratives of Gildo’s rebellion.3 In the present poem, Gildo appears to be acting on his own initiative. Claudian’s speaker Theodosius tells his son Arcadius that Gildo “paid you big bribes and transferred many cities to your control” (258–259). At Eutropius 1.398–400, however, Claudian shifts the blame to Arcadius’s minister Eutropius. Rome says to Honorius that “Gildo’s treason [was] welcomed with great praise” in Constantinople, and “his Moors relied on Eastern strength.”4 At Honorius’s Sixth Consulship 103–123, Claudian expands his criticism to claim that Gildo actively refused Theodosius assistance against Arbogast and Eugenius, which is likely an exaggeration. Other sources, however, do support the idea that the rule of Maximus, the earlier usurper, was recognized in the province of Africa and that Gildo had supported Maximus.5 Whatever Gildo’s motive, he failed either to starve Rome or to weaken Stilicho’s position. His own dynastic conflict granted the Milan court a diplomatic opening, though it did not necessarily need one. Gildo had earlier attempted to assassinate his brother Mascezel and succeeded in killing his children; Mascezel fled to Milan. Mascezel was a Catholic, like the members of Honorius’s court at Milan, while his brother appeared to favor the so-called “Donatists”, a radical Christian movement that arose in fourth century North Africa. Optatus, the Donatist bishop of Thamugadi

2 See Blackhurst 2004; Matthews 1975: 272. 3 For discussion, see Blackhurst 2004; Charlet 1991: 2.1.xxiv–xxxv; Cameron 1970: 93–123. 4 “Moor” was originally a term for the inhabitants of the Roman province of Mauretania. By Claudian’s day, it had become a generalized term for the non-Romanized inhabitants of northwest Africa. See Shaw 2014. 5 For Gildo’s refusal to support Theodosius, see Honorius’s Sixth Consulship 108–110. For recognition of Maximus in Africa: CIL 8.11025, 8.22076; Pacatus Latin Panegyrics 12.38. For Gildo’s longstanding ties to Maximus, see Ammianus Marcellinus 29.5.21.

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(modern Timgad, Algeria), had supported Gildo’s revolt; Augustine, the bishop of nearby Hippo (modern Annaba, Algeria), accordingly called him “Gildonian.”6 Stilicho immediately responded by planning and executing an invasion of Gildo’s territory and employed Mascezel as the nominal head of the expedition. That way he could represent the invasion as a local monarch’s attempt to regain his throne from his usurping brother and as an effort to restore Catholic orthodoxy. Claudian accordingly refers to Gildo as a “tyrant”, the third to be defeated after Maximus and Eugenius who had tried to usurp Theodosius’s throne (6). He further imagines that Theodosius had been planning to take action against Gildo (241–255), although the emperor had in fact died six months before Gildo began to restrict grain shipments. Framing the expedition this way looked better than an attack on Arcadius’s loyal client king, which would have indicated open hostility between the Western and Eastern courts. The expedition sailed from Pisa in winter 3977 and defeated Gildo at the Ardalio River in March or early April 398. Gildo either committed suicide in Thabraca (modern Tabarka, Tunisia) or was strangled after fleeing on a ship which was driven back. Stilicho had concluded his campaign so quickly that Arcadius had no time to respond, and the Western general had appeared to rescue Rome from imminent starvation. (Having Mascezel pushed into a river shortly after his victorious return to Italy made it all the easier for Stilicho to present matters his way.8) However exaggerated Claudian’s claims regarding Stilicho’s salvation of Rome were, they nevertheless made excellent material for panegyric and continued to feature in his later poetry.9 Claudian would further Stilicho’s position the following year in his Invective Against Eutropius, where he struck at the official instigator of Gildo’s rebellion. This poem opens with a celebration of the unity between the Eastern and Western courts (1–16). Like Stilicho’s claim to be the guardian of both of the young emperors, this was a fiction. It signals, however, Claudian’s intention to absolve Arcadius and make Eutropius responsible for Gildo’s treason, a strategy that he similarly pursues in Eutropius. As the narrative begins, personified Rome heads to Olympus and begs Jupiter for relief from

6 See Augustine On Baptism Against the Donatists, 2.11.16; Against Parmenianus’ Letter 2.2.4; etc. 7 Based on Claudian’s astronomical indications, Charlet (1991: 2.1.xxxi) prefers to date the expedition’s departure to early February, just after Honorius’s marriage to Maria. 8 See Orosius 7.36; Zosimus 5.11. 9 See Eutropius 1.398–411; Stilicho’s Consulship 1.246–385, 3.99–106.

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the famine that Gildo has caused (17–212).10 In O&P (75–173), she had appeared as an armed woman triumphantly requesting the young men’s consulships; here, however, she exhibits the symptoms of starvation. Personified Rome recalls her earlier ability to import grain from Egypt until the advent of Constantinople, the “new Rome”, which left her dependent solely upon Africa (46–65). She is now fed at Gildo “the Moor’s whim” (70), and so she wonders what actual good conquering this territory had been in the first place. Rome then relates a brief history of Roman colonization of North Africa. Victories over Carthage in the Punic Wars added the territory to the Roman empire in 146 BCE, then campaigns against the rebel Jugurtha (died 104 BCE) secured it (75–95). Personified Rome inquires if it were not in fact better to be a smaller empire, as it had been in the legendary Regal period and historical early Republic, when the Romans ruled over only central Italy (96–127). Claudian draws on the lengthy rhetorical tradition of praising domestic self-sufficiency (Coffee 2017), a habit of thought which continued even as the Roman empire created a massive international trade network. Yet Rome’s question revealed an uneasy truth. The Western Empire was finding it increasingly difficult to police its borders and maintain security in its territory. Stilicho’s quick and decisive victory over Gildo was essential to send a message to future aspiring rebels. Personified Africa now joins Rome in supplicating Jupiter (128–200). She urges him to destroy her, through a flood or heat wave, rather than make her tolerate subjection to Gildo. She describes Gildo’s vices of avarice and decadence (176–201), conventional insults familiar from Rufinus and Eutropius. The Romans knew North Africa as a source of poisons, thanks to its snakes and herbs, and so the narrator accuses Gildo of being an expert poisoner of his enemies. His banquets feature murder and debauchery; he expels farmers from their estates, and he forces Carthaginian noblewomen to marry local African men. Jupiter quickly reassures Rome and Africa that Honorius will defend them (201–212). The ghosts of the Elder Theodosius and Theodosius the Great now visit Honorius and Arcadius in their respective courts. In Constantinople, Theodosius the Great urges his son Arcadius not to accept Gildo’s treachery (213–324). He relates how Gildo did not support him in his campaign against Arbogast and Eugenius, although other monarchs did. As often in Claudian’s speeches,11 Theodosius lists historical figures as persuasive

10 For personified Rome, see the volume introduction, Section 1.2 “Mythology and Religion.” 11 See the volume introduction, Section 1.3 “Roman History and Legend.”

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examples. Here he focuses on Romans who punished traitors, including ones who offered to betray their rulers on Rome’s behalf. Theodosius is especially aggrieved that Gildo has been able to create dissension between brothers who should be unanimous. He closes with praise of Stilicho, who was able to overthrow Rufinus and who will be able to defeat Gildo with Arcadius’s sanction. Arcadius quickly agrees. The Elder Theodosius now visits Honorius in Milan and briefly encourages his grandson to attack immediately, as he had attacked Firmus 20 years before (325–348). Honorius awakens and relates to Stilicho a prophetic dream about capturing a lion in Africa, which inspires him to conquer Gildo (349–378). Stilicho tells him to let Mascezel avenge himself instead on his brother, then assembles his invasion force (379–466). Honorius exhorts the soldiers by reminding them that the enemy forces are weak combatants and that their leader Gildo is debauched. An eagle omen supports Honorius’s speech, and the Roman forces rush to sail to Africa, no matter the weather (466–526). The unfinished poem breaks off as the fleet passes Sardinia. The poem’s incomplete state may reflect the poet’s adjustment to a rapidly changing political situation.12 A celebration of Mascezel’s victory would be little help to Stilicho after he had had the man murdered shortly after his return. Claudian accordingly disseminated the part of the poem that was complimentary to his patrons and diplomatic with respect to Arcadius. The absence of a preface suggests, though does not prove, that the poet did not recite his poem at the court. Claudian narrates the war itself in greater detail in Stilicho’s Consulship (1.246–385), with all credit attributed to his honorand Stilicho and with no mention of Mascezel. As in most representations of Africa in Roman poetry, Claudian employs literary stereotypes rather than relating accurate information. Poets such as Virgil and Lucan had described Africa as a place of immense fertility but also great danger. Excessive heat, deadly snakes, and peoples with different customs and social organization all figured in the earlier poetic tradition.13 Claudian’s geography is intended to evoke awe rather than provide literal indications. Gildo could not have laid claim, for example, to territory from “Tangier to the Paraetonian shore” (160), as it is over 4000 km from Tangier, Morocco, to Marsa Matruh, Egypt. The poem’s chronological indications, furthermore, are intended to be suggestive rather than precise, designed to evoke significant episodes 12 See Charlet 1991: 2.1.xxx–xxxv. 13 Heat and snakes: 150–151, 316–317. Different customs: 189–193, 435–443. For discussion, see Maritz 2000; Thomas 1982.

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of Roman colonization. For example, Claudian refers to Gildo’s followers as “Juba’s mad race” (331) and their land as “Bocchus’s kingdom” (342). Juba I had participated in the civil war between Caesar and Pompey (49–46 BCE); Bocchus participated in the campaign against Jugurtha (106 BCE). Claudian accordingly makes Africa appear like an unchanging place, its people and politics just as they were four centuries before his time. This was the traditional Roman poetic perspective, but it was also a strategic part of the poet’s argument on behalf of Stilicho. Claudian did not wish to remind his audience that Gildo had married his daughter into the imperial family, that his conflict with his brother involved a schism in the same religion practiced at Milan, and especially not that units of the imperial garrison had fought against Stilicho’s expedition. Rather, he participates in the colonialist fantasy that the Romans were fighting African “foreigners” again, just as they had since the time of the Punic Wars.

The War With Gildo The South Wind has returned to the empire, and the sky’s other half has once more been subjected. Two worlds sound in unison under shared reins, beneath a single ruler. We’ve yoked Europe together with Africa, and full concord between the brothers has returned. The only thing their father Theodosius’s conquests missed out—a third tyrant fell, thanks to his son’s courage. Yet my soul is fearful still, and still in shock, puts off its present joy, hesitating to trust in so vast a wish. The army hadn’t yet landed on Cinyps’s shore, and already Gildo was defeated. No tangles held back victory, no extent of land, no ocean barrier. A single message announced the combat, Gildo’s flight, and his capture, and the victory laurel arrived before the rumors did. I beg to know, what god brought this about? Gildo’s madness, though powerful and long-standing, could be smashed in such a brief time. As winter came on, he was declared an enemy, and then spring struck him down.

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Rome was already fearing her destruction, as she’d been denied the harvest, and left drained. She made for whirling Olympus’s threshold. Her face wasn’t as usual, not as when she gave laws to the British, or subjected the fearful Indians to her fasces. 20 Her voice was weak, her step was slow, and her eyes lay sunken in. 171

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Her cheeks had shriveled, and hungry leanness ate away at her arms. Her weak shoulders could barely support her tarnished shield. Her loosened helmet revealed white hair, and she carried a rusty spear. She reached heaven at last and threw herself at Thundering Jupiter’s knees. Sadly she began to complain:

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“If my walls deserved to be born under eternal auguries, Jupiter, if the Sibyl’s prophecies remain unchanged, if you haven’t yet rejected your temple on the Tarpeian Rock—then I come to you 30 in supplication, not to ask a consul to trample the Araxes River in triumph, nor for our axes to conquer the quiver-bearing Persians’ Susa, nor to fix our Eagle standards on the Red Sea’s shores. You gave us these things before now, Jupiter: now your Rome asks only for food. Pity your people, best of fathers: keep them safe from final 35 starvation. We’ve satiated your anger, whatever you had: we’ve drunk up punishments that Goths would mourn and Suebians lament. Our misfortunes would make Persia itself tremble. Why should I recall the plague, the tombs full of corpses, and the frequent deaths beneath a corrupting star? Or the river that wandered between our roofs and threatened the mountaintops? I was sunk, I carried mighty ships, I felt the sound of oars and Pyrrha’s flood returning.14 Woe is me! Where have Latin strength and the City’s power fallen? What a shadow we’ve declined to, little by little!

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Once I flourished, thanks to my armed people, and the senators’ counsels. I mastered the earth, and I bound peoples under laws. I ran victoriously from the sun’s rising to its setting. After fierce Caesar arrogated everyone’s rights to himself, morality decayed. I grew unaccustomed to my ancient arts, 50 and I slunk back into peacetime’s servile bosom. For my many merits, they gave me Libya and the Nile, so that various winds might send fleets in summer to nourish my dominating people and warlike Senate, filling my silos from both shores in turn. My welfare 55

14 Deucalion and his wife Pyrrha regenerated the human race after the mythical Flood.

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was assured: if by chance Memphis denied me grain, I compensated Egypt’s yearly harvest with African crops. I saw the grain ships competing: far and wide, Punic rigging ran together with the Nile’s sails. 60 Then suddenly there was another Rome, equal to me.15 The separate East took up equal togas, and Egypt’s fields yielded their allotment to the new city. My sole hope remained in Africa, which, under strain, could scarcely tend to me. I depended on the South Wind alone, and I was never sure of the future, always in need, seeking assurance from both the wind and the harvest. 65 And now Gildo snatched even this hope too at autumn’s end. Our fearful prayers ranged over the sea, in case some ship appeared, if by chance shame wrung something from the powerful ruler, or was spared from his plundering. I’m fed at the Moor’s whim! He boasts that he isn’t returning 70 what he owes us, but grants us his own property. He enjoys offering me daily bread as if to a slave, his barbaric contempt holding my life or my starvation in the balance. He glories in my people’s cries and weighs the fate of my great collapse. Gildo sells Romulus’s harvests and occupies the fields my war wounds acquired. Was this the reason why I fought a lamentable war so long with arrogant Carthage? Why Regulus spurned life and wished to return to his captors? My losses at Cannae bought this, father Jupiter? Naval combat flared up so often on the Spanish and Sicilian seas—to no purpose? My land was devastated, so many of our leaders killed, the Carthaginians broke through the Alps and rushed against us, and Hannibal drew close to our astonished city? Indeed, my walls sustained Mars’s assaults, and I endured bloody nights before the Colline Gate16—just so a barbarian might profit from the conquered Africans? Carthage fell three times in defeat—for Gildo’s use? Groaning Italy

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15 Constantinople. 16 Gaius Marius conquered Jugurtha, a North African monarch, in 106 BCE. In 82 BCE, Marius fought a civil war against Sulla; Marius’s forces lost a climactic battle at the Colline Gate on the north side of Rome.

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underwent a thousand disasters, and spent ages at war? Fabius and brave Marcellus fought for me—so Gildo could pile up wealth? We forced evil Syphax17 to drink poison, we dragged wild Jugurtha, whom Metellus smashed, in Marius’s chains—and now Gildo will rule the Numidians? Oh! So many deaths! Such great effort! Did both Scipios sweat to profit Bocchus’s kingdom? You’ve conquered thanks to Roman bloodshed, Moors! For so long my warlike people ruled the world, and handed out scepters and consular robes. Conquered people always experienced them as fearsome in war, but gentle in peace. Dishonored now and needy, my people now endure quiet, a lamentable punishment. Though no enemy openly encircles them, they suffer a besieged city’s fate. Death looms over us from moment to moment, and a few days will mark the end of my doubtful food supplies. Alas for my prosperous fate! Why did you give me seven hills and a population that can’t be fed on little? I would’ve been luckier with smaller dominions. I’d have preferred to withstand the Sabines and the Veientines.18 I’d lead my life more safely as a smaller state. My own massive size harms me. If only I could go back to my ancient boundaries, and poor King Ancus’s walls!19 The Etruscan and Campanian plowland would be enough for me, and the kind of harvests Cincinnatus and Curius brought in. A farmer dictator would bring his own crops to his powerful homeland.

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Now what should I do? Gildo rules Libya, Constantinople the Nile. Once my shoulders carried the land and sea, but now I’m deserted, and there are no rewards for my deserving old age. 115 You gods who were angry that I grew, come to my aid at last, intercede with our father Jupiter. And you, Cybele, carried over the sea of your own will, exchanging your Mount Ida for our Palatine Hill, 17 See the Glossary for these North African leaders and their Roman opponents. 18 These small cities in Latium were the targets of Rome’s initial expansion during the early Republic. 19 Ancus Marcius (traditionally reigned 640–617 BCE) was the legendary fourth king of Rome.

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choosing to wash your Phrygian lions in the Almo River,20 now turn your son Jupiter with your motherly prayers. But if the Fates forbid it, and antiquity used false omens to deceive us, at least destroy us in a different downfall and change our punishment’s nature. Let Porsenna bring the Tarquins back, the Allia River renew its deadly combat, give me over to savage Pyrrhus’s hands, to the Senonian Gauls’ rage, return me to Brennus’s flames.21 All these punishments would be easier than starving!” After Rome spoke, she burst into tears and fell silent. Mother Venus and father Mars wept, as did Minerva who took thought for holy Vesta. Nor did Cybele or Juno remain dry-eyed. The native gods cried, as did all the deities whom Rome had taken in or created. Father Jupiter’s heart began to loosen, and he calmed the holy uproar. Then from far off, Africa appeared amid the stars. Her cheeks were bruised and her wild shrieking shook the heavens. Her clothes were torn, and her wreaths of grain lay scattered here and there. Her head was wounded, and her ivory haircomb hung down, its teeth broken. She broke through the lofty gates, shouting: “Why are you delaying, great Jupiter? Loose the sea’s bonds, release it from laws, and send your angry brother Neptune against the world’s peoples. I want to drown first! Let walls of water come from Cape Pachynus, loosen the Syrtes, sink the cities. If the Fates can’t take Gildo away from me, tear me away from Gildo! Libya’s scorched part is luckier: excessive heat fortifies and defends it, it lies empty, safe from such a tyrant. Let the red-hot zone grow larger; let the burning heavens’ middle path torture me

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20 During a festival in March, Cybele’s statue was washed in the Almo River in Latium. 21 Rome catalogs a series of wars fought in Italian territory. Brennus’s Gauls defeated a Roman army at the Allia River, a small tributary of the Tiber, in 390 BCE. For Brennus, Porsenna, and Pyrrhus, see the Glossary.

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as well. I’ll lie deserted, better off not enduring the plowshare. Let dipsas snakes rule over abandoned plows, and let the thirsty soil raise horned vipers! What good did my climate do me, my gentle weather? I was so fertile—for Gildo! Already the Sun’s reins have turned through twelve winters since his grim yoke clung to my neck. Gildo has grown old amid my grief and established a kingdom for himself over so many years. And if only it were a kingdom! I’m held under his personal rule, like some kind of small farm. He’s assigned himself everything between the Atlas Mountains and the Nile, between dry Barce and western Cadiz, between Tangier and the Paraetonian shore.22 The world’s third part has become one bandit’s estate! Gildo’s endowed with contradictory vices. Whatever profound greed draws to him, his luxury, still worse, pours away. His assaults terrify living people, he inherits from the dead, rapes young women, and commits obscene adultery in marital beds. He gives no peace: when plundering ceases, lust begins; rich men fear the daytime and husbands the night. Whoever’s wealthy, or known for a pretty wife, Gildo attacks with a false accusation. If the man can’t be charged, he’s invited to a banquet and perishes at the table. No form of murder escapes craftsman Gildo: he seeks out various juices, the snake’s green spume, and herbs that stepmothers don’t yet know of.23 If someone’s expression condemns the present circumstances, or he groans too openly, at Gildo’s nod a cruel slave leaps up, sword drawn, right in the middle of the banquet. Everyone’s glued to their couches, and in silent fear they taste foods that torture them. They grow pale as they guzzle unknown drink, and gaze at the swords aimed at their flanks. This Fury’s splendid table is laid out for the Underworld: dripping blood, bristling with swords, threatening poison. 22 Barce is modern Marj, Libya. Paraetonium is modern Marsa Matruh, Egpyt. 23 The Romans described stepmothers as proverbially wicked.

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When wine heats up lust, then decadence burns more fiercely: perfumes diffuse amid varied garlands. Gildo orders young widows to walk amid long-haired slaves and lovely boys, and to laugh shortly after he kills their husbands. It’d be better to undergo Phalaris’s fiery torture and the Sicilian bull’s mooing, rather than to hear such choruses. This shameful loss of modesty wasn’t enough for him: as he tires of the noblest matrons, he hands them over to his Moors. Led through the middle of Carthage, Sidonian mothers endure marriage to barbarians. Gildo forces Ethiopian sons-in-law on us, and Nasamonian husbands. Their degenerate offspring terrify our cradles. Relying on these allies, Gildo marches as if greater than the emperor himself. Infantry columns run far ahead; cavalry squadrons circle around, and his client kings, whom he enriched from plundering us. He thrusts everyone from their ancestral estate, dislodging long-dwelling farmers from their land. I’m carried here and there, dispersed in exile. Will it never be right to return and restore these wandering citizens to their soil?”

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In her grief, Africa would’ve gone on further, if Jupiter hadn’t spoken from his high throne. Atropos and Lachesis, the Fates, took down his words on adamant and wove his pronouncements into their threads: “We won’t allow you, Rome, to remain long unavenged, nor you, Africa. Let Honorius lay your common enemy low. 205 Go forward without fear! No violence shall disrupt your course, and Africa shall serve Rome only.” As Jupiter spoke, he breathed a better youth on Rome. Straightaway her strength returned, and her hair changed color from old age’s whiteness. The resurgent crest rose on her reinforced helmet, her shield’s circle glowed, and her smooth spear sparkled as she knocked off rust.

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Already Sleep, guiding Night’s moist horses with Lethe’s reins, was turning the stars with her silent chariot. And now the two foremost men among the divine emperors, Theodosius and his father, 215 went to bring peace to the world. They brought Jupiter’s secret warnings to the brothers Honorius and Arcadius, and ratified treaties

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between their two empires. It was like when headlong storms overcome the helmsman’s skill, and the ship groans under the waves’ nonstop blows, and wavers, about to capsize. Then, summoned 220 in the dark night, the Spartan brothers Castor and Pollux, sons of Leda, uphold the wrecked ship’s sails. As the moon’s sphere opened, the emperors followed diverse paths. The Elder Theodosius headed for Italy’s shores. But the younger made for where the Bosporus narrows the inflowing Black Sea, and slipped down to Constantinople and Arcadius’s bedchamber. As his son caught sight of him (for the moon shone bright), he trembled, his joys mixed with tears, and he embraced and stroked his father’s limbs that he hadn’t hoped to touch.

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“Oh father!” Arcadius said. “You’ve come back to me, for the first time 230 since the Alpine campaign! How are you here, so longed for by your people? Let me touch your hand, that made fierce peoples fall. Who took such a bulwark from the earth? How all mortal things long since beg for you, weep for you, and seek you, brave and dutiful man that you were!” Theodosius interrupted Arcadius’s sighs and spoke thus: 235 “Is this the situation? Strife grows between you brothers, while Gildo the Moor’s in your midst? The world divides into its twin courts? Gildo’s flourishing is the reward for such madness? For sure, he has outstanding character, worthy of great respect, and thanks to his merits, brothers’ sense of duty should retreat!24 240 Look first for your father’s sake: civil strife flourishes, and Roman affairs stand liable to unpredictable blows. Is there a far-off Armenian king, an unknown ruler on the Sea of Azov, who didn’t provide aid to me as I proceeded on campaign? The Goths assisted me, and the Gelonians came along. 245 But Gildo alone didn’t provide a ship, nor sent any troops. He stood pat, and his loyalty trickled away. If he’d looked to join the forces opposing me, I’d have been less aggrieved, as I’d know my enemy. He remained on the lookout for Fate, and holding back from the press of battle, he weighed up the two 24 Theodosius makes a bitterly sarcastic suggestion.

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opposing forces and let the outcome judge. Leaning on the weight of events, ready to give himself over to the winner, his Fortune and plan hung in the balance. Oh, if the stars that longed for me hadn’t seized me away before this, I’d have followed King Tullus’s example and tied his criminal limbs to four-horse chariots, so he could be torn apart amid the brambles! 255 Up to this point, Gildo heeded your brother Honorius’s directives: now look how he tramples them once more! Are you ready to entrust yourself to such a monster after your brother and father did so? But he’s paid you big bribes, and transferred many cities to your control. So will right yield for the right price? Treason for pay will please you? 260 I’ll won’t mention that that fugitive harmed your brother, that his spirit’s so unstable. Even if a traitor brings us safety when we’re in the greatest danger, and death hangs over our heads, he’ll still never be welcome. Once daylight returns, we condemn his treachery, and we don’t allow ourselves to trust such a man. 265 This kind of man offers citizens along with their walls to a buyer; he’d put his country up for sale. Many people have abused an opportunity, yet soon come to hate it. That’s how Philip took the Greek cities: Macedon’s gold destroyed liberty. Romans have always hated crime’s accomplices. A man promised to mix deadly poison to kill his master Pyrrhus. Fabricius laid bare the plot and sent the man back to the king, whom he attacked viciously in battle, but refused to employ a slave’s crime to end the war. Camillus returned the children who’d been led outside the walls to the city he was besieging.25

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Other people were handed over for punishment, when they tried to end battle: does Gildo remain in order to stir it up? What another man refuses to do to his enemy, you undertake against your brother? Oh, a dishonor forever! 25 When Camillus (see Glossary) besieged the city of Falerii (modern Fabrica di Roma) c. 394 BCE, a teacher led his young students to the general and offered them as hostages to the Romans. Camillus refused to accept the offer and ordered the students to beat their teacher. See Livy From the Foundation of the City 5.27.

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Gildo approves power in the South for whoever pleases him, and an enormous province follows these altered customs. To whichever side his wavering spirit gives the nod, he transfers Libya along with his loyalty. This evil man provides rule that flows back and forth. Africa was this Moor’s gift. Take away this Massylian deception, get rid of this fork-tongued treachery, and words breathing this region’s poison. Don’t let blood brothers fight hand to hand in arms, don’t, I beg you. Such deeds are fitting for grim Thebes, for Mycenae;26 let this crime pass to the Moors. What evil is our Stilicho working up? When has he ever refused your orders? Is there any man alive more loyal to us?

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Not to speak of the various exploits he performed with me, I’ll talk about what I have seen after my death. When I departed as a god, I left behind—I confess it—a disordered and rebellious state. The army was still drawing its swords, against orders, in their hatred from their battle in the Alps, and winners and losers exchanged 295 alternating insults.27 My vigilance could hardly quiet this madness —much less could a boy emperor have done it. Alas! How often I was anxious for you two! What would the massed ranks dare to do once set free, when loosed from their confinement they burned eagerly for revolution! Dissension was bitter, 300 and consensus even harsher. Then Stilicho succeeded me, with his fatherly sense of duty, and he nurtured the tender and unformed boy Honorius, and led him into an emperor’s true maturity. He expelled Rufinus, whom you confess made you tremble.28 Stilicho was the only man I knew to be both mindful and faithful. While life remained to me, he executed anything I wanted, or seemed to want. He venerated me,

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26 Theodosius refers to two mythological stories of murderous brothers: Polynices and Eteocles, who fought over the throne of Thebes; and Atreus and Thyestes, who fought over the throne of Mycenae. 27 Claudian suggests that Theodosius’s victory over Arbogast and Eugenius did not result in immediate reconciliation. 28 See Rufinus.

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and called upon me like an aiding deity. If you’re refusing his great service, then at least respect your brother’s marriage, his father-in-law’s torches, and my royal pledge Serena.29

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You should’ve also gone against your brother’s enemies, he against yours. What peoples, either on the Rhine or Danube, would’ve withstood you joining forces and working together? But allow just this: let Gildo fall. We ask nothing more. He may arm himself behind the Syrtes sandbars, and hide behind the Atlas Mountains. 315 He may block us with a land stuffed with snakes, and the heat of the midday sun. But I know Stilicho’s intelligence, I know his spirit that’s a match for every circumstance. He’ll break through the desert, and his courage will find the way.” Thus spoke holy Theodosius. His son Arcadius replied: “Father, I’ll eagerly obey your orders, and willingly I embrace your advice. Stilicho will be dearer to me than any relative, and that violator Gildo should pay for his crimes! May Africa return now to my brother, safer than before.”

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While they spoke of such matters together at length, the Elder Theodosius came to Italy and entered his grandson’s chaste bedchamber. Stretched out on a Tyrian purple coverlet, Honorius enjoyed tender sleep beside his wife Maria. Theodosius halted by his head and said this in his dreams:

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“My dear grandson, has such confidence sustained the conquered Moors? Has Juba’s mad race conspired once more in arms after my death, and resumed war with their conquerors’ descendants? Have they forgotten Firmus’s fall,30 and are they ruling Libya again, which I sweated to capture? Does Gildo dare to strive against Rome, and has he no fear of his brother’s fate? I’d want to go now, this minute, old man that I am, and show him my familiar face: won’t the Moor flee when he sees my ghost? What are you hesitating for? Leap out of bed, attack

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these rebels, return my prisoner to me. Stop delaying!

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This is your lineage’s destiny: so long as our blood remains in the world, Bocchus’s kingdom will always fear us. Let Gildo’s rich spoils be joined to Firmus’s, the Moorish victory laurel adorn two chariots, let one house triumph over a single people again and again! 345 Gods, you did well to keep Firmus for me and his brother for my grandson, though so many years slipped by in between!” After he spoke, he withdrew as the dawn approached, like a breath of air. But rivalrous courage’s mighty goads sharpened young Honorius. Now he burned to sail his ship, to cut through the waters, to attack the far-off Moors with his spear. Then he ordered his father-in-law Stilicho to be summoned, joined hands with him, and asked him for the best plan: “In my dreams, honored father, future events are often laid open, and many nights sing prophecies to me. From far off, I seemed to spread a hunting net around the Libyan uplands, scouting the Gaetulian slopes with my dogs. A vicious lion’s assault was devastating the grieving region. Here and there lay slaughtered cattle and half-dead bullocks. Gore still polluted the villages, and shepherds’ corpses were scattered around the bloodstained fields. I approached the monster’s hiding place and saw something amazing to tell. His honor slipped away, and the menacing mane flowed downward from his neck. His pride gone, the lion set down his shattered arms, groaning like a slave. We threw clattering shackles on his claws, as chains suddenly appeared upon his neck. And now my grandfather exhorts me to compete with him for equal trophies. How long are we going to delay here, so far off? We should have filled the ships long before this, and overcame the sea’s delay. I’m the first to get ready to cross over. Whichever barbarians draw their swords at my nod should come with me: all Germany should bring its ships, the Sygambrians accompany me with their allied fleet.

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Let Africa grow pale as it feels the Rhine carried toward it. Or should I sit here and endure so many reproaches? Now I’m a young man, should I abandon what I held and ruled as a boy? My father twice rushed to the Alps and beyond to defend his kingdom. Am I going to lie here like easy prey and be insulted?”

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Honorius had finished speaking. Stilicho replied: “Are you, the emperor, going to dignify an enemy Moor’s war trumpet with your attention? 380 Will this coward take a famous death’s consolation to his grave, perishing in war against you? Will Honorius fight on one side, Gildo on the other? Chaos will plunge the stars into the Underworld before that happens! It’s enough to decree his punishment. Your name will create more terror than your sword, your presence diminishes your glory. 385 Standing on the battlefield makes you an equal, and clashing armies don’t recognize your majesty. But I will teach you—heed me— what’s more useful to do and harsher to your enemy. Gildo’s brother Mascezel, from the same parents, but not the same in character, fled his brother’s dire crimes. 390 He entrusted his life and hopes to your protection. When Gildo tried plots in vain, but couldn’t kill him, he directed his anger against Mascezel’s children. All at once he cut down the young people whom he’d clasped to his bosom when they were little children. He cast out their unburied bodies in public, and forbade 395 a tomb to his own relatives’ ghosts. That bloodthirsty man cast off his nature, his brotherhood, his humanity, and begrudged a little earth to people he murdered! This kind of crime made the sun flee and condemned Mycenae, turning aside the daylight. But Atreus’s crime was repaying 400 a crime: his wife made up for his unspeakable banquet.31 Here there has been hatred, not punishment. Abandoned law asks for your revenge, as does your father, these naked ghosts

31 The mythical king Atreus killed his brother Thyestes’s children and served them to him at a banquet in revenge for Thyestes sleeping with his wife.

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who lack a bit of dust, and defiled duty. Athens established an altar for grieving people, and a goddess to take care of wretched victims. 405 The Theban women brought Athenian phalanxes to tears, and their war earned funeral pyres for their husbands.32 When Adherbal was thrust from his throne, he turned the Roman Senate against the Numidians, thanks to his mourner’s ragged hair and tears.33 Gildo tried to drown his brother in massacres. Now let him suffer 410 to see him coming back as a leader, knowing that he’s unequal to your punishment. The man he chased from his throne should chase him headlong. Let him tremble before the man he smashed in destruction, and when he’s dragged as a victim to the altar, recognize his brother.” His son-in-law Honorius approved these plans. Stilicho arrayed his finest fighters, outstanding squads of chosen youths, and refitted his fleet in Pisa’s Etruscan port. Hercules led his own Herculean cohort, and Jupiter, king of the gods, led the Jovian cohort. The standard-bearers weren’t weighed down; the battle standards were so eager to be moved! The Nervian cohort followed, as did one well deserving the name “Lucky”, the legion named for Augustus, the “Unconquered” testifying to their name, and the “Lions” whose shields prove their courage.34 The emperor encouraged them further before their departure, conspicuous on the rampart. The troops gathered around him, leaning on their spears, their spirits fierce as they turned attentive ears to him: “You’re going to crush Gildo, troops. This moment brings threats and promises. If you’re feeling any grief on my behalf, show it to me in combat. Blot out civil war’s disgrace through a just and massive triumph. Let the Eastern world know,

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32 After the mythical king Polynices failed to recapture Thebes from his brother, the Theban women went to the Altar of Pity in Athens to ask the Athenians for help. 33 For Adherbal, see Glossary for Jugurtha. 34 Roman legions were identified by their number, but often took distinctive names as well.

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make it clear, that a just cause, not strength, conquered the Gauls.35 Don’t let Gildo frighten you, even if he gathers the whole barbarian world. Will the Moors withstand your shouting, your shields’ clashing repulse, your swords in hand-to-hand combat? You won’t go against men protected by shields and flashing helmets: 435 they only place their trust in far-flung missiles. Your enemy’s disarmed once he throws his spear. His right hand hurls the javelin, his left holds forth a cloak; otherwise the horseman’s stripped bare. His horse knows nothing about bridles; sticks guide it. The ranks have no loyalty, no order: they think weapons 440 are burdens, and running away is safety. They have a thousand marriages, so they have no family ties, and they don’t care about their children: their sense of duty falls off with their numbers. So much for the masses. Their leader Gildo will come forth, canopied in roses, stinking of perfumes. He’ll be stuffed with undigested food, staggering drunk, burdened by old age, and weak from disease and sexual perversion. Let the cavalry trumpet rouse him from lewd coupling! Put off by the war horn’s blast, he’ll beg for music, for singing and dancing girls, forced to learn instead how to spend nights he stayed up for lovemaking in the camps. Wouldn’t it be better to die than to endure a shameful life? What region is left, if Africa passes to Moorish kings and adds to our loss of Illyria?36 Is the Tyrrhenian Sea going to shut in Roman law, which only Meroë and the Indian Ocean used to confine? And will Sicily be the Roman empire’s border, on which neither the Nile nor India imposed boundaries? Go bring back the sky which that bandit took away, and the South he stole. Rome, the unconquerable world’s head,

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35 Gauls comprised a substantial portion of the army that Arbogast used in his unsuccessful attempt to make the usurper Eugenius emperor. 36 Likely referring to Alaric’s devastation of the region. Charlet 1991: 2.1.xviii–xix suggests a reference to the cession of the Dioceses of Dacia and Macedonia to Arcadius.

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will either stand or fall on your arms’ strength. You owe me so many lost peoples, so many fields and cities. Keep Libya safe with a single war. Let our rule follow your oars and sails: carry our disdained laws across the sea, your practiced swords topple a third head off its neck, putting an end at last to deadly tyrants.”

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The omens supported Honorius’s speech. As everyone looked on, a tawny eagle, Jupiter’s arms-bearer, caught a snake in its curved talons and bore it off to the clear sky. As the snake struggled, the eagle’s hooked beak divided it, 470 head sticking to its talons, its body falling to earth. Straightaway, inspired by these auguries, they rushed eagerly over boulders and torrents, neither mountain nor forest holding them back. They were like the cranes readying to make aerial warfare on the little Pygmies, clamoring loudly when they leave Thrace in summer and exchange the Strymon River for the warm Nile.37 Flying in varied order through the clouds, their wings make letters, their feathers inscribing marks in the air. As the Romans reached the ocean’s waves, keener motivation burned in them. They seized the ships and loosed the ropes themselves, trimmed the sails, and fit the yard atop the mast. The uproar shook the Tuscan shore, and Alpheus’s Pisa couldn’t contain the fleet. Avenging Greece likewise once loosed Agamemnon’s ships, and Aulis seethed with countless shouts.38 The noise didn’t frighten them, nor signs of impending storms, nor an uncertain South Wind’s onset. “Cast off, comrades”, the sailors called out, “or loose the ropes! We’ll even cross the hostile waves to attack Gildo, storms pushing us to war through the sea’s byways.

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37 For the mythological battle of the cranes and Pygmies, see Homer Iliad 3.1–9. 38 The mythical king Agamemnon gathered a thousand Greek ships at Aulis in Boeotia, Greece, in preparation for the Trojan war.

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I’ll ram the land with my wrecked ship’s beak! Alas! You’re too lazy, as you cautiously take note if diver birds are flying back, if crows are walking on the beach! The setting Sun can sprinkle his face with spots, West Winds swell the Moon and turn it livid, impacted stars hurl forth wandering fires, rain soak the Kids, the cloudy Pleiades lead forth Taurus, and Orion descend entirely to the ocean.39 We trust the sky, but Honorius has yet greater authority: his auspices guide me, his soldier, over the immense ocean, not the Chariot or the Bear. Damn the Plowman, sailor: send the ships into the whirlwind’s center! If storms and winds keep me from Africa, the emperor’s fortune will grant it to me.” And already the fleet was sailing, passing Liguria on the right, Etruria on the left, steering clear of Corsica’s unseen rocks. There is a great island shaped like a human foot, which ancient colonists called Sardinia, rich land for crops, an opportune site for conquest of Carthage or Italy. The part that’s closer to Africa has flat land and welcomes ships. The northern-facing part is harsh, rocky, and forward, and sudden gusts make it noisy. The sailors curse it as the Mountains of Madness. Plagues for people and cattle come from here, diseased air rages, and South Winds reign and shut out North Winds. After the ships struggled free and fled far from these places, they rushed past the winding land’s various shores. Some came to Sulci, a colony of ancient Carthage, others sheltered at Olbia, whose walls run down to the beach. Caralis, founded by powerful Tyre, faces Africa and stretches out at length.40 It sends forth a narrow hill

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39 Claudian’s sailors catalog traditional signs of bad weather for sailing and claim that they won’t be deterred. Charlet (1991: 2.1.xxix) places the setting of Orion, viewed from Italy, around 3 December. 40 Three towns in Sardinia, modern Sant’Antioco, Olbia/Terranova, and Cagliari.

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through the waves, which breaks the onrushing winds and so makes a port in the middle of the sea. Its mighty bay contains peaceful waters, safe from every wind. Every rower made for this spot, and they turned their prows, drew up the fleet, and waited for favorable West Winds. The unfinished poem breaks off here.

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9 PANEGYRIC ON MANLIUS THEODORUS’S CONSULSHIP

Introduction Flavius Manlius Theodorus was a philosopher and a scholar as well as an imperial bureaucrat. His work “On Meter” is still extant, and his contemporary Augustine testifies to his eloquence.1 He was Western consul in 399; in the same year, Eutropius was the Eastern consul. Claudian wrote the present panegyric celebrating Theodorus’s extraordinary virtues, which reflect positively both on the honorand and on Honorius’s court. In the following year, he would write an invective denigrating Theodorus’s consular counterpart Eutropius (see Chapter 10). The Preface praises the exalted council, whose members represent the entire world, that gathers in Honorius’s palace to celebrate Theodorus’s accession to the consulship. The panegyric opens by observing that Theodorus has reached the summit of virtue through his philosophy and of honor through his consulship (1–18). The narrator then reviews Theodorus’s career prior to his enforced retirement (19–60). In 376, Theodorus was an advocate for the prefecture of the prefect of Italy. He next governed one of the African provinces, perhaps in 377, then the province of Macedonia, perhaps in 378. He served as magister memoriae, the senior imperial secretary who issued memoranda. He then served as a senior financial official; he was Count of the Sacred Largesses (comes sacrarum largitionum) in 380 and may have been Count of the Private Fortune (comes rerum privatarum) before that.2 Claudian’s summary of Theodorus’s career ends with his rapid ascent from the years 376 to 382, until the emperor Gratian’s assassination in 383 sent him into retirement.

1 Augustine On Order 1.11.31. For Theodorus’s scholarly work, see Sánchez Ostiz 2013. 2 Theodosian Code 11.16.12, 18 March 380.

DOI: 10.4324/9780429353345-9

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Theodorus spent his enforced retirement studying philosophy and maintaining his country estate (61–112). To emphasize the breadth of his learning, the narrator catalogs a series of philosophers and their major teachings. Theodorus both writes his own works of philosophy and shapes his character in accordance with his learning. Personified Justice recalls Theodorus to office, where his virtue can benefit people under a just emperor (113–173). Theodorus replies that though his long retirement has left him out of practice, he must obey Justice (173–197). Justice then hands Theodorus the world’s reins (198–255). Claudian praises his modest and balanced character, comparing his serenity to the gods or to an enormous river’s smooth currents. Theodorus’s elevation to the consulship signifies the return of fitting rewards for virtuous service (256–269). The Muses then prepare Theodorus’s consular games (270–340). Claudian employs several traditional narratives to celebrate Theodorus’s leadership qualities (Bernstein 2019). In Roman mythology, the personification of Justice had left the Earth at the end of the Golden Age. Human beings now suffer lawlessness and corruption in the present Iron Age. In a typical panegyric move, Claudian claims that Honorius’s rule has caused Rome to enter a new Golden Age.3 Justice has accordingly returned from heaven to visit Theodorus and encourage him to serve under Honorius and Stilicho, an opportunity that would excite Rome’s historical defenders of liberty (159–165).4 Justice’s effort to persuade Theodorus to return to a leadership role draws both on Roman historical examples and on a traditional conflict in ethical philosophy. Roman legends told of leaders such as Cincinnatus who retired to work their farms and waited to be called back to public service; see 8–9. Ancient philosophers, meanwhile, questioned whether educated people should serve their communities or choose a life of study over public service. The Epicureans, for example, argued that the contemplative life was best; so too did contemporary Christian ascetics, though Claudian does not mention either of these groups directly. By contrast, the Stoics argued that ethical people make the best leaders and so philosophers owed their leadership to the community as a public service. Claudian dramatizes this philosophical conflict by showing Justice herself persuading Theodorus to return to the consulship. Invoking these historical and philosophical narratives allows Claudian to avoid stating the potentially embarrassing truth that Gratian’s assassination had forced Theodorus to retire.

3 See volume introduction, Section 1.2 “Mythology and Religion.” 4 See also Rufinus 1.354–387.

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The poem’s final section (270–340) focuses on the arena games that were an essential part of a new consul’s accession. These celebrations were opportunities for the consul to increase his popularity with the people by providing exciting displays of combat, chariot racing, and exotic animal hunts. He was also expected to distribute gifts of food and cash. To celebrate Theodorus’s character as a scholar and philosopher, Claudian has the Muses prepare his games. (At Stilicho’s Consulship 3.236–369, by contrast, Claudian assigns this role to Diana, the goddess of hunting, thereby contrasting the general’s active life with the philosopher’s contemplative life.) Claudian claims that Theodorus will govern outstandingly during his consular year as well as passing down the consulship to his descendants, like the Anician family (see O&P). As often in Claudian’s panegyrics, the consulship ennobles its holder and vice versa. Preface I beg you, my Muse Thalia, will you dare to sing, before such a learned gathering, amid so many nobles? Your own fame doesn’t prevent you, but it’s grown so great that it’s hard work to preserve it, and shame to diminish it! Or has your confidence increased from constant campaigning, and has the soldier now wholly taken over the poet’s breast?5 See the Roman Senate’s heights, its majesty, the heroes that make Gaul rejoice. The entire earth hears my song, and it shall come to the whole world’s ears. Ah, such great love for our consul drives me forward! They say Jupiter wasn’t aware once of his own kingdom’s boundaries and wanted to learn Nature’s full extent. So he sent out from the eastern and western zones two eagles who carried his thunderbolts on similar wings. It’s said both flights met on Mount Parnassus, and Pythian Apollo’s sky brought the birds together. Our emperor doesn’t need eagles to know his world: he reckons his rule more surely thanks to me. I measure for him the world that’s collected here in council, and in this gathering I see whoever shines anywhere on earth.

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5 Claudian likely refers to his frequent celebrations of his patrons’ military victories but may also refer to his service at court as tribune and notary.

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Manlius Theodorus’s Consulship Virtue provides its own reward; far and wide it shines alone, safe from Fortune. Consulships don’t raise Virtue higher, nor does it seek to grow more glorious from the mob’s applause. It has no desires for external goods, nor hunger for praise, inner riches give it courage, and no misfortunes shake it. It looks down upon people’s affairs from a lofty citadel. Yet Honor pursues it seductively, though Virtue’s unwilling, and solicits it of its own accord. The lictor coming so often from the farm taught us this, as did the consul summoned straight from his plowing.6 You also were at leisure, studying Nature’s holy mysteries and the universe, long since retired and far from the law courts where you’d sweated. Once more the same power embraced you and carried you upward, setting the familiar reins of state in your hands as you returned. Consular garb soon followed. Now nothing’s left, Theodorus, to increase your soul’s virtue or your honor’s splendor: both summits are yours. From the beginning, your childhood years formed your character, your life drew you on a worthy path to the consul’s curule chair, and old men yielded as your youth outdid them. Even as a child, your soul seemed to have white hair, your speech had a sweet gravity, and your conversation astonished people’s ears. Soon your tongue’s triumphant abundance overflowed the Forum and protected accused defendants. Your pleading stunned the most revered throne, that would praise you twice for leading the state. Next, part of Africa approved your administration of law, which the whole now enjoys. Your short tenure produced a pledge of long-lasting love, and public statues’ enduring voices testify that the populace became your grateful client. Then Macedonia and Pella’s walls were entrusted to you, made wealthy once by conquering the Hydaspes River. Your gentle rule brought back to those under your care

6 Referring to Cincinnatus; see Glossary.

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the joy they’d felt once when Philip flourished in arms, or when black Porus’s kingdom fell to Alexander.7 But the court didn’t grant you further to these cities; it preferred to have you for its own. You came to give edicts to the world, and responses to petitioners. Your eloquence elevated the emperor’s oracular pronouncements. Rome’s majesty never could recall a time when it spoke more worthily. Next, you took charge of the Sacred Largesses8 and the conquered world’s tribute: all the gold rolled down from the rivers, that the pale Bessian miners’ skill dug out, tracking along the hidden seams, far from the light. A sailor who knows how to ply the oars takes charge of one side of the ship. There he manages the high prow and thoroughly learns the waves and signs of future storms. After he masters the sea through constant practice, he proceeds to take the helm and direct the entire craft.

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So when you had long given outstanding proofs of your deeds, the empire took you up to govern not a part of itself but its entire body, and gave you rule over all the world’s governors. The Spanish and German seas obeyed you, as did Britain, set apart from our world. Rivers in their different channels heeded your words, the sluggish Saône, swift Rhône, and wealthy Ebro. How often the Rhine, where the barbarians roam, lamented that it didn’t enjoy your judgments on both banks!9

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Every place the sun reddens as it heads downward, and encircles as it sets, became one man’s concern. You passed so swiftly through your career, constantly filling new offices. Your powers’ terms occupied one and the same stage of life, and you climbed so many steps of your destiny in your early years.

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7 Claudian describes the Roman province of Macedonia in terms of its historical period of greatest glory, under the rule of Philip (382–336 BCE) and his son Alexander (356–323 BCE). Pella was the capital of Macedon, and Porus was an Indian monarch whom Alexander defeated. 8 The Count of the Sacred Largesses (comes sacrarum largitionum) was a senior financial official. 9 The Rhine River marked the boundary of Roman territory. Claudian imagines the Germanic tribes on the other side of the river wishing they had the benefit of Manlius Theodorus’s administration.

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After you reached the highest peak and earned your retirement, your glory sought a private haven, now freed from cares. Your genius’s fruits returned, as did your other pursuits, and no part of your life fell away. Whatever time you reclaimed from court cases, you applied to your studies, and your soul in turn either worked diligently for the people or recreated with the Muses.

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You’re re-reading the mysteries of ancient Cecrops’ Athenian descendants, and carefully examining the new arguments each one entrusted to the ages, and counting up the ranks that each school led forth. One, Anaximenes, determined that air was the universe’s leading element; 70 another, Thales, trusted in water; a third, Heraclitus, made fire create all things.10 Yet another, Empedocles, before he jumped of his own choosing into Aetna’s fiery ash, dispersed and recalled God, and bound together with ties of renewed friendship everything that discord separated.11 One thinker, Democritus, condemned the body’s senses and denied 75 that the truth could be perceived. Another, Plato, tried to prop the world’s weight, always collapsing, on the heavens’ swift rotation, and made the jagged rocks’ whirling ignite day’s fire.12 A third, Anaximander, fiercely resisted being covered by only one heaven and flew through the immense void. He hated boundaries 80 and so his small heart gave birth to countless worlds. Some made wandering atoms collide in unseen blows, others established gods and eliminated random chance.13

10 These philosophers are the Monists Anaximenes, Thales, and Heraclitus, who argued respectively that the universe’s main element was either air, water, or fire. 11 Empedocles argued that the universe was created by the conflict between love and strife. He died after claiming that he was a god and jumping into the volcano Mount Aetna. 12 Democritus (active fifth c. BCE) was one of the originators of atomic theory. He was known as the “laughing philosopher” thanks to his emphasis on laughing at life’s challenges. Plato (c. 429–347 BCE) was the greatest of the Greek philosophers, who wrote extensively in all areas of ancient philosophy. Claudian focuses here on his physical theories. 13 Anaximander (c. 610—c. 546 BC) of Miletus (near modern Balat, Turkey) seems to have been the first to argue that the universe was limitless. The Epicurean philosophers argued that the universe and its events emerged from the random collisions of atoms; see introduction to Rufinus.

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You use Roman flowers of speech to illuminate the Greeks’ obscure learning, you’re skilled in shaping speaking characters who exchange pleasant speeches, weaving truth’s thread through alternating knots. All the wisdom flowing from Socrates’s school, that crowds of Stoics echoed in Cleanthes’ learned atriums, discovered in Chrysippus’s retreat, all Democritus’s laughter,14 all that Pythagoras15 communicated in silence— all antiquity stored itself in your sole breast, gathered its strength, and came forth greater still. You adorn the ancients, and under your nobler teaching Plato’s Academy scorns Athens and immigrates to Italy. At last it may learn closer at hand what end happiness aims for, what the good’s norm is, the limits of the right; what parts of itself virtue sets aside to master the vices: which part pares back injustice, which conquers fear through reason, which reins in lust. How often you teach us the universe’s elements and the causes for matter’s constant change: what force animates the stars and moves the constellations, and what movement makes the structure come to life. Why the seven planets strive backward16 towards the East and struggle with heaven; whether the same arbiter directs the sky with various movements, or two minds. Whether color is a property of objects, or whether reflecting light deceives our vision. How the moon feeds the ocean’s swelling tides; which wind causes crashing thunder, which one draws the rainclouds, and which one creates hailstones. What causes snow’s solidity, which flame whirls glittering pathways through the sky, or hurls swift thunderbolts, or fixes the grim comet’s hairy tail in heaven.

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You’d already anchored your well-ordered ship, certain of gaining the shore, and productive retirement pleased you. 14 Cleanthes (331–232 BCE) was the successor of Zeno, the founder of Stoicism. Chrysippus (280–207 BCE) succeeded Cleanthes and achieved still greater influence. 15 Pythagoras was a Greek philosopher of the sixth century BCE. He is credited with both mathematical discoveries, such as the Pythagorean theorem, and mystical doctrines, such as belief in reincarnation and requiring his followers to take a vow of silence. 16 See note to Honorius’s Third Consulship 168.

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The books you birthed were going forth to eternity, when Justice suddenly looked down from the clear sky and saw you at rest and the laws bereft of their mighty judge. Straightaway she veiled her modest forehead with a band, and left autumn’s gates, where the Zodiac inclines southward, and the Scorpion repairs the night’s losses.17 Wherever Justice flew, peace came to the birds, and roaring beasts left off raging. Earth rejoiced as the goddess returned, whom it lost when the ancient Golden Age had ended.

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Justice concealed herself and entered Ligurian Milan’s walls, light footsteps bringing her inside Theodorus’s chaste home. 125 She found him tracing heavenly orbits in the dust, which astronomers in pious Memphis discovered through painstaking calculation: which impulses move the heavens, the planets’ predetermined wanderings, the calculations that predict the Sun’s darkening and the causes for its eclipses, and the line that condemns 130 the Moon, shutting out her brother the Sun, leaving her in darkness. When Theodorus saw far off virgin Justice’s shining appearance and recognized the goddess, he ran to pay homage to her friendly face, and erased the sketches he’d jotted in the sand. The goddess spoke first: “Theodorus, you’re a pure collection of good qualities, and I see in you the traces of ancient right, and a way of life drawn from rarer metal. You’ve already indulged enough in your studies, and the Muses have snatched you away from me for so many years. The law long since calls you back. Come forth and return yourself to my labors; don’t let your previous life’s glory be enough for you. Whoever ordained a limit to caring for the human race? Wisdom accepts no boundaries. Add too that many people could obtain this seat, but only the deserving may return to it, and reappointment to this office commends their prior tenure. Virtue leads back those men whom Fortune directed to the position. Do you think it’s better, worth great effort, to spend your days seeking out things’ hidden causes?

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17 The Sun transitions through the constellation Scorpio in late October and November, as nights get longer and thereby “repair the losses” they had incurred during the summer months.

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Do you think your Plato’s teachings lifted up his Athens, rather than Themistocles, who followed the oracle, and sank the Persian fleet, led the city on to ships, and so rescued them from the Persians’ burning? Lycurgus could supply courage to Spartan mothers, and his severe laws mastered their sex. He forbade the citizens to trust in cowardly walls, and thus presented naked Sparta more securely in war. Yet Pythagoras’s warnings and his years spent in silence didn’t repress Spartan Tarentum’s notorious debauchery.18 Indeed, who could reject this outstanding responsibility, under so great an emperor? When will greater rewards for merit ever be available? Who’s crazy enough to refuse joining minds with Stilicho? Has history ever produced a man like him in council or in war? Brutus would love to live now under such rule, Fabricius would submit to such a court, and the Catos themselves would desire to serve.19 Don’t you see how my sister Mercy blunts grim swords, how Duty leaps up to embrace the serene brothers, Honorius and Arcadius? How Treachery grieves for her shattered weapons, how the snakes, dying as the Furies’ heads are wounded, lick their chains with powerless poison? Loyalty exults along with Peace. Together we leave the stars, and run throughout the empire’s peaceful cities. Come back with us, Theodorus!”

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He replied to her: “I’ve been down on the farm so long, goddess, and you’re compelling me to return, calling me to your standard although I’m stained with rust 175 from my long stay in the country. For so many years I’ve had no other concern than to soften my hard, unplowed land with furrows, to know my soil’s potential: which ridge would be good for planting 18 Justice contrasts philosophers and lawgivers. Themistocles (c. 524–459 BCE) was an Athenian politician who advocated building a navy to resist the Persian invasion of 480 BCE. See the Glossary for Lycurgus. See line 90 for Pythagoras. Tarentum (modern Taranto, Italy) was founded by Spartans as a colony in the eighth century BCE. 19 See the Glossary for these exemplary Roman figures.

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a grove, which expanse would be fertile ground for olives, what land favors crops, or which hills a vineyard should cover. Will I come back to the terrible war trumpet as a veteran, and try the forgotten sea once more as an old sailor? I’ve long since garnered a reputation, set in a sure refuge —should I suffer casting it into doubt? Experience is stronger than nature, what it can accomplish doesn’t escape me, nor how much we lose from neglecting a skill. A lazy charioteer’s team doesn’t listen to his whip, a hand no longer recognizes the bow that it hasn’t practiced. But I confess whatever’s denied to Justice is unjust. You were the first to take people out of their woodland caves, and wipe the ages clean of their disgusting lives. Thanks to you, we cherish the laws and have rid ourselves of wild beasts’ souls. Whoever drinks you into their pure heart will rush fearlessly through fire, sail the winter seas, and conquer massed enemies while unarmed. They can soften even Ethiopia’s heat with rain, and a spring breeze will follow them across Scythia.” After Theodorus spoke, he took the four reins that the goddess handed over, which lay spread across her chariot’s huge pole. The first ties the Po and Tiber, and Italy that glitters with crowded towns. The second guides the Libyans and Carthaginians, the third stretches out to Illyria, the last reins in Sardinia, Corsica, three-cornered Sicily, and wherever the Tyrrhenian Sea’s waves drench or the Ionian’s roars. Nor did the state’s many excellences 205 make you uneasy, Theodorus, nor its massive weight. You’re just like Olympus’s high peak, whose extent leaves winds and storms far beneath it. No mist defiles its perpetual serenity as it rises higher than the rainstorms, and hears the clouds rushing below its feet and treads the crashing thunder. Likewise amid such great affairs, your patient soul rises free, the same as it was before. No hatred forces it to turn away from justice’s path, no favor seduces it. 198

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For why should anyone praise you for rejecting bribes, for your heart that graft can’t touch? Perhaps others might find this praiseworthy: 215 where you’re concerned, it can’t be praise just to clear you of a crime. Your godlike modesty keeps your voice free of harm to others, your eyes preserve their balance, and rage doesn’t sharpen their brilliance, nor suffuses your veins with angry blood. No storms ever change your face. 220 You banish anger instead, even while correcting the guilty, and you calmly subdue their crimes. You never menacingly gnash your teeth, nor shriek and call for the whip.20 Savage people take pleasure in punishment and appear to exercise the laws’ vengeance for themselves. When poison inflames their guts, goads burn them, and they rush headlong, ignorant of the case and punishing excessively. But that man is akin to the gods, the one whom reason stirs, not anger, who can weigh the facts and punish after deliberation. Let others boast about their bloody swords, work at being feared for savagery, while filling their treasuries with condemned men’s property.21 The Nile River flows gently, its sound revealing none of its powers, yet it’s more useful than all other rivers. The mighty Danube travels more keenly and swiftly between quiet banks. The same gentleness leads the vast Ganges’ considerate currents to its mouths.

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Let torrential streams roar horribly and menace weary bridges, their foaming whirlpools tearing down the forests. Peace befits greater rivers; serene authority accomplishes what violence can’t, and quiet orders compel obedience 240 more strongly. You adamantly resist unfair petitions, but respond easily and openhandedly to worthy requests. The arrogance usually following high office didn’t dare to touch your mind, even lightly. You keep your appearance like a private citizen’s, believing you’ve increased your station, but confessing 245 20 Claudian draws on a common Roman stereotype in his portrait of the judge who lets anger overcome his sense of justice. 21 Contrast Rufinus’s joy in inflicting punishment: see Rufinus 1.234–5. Mercy teaches Stilicho not to take similar joy: see Stilicho’s Consulship 2.14–15.

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you didn’t deserve it. Your seriousness shines forth instead, full of unbending modesty, yet pleasant because all contempt is gone. What revolt, what mob’s madness wouldn’t collapse, now tamed, on catching sight of you? What barbarous land has such different customs, that respect for you didn’t master it when you arrived? 250 What person thirsting for your polished conversation’s honey wouldn’t leave behind Orpheus’s songs and his enticing lyre? We read your works on the newborn world’s origins, or the soul’s parts, and we see throughout that you’re just the same, and recognize your character, similar to your pages. 255 Thanks to the emperor’s judgment, the reward for your duties hasn’t been put off. You wear the consular robe which joins the imperial court to the senators’ Curia, which joins the nobles to the emperor as trusted friends, which Honorius himself has worn four times, and handed to you at the conclusion of his year, and abandoned his curule chair so you could succeed him. 260 Grow, virtues; let intellects flower in this fertile age! The field lies open, assured rewards await deserving people, and proper gifts deck out hard work. Rise up, arts, which bribery had buried and sent to sleep. Envy has no scope while Stilicho watches out for the world, along with his divine son-in-law Honorius. Here the curule chair isn’t defiled, and obscene names don’t pollute the Latin Fasti. Brave men get the consulship, only fathers exercise its powers, and it will never bring disgrace to Rome.22 Already flying swiftly to announce our fulfilled prayers, Rumor shook Aonia’s groves as they heard the consul’s name. Mount Helicon23 rejoiced as it sang of you, Aganippe flowed more abundantly, and the learned rivers laughed and sprouted flowers.

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22 Claudian imagines Eutropius’s name polluting the Fasti. The senators were also called “fathers”, and the eunuch consul obviously could not be a father. See Eutropius. 23 The Muses were imagined to live on Mount Helicon in Boeotia, Greece, and poets drew inspiration from its spring Aganippe. Urania, the Muse of astronomy, instructs Erato, the Muse of lyric poetry; Calliope, the Muse of epic poetry; and Clio, the Muse of history.

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Muse Urania, a wreath in her hair, had often guided Theodorus’s compass as he marked out fiery heaven. She rallied the other Muses: “Sisters, can we bear to be absent on this desired day? Shall we not visit our consul’s door, his house always beloved? [We know it better than Stilicho’s house; to carry the curule chair . . .]24 We submit happily to his fasces. Gather miracles for the people and celebrate Theodorus’s name in the famous theatres.

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You, Erato, head to watery Neptune’s palace sunk beneath the waves, and ask for swift four-horse chariots, ones from whom Arion could never snatch the prize. Let a horse ennoble the Circus, whose proud neighing echoes across the Baetis River, 285 who drinks from the Tagus River’s shining waters, and sprinkles his mane with dripping gold. Calliope, ask Hercules for wrestling-grounds dripping oil. The whole athletic team that won the Isthmian Games should be present here, along with the young men who earned praise at Jupiter’s Olympic Games.25 290 You, Clio, go to beg Diana on Mount Taygetus’s ridges and leafy Mount Maenalus: don’t reject our request, but support the amphitheater’s solemn procession. Let Diana herself pick daring men who can skillfully lasso wild animals’ necks, whose hunting spear’s sure stroke pierces them. 295 Have her set aside her bow that thirsts for slaughter, and herself lead fierce monsters and captured marvels from their caves. She’ll gather bears who make the fierce Great Bear wonder, looking from her father Lycaon’s stars, as their massive bodies charge.26 Hunters may spear charging lions as the crowd turns pale, ones goddess Cybele would seek to yoke to her Phrygian chariot,

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24 This line is likely not by Claudian. 25 Two of the ancient Greek games, those celebrated at the Isthmus of Corinth and at Olympia. The Olympic Games were celebrated on a four-year cycle, the Isthmian Games the year before and year after the Olympic Games. 26 Lycaon’s daughter Callisto was transformed into Ursa Major, the Great Bear constellation. Claudian imagines her watching the bears in the arena.

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or Hercules’s arms would choose to crush. Let lightning-fast leopards hurry to meet their wounds. They’re born from mixed seed, when by chance a green-spotted adulterer defiles a nobler lioness’s womb. Their spots recall their fathers, their strength their mothers.27 All the beasts nourished on Gaetulia’s fields, inhabited by monsters, those covered by the Alpine snows, those the Gallic woods fear— let them fall in the arena and their great bloodshed enrich it. The spectacle should empty out all the mountains!

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Softer pastimes won’t lack our sweetness: the jester whose gleeful jokes raise laughter, the mime’s eloquent nodding and hand movements, the flute-player, the lyrist striking his plectrum, the comic actor in low shoes who makes the theatre resound, the tragic actor striding mightily on his higher boots. 315 A light touch on the hydraulic organ brings forth mighty sounds. The player’s wandering fingers create countless tones as they thunder across a field of bronze pipes, and by working a lever deep within, he stirs the straining water to make songs. Acrobats hurl themselves into the air like birds, quickly twining themselves together, constructing growing shapes. On their summit, once completed, a boy secured by a rope leaps forth. With his foot tied, or attached by the leg, he places swaying footsteps in a balancing dance.

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Remove the weights, send down the moving scaffolding, spreading flames, whirling like a chorus, from the lofty stage. Let Vulcan wander unmolested across the stage’s boards, forging varied fireballs, and swift sparks play about the painted beams. Faithful flames, forbidden to delay, wander harmlessly over the towers. Sporting boats will clash on an ocean created on the spot, and tuneful oars will churn the improvised waters.

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27 For these beliefs, see Pliny Natural History 8.42–43.

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he’ll be read both in his own books and in the Roman Fasti. 335 Let his son receive his father’s example and hand it down to his own son, and once they’ve begun, let these fasces never lack his heirs. May his house run through the ages, wearing the consul’s robe, may future generations hand down the axes, one to another, keeping to Fate’s order, always counting Theodorus’s descendants by their consulships.” 340

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Introduction Eutropius was the head of the imperial bedchamber (praepositus sacri cubiculi), or grand chamberlain, at Arcadius’s court at Constantinople. He had Stilicho declared a public enemy in summer 397. His ambitions seem to have been much the same as Stilicho’s: he wanted to control both Eastern and Western courts. Claudian responded with two books of invective against Eutropius, one during his consulship of 399, the next after the courtier’s subsequent downfall and exile to Cyprus. The invectives launch an overwhelming variety of assaults on Eutropius. The principal charge is that Eutropius was the first eunuch ever to be a Roman consul. Though Claudian indulges in wild exaggeration, social prejudice against eunuchs and former slaves was indeed intense among the Roman aristocracy, and thus easy for the poet to play upon.1 Eunuchs were part of European aristocratic life well into the nineteenth century. Castrated singers performed in operas, for example, while eunuch bureaucrats often rose to high office in traditional China, in part because they were seen as incapable of originating their own dynasties. In the fourth-century Roman empire, the emperor Constantine (reigned 306–337 CE) renewed a perennial legal ban on castration. Yet the practice continued in Claudian’s day because castrated slaves could be perceived as more valuable, better looking, and easier to control because of their supposed lack of energy and initiative.2 The narrator opens the invective by expressing outrage that a eunuch and a former slave could become a Roman consul (1.1–44). Eutropius was 1 See Tougher 2020: 89–97; Nathan 2015; Long 1996. 2 Constantine’s ban: Code of Justinian 4.42.1. Continued legislation against the practice: Ulpian Digest of Justinian 9.2.27.28, Code of Justinian 6.43.3.1.

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castrated as an infant in order to make him a more valuable slave (1.44–57). He was then purchased by Ptolemy, tribune of the imperial stables, a position that Stilicho also held in 385, early in his career. Ptolemy then gave him to Arinthaeus (PLRE 1.102–103), consul in 372, who eventually made him an attendant to his daughter (1.58–109). Meanwhile, Eutropius worked as a pimp until he entered the service of the Thracian commander-in-chief Abundantius (PLRE 1.4–5), consul with Theodosius in 393. Thanks to his disgusting physical decline, Eutropius gained his freedom on the grounds of ill-health (1.110–170). It is not clear when Eutropius first entered Theodosius’s service, but it is evident that Claudian’s representation of the man’s career is entirely prejudicial. Numerous high officials had obviously judged Eutropius to be a competent and skilled bureaucrat. As was typical in Roman slaveholding society, Claudian draws numerous prejudicial and insulting conclusions from this part of Eutropius’s career. He takes the former slave’s multiple ownership as proof of his incompetence and disloyalty. He claims that the eunuch’s procuring was proof of his dishonesty, but we cannot readily believe in the poet’s portrait of a powerfully connected pimp. Eutropius’s activity was probably no more than the socializing and connection-making typical among the Roman aristocracy. The abuse that Eutropius endured as a slave taught him to be brutal to others once he gained power, while his earlier deprivation taught him to be greedy (1.170–228). He accordingly conducted unjust prosecutions of his enemies and the sale of governorships of provinces to enrich himself. Contriving the exile of his former master Abundantius in 396 permitted Eutropius to seize his property. He also instigated the prosecution of Timasius (PLRE 1.914– 915) and engineered his exile in 396.3 Timasius had been consul in 389 and commander in chief of the expedition against Arbogast and Eugenius, for which Stilicho had been second in command. Eutropius then tried to handle the Eastern Empire’s numerous conflicts (1.229–345). In 393, he went on an imperial mission to consult the monk John, who lived in the Egyptian Thebaid, for a prophecy regarding the attempted usurpation of Arbogast and Eugenius.4 The narrator demonstrates Eutropius’s utter unfitness for office by cataloguing female rulers who have ruled more effectively than he has, drawing on Roman misogynistic stereotypes). Two soldiers react to Eutropius’s news (1.346–370). One straightforwardly claims that the rumor is impossible, while another makes a series of crude sexual jokes on Eutropius’s inadequate performance of masculinity.

3 For these trials, see Zosimus 5.9–10. For Timasius’s earlier command, see Zosimus 4.57.2. 4 See 1.312–313, Sozomen 7.22.17 and Augustine City of God 5.26.

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A lengthy speech by personified Rome closes the first book (1.371–513). She finds Honorius and Stilicho in Germany and exhorts them to take action against Eutropius.5 After his victory over Gildo, Stilicho should find the unwarlike Eutropius easy to defeat (1.371–411). Eunuchs used to know their place and did not aspire to greater roles than overseeing the imperial bedroom (1.412–433). Eutropius’s name appears on the Fasti, the inscription recording the consuls who gave their names to the year. Honorius must defend the historical heroes on the Fasti from the shame of keeping company with the eunuch (1.433–492).6 Stilicho can easily defeat Eutropius just by showing up, in the same way that the ancient Scythians once regained control of their rebellious slaves (1.493–513). The Preface to Book 2 narrates how a letter caused Eutropius’s downfall and exiled him to Cyprus. There have been numerous hypotheses as to the sender and recipient of this letter. Previous scholars hypothesized that either Stilicho or Gaïnas sent a letter to Arcadius. Modern scholars point rather to Arcadius’s decree banishing Eutropius to Cyprus.7 Eutropius took refuge in a church in Constantinople, most likely Saint Sophia, which prompted two sermons by the contemporary bishop John Chrysostom (Homily on Eutropius 1 and 2). A later church historian pointed out the irony that Eutropius had forbidden the right of refuge in churches.8 The narrator opens Book 2 by inquiring how long it will take to remove the disgrace from the Eastern Empire (2.1–23). He catalogs the omens of Eutropius’s unlucky year and claims that Roman history has never seen such disgrace. People erect statues to Eutropius, and he courts their favors through parties and cash distributions. The court takes a summer vacation in Ancyra (Ankara, the capital of modern Turkey), which Eutropius treats as a military victory (2.24–102). Mars tells the war goddess Bellona to stir up the Goths and hurls his spear against Phrygia (2.103–173). Bellona visits Tarbigilus, also referred to as Tribigild in the sources, an Ostrogothic commander based in Phrygia (2.174–237). She disguises herself as the king’s wife and convinces him to attack the Romans. She contrasts Tarbigilus’s present loyalty, which has won him no rewards, with Alaric’s devastation of Greece in 395. The narrator introduces Phrygia, a region in western Turkey, through its myth, history, and geography. The goddess Cybele laments the Goths’

5 For personified Rome, see the volume introduction, Section 1.2 “Mythology and Religion.” For Stilicho’s German embassy, see Stilicho’s Consulship 1.188–245. Theodosian Code 13.11.10 (4 May 399) or 7.20.12 (30 January 400) may possibly reflect the event. 6 For these individuals, see the volume introduction, Section 1.3 “Roman History and Legend.” 7 See Zosimus 5.17.5; Theodosian Code 9.40.17. 8 See Zosimus 5.18.1; Sozomen 8.7.2–5.

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destruction of her region (2.238–303). Back in Constantinople, Eutropius at first ignores the terrible news, next tries to bribe Tarbigilus, then finally summons a council of war. His minister Leo, a former woolworker, proudly announces that he will lead the campaign (2.304–408). He has no tactical plan for his lazy, good-looking soldiers, and Tarbigilus soon catches him in an ambush (2.409–461).9 News of two terrible events reaches Constantinople: Leo’s defeat and the murder of the Persian monarch, whom Claudian calls “Shapur” (Sapor). Theodosius had earlier negotiated with the Persian empire over the status of the border territory of Armenia.10 In 399, the Persian shah Bahram IV (Varanes) was assassinated, and his successor Yazdagird did not in fact make war on Rome. Claudian’s account is therefore inaccurate; he either confused Yazdagird with Shapur III, or more likely, he assumed that Sapor was a title like Caesar or Augustus for the Romans. After Leo’s defeat, the residents of the Eastern Empire begin to regret their stupidity, like the mythical Epimetheus (2.462–501). As in Rufinus, Gildo, and the panegyrics, Claudian now presents Stilicho as the empire’s last hope. The Eastern courtiers now beg his forgiveness. The personified Dawn comes to beg Stilicho to rescue her part of the world (2.502–602). The unfinished poem then breaks off, and Claudian’s subsequent panegyric Stilicho’s Consulship briefly reviews these events. Throughout, Claudian remains silent about the role of Gaïnas (PLRE 1.379), the Gothic commander who had been involved in Rufinus’s downfall (see Rufinus 2.384– 390). Zosimus (5.14–18) relates that Arcadius appointed Gaïnas along with Leo as a commander in the campaign against Tarbigilus. Gaïnas conspired with Tarbigilus, however, permitting him to devastate Phyrgia in order to persuade Arcadius to exile Eutropius. Claudian employs longstanding Roman gender stereotypes as part of his assault on the eunuch Eutropius. Throughout the narrative, he opposes the “effeminate” consul with the “hypermasculine” Stilicho, his polar opposite. Stilicho conducts victorious, professional campaigns, while the foray against Tarbigilus that Eutropius delegates to his bumbling general Leo ends in ignominious failure. Stilicho is the father of the emperor’s bride Maria, whereas sterile Eutropius has no real motive for his embezzlement and usurpations since he has no family to inherit his wealth. Most importantly, Stilicho serves as a trustworthy guardian of Honorius and the Western Empire, where Eutropius guides the unwitting Arcadius to make terrible decisions that threaten the Eastern Empire’s security. Claudian further

9 For the campaigns of Tarbigilus and Leo in Asia Minor, see Zosimus 5.13–18. 10 See Orosius 7.34, Matthews 1975: 178.

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opposes Eutropius with women rulers. Roman patriarchal and nationalist ideology claimed that women were inferior to men, and non-Romans were inferior to Romans. Claudian employs these prejudicial narratives in order to demote the eunuch below both groups. While women built cities such as Carthage and Babylon and ruled over the Assyrians, no similar accomplishment can be credited to a eunuch (1.331–345). The dialogue between Tarbigilus and Bellona (2.174–237), meanwhile, expands the gendered narrative beyond the simple goal of abusing Eutropius. The goddess of war appears to the Ostrogothic king disguised as his dissatisfied wife, who challenges him to prove both his “barbarian” hypermasculinity and Danubian heritage by rebelling from Roman rule. She observes that Alaric, another Gothic ruler, seized captives from the Romans and extorted a high command as a result (2.214–19). Claudian thereby reminds the Roman audience of the unfairness of the “stab in the back” that restrained Stilicho from pursuing Alaric and appeared to reward the Gothic king for his invasion of Roman territory.11 The gendered narrative, meanwhile, draws on Roman stereotypes at least as old as Julius Caesar’s account of the Gallic and Germanic peoples in his Commentaries on the Gallic War (mid-first century BCE). In the simplistic series of oppositions created by this and other Roman ethnographic works, free men exhibit praiseworthy masculinity in their resistance to Roman domination. They can be criticized, however, for their naïve belief that they can push out the superior Romans through heroic battle alone. While Tarbigilus is a far more “masculine” man than Eutropius and his ridiculous general Leo, his accomplishments only make him a worthy opponent for Stilicho. Stilicho’s victory sets him at the top of this gendered hierarchy, above both Roman and non-Romans alike, a theme pursued at greater length in the three-book panegyric Stilicho’s Consulship. Elements of the invective also overlap with Rufinus; Claudian accuses both ministers of corruption, extortion, and unbalanced oscillation between laziness and misdirected activity. Eutropius’s greed is worse than Rufinus’s, in the narrator’s view, as he had no family to benefit. Furthermore, a eunuch at the head of state upends the world’s stability and fertility (1.493–499). In Claudian’s hyperactive fantasy, Eutropius becomes a disease or cancer that requires Stilicho to thoroughly cleanse and purge the state (2.10–23). The worry about Eutropius’s “pollution” continues into Stilicho’s Consulship (2.277–285), where Rome swears repeatedly to Stilicho that he can assume the consulship without worrying about residual shame from the eunuch’s tenure of the office.

11 See Rufinus introduction.

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Invective Against Eutropius, Book 1 The world shouldn’t wonder any longer at half-animal children that terrify their mothers, wolves howling at night in the middle of the city, or cattle speaking to their astonished herdsman. Dire showers of stones, bloody clouds reddening a menacing sky, gore polluting wells, moons colliding in the sky, or double suns—all these monstrous portents yield to a eunuch consul! Alas! Earth and heaven’s shame! An old woman in consular attire parades through the cities, and his name has made the year effeminate. Unroll the Cumaean Sibyl’s prophecies, pontifices, consult where lightning strikes, learned Etruscans, find the immense abomination concealed in animal entrails, priest:12 what new matters are the gods forecasting? Is the Nile deviating from its course, trying to flee our world, and mix itself with the Indian Ocean? Has Mount Niphates broken open once more and let barbarian armies devastate the East? Or is a plague outbreak coming? Or crops won’t grow for farmers? What sacrifice will placate the gods’ vast anger? Whose neck should we cut to appease them at the dire altars? Sprinkle the consul’s blood on the fasces, let the prodigy himself make atonement. Make Eutropius’s neck expiate whatever this omen says Fate’s preparing. Is this how you govern all our affairs, Fortune? What kind of vicious joke is this? How crazy will you get with human affairs? If you’re happy that a criminal slave defiles the consul’s curule chair, then let a shackled consul mount it. Break open the slave workhouses and dress them up as consuls. Give us anyone—so long as he’s a MAN!

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There are ranks among slaves, and each has their own distinction. The condition 30 is less defiling for a person who’s lived under only one master. If you can count the sea’s waves and Libya’s sands, then you’ll know how many masters Eutropius had. How often he changed his status, his registration, and his names! How often buyers stripped him naked to consult the doctor, 35 making sure no concealed defect would bring hidden loss. All his masters regretted their purchases, and put Eutropius back up for sale, while he could be sold. After he became an ugly living corpse, and an old woman’s wrinkles completely covered him, masters eagerly gave him away as a gift, to thrust him from their houses, 40 and hurried to foist this disgusting present on unsuspecting friends. Eutropius bent his neck to so many yokes as he was transferred. His slavery was long-lasting but always renewed, and it never stopped, though it often began anew. Right from his cradle, he was exposed to cruel tortures, seized from his mother’s breast to be castrated. Punishment took him straight from the womb. An Armenian came running, his precise blade skilled at cutting men to neuter them. He increased his cursed earnings through their loss. He drained the body’s generative heat from its twin seats, and in one blow he took away a father’s capacity and a husband’s title. Young Eutropius lay there, unsure of life, his severed nerves leading the cold deep within his brain. Should we praise the hand which removed our enemy’s strength, or lament that he gave Fate an opening? Better he’d remained a man! He’d be happier in his disgrace: if he’d been stronger, he’d still be a slave.

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And so Eutropius was dragged through the Euphrates markets. Then a Galatian frequently put him up for sale, and he passed through various houses. Who could run through all his owners’ names? 60 Ptolemy, tribune of the imperial stables, is better known among them. Tired from long abuse of his concubine, he gifted him to Arinthaeus. Eutropius was neither worth owning, nor young enough to sell. When Ptolemy got sick of him, and he had to leave,

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how Eutropius groaned, how he grieved when mourning their “divorce”! “How could you be so disloyal, Ptolemy! I wasted my youth in your lap—for this? For our marriage bed, and so many nights of sleeping in the stables? I’ve lost the freedom you promised me? You’ll leave your Eutropius a widow, and forget so many nights together, you terrible man? Oh, Fate’s so cruel to my kind! When a woman gets old, she hangs on to her marriage thanks to her children. The respect due to a mother makes up for a wife’s lost attractiveness. Lucina, childbirth goddess, has shunned me, and no children support me. My face’s charm has withered. Your love slipped away with my beauty. Wretched me! What dodge can save my shoulders from more beatings? I’m an old man—how can I please anyone?”

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Thus Eutropius spoke, and got started on the pimp’s sharp practice. His mind wasn’t slow to learn, and he was competent at his profession. He tried every trick to ambush modesty. No guard who watched the marriage bed 80 could be trusted, no bars could shut Eutropius out: he could even entice Danaë, hiding in her bronze tower.13 He said his master was in love and faked his tears. He used delays to soften uppity women, money for greedy ones, games for lascivious ones. No one ever tapped a slave girl’s flank 85 more cunningly as she walked by, gently drawing back her robe, and whispered secretly to entrust the crime to her. No one sought out places for secret trysts better than him, or dodged the deceived husband’s fury more carefully once the trick was discovered. Laïs of Corinth14 got rich the same way, thanks to the lusts 90 of young men coming from both sides of the Isthmus. When her white hair wouldn’t take a garland, when the aggressive crowd’s nightly pursuit skipped over her house, and knocking rarely struck her door, she was afraid to see herself in mirrors condemning her old age. Yet Laïs still stayed on as a procuress, gathering other slaves, 95 13 The mythical king Acrisius of Argos locked his daughter Danaë in a tower. The god Jupiter appeared to her as a shower of gold and engendered the hero Perseus. 14 A famous prostitute of the fifth century BCE.

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and though she was ancient, she made the rounds of her brothel that clients had loved so long. She stuck with the habits that old age had ended. From here came all Eutropius’s offices. Guarding chaste bedrooms is every eunuch’s sole merit: he alone bettered himself through adultery. Yet the beatings on his back didn’t stop. They happened 100 any time his angry master Arinthaeus’s desire grew hot and was disappointed. In vain, Eutropius asked for mercy, and catalogued his labors over so many years. Yet his master handed him down to his son-in-law in the dowry, as an attendant for his daughter. The future consul, ruler of the East, 105 combed his mistress’s hair, and often was naked before her while bringing her water in a silver jug to wash. When she threw herself down, exhausted from the consuming heat, he fanned her with a rosy peacock-feather fan, this future patrician!15 And now old age had loosened Eutropius’s skin. His face, wrinklier than a dried raisin, had collapsed. Furrows appeared in his cheeks. Pressing down the plow splits the golden fields less, and sails don’t tremble as much in the wind. Disgusting lice ate away at his wretched head, and deserted spaces lay open between his hairs. As on the parched fields, a dried-out crop shows tiny stalks here and there, or like a swallow dying in winter on a tree trunk, its feathers falling on the cold frost. Just to increase future damage to the consul’s robe, Fortune added these marks of his debauchery to his forehead, this disgrace to his face. When this pale ghost bared his bones and horrified his masters, his discoloration and emaciation harmed everyone he came in contact with. He’d either terrify children, or disgust banqueters, shame to slaves, a bad omen for passersby. No one could profit from his withered trunk. Indeed, his wasted arms couldn’t make beds or chop wood for the kitchen. His faithless soul barred him from overseeing gold,

15 See Zosimus 5.17.4 for Eutropius’s elevation to patrician rank.

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finery, or secrets. And who’d wish to trust their bedchamber to a pimp? At last, as if he’d suffered an untimely death, they thrust this unlucky phantom from their houses. Their contempt had now set Eutropius free.16 Likewise a shepherd fattens a dog on milk, chains him up, and feeds him in his fetters. While he’s still strong enough to guard the herd, his vigilant barking frightens off rapacious wolves. When the dog gets slower, filthy with scabies, torn ears drooping, the shepherd sets him free and saves the chain cast off his neck. It can help a man to be too hated. Thrust out everywhere, he can wander with impunity through every deception and open the way for Fate. Whoever holds highest Olympus— is it such a laugh to overturn mortal affairs? The man who wasn’t even allowed to be a slave is chosen to govern. The court endures as its ruler the same man whom private houses disdained as an attendant. Who wasn’t crying when the palace first concealed the old vixen? Who didn’t lament that a cadaver, sold so often, crept into the emperor’s holy retinue? Indeed, the most exalted order of royal slaves complained about such a companion. For a long while, these proud men spurned their new colleague.

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See the man they called to add to the Latin Fasti: he even shamed eunuchs! But he was lowlier and hidden before then, the least known member of an obscure crowd. Then Abundantius’s madness raised him up from the lowest bedchamber to invade the greatest office. Abundantius brought destruction on the Eastern empire, and first of all to himself. 155 How well the world’s arranged: an evil counsel’s just outcome redounds upon its original instigators. Likewise for many years, the Nile River ran dry. A prophet advised sacrificing a stranger to appease Jupiter.

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16 Roman law granted freedom to a slave who had been abandoned on grounds of ill health. See Digest of Justinian 40.8.2, Code of Justinian 7.6.3.

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He was the first to stain Busiris’s newly made altars, and he died a victim of the savage sacrifice that he’d prescribed. The same occurred to a torture inventor, engineer of a bull. He’d constructed the deadly bronze animal as a new form of torment, and the Sicilian tyrant Phalaris forced him to feel 165 the untested work first, and teach the bull to bellow.17 Eutropius hadn’t seized anyone’s goods before Abundantius promoted him, nor thrust anyone into exile, and he did only this one deed justly—condemning the man who’d started his career. After old age fouled this half-man, he was swept to the empire’s highest citadel, something neither prayers permitted nor dreams imagined. He saw the laws crushed beneath his feet, the nobles’ necks as well. Fate allowed Eutropius so much, who’d wanted nothing more than to earn his liberty. And now he already disregarded his masters, and his slave’s spirit swelled loftily. Filth-covered nobles filled up the prisons, exiles groaned in Meroë and Ethiopia’s fields. Men’s punishments resounded through the burning desert, and the slaughter of famous people violated African Hammon’s temple.18

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No-one’s more bitter than a lowly man rising high. He’s afraid of everything, so he strikes out at everything. He savages everyone, just so they know he can. There’s no beast more vicious than a maddened slave raging on free men’s backs. He recognizes their groans, but he can’t imagine sparing them the punishment 185 he once endured. He remembers his own master and hates the men he beats. Add that no sense of familial duty moves a eunuch. He’s not anxious for his son-in-law or children. Everyone feels mercy for others like them. Sharing in suffering binds our souls together— but Eutropius wasn’t even kind to eunuchs!

17 See the Glossary for Busiris and Phalaris. 18 Claudian refers to Abundantius’s exile (see note to line 154) and that of Timasius to the Libyan Oasis (see further 229–34). See the introduction to this poem and Jerome Letters 60.16; Zosimus 5.9.5.

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Yet he burned even worse for gold: after his castration, his desire knew this pleasure only. What good did it do to slice off his sex? No violence could castrate his cruel avarice. His hands had practiced little thefts, raiding the larder, working open a neglected money-chest’s locks: now his crimes got richer plunder from the whole world. Eutropius put up for sale everything between the Tigris River and Mount Haemus, on site at a fixed price—this peddler of empire, this famous trafficker in imperial offices. One man bought the province of Asia for a villa, another Syria for his wife’s jewelry, a third regretted he’d swapped his father’s estate for Bithynia. A table hung openly in Eutropius’s entryway, listing prices for the empire’s various peoples. Galatia went for this much coin, Pontus for that much, same for Lydia. If you wanted to hold Lycia, you set so many thousands out; for Phrygia, add a little more.19 Eutropius wanted to mark prices as consolation for his condition: since he himself had been sold, he wanted to sell everything. When two people were bidding, he’d often weigh each man’s gold. As judge, he tipped along with the scales, and the province teetered between the balance’s two pans. Alas, gods, aren’t you ashamed to send whole peoples beneath the auctioneer’s spear? Certainly the seller should ashame you. What legally dead slave20 held so many kingdoms, sold so many cities? Did Cyrus’s victory smash Croesus, so powerful on his throne, so the Pactolus and Hermus Rivers might run gold for a eunuch? Attalus wanted Rome to inherit his kingdom of Pergamum, Antiochus stopped at Taurus’s borders, set by Rome, Servilius led the indomitable Isaurians in his chariot, Augustus conquered Egypt, and Metellus Crete.

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19 These are Anatolian regions mostly located in modern Turkey and Syria. The Roman Diocese of Asia comprised much of western Turkey, including Lydia, Lycia, and Phrygia. The Diocese of Pontus comprised the Black Sea coast, including Bithynia and Galatia. Syria was in the Diocese of the East, including parts of modern Syria, Turkey, and Lebanon. 20 Eutropius had been born in slavery, and slaves had no legal rights.

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All this happened so Eutropius could make more money? Cilicia, Judaea, Sophene all came up for sale— the Romans’ labor and Pompey’s triumph.21 What’s your purpose in heaping up gold? What children will inherit all this wealth? You can marry either as a bride or groom, but you’ll never be a mother or a father. The steel denied you this, as did Nature. India’s massive gems enrich you, as do Arabian perfumes and Chinese silks. Yet no one ever was so poor, no poverty ever ground anyone so much that he’d want to acquire Eutropius’s fortune—and his body.

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And now Eutropius’s mind had forgotten itself, and was drunk on riches. He played with the wretched laws and people’s business affairs. 230 A eunuch sat in judgment: why should we wonder that he was also a consul? Whatever office he held, he was a freak. What page of history recalls such trials ever happening? Through the ages, which lands ever saw a eunuch’s law court? But just so Eutropius wouldn’t leave any part of his position free of disgrace, nor anything unattempted— 235 he even got ready to defile war, adding portents to prodigies, and his wild insanity competed with itself. Mars blushed, and war goddess Enyo turned aside and laughed at the East’s disgrace, every time this old Amazon focused on archery practice, his quiver shining, every time this arbiter of war and peace ran to and fro to address the Goths. The enemy rejoiced when they saw him: they figured Rome lacked men. Fires smoked, no one trusted their walls, devastation trashed the fields, and the only hope lay in the middle of the sea.

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21 The narrator lists various conquests in the region. See the Glossary for Antiochus, Croesus, and Cyrus. Attalus III (c. 170–133 BCE), king of Pergamum, a wealthy city on the western coast of Turkey, left his kingdom to the Roman empire upon his death. Publius Servilius Vatia campaigned in Isauria, a region in the Taurus Mountains, from 78–75 BCE. The emperor Augustus conquered Egypt in 30 BCE. Quintus Caecilius Metellus conquered Crete in 66 BCE. Pompey the Great conquered the eastern Mediterranean regions of Cilicia (67–66 BCE) and Judaea (63 BCE) and the Armenian territory of Sophene (66 BCE).

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Enslaved Cappadocian mothers were led across the Phasis River. Captive herds, stolen from their ancestral stables, drank the Caucasus Mountains’ frosts. Greek horses changed their grazing pastures for the Scythian woods. Beyond the Cimmerian swamps, the Taurian gates,22 the vicious barbarians ran hot with Assyrian plunder—but weren’t satisfied. They got bored of pillaging and turned to killing. Yet Eutropius—for what could shame an effeminate slave? Or what blushes could burn a face like his? He returned in triumph, infantry companies following, along with regiments of eunuchs, armies similar to himself: indeed a legion most worthy of Priapus’s battle standards!23 His clients went to meet him and embraced their returning defender. Eutropius was pleased with himself, and worked to swell his flabby cheeks, puffing himself up, pretending to be panting from exertion. Dust covered his lice, and his face was even paler under the sun. He gabbled some sob story in nerveless tones, beyond all indecency. He told of his battles in his quivering voice, calling his “sister” as witness:24 his faltering forces had wandered off (to the public’s benefit), he’d yielded to disfavor and couldn’t sustain the storms of hatred. He begged to be drowned in the foaming waves. If only he’d gotten his wish! While he made his plea, he wiped away clumsy tears, sighing mournfully as his words came one by one. Likewise a withered-up mother-in-law travels far to see her daughter-in-law, sits down exhausted, and calls immediately for wine.

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You thoroughly disgusting eunuch, why do you involve yourself in war, or test Minerva on the savage battlefield? You could stick with Minerva’s other art:

22 The Cimmerian Strait, the modern Kerch Strait, links the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. The Taurian or Cilician Gates are the modern Gülek pass in south central Turkey. 23 Priapus was a fertility god imagined to be born at Lampsacus on the Hellespont. He was associated with uncontrolled sexuality. 24 The “sister” reappears in Book 2. She cannot be identified from available evidence. Long 1996: 133 suggests that she may have been a female slave in a monastery of male monks. More probably, she was an associate of Eutropius whom he passed off as his sister (Gioseffi 2004).

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brave the loom, not the lance. You know threads, you’re skilled at your craft: you could urge on lazy girls, and wind up white wool on your mistress’s distaff. Or if rituals please you, choose Cybele instead of Mars, and learn Celaenae’s madness in time to the raucous tympani. You can carry the cymbals, wound your chest with a pine branch, and slice off your member’s remnants with a Phrygian knife. Leave war to men. Why did you divide the twin court, and try to turn dutiful brothers to hatred? If you remember your former profession, you crazy man, better you had reconciled them. Eutropius demanded his year in return for such deeds. He didn’t pollute just one role: as a leader, the army; as a judge, the courthouse; as a consul, Roman history. Nothing’s so disgusting that bygone antiquity hasn’t told it, and time’s long labor hasn’t sent it forth. They sing how Oedipus married his mother, Thyestes his daughter, Jocasta birthed brothers for her husband, and Pelopea for herself. Athenian tragedy’s grim stage laments for Thebes and the Trojan war dead. Tereus turned into a bird, Cadmus into a snake, and Scylla marveled at new dogs on her hips.25 Myths stuck one man on a tree, lifted another on wings, clothed a third in serpent scales, and dissolved another into a river. Yet never on earth was there a eunuch consul, judge, or leader. Whatever’s glorious for men is criminal for eunuchs. Eutropius creates examples that outdo comedy’s laughs and tragedy’s griefs. How beautiful was the sight, when Eutropius stretched his bloodless limbs to load them with the toga. Belt weighing him down, the old man went forth, more obscene for wearing gold, like an ape whose face resembles man’s. A laughing slave clothes it in precious silk thread, leaving its back and buttocks bare, as a diversion for the banquet table. The ape walks like a rich man, chest held high, made to look ugly in distinguished clothing.

25 See the Glossary for these popular stories from Greek tragedy.

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The shining court accompanied the polluted fasces— perhaps even the emperor Arcadius. Miracles were on offer: a lictor nobler than his consul, and a consul handing out liberty 310 that he hadn’t earned himself.26 Eutropius climbed the lofty tribunal, and while praising himself, he bragged about some Egyptian dreams, prophesying that he’d overthrow tyrants, according to his prediction. I’m sure war goddess Bellona was in suspense, unsure about exacting vengeance, while this eunuch Tiresias, this effeminate Melampus, 315 crawled back from the furthest Nile, bringing oracles with him.27 Birds’ voices reproached Eutropius, the year ran in terror at his name, and Janus opened his double mouths to proclaim him insane, and forbade a eunuch to accede to the Fasti. It’d have been less shameful if a woman illegally took up the fasces. 320 Women rule the Medes and trivial Arabs, and a great part of the barbarian world lies under queens’ arms. But we’ve found no people who endure a eunuch’s scepter. We worship goddesses: Minerva, Diana, Earth, Ceres, Cybele, Juno, and Latona. What temples do we see to eunuch gods, what altars? Then there are priestesses: Apollo enters their breasts, and they sing prophecy at Delphi. Only Vestal Virgins may approach Trojan Minerva, and guard her sacred flames.28 Men don’t merit her headbands and are always profane to her. Women are born to create our future offspring, while eunuchs are created to be slaves. Amazon Queen Hippolyte fell to Hercules’s bow, and the Greeks fled Penthesilea’s axe. We credit women’s labor for building Carthage’s famous towers and haughty Babylon’s hundred gates.29 What noble work did eunuchs ever do? What wars did they wage? What cities did they found? Mother Nature

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26 See Honorius’s Fourth Consulship 612–613. 27 A reference to Eutropius’s mission to the monk John; see the introduction to this poem. Tiresias and Melampus were mythical Greek prophets. 28 The Vestal priestesses did not marry during their priesthood, maintained their sexual purity, and kept Rome’s sacred fire burning. 29 The Amazon Penthesilea fought in the Trojan war. Dido was the mythical Phoenician founder of Carthage. See the Glossary for Hippolyte and Semiramis.

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created women, but men’s hands made eunuchs. Queen Semiramis, foremost in cunning, lied to the Assyrians that she was a man. So that her high soft voice and smooth cheeks wouldn’t give her away, she surrounded herself with eunuchs who looked like her.30 Luxurious Persians employ the steel to stop boys growing peach fuzz and preserve their youthful flower longer. Through this art, they force their delayed youth to slave for Venus. At first the news seemed fake, made up as a trivial joke. A light rumor flew from town to town, and the people laughed at the unspeakable. It was like hearing of a black-winged swan, or a crow whose whiteness outdoes privet flowers. But some serious character said: “If we believe such things, and extravagant prodigies pump up lies, then turtles fly and vultures grow horns. Rivers flow backwards up steep slopes, and the Armenians end the day that begins in Spanish Cadiz. We’ll plant crops in the sea, and I’ll see dolphins making homes in the woods, cockleshells will enfold men—and any meaningless rumor India feeds, or appears painted on Alexandrian theater curtains.”31 A bawdier fellow followed him and wit seasoned his speech: “You’re surprised? There’s nothing too big for Eutropius to take to heart. He always loves new things, huge things, and samples them, tasting each one briefly. He fears nothing from behind: he’s open and available night and day, cares from all sides keeping him awake. He’s gentle, and prayers move him easily; even when getting riled up, he’s the softest. He never says no to anything and offers himself—even to people who didn’t ask. He submits everything to his skills and shares it for enjoyment. This hand of his will give anything you like. He performs every duty for all and his strength loves to be mastered. He’s gained his place through hook-ups and hard work, taking the consul’s robe as his persuasive hand’s reward.”

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30 For the tradition that Semiramis was the first to castrate men to create eunuchs, see e.g. Ammianus Marcellinus 14.6.17. 31 The reference is unclear, and the text may be corrupt.

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Afterwards, a genuine report spread the news of the East’s crime to the world’s peoples. It struck Rome’s ears more surely: “Should I even think Eutropius worth my anger?” she said.32 “Does this man even deserve to be part of the Romans’ grief?” Thus the powerful goddess spoke, and darted through the empty sky. A single flight took her to the Po River, where she approached her ruler’s camp. At that time, noble Honorius, along with his father-in-law Stilicho, happened to be giving replies to the Germans, who came of their own accord begging for peace.33 Loftily he gave laws to the Chauci, and assigned rights to the blond Suebians. He gave kings to some peoples, and took hostages from others to ratify treaties. He signed up others as auxiliaries in war, and short-haired34 Sygambrians fought under our battle standards.

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An exuberant sense of duty entered Rome, and her joy almost led her to tears. She exulted in having raised such a mighty descendant. 385 Likewise, when a young bull defends his herd, his proud mother lifts her horns higher. An African lioness marvels that her cub has grown into a lion that now terrifies the stables and rules the other beasts. Massive Rome moved aside a cloud and appeared to young Honorius. Then she began to speak: “Affairs not far off show me how much I can do under your rule as emperor. We’ve defeated the Saxons, pacified the Ocean, shattered the Picts, and Britain is secure. I’ve enjoyed setting humbled Franks and grieving Suebians beneath my feet, and I see the Rhine’s now ours, Honorius conqueror of Germany!

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But what should I do? The rebellious East envies your success and crimes arise from the sky’s other side, so our dominion won’t work together as a single body. I’ll make no mention of Gildo’s treason,35 which they welcomed with great praise,

32 For personified Rome, see the introduction to this poem. 33 Stilicho’s embassy to the Germanic peoples is possibly reflected at Theodosian Code 13.11.10 (4 May 399) or 7.20.12 (30 January 400). 34 For short hair as a mark of submission, see Sidonius Letters 8.9.21–30; Poems 13.30–31. 35 For Gildo’s rebellion, which threatened Rome’s grain supply, see Gildo introduction and Stilicho’s Consulship 1.246–385, 3.99–106.

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or how his Moors relied on Eastern strength. What a famine we would’ve endured, what a crisis for the city, if your courage and your father-in-law’s hadn’t always looked out for us. You used northern grain to compensate the southern harvest. Ships sailed from the Rhône River through the Tiber’s mouth, and the fertile Saône valley made up for North Africa’s grain. German plows and Pyrenean oxen toiled for me, and my silos marveled at the Spanish crops. A harvest from across the Alps satisfied my citizens, who didn’t feel loss from Libya’s rebellion: Gildo’s been punished as he deserved (Thabraca36 knows) and so perish all who come against your arms! Look now, this new crisis comes from the same part of the world, less terrible, but more shameful that Eutropius is consul. I confess that we’ve long tolerated his kind, ever since Arsacid luxury destroyed our palace, and Persia corrupted our morals. But before now, eunuchs were employed to guard the royal robes and jewels, and enforce silence for the emperor’s holy rest.37 Eunuch service never progressed beyond the bedchamber. Their lives didn’t secure their loyalty; rather their laziness offered a guarantee of safety. Let them guard hidden necklaces, care for purple-dyed adornment, but stay away from heading the empire. An effeminate heart doesn’t know how to direct our state’s majesty. Even on the ocean, I’ve never seen a ship under a eunuch skipper’s helm. Am I so easily dismissed? Is the world worth less than a boat? Sure, let eunuchs have the East, which is glad to endure such ways, and its cities are used to women’s rule. But why should their public disgrace burn warlike Italy, and their shame mix among us and harm our stern people? We must push foreign abomination far away from brave Italy. Dishonor shouldn’t cross the Alps, but stick entirely to the regions where it began.

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36 Gildo committed suicide at Thabraca; see Gildo introduction. 37 Rome refers to two imperial palace offices: “head of the imperial bedchamber”, or grand chamberlain, who supervised the “silentiaries”, who enforced order.

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Let the Halys River write of this, or the Orontes, careless of its reputation. I, Rome, swear by you and by your triumphs—the Tiber mustn’t know of this. Once it used to give consulships to the Dentatuses and the Fabii, who never requested them. Will people vote for a eunuch in the Campus Martius? Put Eutropius’s name amid the Aemilians and Camilluses, who saved the city? Your power, Brutus, given to men like Chrysogonus and Narcissus?38 Handing over your sons for execution, choosing to be a loyal citizen, rather than a bereaved father—got you this? Etruscans besieged the Janiculum Hill, and only the Tiber separated Porsenna from us—were they looking for this? Did Horatius’s bridge deserve this, or Mucius’s fire? Did Lucretia sink the steel that saved her chastity into her guts, or Cloelia swim the astonished Tiber—for nothing? Did we wrest the fasces from the Tarquins to save them for Eutropius?39 Whoever’s sat in my curule chairs should come to see Eutropius, their colleague. Open the Underworld! Burst forth from your holy tombs, Decii, who pledged yourselves to death, fierce Torquatuses, and pauper Fabricius’s brave soul. You too, Cincinnatus, who even now perhaps are plowing Elysium’s croplands, the Underworld fields where pious folk dwell. Scipio and Lutatius, famous for the Punic wars, fierce Marcellus, famous for Sicily. Rise up, Claudian clan, Curii and your descendants. You too, Cato, who refused to live under Caesar’s law, come forth from your little tomb, and endure Eutropius. Return from the shadows, armies of Brutuses, troops of Ravens.40

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38 Chrysogonus (died 80 BCE) was a freedman of Sulla, who in 82 BCE put him in charge of condemning his political enemies and seizing their estates. See Glossary for Sulla. Narcissus was a freedman of the emperor Claudius (reigned 41–54 CE), remembered for manipulating the emperor. 39 For these figures from Roman history and legend, see the Glossary and volume introduction, Section 1.3 “Roman History and Legend.” 40 In 241 BCE, Gaius Lutatius Catulus won a naval victory at the Aegates Islands off Sicily that ended the First Punic War between Rome and Carthage. According to Roman tradition, Marcus Valerius Corvinus (“Raven”), whose life dates are unknown, held the consulship six times, the dictatorship twice, and celebrated three triumphs during the fourth century BCE. His name

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Eunuchs have taken your regalia, dubious males possess the Roman insignia. They’ve stolen the togas that made Hannibal and Pyrrhus tremble. They eschew ladies’ fans and aspire to the consul’s robe. No more carrying young women’s parasols: instead they dare to brandish Latin fasces.

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You unfortunate crowd, quit your women’s hiding places: one sex pushes you aside, the other doesn’t take you in. You’ve had Venus’s goads cut out, and your wound has made you chaste. You mix two stages of life, boy and old man, with nothing 470 in between. Fill the benches, false “father” senators,41 go forth, new leaders, and crowd around your master Eutropius, in an infertile Senate. Pack tribunals instead of bedchambers. Don’t follow married women’s litters: change your ways and learn the curule chair’s. I won’t recall ancient history, count up our great leaders across a thousand years whom Eutropius has outraged, how long the era he’s defiled, how many centuries endure the same offense. Between Arinthaeus’s name on the Fasti and another master’s name, there’ll be a slave inserting his offices, as if his master’s equal. Alas! Ptolemy’s Egyptian slaves are always dangers to the world. Look, someone worse than Pothinus harms me, and I suffer a greater crime than Pharos did.42 Pothinus’s Macedonian sword spilled just Pompey’s blood, one consul’s—Eutropius defiles all the consuls. If personal concerns won’t move you, look out for the emperors’ interest, and your own. Keep the monarchy from disgrace! The court accepts this one magistracy; emperor and senators exchange this alternating office. Spare the coming years from crime,

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“Raven” derives from a legend that a raven helped him win a duel against a Gaul in 349 BCE; see Livy From the Foundation of the City 7.26. See the Glossary for the other figures. 41 See Glossary for patrician. 42 Pothinus, a eunuch counselor of the Egyptian king Ptolemy XIII, arranged the murder of Pompey the Great in Egypt in 48 BCE. The island of Pharos, close to the site of Pompey’s murder, contained the Lighthouse of Alexandria. See Plutarch Life of Pompey 79–80.

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Honorius, four times consul! I beg you, defend your fasces from loathsome contagion. Don’t let these omens be handed down 490 to the history books. Don’t let him sink my robes in darkness and tread on them: they let me master everything the Ocean encircles. What war could I fight under a eunuch’s auspices? What marriage would produce offspring, what planted field its crops? What on earth would be born fertile? What could flourish under a sterile consul? If eunuchs give judgments and uphold laws, men should spin wool. Overturn the world’s order, and let Amazon ways thrive amid confused debauchery.

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Why drag on further? Stilicho, why put off conquering? 500 Are you ashamed to fight him? Don’t you know that the more disgraceful the enemy, the greater the joy when he falls? The victory laurel from the pirate war raised up Pompey, the slave war ennobled Crassus.43 You are nodding. I recognize your war cry, that turned the East pale,44 that overthrew Gildo and his Moors. Why fuss with war’s 505 battle standards? You don’t have to chase Eutropius with spears and javelins. When his guilty back hears the whip crack, he’ll succumb. Once the Scythian army returned home after many years, and the slave youth went to face them at the border, to hold off their returning masters from their land. The masters showed the whips to rout those armed ranks. The familiar horror pushed back the ignoble crowd from their undertaking, and the swords they drew fell slack under the whip.”45

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Invective Against Eutropius, Preface to Book 2 Eutropius, the patrician who just now held the state’s exalted reins, now fears the accustomed whip once more.

43 Pompey campaigned against eastern Mediterranean pirates in 67–66 BCE. Marcus Licinius Crassus defeated Spartacus’s slave rebellion in south Italy in 71 BCE and crucified many of the survivors. 44 The text is uncertain. Other possible readings (Haemus, Hebrus) refer to Stilicho’s campaigns in Thrace. 45 For this story, see Herodotus Histories 4.1–3.

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He’ll suffer the slowing shackles’ familiar rings and mourn his empty threats against his masters. Well pleased now with her crazy joke, Fortune threw him down from his summit, and returned him to his earlier life. Now Eutropius thinks about cutting wood with a different axe than his lictors’, and being beaten at last with his own fasces. The consul suffers punishments forbidden while still consul, and the same year gave him both the consul’s robe and exile. An unlucky omen for the people turns on him too, and his freakish office savages its holder. The Fasti breathe once more, now his name’s gone, and the palace is healthier after vomiting out this ripe infection. His associates hide, his cronies withdraw, his whole army has collapsed along with its leader, neither beaten in battle, nor overthrown by rebellion: they didn’t die the way men die!

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A little note inflicted the wound that killed off this madness, and a letter did war’s savage work. 20 It thrust the unmanly tyrant from the effeminate palace, and pushed once more from the bedchamber, Eutropius lost his power. Likewise when a young man’s loyalty wavers, and he brings back his old flame, his girlfriend weeps and leaves the house. Eutropius dirtied his sparse white hair, spreading lots of dust, tears filling his wrinkles as he cried like an old woman. He humbly prostrated himself at the holy altars, his trembling voice supplicating the young women to soften their rage.46 Countless masters gathered, each one looking for a slave good for nothing but punishment. Though Eutropius was ugly, and his soul was more disgusting than his face, their anger still offered a price. He was worth buying for punishment. What land will you run to now, eunuch, what side of the world? Hatred surrounds you here, love withdraws from you there. Both courts condemn you, under two skies. You’ll never

46 See the introduction to this poem for Eutropius’s refuge in a church.

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be a Westerner or an Easterner. You blind Sibyl,47 used to revealing fate for others, I wonder why you’re quiet about your own destruction? Now the lying Nile won’t see any dream visions for you, nor will your prophets stay up all night, pitiful Eutropius. What of your “sister”?48 Will she dare to board the ship with you, crossing the vast sea as your faithful companion? Or perhaps she hates a poor eunuch’s bed, and she refuses to love you now you’re broke and she’s rich? You confess you were first to cut a eunuch’s throat, yet you won’t be executed by your own example. So live on, an embarrassment to fate. Look who made so many cities tremble! Look whose yoke the people endured! Why lament your wealth’s taken, which your “son” Arcadius will have? Otherwise, you couldn’t be the emperor’s “father”!49 Wretched man, why do your effeminate complaints strike the stars, now that you’ve been granted rest on Cyprus’s shore? Barbarian upheaval struck the whole world thanks to you.50 So believe me, the land’s safer than the sea. Now your spears and bows won’t terrify the Armenians, and you won’t spur a swift horse across the plain.51 The Constantinople Senate misses your beloved face, the court sweats now it’s lost your counsels. Hang up your toga in retirement, hang up your quiver. Return to Venus’s division and your own nature. A procurer’s hand doesn’t serve war god Mars so well: Venus will take you more willingly as her slave. She’s the sweet Loves’ mother, her Cyprus delights in choral dances, and concern for modesty pleases no-one there.

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47 Claudian calls Eutropius a Sibyl because of his pretense at giving prophecies (1.312–313) and because of his resemblance to an old woman. 48 See 1.262–265. 49 For Eutropius’s execution of a eunuch, see 1.190. For the confiscation of Eutropius’s goods, see Theodosian Code 9.40.17. As a patrician (see Glossary), Eutropius was symbolically a “father” of the emperor. 50 Referring to Tarbigilus’s invasion; see 2.176ff. 51 For Eutropius’s negotiation with the Goths, see 1.235–251.

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The girls of Paphos look down from a high cliff, worrying if the waves will bring your ship in safely.52 I’m afraid that the Tritons may restrain you on the deep Ocean, since you’re skilled at tricking lusty Nereids. Or the winds may want to drown you in the sea, the ones that recently stopped Gildo’s escape. Famous Thabraca is remembered for the Moor’s capture,53 so let Cyprus be remembered for your shipwreck. While drowning, you’ll call for a dolphin to carry you to shore, in vain—they only carry men to land. If any eunuchs are still planning similar deeds, they should look to Cyprus and leave off being fierce.

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Invective Against Eutropius, Book 2 Phrygian ashes, if anything still remains in the East— certainly the prodigies’ truthful augury laid bare the threat. You’re learning a monstrous year’s prophecy in vain: you’ve already been wounded. Yet the sailor looks more cautiously in advance for the violent northwest wind, and draws in the sails before the swelling storm. What good confessing your mistake when the ship’s already sunk? How do tears lighten the crime? Your consul’s omens are clear, and the implacable Fates have determined punishment. Sensing the crime earlier would’ve been appropriate, wiping off the fresh stain. After a long disease has overwhelmed the body, you administer healing herbs in vain. Steel and fire, not a light touch, heal ulcers diffused deeply through a diseased marrow, so that a useless scar soon to break doesn’t cause harm. Flames penetrate to the live part, making pus flow from deep within, and the evil infection’s source pours out, veins emptying the corrupted blood. Surgeons cut off limbs so that patients may lead their lives safely with the remaining parts.

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52 These lines suggest that Honorius’s court did not know whether Eutropius had arrived in Cyprus when Claudian composed this book. 53 See 1.399–411 and Gildo introduction.

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But do you think the court’s been well and truly purged 20 if Cyprus is Eutropius’s new home? Will sending the half-man into exile avenge the world? What Ocean will be able to purify you? What span of time will dilute so great an offense? Eutropius hadn’t even put on his consul’s robe, when there came a rumbling from hell’s depths.54 Secret rage shook the caverns below, and roofs crashed together, collapsing on either side. A wild underground tremor whipped through Chalcedon, the Bosporus dipped and swung between the two cities, and the straits’ mouths ran together. Sailors avoided the Clashing Rocks, torn from their roots and on the move again. No doubt the Underworld Furies sent forth these warning omens, rejoicing that this consul handed the people over to them. Soon varied devastation arose: fire spread flames on one side, on the other, the sea overcame barriers and broke through. Some buildings burned, others floated. O gods, what punishment have you saved up for our misdeed, foretold by so many misfortunes? If only, Neptune, you’d push on your trident and drown this polluted land with all its crimes. We’d give the Furies this one city, Constantinople, to save the world. Once the way lay open for prodigies, they all hurried to seize their opportunity. The rain changed color, newborn babies had strange faces, and crops didn’t match their seeds. Stones wept, cattle boldly spoke out loud, and wild beasts made their dens amid the city walls. Then prophets unexpectedly fell into trances, and terrifying Apollo randomly goaded their frenzied breasts and set them alight. Imagine that no gods sang prophecies: who’s got such dull senses that he’d doubt a castrated consul would cause a fatal year for this region? But what blind love we have for our vices! We disregard the whole future, and present circumstances make fleeting profit sweet. Our desire doesn’t worry

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54 We do not have other attestations to this particular earthquake. Philostorgios 11.7 mentions earthquakes in various cities, along with other natural disasters, but does not assign dates to them. Marcellinus Chronicle mentions earthquakes in 396 and 402.

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about losses, and so rushes to what’s forbidden. We think delayed punishment is gain, and we imagine that what’s right around the corner is coming late. I wouldn’t have given Camillus the fasces in the face of so many omens, much less an impotent slave. Alas for our sex! Though all the oracles command us, and the gods encourage us, promising success, it’s still shameful for Eutropius to rule real men. Read the annals and look back at all the past crimes, review the Fasti and unroll the bygone ages. Did Tiberius, that unspeakable old man of Capri, or Nero’s theatrics ever bring on anything like this?55 A eunuch dressed in Romulus’s toga sits in the emperor’s palace, which lies wide open to courtiers eager to greet him. Here come the senators, mixing with common people, and fearful leaders, and every rank runs together. They compete to fall at his knees, to touch his hand, and they long to plant their kisses on his ugly cheeks. They call Eutropius the law’s guardian, the emperor’s father,56 and the court thinks a slave fit to be a senator.

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Past ages, believe this if you can: they look to erect statues 70 to this dishonor, and bronze groans on many anvils to form his unspeakable shape. One statue shows him as a judge, another in a toga, a third glitters, showing him in arms. Statues of him on horseback dazzle everywhere we go. The Senate house displays the eunuch’s face. They make sure virtue 75 can’t remain pure anywhere, polluting all the roads with this man’s features. We pray these statues remain fixed and rooted, proofs of our undying shame. Below, you can read fawning titles, excessive praises even for real men. They say Eutropius is nobly born, from famous ancestors 80 —though his masters are still alive? That all alone, he won the greatest battles—the soldiers tolerate this? That he’s the city’s third founder—will Byzas and Constantine see that?57

55 The emperor Tiberius (reigned 14–37 CE) retreated midway through his reign to Capri, an island off the Bay of Naples. The emperor Nero (reigned 54–68 CE) outraged Roman aristocrats by performing in the theater. See Honorius’s Fourth Consulship 314–315. 56 See note to Book 2 preface, line 50. 57 Byzas was the legendary founder of Byzantium in the seventh century BCE. The emperor Constantine renamed the city Constantinople after himself in 330 CE.

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Amid all this, the arrogant pimp hosted dinner parties, stinking of strong wine, lasting till sunrise. He purchased the people’s applause, 85 threw massive funds at them, spent whole days at the theater giving away other people’s money.58 But his “sister”59— who was his wife as well, if you believe in portents— buttered up the matrons at the banquets, and like a modest wife should, celebrated the fulfillment of her eunuch husband’s vows. 90 Eutropius loves her, he consults her on the greatest matters of war and peace, he entrusts her with his responsibilities and the palace keys, as if to a stable or an empty house. So is it nothing to oversee our mighty empire? Is he playing with a world that endures his yoke? And now winter lightened as it felt the West Wind’s warmth, and the first flowers opened from their buds. The court planned a solemn journey to Ancyra’s walls, the bosom of peace. Eutropius had planned the trip to avoid a lengthy sea voyage’s discomfort, and to pass a wandering summer with shameless excursions. Yet they came back in triumph, as if from great labor, as if dragging conquered Persians, after drinking the Indus River. Look! In his bloodstained chariot, war god Mars returned from the blond Gelonians to his Thracian fields. His chariot wheels pressed down Mount Pangaea, and the deep snows resounded under his shrieking axle. He stopped on Mount Haemus’s summit and held the reins tight as he gazed at the toga-clad effeminates. Father Mars laughed cruelly and shook his helmet, its crests flashing. Then he addressed Bellona, the implacable war goddess. Blood fouled her tunic, and she was combing her hair’s snakes, fattened on Illyrian slaughter.

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“My sister, can’t we yet cure effeminacy in the East? Not yet? Won’t the corrupt ages ever straighten up?

58 For Eutropius’s distributions of imperial funds at the games, see John Chrysostom Homily on Eutropius 1.1, Theodosian Code 6.4.29–30, 32. For Stilicho’s distributions, see Stilicho’s Consulship 3.223–36. 59 See 1.262–265.

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115 Warm heaps of Cappadocian corpses sweat on Mount Argaeus,60 and even now the unfortunate Orontes River grows pale. They remember evil only while actually dying of it. Just let their spirits rest, give them a small breather, and no one recalls so many dead, and so much loss of blood feels trivial. Do you see this obscene crime? Why’s your snake hair 120 covering your face? Look what kind of deeds result from a little quiet, how much damage rest from warfare does. That year didn’t have a war, so a eunuch got it. There would’ve been no more consul’s robes, if the Western empire had had the same idea. Tradition would’ve collapsed in mockery, 125 and our downtrodden laws would leave no trace. Good thing Stilicho remembered the empire and our ancestral customs. He defended the Tiber, exiled Eutropius, that shameful name, and kept Rome safe. No new crime touched it. He offered us a haven, where Italy’s offended majesty 130 and its defiled consular axes might take refuge. He gave us Fasti that an era defiled by the slave’s taint could leave the East and flee to. How much the Eastern courtiers resemble Eutropius! Just glance at the walls: don’t they even grumble fearfully under their breath? Don’t they condemn him 135 in their hearts? No! Look at the clapping Senate, the Byzantine nobles, and the Greekish Romans. People who deserve their senators, senators who deserve their consul! What if these armed soldiers yield and no one remembers manly anger among so many swords? Have my Roman descendants let their regalia decline so? 140 Is this how they despise Brutus’s consulship? Forgive your father, Romulus, that I’m coming so late to avenge your defiled fasces. Now I’ll make your joys compensate for your great grief. Why delay, Bellona? Blow your hellish trumpet, draw the scythe you use to cut

60 Mars refers here to the Huns’ invasion of 395. See Rufinus 2.26–35.

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down people to the root. Work some upheaval, shake out these softies. I’m bored of attacking once more what remains of the Thracians and Macedonians, peoples already buried. Losses less familiar stir me up. Aim your savage torches across the sea. Take the initiative for new plunder.

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You don’t have to look for an enemy on the Scythian shore. No need for you to whip up whirlwinds through the Caucasus valleys. Ostrogoths, paired up with Gruthungians, are farming Phrygia’s cropland. Trivial reasons could push them to crime, and returning to their customary ways is right in their nature. 155 So let it happen! Since our soldiers’ strength has already weakened, and they’ve learned to obey soft masters, then let northern foreigners avenge the violated laws. So may barbarian arms defend the Romans’ shame.” Thus Mars spoke and his shield thundered. Jupiter, the gods’ ruler himself, hardly strikes his aegis as loudly against a thundercloud. 160 Mount Athos resounded and Haemus echoed. Rhodope was struck and a raucous crash redoubled. The Hebrus lifted up its horns,61 white with frost, from its stunned waves, and fear bound up the bloodless Danube in ice. 165 Then Mars hurled his spear, heavy with adamant and stiff knots, a massive missile no other god could throw. It broke through the clouds and cut a broad path. It crossed over so many seas and mountains in a single flight, and stuck in the middle of Phrygia’s fields. The ground felt 170 the impact. The Hermus River, flourishing with Nysaean palm trees, gave a groan, and the Pactolus River recoiled with its golden urn,62 and all Mount Dindymon wept as its forests were leveled. The goddess Bellona, no slower, followed the hurled spear’s shrieking. She thought of a hundred ways of doing harm,

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61 River gods could be imagined to wear horns on their heads, as with the Tiber River at O&P 221. 62 See note to Proserpina 2.70.

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and at last approached Tarbigilus. He was the Gothic court’s evil leader. At that time, he happened to be returning from seeing Eutropius, but hadn’t received any gifts from him. Anger increased Tarbigilus’s savagery. Poverty can persuade even tender minds to crime—here it inflamed his Scythian breast. 180 Bellona impersonated his wife’s appearance as she revealed herself to him, faking a barbarian’s gait as she fiercely strode forth. She wore linen robes, and near her breasts, a brooch clasped her garments’ folds that swept behind her back. A polished crown restrained her coiled curls, and she’d turned her hair’s green serpents blonde.

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She flew to Tarbigilus upon his homecoming, snow-white arms embracing him, kissing him, and pouring her maddening poison into his soul. Cunning questions stirred up his rage: she asked him how generous a king he’d visited, how much wealth he was bringing home. 190 Tarbigilus complained about his thankless journey, his empty toils, the contempt he’d endured from a eunuch—the shame! Straightaway Bellona’s nails sliced up her cheek, and she seized the moment to unfold these complaints: “Go now and devote yourself to your plow, turn the earth, teach your companions to lay aside their swords, 195 and sweat over their rakes. Let the Gruthungians carefully tend the fields, and arrange their vines according to the season. Other women are lucky. Their husbands sack towns, and their great strength wins choice spoils to dress them in. Lovely slave women, Argives and Thessalians, tend to them; some even get to possess Spartans! But the Fates joined me to a man who’s too cowardly, too lazy, a degenerate who’s shaken off his whole Danubian heritage. He’s shunned his country’s ways. The glory of ‘fairness’ holds him back. He’d rather live as a sharecropper on granted land, than as master of a domain he seized himself. Why use pretty words to hide your criminal laziness? Sloth likes the name of ‘honesty,’ fear likes ‘justice.’

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Will you put up with unjust poverty while you can still bear arms? And will you weep unavenged, while such huge cities lie open and unguarded? Are you scared of punishment? The Romans once observed this custom: they’d take care of deserving peoples, and they’d crush rebels with an unappeaseable anger. But now men who break treaties get rich, those who keep them stay poor. Alaric recently devastated Achaea and slaughtered Epirus; now he rules Illyria unpunished.63 He goes like a friend up to walls he besieged to respond to their petitions—the same man who seized their wives and killed their children. That’s the way the Romans punish enemies these days, and they offer these rewards for killing. Are you still delaying and looking again over your people’s numbers, your small fighting force? Go on and break the peace: war will give you allies. I wouldn’t be so ready to advise this, if you were going to face men. Instead the other sex is up in arms, and the world entrusts itself to eunuch defenders. The Eagles and Roman battle standards follow these people. Begin at last to return to barbarian ways. They disdained you when you obeyed. They’ll fear and marvel now when you hurt them. Once you’re full of spoil and plunder, you’ll be Roman again when it suits.”

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After Bellona said this, she suddenly turned into an ill-omened bird. Her curved beak 230 was ugly, and her wings were darker than hell’s shadows. She sat on an ancient tomb, a deadly portent. After Tarbigilus’s fear calmed down, his heart rallied again, and his stiff hair settled. The fierce man didn’t delay the goddess’s orders. He told his companions what he’d seen, spurring them 235 to follow. The barbarian youth swore loyalty, acclaimed him leader, and openly rebelled from Roman arms. 63 Achaea and Epirus are regions of Greece, Illyria the eastern Adriatic coast. Arcadius appointed Alaric Commander of Infantry (magister militum) in Illyria at the end of 397 or 398.

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There is a part of Phrygia64 that freezes under the northern Big Dipper, bordering Bithynia. The western part toward the sunset touches Ionia; toward the sunrise, Galatia. Lydia’s transverse border 240 runs across two sides, while the fierce Pisidians maintain the southern edge. Once so many people were one race, called Phrygians, a single ancient name. But what can’t change over long ages? After Maeon ruled them, they were called Maeonians. The Greeks 245 besieged their Aegean ports: the Thracian Thynians cultivated the land now called Bithynia. More recently, a huge army of Gauls came from the Atlantic Ocean: nomadic previously, they settled in this region at last and set down their spears. As Greek dress softened them, 250 they drank the Halys instead of the Rhine. All antiquity concedes the beginning to the Phrygians. Egypt’s Pharaoh didn’t doubt further, after a baby who’d never sucked a mother’s breast murmured a Phrygian word when first opening his mouth.65 Here fell the flute once celebrated throughout the Libyan marshland, 255 when Minerva looked into a pool and felt it made her ugly. Here Apollo’s lyre defeated the shepherd Marsyas: the god flayed his skin, and hung it up to make Celaenae famous. Four gold-bearing rivers flow here from mighty springs: I’m not surprised metal glitters in the waters, since Midas 260 so often bathed in them.66 They flow in diverse paths, south to the Mediterranean, north to the Black Sea. Mount Dindymon pours forth the Sangarius, which the Gallus’s pure flow increases. It flows to the Bosporus, mouth of the Amazons’ Black Sea. The Marsyas and the Maeander seek the Icarian Sea 265 and Mycale’s shore. The swift Marsyas, while it’s its own river, runs straight without bends, until the Maeander’s stream mixes with it and makes it gentle.67 (The Saône experiences the opposite as the Rhône speeds it up.) Between these rivers, a sunny plain

64 For the description of Phrygia, see Strabo Geography 12.8.1–3. For Bithynia, see Pliny Natural History 5.150. 65 Herodotus Histories 2.2 relates this famous story. 66 The narrator briefly relates three myths set in Phrygia, best known from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. 67 The Sangarius is the modern Sakarya River, the Gallus the Göksuçay River in Turkey. See Strabo Geography 12.3.7. For the Marsyas and Maeander Rivers, see the Glossary.

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favors agriculture. Thick vines bind the land, grey olive trees lift their fruit. Phrygia’s rich in horses, abounding in cattle, wealthy in colored marble quarried from Synnada’s purple veins.68 That was Phrygia when the gods allowed the Goths to burn and pillage it. The barbarians burst into the carefree cities and found them easy to capture. There was no hope of safety, no hope of escape. The fortifications’ rocks had rotted and collapsed over a long period, as peace grew old.69

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Meanwhile Cybele sat on cold Mount Ida’s hidden crags, watching her worshippers’ wild dances as usual. 280 Her tympani’s beat roused up the Curetes’ keen swords. A golden tower, her sacred hair’s immortal glory, slipped from her head. The city wall rolled off, and the dust fouled it. The omen stunned the fierce Corybantes. All afraid, they ceased 285 their orgiastic dancing and their flutes fell silent. The great mother goddess groaned, deeply moved, and addressed them: “Ancient Lachesis sang this prophecy to me long before now. My crown’s falling testifies that Phrygia’s ultimate misfortune has arrived. Alas, how the Sangarius will flow with blood and how the corpses will block the slow Maeander! Here stands an immobile endpoint. These matters have long pleased my son Jupiter. The neighboring provinces will experience similar grief. Lydia will plead in vain for Bacchus’s thyrsi, which won’t defend it. And so farewell, land of Phrygia, and walls soon to perish in flames. The illustrious towers you now raise aloft soon will be fields and bare soil. Farewell, beloved rivers. I won’t dance in your caverns again, nor will my chariot furrow the Berecynthian crags.” Cybele finished speaking and turned her tympani

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to sad complaints. Attis’s70 holy cries gave voice to his collapsing country, and tears wetted the fierce lions’ faces. The frightening destruction couldn’t be kept silent, and fearful rumors made everything public. Nevertheless, Eutropius pretended to ignore it and lied about his kingdom’s collapse: a small band of robbers were wandering around, and torture rather than weapons awaited these criminals. No need for a general, he claimed: a judge could smash their strength. Likewise, hunters’ cries assault the massive Libyan ostrich. It dashes across the hot sands, its wings curved back like sails to catch the wind, hovering over the dust. If footsteps sound clearly behind it, it forgets about running away, stands still, and shuts its eyes. Ridiculous! The ostrich buries its head and thinks it’s hiding from the hunters it doesn’t see.71 Yet Eutropius secretly sent lofty promises and new gifts, to see if asking would perhaps deter the enemy. But once Tarbigilus tasted plunder’s sweetness, he refused to serve a slave, and frightened people’s gifts weren’t welcome. He proudly thought himself better than any military command, even the foremost.72 For what was any office worth under Consul Eutropius? Eutropius saw no prayers could soften Tarbigilus, no gold could buy him off. Messenger after messenger ran to him in vain, and there was no hope of a treaty. At last he admitted he had to declare war, and he convened a council in his palace. Shameless young men came, as did randy oldsters who had outstanding reputations for eating, and thought it glorious to alternate decadent dishes.

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They enticed their bellies at great cost, offering their palates Juno’s starry birds, the peacocks, and talking green parrots from dark India. They sought foods from across the empire. No far-flung fish from the Aegean, the deep Propontis, or the Sea of Azov could satisfy their profound gluttony.

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Perfumed clothing was their deepest concern, and empty jokes 335 that raised a laugh earned their greatest praise. Their care for appearance was anything but masculine, their faces were neatly groomed, and even their silk clothing weighed them down. If Huns or Sarmatians came striking at the gates, they’d worry about the theater. They held Rome in contempt and marveled at their palaces, washed by the Bosporus. 340 They were trained dancers and knew the charioteers. Some of the leaders came from the lower ranks. Shackles had marked others’ calves, and dark iron had left their legs still blotchy. Yet they ruled the laws, though the branding on their faces forbade this right, and these marks denounced them.73 345 The foremost power advanced Eutropius, who relied on Hosius in second place. Hosius indeed was sweeter to everyone, and careful when he sauced a case. He applied smoke to keep everything in balance. He could get heated, but knew how to cook his anger well.74 The twin titans of Eastern rule sat down—one a cook, the other a pimp, deep whip scars on their backs, the same in slavery, not in profession. Eutropius had been often sold, while Hosius was a home-born slave, brought up in a Spanish house. And so these great men gathered to solve the empire’s tight spot, and give comfort in such great affliction.

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73 Branding marks were used to identify runaway slaves. 74 Hosius (PLRE 1.445) was Count of the Sacred Largesses in November 395 and Master of Offices from December 395 to December 398. See Theodosian Code 6.30.13, 6.27.7, etc. In making fun of Hosius the former cook, Claudian puns on the Latin word ius, which means both “law” and “sauce.”

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Yet they immediately forgot Phrygia and left the war behind, beginning instead to tell their customary jokes and argue about the circus. They clashed uselessly, in great anger, about which boy actor whirled the most delicately as he spun his quivering limbs, whose hair best swept the marble floor. Who could twist his flanks’ curves most flexibly? Whose gestures paired best with voice, eyes with character? Some nobles recalled tragedy scenes, singing Tereus, others Agave which a chorus hadn’t yet staged.75 Eutropius rebuked them: no time for spectacles like these; other affairs, war matters, pressed on them now. He’d exhausted himself defending the Armenian border, and one man couldn’t handle so many difficulties.76 They should forgive his old age and send young men out to war. Likewise a hateful nurse sits by poor girls, hoarsely nagging them to seek their common livelihood at the loom. They beg her to let them play on festival days, put aside their weaving, and see their friends. They get angry at the work, their exhausted thumbs mess up the threads, and they use the fabric to wipe away tender tears. Straightaway Leo jumped out before the fearful gathering, bulky but bold. Only the Cyclops’s hunger could match his (barely), the ravenous Harpy Celaeno wouldn’t outdo him:77 that’s how, it’s said, he earned the name “Lion.” He was unyielding against absent enemies, a huge boaster, massive in body but puny in courage. Once he’d had excellent skills at weaving and guiding the hooked comb: no one could get dirt out of wool, fill baskets, or draw greasy fibers through the iron card’s gaps as skillfully as he. He was Eutropius’s warrior Ajax, roaring far and wide.

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75 The myths of Tereus and Agave (see Glossary) were popular subjects for pantomime drama in imperial Constantinople. 76 The Huns had invaded along the Armenian border the previous year: see 1.234–256. 77 Celaeno and the other Harpies, mythical bird-women whose name means “Snatchers”, swooped down to devour people’s food.

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He didn’t shake a huge-bossed shield made from seven oxhides:78 instead he shook his stomach, loading it down with constant feasting and idle sitting among old women and their looms. Yet he leaped up and panted out: “My friends, what’s this new laziness? How long are we going to sit, shut in the women’s quarters, and let the danger grow through inaction? While we drag time out in cowardly prayers, they’re weaving a tangle of greater evils. Battle’s sweat calls me. My right hand’s never lazy for the sword. Let Minerva only favor my beginnings, and I’ll finish the work the moment it’s begun. This swollen Tarbigilus, whose madness weighs on everything—I’ll make him lighter than a ball of wool, and I’ll devastate his Gruthungian cowards like wretched sheep. I’ll bring home peace, and get Phrygia’s mothers back to their weaving once again.”79

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Leo sat back down after speaking. The council applauded and gave a mighty shout, just like cheering makes the theater resound as some long-haired young man plays Niobe turned to stone, or a weeping Trojan princess.80 Straightaway Leo called up the battle standards and rushed out on a journey with no return. As unlucky owls hooted, he ordered troops to move, readying corpses to feed the Phrygian birds.

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These soldiers were good-looking, loved the city’s shade, were always at the games, and eager to shine at the bath house, but couldn’t withstand sun or rain. Stilicho’s earlier expedition

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78 In Homer’s Iliad, the mythical hero Ajax carried an enormous shield covered with seven oxhides. 79 Leo’s promise to devastate the Gruthungians like sheep both recalls his past as a weaver, as well as an episode of Sophocles’s tragedy Ajax. While suffering from temporary insanity, Ajax massacred a flock of sheep under the delusion that they were his enemies. 80 These were popular subjects on the ancient pantomime stage. Niobe lost her children to the gods Apollo and Diana, and the Trojan princesses were enslaved when the Greeks captured their city.

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was very different: those men endured Thracian frost under arms,81 and got used to spending winter under the stars, their tough axes splitting the frozen Hebrus to drink. The army’s strength changed with its leader. Constantinople’s luxury and an easy win at Ancyra smashed their endurance.

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The cavalry didn’t ride before the infantry. They didn’t choose a suitable region for their camps. Guards didn’t alternate watches at the rampart. They didn’t reconnoiter roads to travel or avoid. The wings wheeled about in disorder. 420 They wandered all confused, here and there through dark woods, down narrow paths through unexplored valleys, like a riderless horse, a ship without its helmsman, which chance, not a guiding star, carries headlong. A whale likewise crashes on the rocks, when it loses 425 the companion fish that looks ahead to tell it how to cut the waves. Its little tail’s guidance directs the great beast and joins the massive monster in partnership. Without it, the whale lacks a plan and swims blindly through the deep, until it is caught in shallow water and can’t figure how to escape. 430 It thrashes and uselessly smashes its jaws against the cliffs. Tarbigilus pretended to flee and hope fed Leo’s empty pride. Suddenly, unexpectedly, he attacked the camp after heavy drinking knocked out Leo’s soldiers. Massive banquets weakened them, and they’d boasted amid their cups about putting chains on their enemy. Some men died as they tried to lift their slow bodies out of bed; others slipped from sleep to death. Some rushed in disorder to the nearby swamp and massive heaps of bodies loaded down the waves. Leo himself ran away faster than a deer or chamois, trembling, on his sweating horse, which collapsed from his weight. Covered in mud, he crawled on his belly through the resisting swamp, supporting himself on the clinging mud. He sank in, his fat bulk panting,

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81 For Stilicho’s campaign of 392, see In Praise of Serena 207–209, Stilicho’s Consulship 1.94. For the court’s summer journey to Ancyra, see 2.95–102 earlier.

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like a pig destined for a future banquet, which squeals shamefully each time Hosius wields his flashing carving knife. The cook ties up his tunic and plans which parts he’ll pierce with skewers, which scraps he’ll dunk in boiling water and how much sea-urchin he’ll need to stuff the pig’s skin. The dish roasts on the fire. Struck repeatedly, the pig cries out and a varied aroma penetrates and envelops Chalcedon. Look! A light breeze stirred the leaves at Leo’s back; he thought the sound was missiles. His terror was good as a wound, and incapacitated him in place of a javelin. Unharmed, struck only by fear, he breathed the last of his criminal life. Degenerate Leo, who talked you into wielding the sword instead of the wool comb, choosing the battlefield over your ancestral chair at the loom? How well you’d praise the weavers’ carding in safety, and shake off the cold at morning banquets. But here you lie, pitiable man. Here, while you duck your wool working, the Fates spun your final thread at last. And now wandering rumors shook the court, and profound terror turned it pale. They sang how the army was overturned, the battle ranks wiped out, slaughter polluted the Maeonian fields, and Pamphylia and Pisidia were captured.82 Tarbigilus thundered forth, feared in every region. Now they said he aimed for Galatia, then that he pressed on Bithynia. Some spread about that he’d broken through Mount Taurus and bore down through Cilicia. Others said he’d seized some ships and would arrive on both land and sea. Fear’s cunning invention redoubled the truth. Ships saw cities burning far away, the straits on fire, and the wind speeding the ash to cling to all the ocean’s sails. Amid this uproar, another messenger rushed up with grimmer news: under its new king, Persia once more armed itself

82 For the defeat, see Zosimus 5.15.4–5.

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and threatened us. They’d been sluggish, but now hated cowardly sloth, and looked to end the peace with Rome. The Persians rarely murder their kings, because their whole family dies as punishment; they serve even cruel masters as obediently as kind ones. But was there anything they wouldn’t dare 480 in Eutropius’s consulship? This year cut down our ally, faithful Shapur,83 and roused the Persians to overthrow their monarchy. Just so no part of the world would be free from murder, it also led the Furies’ torches across the Tigris, destroying loyalty.84 Then indeed the Romans’ spirits fell and failed them amid such disasters. Roaring war fenced them in on all sides, and they recognized at last that the gods despised them. Their consul was a deadly omen, and from the outcome (that teacher of fools) they learned their loss was now irrevocable.

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The story goes that twin brothers, sons of Iapetus born from a single origin, shaped the human race’s beginnings using very different hands. Prometheus, or “Forethought”, made people by mixing much divine ether into the mud. This better maker polished the kind of person who observes the future far in advance, ready to meet unexpected challenges. But his brother, a shoddy craftsman, made people from worse mud, and so the Greek poets deservedly called him Epimetheus, or “Afterthought.” He put no divine force in their limbs, and so their sort neither avoid impending trouble, like cattle, nor see things in advance. They accept misfortune and complain, and too late they bewail what’s already happened.85

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And now Stilicho shone forth, the only hope. Scared and guilt-ridden, they thought his arrival would be bitter and unwelcome. If earlier they’d heard that he’d only gone as far as the Alps, they’d have feared death and punishment. Now they all wanted him to come, and they repented their earlier crimes. 83 Reading Saporem. Charlet reads sodalem, “comrade.” 84 See the introduction to this poem. 85 See Honorius’s Fourth Consulship 227–240.

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They hoped for a guiding star amid such waves of war. Honest people and criminals prayed the same for him. They were like boys whose father carries cargo across the deep sea, shrugging off their studies, devoting themselves to play, and wandering happily here and there now their guardian’s gone. If their harsh neighbor attacks their defenseless house, thrusting them from their home unavenged, then at last they cry out for their father, call his name to no effect, and gaze in vain at the shoreline.

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Everyone confessed that they’d earned punishment and death, and that by excluding Stilicho they’d handed themselves over to slaves. They were stunned for a long while, and as their senses slowly returned, they were amazed at the monsters their madness had created, and they averted their gaze. The lictors threw away the fasces in horror, 520 the disgraced axes slipping by themselves out of their hands. They were like the Maenads returning to Thebes from Mount Cithaeron, carrying thyrsi stained with Pentheus’s blood. But when their grim hunting became apparent to them, and they saw Agave twisting her son’s severed head, they stopped still in their delirium, 525 grieving that their madness had left them.86 Then straightaway the Dawn herself went to powerful Italy begging for help. No rays crowned her hair, no fire in her face, and golden day didn’t clothe her. She stood before Stilicho, dark in her grief, as when she placed her son Memnon on a Trojan pyre. 530 As soon as Stilicho recognized her, and her reason for coming was plain, he stayed to listen. She clasped his victorious hand and held him back, hardly able to speak as she wept amid deep sighs: “Has such frustration with our world taken hold of you? So you abandon me, a joke for slaves to mock?

86 See Glossary for Pentheus and Agave.

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Once you were my lord and master,87 now you’ll oversee Italy only? I can’t see you any more after your victory over the tyrant Eugenius? So winning takes you from us and gives you to the Gauls? Rufinus was where my troubles started. He began the discord between the empire’s two halves.88 But as he stirred up even greater trouble, the army came home and encountered him in righteous anger, still brave, remembering their swords.89 Then fake freedom briefly dawned. I hoped Stilicho could take the reins again and rule me. Oh, my blind joy in the future! The world had begun to unite under the brothers’ rule: the usurper’s recent example caused such terror, and who would commit another audacious deed like that? Then suddenly, Rufinus’s castrated successor leaped forth—a monstrous story I’m ashamed to tell. Fortune brought similar grief upon us once more: it seemed our new master had only changed his sex.

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At first, Eutropius kept his crimes hidden in the bedchamber, giving orders secretly and timidly. Others envied his influence, but it was only a eunuch’s. He didn’t yet dare 555 to take power publicly, nor overturn all the laws. But after he thrust out the good men and kept the dregs, he picked even worse associates. Here Hosius stood forth, his worthy minion, there Leo, and Eutropius’s confidence grew, his lust for power burning openly. This “patrician” 560 consul stained the offices he sold, the ones he occupied even worse. Now battle horns and standards began to weaken. Cowardice flowed into the swords themselves. Foreigners deservedly rejoiced, and we became easy prey for anyone who wanted us. And now the East has been devastated more than Thrace 565 or snowy Mount Haemus, decaying as the plows are thrust aside. Alas, what cities these were, how long unused to war, stormed and captured in a single invasion! 87 In 392–3, Stilicho was Commander of Infantry (magister militum) in the Eastern Empire. 88 For a similar wish for cooperation between Honorius and Arcadius, see Honorius’s Third Consulship 189–91. 89 See Rufinus introduction and 2.366–420.

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Just now, cavalry riding from the distant Araxes River terrified Antioch’s walls, and enemy flames almost burned 570 noble Syria’s capital.90 The horsemen returned loaded down with plunder, rejoicing in their bottomless slaughter, no one blocking them. Continual carnage followed their victorious blades. It’s not the Caucasus mountains or the cold Phasis River that send me enemies; these wars 575 are born in my very bosom. The Grunthungians once formed a Roman legion. We defeated them and gave them laws, we offered them fields and homes. Now their fires devastate Lydia and Asia Minor’s richest parts, whatever war’s first storm left behind. They’re not relying on their leader or their numbers. Rather, our commanders’ 580 laziness and treachery build them up. Thanks to their crimes, our soldiers now turn their backs on their former captives, men whose defeat the Danube River witnessed. We once repelled them all, but fear their remnants now. The court has free time for dancing and banquets, and doesn’t care about its loss, so long as something’s left. Yet Eutropius doesn’t miss 585 a sale from the mutilated world. He divides surviving provinces in two, and forces them to endure a double governorship, so the sale price can make up for another province that’s been lost. That’s how he gives me back my peoples. By discovering this trick, they increase the number of rulers for a dying earth.91 590 And now my one hope is in you. In place of Minerva’s olive branch, I extend my tears to you. Save me from collapsing, rescue me at last, rescue me from slave rulers. Don’t condemn all of us for a few men’s crimes, and don’t let our recent offense stands in the way of earlier merits. Turn a kindly mind toward us already: mortal danger always grants pardon to a fault. Though Camillus was furious about being exiled,

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90 For the Huns’ invasion in winter 394/5, see Rufinus 2.26–35. 91 The province of Galatia (but apparently no others) may have been divided in 399, or earlier; see Kulikowski 2000.

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he didn’t put off fighting to save his burning country. We’re not taking you from Italy; you’re powerful enough to defend both kingdoms. Let us share your arms’ glory. May your one shield protect us, and your sole courage sweat for both halves of our world.” The unfinished poem breaks off here.

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Introduction Praise of Stilicho’s character and achievements appears constantly throughout Claudian’s poetry, occupying significant portions of the panegyrics ostensibly dedicated to Honorius. A leading scholar once called Claudian “Stilicho’s official propagandist”, then later moderated that view.1 Ancient courts did not have propaganda in the modern sense, nor did an epic poet serve as the equivalent of a modern government’s press secretary—many of whom take greater liberties with the facts than the ancient poets. Rather, Claudian performed a selected version of the regime’s message as part of an important performance of court ritual and maintained considerable freedom over his manner of presentation (Gillett 2012). Stilicho’s first consulship, the subject of Claudian’s lengthiest panegyric, occurred in the year 400. The poem’s first book opens with a swift review of the past few years’ events. The narrator emphasizes how Honorius’s marriage, Stilicho’s campaign against Gildo, and Eutropius’s downfall have all led up to this moment (1.1–9).2 The Gigantomachy, the story of how the Giants piled Mount Pelion on Ossa to storm Olympus, was traditionally regarded as the grandest subject for epic. Claudian claims that it would still be easier to write about than Stilicho’s accomplishments and implies that Stilicho’s exploits have been similar victories against the forces of disorder. The hero’s virtues are so numerous that the poet barely knows where to start. Good qualities which are usually spread across many people are all collected in him (1.10–34). The poet briefly mentions Stilicho’s father, a Vandal who “led troops of blond Goths to Valens” (1.37). Valens was the Eastern emperor from 1 Cameron 1970: 42, moderated at Cameron 2016: 137. 2 For these events, see Epithalamium, Gildo, and Eutropius.

DOI: 10.4324/9780429353345-11

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364–78 CE; his patronage of Stilicho’s father enabled the son to draw on military connections when beginning his career under Theodosius. We know nothing about Stilicho’s mother other than that she was Roman. The focus immediately shifts to Stilicho’s youth, in which he already showed outstanding promise (1.35–50). His first accomplishment was an embassy to the Persian empire, as praetorian military tribune, which he probably completed shortly before a Persian mission to Constantinople (1.51–68).3 Upon his return, he married Theodosius’s niece and stepdaughter Serena (1.69–96). Claudian then narrates Stilicho’s campaigns in Greece against the Goths (1.94–137). Stilicho avenged his predecessor Promotus, who rescued Theodosius from the Visigoths in 390 and then was killed in an ambush in Thrace a year later.4 During his pursuit of Alaric in 395, he received an order from the Constantinople court to send the Eastern legions home. (Claudian earlier represented this event as a stab in the back; see Rufinus introduction). After Theodosius’s death in January 395, Stilicho sustained the empire’s security like Hercules holding up the world in place of Atlas (1.138–187). He led a multi-ethnic army,5 yet his troops were orderly because of his example. Stilicho brought relief to Greece, which had suffered from ravaging by the Goths. The narrator then shifts focus to Stilicho’s exploits on the German frontier (1.188–245) and in Africa against Gildo (1.246–385), reprising thereby some of the themes of his earlier poem Gildo. The swiftness and success of his German diplomacy made him superior to earlier conquerors, Nero Claudius Drusus and the emperor Trajan.6 At Eutropius’s instigation, the Eastern court declared Stilicho a public enemy in summer 397 after his campaign in Greece.7 The narrator praises Stilicho’s equanimity and ongoing loyalty in the face of this tremendous blow to his public standing (1.291–313) and condemns Eutropius’s conspiracy with Gildo as treason. Book 2 turns from war to peace. The narrator claims that the personifications of Mercy and Loyalty dwell in Stilicho’s breast and guide his governance (2.1–52). These qualities are especially important in his role as guardian of the young emperors Honorius and Arcadius (2.53–99). As

3 4 5 6

See PLRE 1.854, Marcellinus Chronicle for the year 384. See Rufinus 1.307–322; Zosimus 4.51.3. See Rufinus 2.106–123. Drusus campaigned in Germany from 13 to 9 BCE; see Glossary for Trajan. For Stilicho’s German embassy, see also Eutropius 1.376–383. Theodosian Code 13.11.10 (4 May 399) or 7.20.12 (30 January 400) may possibly reflect the event. 7 See Eutropius introduction.

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elsewhere in Claudian’s panegyrics, this poem sustains the unsubstantiated claim that the dying Theodosius appointed Stilicho guardian of both his sons.8 Stilicho continues Honorius’s education where his father Theodosius left off, now as his father-in-law. Meanwhile, he forgives Arcadius for having been manipulated by his unscrupulous minister Eutropius. Stilicho distributes the royal property equitably and makes sure that the Eastern emperor receives his share of the inheritance. A catalog of Stilicho’s virtues then follows, narrated as a battle between positive and negative personifications in the leader’s breast (2.100–183). (The Psychomachia, or “Battle of the Soul”, by Claudian’s Christian contemporary Prudentius, develops this type of allegorical narrative into a full-length poem.) Stilicho eschews the avarice and decadence that were centerpieces of Claudian’s invectives against Rufinus and Eutropius. He exercises his power without arrogance, remains approachable despite his majestic position, and remembers even his humbler clients. Pliny’s prose Panegyric on the Emperor Trajan (reigned 98–117 CE) used several of the same ideas when praising another soldier-ruler. Stilicho has restored peace throughout the empire, and people may return to their farms in complete security (2.184–217). The personifications of Spain, Gaul, Britain, Africa, and Italy now come to Rome to ask her to persuade Stilicho to accept the consulship (2.218–268). Rome immediately agrees and approaches Stilicho.9 In case he is hesitant to accept the consulship after Eutropius defiled it, Rome reassures him that the Western court never recognized the eunuch’s tenure (2.269–338). She presents him with a consul’s robe embroidered with future scenes (2.338–376):10 the birth of a son to Honorius and Maria, who would have been Stilicho’s grandson; the marriage of Eucherius, Stilicho’s son by Serena, presumably to Theodosius’s daughter Galla Placidia. (In reality, however, Honorius produced no heir to the Western throne, Eucherius was murdered along with his father in 408, and Galla would be married off to the Visigothic king Ataulf in 414.) Rome’s speech concludes with a description of the crowds at Stilicho’s inauguration (2.377–407). Rumor gathers the nobility to attend the event, like birds admiring the reborn Phoenix (2.408–423). The Sun travels across the sea to meet Mother Nature and Father Time at the Cave of Time (2.424–476). The ouroboros, a mythical snake imagined 8 See the volume introduction, Section 1.1 “Claudian’s Career.” 9 For personified Rome, see the volume introduction, Section 1.2 “Mythology and Religion.” The dialogue between the personified Roman provinces recalls the interaction between personified Rome and Africa at Gildo 17–212. 10 Compare the robe woven by Proba for her children Olybrius and Probinus (O&P 174–204).

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to devour its own tail that allegorically represents the cycle of time, encircles the cave.11 The Sun picks out a golden year and orders its successors to be prosperous, then readies his horses to inaugurate Stilicho’s consulship. The golden year is both imaginary and allegorical (we use the same metaphor in English), as well as concrete and physical, since shining metal covers its body. In Claudian’s imagination, the mundane world of Roman politics, the natural world of agricultural fertility, and the allegorical world of Mother Nature and Father Time are all coextensive. After the previous year’s threat of starvation, harmony in the celestial world and good government in the Roman empire lead to an abundant harvest. In the Preface to Book 3, Claudian compares himself to Ennius and Stilicho to Scipio Africanus. Scipio was the greatest military hero of Roman history; he pushed Hannibal and the Carthaginians out of Italy and launched the invasion of North Africa that won the Second Punic War (218–202 BCE). Ennius was the first Roman poet to write Latin panegyric in the dactylic hexameter rhythm used by epic poets, including Claudian. Ennius’s epic of Roman history, the Annals, celebrated Scipio’s military and cultural accomplishments. Claudian claims that Stilicho, like Scipio, both defeated an African enemy and generously supported the arts. Book 3 opens with a description of Stilicho’s consular procession (3.1– 50). Though he could have advertised his victories in Germany and Africa, he forgoes the traditional display of conquered territories on parade floats. Unlike previous commanders, who were often civil warriors, he enters a city unified in affection for him. As we have learned to expect from Claudian’s panegyric, both of these statements were exaggerations. Stilicho did not have much to celebrate from his recent campaigns against Alaric, Gildo, and the Germanic tribes. His pursuit of Alaric had been abruptly terminated, while the campaign against Gildo merely restored the Roman empire to the status quo rather than conquering new territory (see Rufinus and Gildo respectively). The embassy to the Germanic tribes was diplomatic rather than military in nature. Few people, furthermore, would have forgotten Stilicho’s central role as commander in the civil war against Arbogast and Eugenius just six years before. In their excitement to see Stilicho, crowds pack the city’s roads and roofs (3.51–129). His deeds have restored Rome’s standing, and subject peoples, especially the recently rebellious North Africans, are now eager to serve their dutiful leader. The narrator then reviews Rome’s growth from a small city into a world empire, and the reasons for its ongoing success over 1000

11 See Plutarch On Isis and Osiris 10.355A, 74.381A.

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years (3.130–173). The Roman empire endures, according to Claudian, because it includes conquered peoples as citizens and permits free travel throughout the empire. Other empires, meanwhile, were corrupted by vices that left them prey to conquest by their competitors. Rome also benefits from its secure relationship with protecting divinities and has grown stronger by importing gods such as Cybele and Asclepius. These claims regarding citizenship, virtue, and divinity were typical of earlier panegyrics of the Roman empire.12 The narrator then turns to Stilicho’s connections to the city of Rome (3.174–222), recalling that his son Eucherius was born in the city. The people recognize and cheer Stilicho wherever he goes. The personification of Victory herself opens her temples to Stilicho, who fulfills the goddess’s most important duty by being merciful to defeated peoples. This brief section is an effort to reassure the Roman nobility that they had not been neglected by a court located in Milan that would soon move to Ravenna. Stilicho’s connections to the city might indeed be considered tenuous given that the general had spent most of his career in Constantinople, Milan, or on campaign. Claudian similarly makes a consular visit to Rome a theme of his next panegyric, Honorius’s Sixth Consulship. The book’s final movement turns to Stilicho’s consular games, one of the newly inaugurated consul’s most important duties (3.223–369). Stilicho distributes Rome’s wealth generously to its people. Diana, goddess of hunting, orders her nymphs to collect the wild animals who will be slaughtered in Stilicho’s arena games. (Compare the conclusion of Manlius Theodorus where the Muses assist in preparing his consular games.) The beast hunts were opportunities to display wonders from all over the empire to impress a populace who could not travel easily. These include Spanish bears, Ethiopian lions, Indian elephants, and so forth. The book concludes with a lively image of the African fleet returning laden with wild animals, which the narrator compares to the lynxes and tigers who surround the god Bacchus’s ship. Through his encomiastic representation, Claudian makes Stilicho into a late ancient example of an ideal man (Nathan 2015). He is the perfect surrogate father to the young Honorius and would have been so to Arcadius had the Eastern emperor’s evil counselors permitted. His virtue and masculinity contrast with Rufinus’s corruption and Eutropius’s effeminacy. He is the ideal patriot, enduring others’ treachery uncomplainingly, obeying the order

12 See, for example, the late second-century CE Greek orator Aelius Aristides’s On Rome, sections 14–66.

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to retreat from pursuit of Alaric which Claudian represents as a stab in the back. He is a loving husband to his wife Serena and father to his children Maria, Thermantia, and Eucherius. Despite Claudian’s optimistic vision, subsequent events did not turn out well either for Stilicho or for the Western Roman Empire. Later in 404, Stilicho’s daughter Maria died; Honorius married Stilicho’s younger daughter Thermantia a few years later in 408. On 31 December 406, Gothic forces would invade Gaul across the Rhine River. In 407, a Roman general in York, England, declared himself the Western Roman emperor Constantine III. The Roman army that he took with him into Gaul would never return to Britain. Though Stilicho would enjoy a few more years of success, suspicion that he intended to make his son Eucherius emperor may have led to his downfall and assassination.13 Stilicho was murdered outside a church in Ravenna in August 408; his son Eucherius and wife Serena were also executed. Honorius then ended all connection with Stilicho’s family by divorcing his daughter Thermantia.

Stilicho’s Consulship, Book 1 May the gods generously favor Rome, prolong its joys, and new successes build on our success. At court, the joyous marriage songs hadn’t quieted, when they began to sing of triumph over Gildo. Victory laurels followed while the marriage garlands were still warm. The emperor took a husband’s title and victory’s glory together. Eastern treachery collapsed after the African war. The East once more subdued, the axes rise once more, defended by consul Stilicho. My prayers proceed in order. If I could hope to roll such great matters’ highlights into a single song, I’d set Mount Pelion on snowy Ossa more readily. If I wanted to keep silent about one part, whatever I left out would be more important. Should I talk first about Stilicho’s youth and early deeds? But present matters attract my thoughts. Should I tell of his justice? But his glorious warfare shines forth. Should I speak of his strength in arms? But he’s done more unarmed: Italy flourishes, Africa is regained and serves Italy,

13 See Zosimus 5.32.1; Orosius 7.38.

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Spain cares nothing for the neighboring Moors, Gaul marvels in safety at the disarmed Rhine. Or should I sing of frozen Thrace and the struggles he waged as the Hebrus River watched? An immense expanse lies open before me, and the very slopes tire the Muses’ chariot with countless praises.

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From the time when people began to till the earth, destiny never gave anyone such unmixed goods. 25 Appearance ennobles some, but their habits disgrace them. Beautiful souls ornament others, but their bodies fail them. One person may be outstanding in war, but their vices ruin peacetime; another may be fortunate in public, but less so in private. Individual qualities ennoble each person separately:14 becoming beauty 30 for one, strength in arms for another, self-discipline here, affection there; skill at law for others, or children and a chaste marriage. These gifts are spread among everyone else, but for you they’ve commingled and flowed together. Each quality alone makes people fortunate; you possess them all together. Why should I unroll your father’s deeds and military service? If he’d done nothing else outstanding, if his loyal hand hadn’t led troops of blond Goths to Valens, his child would’ve been enough to advance his fame. Stilicho’s mind was always lofty, even from childhood, and a greater destiny’s honor shone forth even in his youth. Upright and keen, he did nothing short-lived, he didn’t loiter in powerful patrons’ doorways, and his conversation suited his future deeds. Even then you stood out, Stilicho, even then you commanded respect, and your exalted face’s fiery gleam promised your future leadership. So did the size of your limbs, greater than the ancient poems attribute to the demigods. Whatever city you loftily marched through, you saw men yielding their place and rising in respect, though you were still an ordinary soldier. The crowd’s silent support had already brought you what the court would soon bestow.

14 Reading partitim. Charlet reads partitum as a one-word sentence: “there’s division.”

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You were hardly grown when you were sent to negotiate peace with Persia. A youth was entrusted to make a treaty with such a mighty people. You crossed the Tigris and the deep Euphrates, and made for Babylon. The grave Persian nobles marveled at you, and the quiver-bearing people burned with eagerness to see you. Transfixed by their handsome guest, the Persian women sighed in secret desire.

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The altars affirmed the peace, burning heaps of sweet-smelling incense from the Arabian harvest. The Magi brought the sacred fire from their innermost temples 60 and sacrificed bullocks in Chaldaean ritual. The king himself held forth a sparkling dish in his right hand, attesting to Ba’al’s secrets and Mithras who whirls the wandering planets.15 If ever they accompanied you on friendly hunts, who stabbed the lion before Stilicho, close up with his sword, 65 or pierced tigers at a distance with his spear? The Persians yielded as you easily turned the reins, and marveled as you fired your bow in retreat. Meanwhile the emperor’s stepdaughter Serena grew to marriageable age. Fatherly concerns pressed on him and kept him in suspense. 70 He looked out for a husband for his stepdaughter and a leader for the empire, seeking uncertainly through the whole world for a son-in-law worthy to marry Serena and gain her bed. He assayed virtue: his hesitant mind’s scales ran through armies, cities, peoples. You were chosen, Stilicho, outdoing the great men 75 whom the whole world offered, in the sense and consideration of the man who chose you. You rose to become the emperor’s son-in-law, and soon a future father-in-law. Golden rays and purple majesty shone from your couch. The bride came forth, accompanied by her purple-robed parents. 80 Her stepfather stood on one side, exalted amid his trophies,

15 The Magi were Persian priests. Ba’al (Belus) was a title that the Romans frequently applied to non-Roman gods. Mithras was a Persian deity also worshipped at Rome, here identified in his aspect as the Sun.

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the queen on the other showed a mother’s dutiful attention,16 as she attached the veil with its heavy gems. Then, they say, the Sun’s horses and the stars rejoiced in chorus. Lakes of honey and rivers of milk shot forth from the earth. Spring flowers clad the Bosporus’s banks, and Europe, wreathed in rosy garlands, lifted torches in rivalry with Asia.17 The emperor chose luckily. He judges according to the world’s need, and he’s first to determine what we all perceive. He joined great Stilicho to his court and children, a man who never valued luxury more than war, sweet rest more than danger, nor life’s benefit more than glory. Who pushed back the fierce Visigoths in their wagons, or could destroy the Bastarnians in a single defeat, arrogant as they were from savagely slaughtering Promotus?18 Aeneas avenged Pallas’s murder when Turnus died, and angry Achilles’s punishing wheels dragged Hector, as payback or profit.19 But you don’t drag corpses for sale behind your raging chariot, nor practice useless savagery on one man’s body. You lay low cavalry squadrons, infantry bands, and enemy formations on your friend’s tomb, sending an entire people down to the Underworld. Vulcan didn’t forge a fabulous shield,20 nor did the poets fabricate armor to help your efforts. So many thousands

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16 Theodosius’s first wife, Aelia Flavia Flacilla (356–386 CE), was Serena’s stepmother and mother of the emperors Arcadius and Honorius. 17 Ancient Constantinople (modern Istanbul) was built across the Bosporus, a strait that divides Europe from Asia. 18 For Promotus, see the introduction to this poem. 19 In Virgil’s Aeneid, Turnus killed Aeneas’s young ward Pallas; Aeneas pursued his opponent and took revenge. Homer’s Iliad featured a similar narrative in which Hector killed Achilles’s lover Patroclus. Achilles responded by dragging Hector’s corpse behind his chariot and later ransomed Hector’s corpse to Hector’s father Priam. 20 Both Achilles and Aeneas wore armor forged by the god Vulcan.

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of barbarians had already devastated wretched Thrace: you alone trapped them in a valley’s narrow bounds. The advancing Alans’ terrifying clatter didn’t push you back, nor the wandering Huns’ savagery, the Gelonians’ sickle swords, the Goths’ bows, nor the Sarmatians’ lances. You would’ve wiped them out completely, if the traitor Rufinus in his evil way hadn’t secretly tricked Arcadius’s ears, created delays, made the soldiers sheathe their drawn swords, released the trapped enemy, and offered the captives a treaty.21

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Stilicho was always in camp, very rarely in Rome— only if the emperor called on him out of anxious duty. Hardly had he greeted his household gods, hardly had he seen his wife: he returned to battle without a chance to wipe the blood clean. He didn’t even stand still so his son Eucherius could snatch a kiss 120 through his helmet. A leader’s concern overcame a father’s affection and a husband’s desire. How often he passed the Thracian winter wearing animal skins, and endured gusts from the slow Plowman’s stars22 under the open northern sky. When other people sitting right by the fire could hardly bear the cold, he spurred his horse 125 over the frozen Danube. In his crested helmet, he climbed Mount Athos’s deep snows. His shield shone far and wide as he rushed through woods bent down with ice. At one time, he headed for the Cimmerian Pontus’s shores,23 at another, he pitched winter camp on cloudy Mount Rhodope. 130 I call Mount Haemus’s cold valleys to witness, which Stilicho often filled with bloody slaughter, and Thracian rivers, whose streams were changed by massive flows of blood. Tell us, Bisaltans,24 or you folk whose oxen plow Mount Pangaea, how mighty are the decaying helmets that leap from the soil as your plows strike them, or how massive the slain kings’ bones that resound beneath your rakes. I want to address each exploit, but too crowded a series of deeds presses upon me, and I’m drowning in successive 21 22 23 24

See Rufinus introduction and Rufinus 2.137–256. See note to Proserpina 2.190. A region of eastern Crimea; see Eutropius 1.249. A Thracian people.

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tides of praise. After death ended the tyrant Eugenius’s slaughter, 140 father Theodosius ascended into heaven, and entrusted the world to you. Your neck equal to the task, you supported the tottering empire, whose summit threatened to collapse. Hercules likewise once held up the sky, and balanced its framework better. The Zodiac didn’t wobble, stars kept to their paths, 145 and old Atlas, briefly relieved of his constant burden, was stunned to see the weight that he’d been carrying.25 There was no barbarian uprising; no maddened revolution attempted to destroy the public order. Though so great an emperor had departed, the world didn’t sense that rule had changed. 150 No hand dared any mischief in the twin armies, as if loosed from its reins. Certainly such a dissonant mob had never flowed together before, speaking so many languages, their weapons so diverse. Father Theodosius had roused the entire East to march with him. Here were Colchians mixed with Iberians,26 here Arabs 155 veiled in their miters, here Armenians, their hair elegantly styled. Here Sacians27 had pitched figured tents, Persians dyed ones, dark Indians gem-encrusted tents. There was a tall cohort from the Rhône, and soldiers raised by the Ocean. Stilicho was the sole leader among so many peoples, 160 those whom the sun sees whether rising or setting. Amid such a varied commotion of languages and peoples, there was quiet and reverence, the preserver of honest right, when you were in command. Vineyards suffered no theft, farmers’ crops weren’t seized, nor harvests plundered. Madness didn’t prompt anything vicious, nor lust anything shameful, and swords calmly obeyed the law. Leaders’ examples indeed flow down to the people: soldiers follow their commanders’ habits just like their trumpets. At last, wherever you moved your victorious Eagles, rivers dried up as so many thousands drank them.

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25 Hercules briefly took the world on his shoulders, relieving the god Atlas who typically held it. 26 “Iberia” refers here to a Black Sea region (modern eastern Georgia), not to the Iberian Peninsula (modern Spain and Portugal). 27 A nomadic Iranian people of the Eurasian steppes.

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If you made for Illyria, troops hid the fields and mountains. If you sent out a fleet, the Ionian Sea disappeared beneath your ships.28 Cloudy Ceraunia couldn’t deter you, nor a storm surge striking Leucas’s spuming cliffs. If you ordered your men 175 to investigate a frozen strait, then fearless soldiers pulled straining oars to shake the northern sea. If you’d desired to explore the southern desert, to find the Nile’s source, your boats would’ve penetrated to the middle of Ethiopia’s heat. 180 The Eurotas River recalls you, as does Lycaeus’s country Muse; Mount Maenalus sings a pastoral song in your honor, so too Parthenius’s grove. They tell how wretched Greece rose once more as you came to fight, and lifted its head amid the flames. So many bodies stopped up the Arcadian Ladon River at that time, and heaps of Gothic corpses narrowed the Alpheus, which even now runs slower to his love, the spring Arethusa in Sicily. Do we wonder that the enemy fell in swift battles, when terror alone made them collapse? Did we bring our war horns against the Franks? Yet they lie in defeat. Did we smash the Suebians in war? Yet we give them laws. Who’d believe it? Daring Germany serves us before we blow the war horns. Let Drusus’s exploits yield, let Trajan’s.29 Whatever their warfare achieved in a back-and-forth contest, Stilicho accomplished on the run. He mastered the Rhine in as many days as they took years. They conquered the river with the sword, Stilicho with words. They used an army; he succeeded alone. Descending eagerly from the Rhine’s source, Stilicho pursued his thundering path to where the river diverges, and its mouths join with the swamps. The commander’s onrush conquered the swift waves. Peace proceeded from the river’s spring,

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28 Claudian indirectly compares Stilicho’s army to the one led by the Persian emperor Xerxes in the fifth century BCE; see note to Rufinus 2.123. 29 A reference to Drusus’s campaigns in Germany (13–9 BCE) and Trajan’s conquest of Dacia (101–102 CE).

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and grew along with its waters. Names once mighty, long-haired blond kings, who hadn’t obeyed the call when emperors bribed or begged them, now hurried at his order, and feared their tardy delay would offend. Crossing the river on skiffs, they rushed wherever Stilicho desired. His reputation for justice didn’t disappoint: they observed him being dutiful and faithful. The Germans who once feared his arrival now welcomed his return. Those terrifying men had always sold the peace, and promised quiet for a shameful price. Now they offered their own children as hostages to ask for peace. They wore a captive suppliant’s expression, as if their hands were tied behind their backs, their necks were yoked, and they’d entered Rome’s Tarpeian citadel. All the land that lies between the Ocean and the Danube’s source trembled at one man’s incursion. He reduced the North to servitude without slaughter, and disarmed the Great Bear’s stars. In such a short time, Stilicho, you completed so many wars without bloodshed. You set out when the moon was just new, and you returned before it was full. You smashed the Rhine’s menacing horns and forced it to become so gentle that the Suebians henceforth could tend their fields. The Sygambrians curved their swords and bent them into scythes. When a traveler sees the Rhine’s two banks, he asks which one is Roman. The Belgians now may pasture their flocks across the Rhine without complaint from the Chauci.30 The Gallic herds may wander in the Frankish mountains across the Elbe River. People may hunt safely far off in the Hercynian Forest’s vast silences. Our axes with impunity may fell grim groves of ancient sanctity, and trees the barbarians regard as divine.

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Indeed the Germans support you of their own accord, with loyal minds, and favor you as victor. How often Alamannia begged to join you, and unite its war bands under your battle standards! Yet they didn’t grieve when you rejected them:

30 The narrator lists various Germanic peoples.

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though you refused their help, their worthy loyalty didn’t cease. Our Province will expel the fasces sooner than Francia will the kings you gave it.31 We don’t need soldiers to push back rebels; rather, we can punish them in chains. Under our jurisdiction, the Roman jails investigate kings’ crimes. Marcomeres and Sunno teach this:32 one of them endured exile in Etruria: the other promised he’d avenge his exile, then fell on his own people’s swords. These brothers were eager to stir up revolution, and hating peace, they raged, mad with cunning and desire for crime. After you subdued the North, a storm broke out from the world’s other side. The southern war horn sounded, just so your victories would leave no region untouched. Gildo had roused all the Moorish peoples, those whom Mount Atlas looms over, others whom excessive sun banished to the interior; the ones whom the wandering Cinyps River waters, and Lake Triton next to the Hesperides’ gardens, and Gir, the Ethiopians’ most famous river, whose inundations imitate the Nile’s.33 The Nubians came, garlanded with short arrows, as did the swift Garamantians. Hammon’s oracle gave grim responses, yet couldn’t hold back the keen Nasamonians. Soldiers crammed Numidia’s fields, covered the Gaetulian Syrtes in dust, and javelins hid the sky over Carthage. Some used a stick to guide their horses. Lions supplied others with tawny dress, as did the hides of strange beasts nurtured amid Meroë’s vast sands. In place of a helmet, they carried a serpent’s gaping mouth, and they slung

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31 Romans referred to Gallia Narbonensis, which includes regions of modern Languedoc and Provence, as “Our Province.” Conquered in the late second century BCE, the territory was the first Roman province north of the Alps. Francia refers to the region occupied by the Frankish peoples on the right bank of the Rhine River. 32 Marcomeres and Sunno (or Sonno) were Frankish chiefs who had invaded near Cologne in 388. Stilicho successfully campaigned against them in 395. 33 See Glossary for Cinyps and Hesperides. For the Gir River, see Pliny Natural History 5.53. For Gildo’s revolt, see Gildo.

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scaly snakeskin quivers. The Simois River didn’t tremble so when dark Memnon led his black troops to Troy’s Mount Ida, nor did the Ganges, when mighty elephants carried Porus amid his Indian troops who hurled javelins from a distance. Porus fell to Alexander, Memnon to Achilles, and Gildo, of course, fell to you.34 Raging war god Mars not only roused the South, but also the Eastern regions. Though duty complained, Gildo had transferred nominal rule of Libya to them, and deceitfully held forth the appearance of legitimate rule —an accursed crime. A double war rose up with diverse terrors, one grim with arms, another with treachery. Africa had outfitted savage troops for one war, while the East conspired to nourish the other with treachery. On one front, edicts went about to corrupt the generals, on the other, Gildo withheld food, and dark famine oppressed and besieged fearful Rome. Libya’s threat was openly fatal, while civil war was silent, veiled by shame. These whirlwinds raged on both sides, and double storms struck the wounded empire with alternating blows. Yet tired courage gave up no part of duty, and remained on watch against threatening fate, ready to bring favorable outcomes, shining all the greater amid the challenges. Likewise, when an Aegean storm tosses a ship under cloudy Orion, the helmsman lightly shifts the rudder to turn aside the water’s blows. Now he cunningly guides the ship straight, now tacks, working against the raging sky and sea. What makes me marvel first, Stilicho? That you prudently resisted every treachery, such that no clandestine letter could harm you, no bribed hand secretly stir up rage? That amid such terror, you said nothing unworthy of Rome?

34 See Glossary for Memnon and Porus.

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That you always gave dignified responses to the Easterners, 295 and your deeds quickly proved them? That you weren’t worried, although they seized your wealth, your farms and remarkable houses?35 This loss was small; you never made public interest yield to your personal affairs. You compartmentalized your vast anxieties, and confronted them all alone, 300 finding in your soul what your mind had to achieve. Your hand completed what had to be done, ready to dictate what writing could accomplish. What hundred-handed monster, what Briareus with yet more arms, the number growing, could have fought against so many challenges at once, escaped the treacheries, strengthened his veteran cohorts, found new troops, deployed twin fleets, which brought in food or war, soothed the court’s upheaval, and Rome’s famine? How many eyes free of sleep’s cloud were enough to run over so many regions, and oversee so many places, so far off? Yet myth sings of Argus, his body arrayed with a hundred eyes, watchman guarding a single heifer!36 Where did you import so many crops? What forest built the ships? How did an untrained army with such raw recruits shine forth? How did Gaul’s old age turn green once more, and regain its strength, already smashed twice in Alpine bloodshed? I didn’t think it was a levy: rather, armies jumped up so suddenly, as if Cadmus’s plow had planted the dragon’s teeth. Like the harvest of soldiers in Thebes’s fields, born ready to fight their plowman, they drew swords against their brothers. When Cadmus sowed the seed, the earthborn soldiers struck their Mother Earth, as she birthed their helmets, and the armed furrow flowered with fresh troops. Also it’s not right to praise this just a little and move on: that the avenging fleet didn’t occupy the water before the Senate declared war in the traditional manner. Stilicho brought back

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35 A reference to the Eastern court’s declaration of Stilicho as a public enemy. 36 Jupiter raped the princess Io and transformed her into a cow. Juno set the guardian Argus, who had a hundred eyes all over his body, to keep Jupiter away from her.

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the custom neglected for so many centuries: the senators entrusted wars to the commanders, and by civil decree the fortunate order went forth to the legions. We admit that Romulus’s laws have returned when we see troops obeying our nobles’ orders.37 All your legions would’ve crossed the Tyrrhenian Sea, your ships filling the Syrtes, and your troops Libya. But your anger halted short of the plan, in case Gildo became scared that you were in command. Suspecting that more troops were on the way, he’d either have headed into the torrid sands, the red-hot zone, or crossed over on the run to the sun’s rising, or burned down cities, to assure himself the comfort of certain death. It’s an amazing story to tell—you were afraid he’d be afraid of you, and you forbade him to despair, though punishment awaited him. How much the enemy’s trust benefitted us! Carthage’s towers are safe, and unharmed cultivators rejoice in the Punic fields. Gildo could’ve slaughtered these men as he retreated. But empty hope seduced him, so he didn’t flee from punishment, and spare our men— madman, who only measured the Romans’ numbers, not their fortitude! He came on as if his swift horses would trample all of us right away. He liked to boast that he’d drown the sunstruck Gauls in dust. But he learned that wounds enhanced by Ethiopian poison, or a rain of close-packed steel pouring down, or clouds of cavalry couldn’t block Roman javelins. Lazy Nasamonians were laid low, suppliant Garamantians no longer hurled their javelins, and cowardly Autololes sought the desert again. Fearful Mazacians threw away their missiles, while Moors pointlessly spurred their panting horses.38 Gildo the bandit fled in a little boat, which the wind pushed back, and fateful Thabraca received him in the port that he deserved.39

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37 The Roman Senate had not wielded fully independent executive authority in many centuries, though the senators continued to value being allowed to participate in significant decisions. Stilicho accordingly permitted the senators to engage in a ceremonial declaration of war on Gildo. 38 Various North African peoples. 39 Gildo committed suicide at Thabraca. See Gildo introduction.

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He learned no element opens for Stilicho’s enemies.40 He endured the rejoicing crowd’s insults, and his guilty expression shattered beneath a humble judge. May Fortune always be favorable, but don’t let her claim any of this for herself. We didn’t trust a war to a single battle, nor did we roll the uncertain dice once for the whole army. If evil misfortune had garnered anything, other ships would’ve hurried after Gildo’s back, and a greater leader, Stilicho, was ready to come. No brighter victory was ever achieved, nor one more desired in men’s prayers. Would anyone compare Tigranes or the Pontic war, or Pyrrhus, Antiochus’s flight, Jugurtha’s chains, Perses, or Philip’s defeat?41 These men fell to expand our empire’s borders, but here Rome’s Divine Safety42 stood in the balance. Back then, waiting dragged delays out safely. Here, conquering slowly was almost like defeat. Rome was in extreme danger, and a shameful punishment hung over the people. It got back Libya with greater gain than when it first acquired it, just as a loss causes greater grief than a good not yet obtained. Who would’ve known of the Punic wars’ exploits, of the Scipios or Regulus, who’d sing of slow Fabius the Delayer, if the fierce Moors were triumphing, enslaving Carthage, destroying law? This victory has called back all those ancient laurels: Stilicho has restored every triumph to you, Rome!

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Stilicho’s Consulship, Book 2 That’s enough praise of arms. Now for what character Stilicho uses to rein Rome in, and how great the Romans’ love, that makes him feared; at whose command he finally inclined to wear the consul’s robe 40 I.e. Gildo was doomed on both sea and land. 41 In 66 BCE, Pompey defeated Tigranes the Great, whose empire included the Pontic Alps in northeastern Turkey. See the Glossary for the other figures whom Roman commanders defeated in their wars of expansion. 42 The divine personification of Rome’s security. See also In Praise of Serena 188.

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that begged for him, and yield his year to the Fasti. Let a gentler Muse begin this song on looser strings. In the beginning, Mercy43 was the great world’s guardian. She dwelled in Jupiter’s region, balancing the sky midway between ice and fire, oldest of the heaven-dwelling gods. Mercy was first to sort out Chaos, taking pity on the disordered heap. Her expression calm, she shook away the shadows and poured the ages into the light. Instead of temples and incense on smoking altars, this goddess rejoices in you, and makes her home in your breast. Mercy taught you to think it cruel and disgraceful to feed on men’s punishments, or their blood; to carry a bloody sword in war, but dry in peace; not to attack and so nourish hatred. Of your own accord, you want to forgive the guilty, to set aside your anger quicker than you began it. You never oppose entreaties implacably, you overthrow obstacles;44 you overlook those fallen before you, like lions who pass over humbler prey and burn to kill fierce bulls. Mercy taught you to pardon the defeated. She encourages you to hold back horrifying rage and threats, which men fear, though you’ll never harm them. You’re satisfied simply to be revered, like heaven-dwelling Jupiter, whose roaring thunder shakes the whole earth. He sends the Cyclopes’ lightning against mountains and sea monsters, but spares our human blood and hurls his thunderbolts into Mount Oeta’s forests. Loyalty is Mercy’s sister, and she inhabits the same temples in your heart, involving herself in all your deeds. She taught you never to paint yourself with deceit, never to lie, never to defer promises, to openly hate your enemies, not to bury malice deeply, not to dress

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43 Latin Clementia covers a broader range of meanings than the English word “mercy”, including “gentleness” and “mildness.” 44 Editors remove the following line, which is likely not by Claudian: “just as a lion’s noble anger spares the defeated.”

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fraud handsomely; rather to keep a constant expression reflecting your mind. She forbade you to be vicious in secret, and sent you to serve others instead. Loyalty also strengthened friendships over time, bound them with everlasting adamant, and didn’t change unsteady minds. She didn’t let grumbling at a small fault loosen friendship’s ties, nor lured you to tire of an old friend if a new one appeared. Your loyalty’s eager to recall good deeds, to disdain offenses, to remember both small duties and great ones, working hard to surpass Rome’s enemies in war, and your friends in services. Loyalty nurtures absent friends, the only one to care for those far off. She never turns an eager ear to rumors. Dangerous whispers won’t ever alienate your affection and hurt an unaware client.

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Your love’s bound to the living, but doesn’t cease remembering the dead: 50 your favor to the parents passes to the children. You served Theodosius loyally while he held the scepter, the same after he passed away. You care for your children no more than for his, whom he entrusted to you to protect and instruct. Rumor counts those men just 55 and all too loyal, who could deny that they received a trust, but prefer to return it undisgraced through profit. But Stilicho wasn’t overseeing wealth or weight of gold, rather the world’s two poles. For these young boys, he guarded in trust wherever the fiery sun traverses. What would you not 50 confidently entrust to him, this man who was safely trusted with the palace? Armed with Stilicho as his shield, Honorius didn’t mourn his exalted father. On the very threshold of light and life, he gave laws to conquered peoples, was never rejected, and felt himself grow along with the triumphs. 65 You formed him so gently and so strictly, never letting him get lazy, while consenting to everything he wished. Nor did you smash his enthusiasm by opposing him. You taught him privately, as if to a young man, what befit his rule,

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what the public burden demands, as if you honored his holy father, steering the Empire according to his commands. Submissively you worshipped your master, your obedience guiding the emperor, your duty his father. This was how Honorius first learned to desire his wife, skipping dissipated adolescence to begin his manhood, preferring a chaste union under marriage’s law. You were lucky to have an emperor son-in-law; he was luckier to have you as his father-in-law.45

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You oversaw his brother Arcadius with no less concern. If sluggish Eutropius and his shameless throng dared to put the royal name 80 on their own madness, Stilicho didn’t blame the young emperor.46 Indeed, his anger never glowed when conflict raged. Insults often assaulted him, swords aimed for him: he could’ve avenged the mad attacks that he endured through unlawful battle, and justified a civil war. 85 Amid the courts’ conflicts, reverence for these brothers remained undefiled, supported by his loyalty. Indeed, Stilicho, you divided fairly the purple cloaks, jewel-encrusted necklaces, gem-covered togas, breastplates green with emeralds, helmets overflowing with jacinths, shining-hilted swords wielded by Theodosius, and crowns ornamented with precious stones’ varied gleam. Both heirs would possess equal ornaments and imperial regalia. You even sent back soldiers, although the factions already swelled for war.47 You’d rather arm your enemy with troops than stain your loyalty. You grant him what’s fair to request, deny him only what he himself would soon be glad to lose, and what would’ve been shameful to deserve. Meanwhile every goddess whose pure mouth rejects crime joined in chorus and was welcomed in your single breast. They girded along with you for various pursuits. Justice persuades 45 Honorius married Stilicho’s daughter Serena early in 398; see Chapter 7. 46 See Eutropius introduction. 47 These troops murdered Rufinus in November 395; see Rufinus introduction.

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you to put right before profit, to follow common laws, and never to enrich your associates unjustly. Endurance toughened your body so you’d never wish to yield to any challenge. Balance taught you to seek chastity; Prudence, to do nothing without forethought; Constancy, to undertake nothing vain or unstable. Run far away, unlucky divinities, whom Tartarus sent from its monster-bearing caverns. You first banished Greed, mother of crimes. Gain always makes it thirst for more, jaw gaping open as it seeks for gold. Along with her, you expelled Bribery, Greed’s utterly disgusting nurse. She keeps watch at powerful men’s doors and entryways, her outlays feeding the trade in offices. Corruption’s whirlpool didn’t attract you to this age’s example, which had strengthened crime year after year, and legalized the practice of theft. At last, under your rule, rich men don’t fear for their ancestral estates, nor their homes. Informers don’t wander about ready to charge anyone. Virtue doesn’t hide buried in poverty. You advance men chosen from every shore; you never inquire about a worthy man’s origin; you ask what kind of man he is, not where he’s from. We live under your kindly witness, and your rewards draw outstanding characters. Thanks to you, the ancient arts are returning, and you’re opening a path for productive minds. The Muses lift their once-despised heads. Both the man of overflowing wealth and the poor man strive for profit with the same zeal, as both see that honesty does not lie impoverished, nor does laziness get richer. Luxury’s pleasant appearance didn’t deceive you, that sweetest evil, always given over to the body’s desires, her darkness blunting the senses, unmanning the limbs more powerfully than Circe’s herbs. Her face is charming, but nothing’s more obscene than her inside. She’s painted her cheeks, clothed herself in deceptive tricks, and dyed her fierce snakes gold. She captures many people with desire’s hooks—she tried, but never captured you.

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No depraved desire for debauchery keeps you awake till dawn, no napping derails your time for action, no zither music at your parties, or young boys singing of lust. Who could catch sight of you living carefree, your mind totally relaxed, or indulging in feasts, unless a good reason commanded you to celebrate?

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Shameful expenses don’t wear out the treasury. No evil 145 letter in a little book hands over an absent owner’s wealth. Because you’re frugal, the soldiers love you. You don’t neglect the troops in peacetime, then enrich them when battle thunders. You know that no gifts are pleasing which a man offers in fear to people he’d rejected, coming late and wasting the gold 150 he saved to no purpose. You come of your own choice, before the time giving generously to men who aren’t expecting you. You invite them to your table, and you call each man by name, remembering the famous deeds he once performed under your command. You add words to fix the deeds 155 in their senses, which doubles your great gifts’ reward. Whatever you give, you don’t have the habit of boasting to make it a reproach. You don’t speak to the men you advanced all swollen up with haughty disdain. Your good luck doesn’t swell you with excessive empty wind. Indeed Pride slunk far off; a typical vice in favorable circumstances, the virtues’ unwelcome companion. People can approach you anywhere and speak to you. They don’t have to snatch a word while drinking, but in pure freedom of conversation, anyone can fearlessly mingle jokes and business. Your party guests see that you’re the emperor’s father-in-law, the empire’s father, and they’re astonished that you’re their equal. Though possessing such great power, you act gently, like a citizen. Scholars hear you speak of oldfashioned matters, old men hear you speak maturely. For the soldiers, you mix witty remarks and brave talk. No one would prefer Amphion’s music to your speeches, though his playing built Thebes’s walls, nor would they wish for Orpheus’s lyre that made trees change their places.48

48 Amphion and Orpheus were mythical musicians.

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That’s why you’re loved, and everybody cares for you: their prayers are real, not fake. That’s why everywhere you go, applause cheers your name, and golden statues honor your appearance. 175 What anvil wouldn’t ring, what smith’s flame would be idle, what forges would supply the bronze, enough to make your statues—what hidden corner or what region wouldn’t cherish your beloved face like a god’s— if you hadn’t always rejected such honors? 180 Fearful subjects’ fake gifts deceive the man who snatches at this sort of glory, unsure if he’s loved. Stilicho alone can reject what he’s rightly owed. Envoys rush from all directions, and before your son-in-law Honorius’s face, they ready a hundred voices to proclaim you. 185 The Gauls give thanks, safe on an unarmed border, fearing no enemy, building new towers all along the Rhine’s banks. They cover the river, full of fierce tribes, with pleasant houses, just like on Rome’s Tiber. Here the Carthaginians heap praises upon you, 190 because they may possess their fields, free of the tyrant Gildo. The Pannonians and those who drink the Save River aren’t under siege. They dare to loosen the gates and open their cities, shut in for so many years. They use the whetstone once more to sharpen sickles dark with rust, shine mattocks eaten up with decay, 195 see their farmhouses, plant kisses on their familiar hills, and scarcely believe that the plow pushes on fertile soil. They cut down forests left untouched for centuries and restore the land. They plant vines to shade the Danube and gladly pay the ancestral tribute once more after defeat had exempted it. Thanks to Stilicho, our savior, it’s right to renew our wounded empire’s suffering body. You restore everything we lost under so many emperors. Stilicho’s the only doctor who’ll make the scar grow to cover Rome’s wound. Farmers will return at last to their lands, and Illyrian tribute will enrich the court once more. Yet neither does divine judgment yield to human favor: the gods unite their protection to surround you alone.

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Either they deliver your foes up on the shore, or they block their escape and shut the whole ocean to them, or they turn their own madness against them, and running riot with the soldiers’ swords, they tear bodies apart, as happened to Pentheus.49 The gods uncover plots and lead you into fraud’s dens, as a Molossian dog’s trained nose aids the hunter. Their omens mark out the future, or birds show it, or they dignify your sleep, guiding it with true visions. For these services, countless lands competed to seek the consul’s robe for you. You’d stood fast against their demands, and your mind was inclined to favor others, but judged your own merits harshly. Hot with modesty’s fiery blushes, your mind forgives out of respect the late-arriving rewards. And so the eager provinces, hoping that you’d be the new consul, frustrated for so many years, made their way to the threshold of their mistress Rome. If you wouldn’t approve their entreaties, they were even bound to force your hesitation, set to remove your delays to their desire. They came to the goddess’s temple that shone brightly on the Palatine Hill.50 Spain was first, her hair wreathed in Minerva’s gray olive leaves, the glittering Tagus River embroidered on her tawny robe. She made this speech: “Stilicho always granted me everything I requested, and only despises offices for himself. He could reject the fasces that his father-in-law offered, and now he also denies his son-in-law. At least he ought to take them from the court as a relative, if not as ruler from the world he rules. Does he think it little to embrace the Ebro River’s offspring, sustaining our children in their unchanging right, that the royal purple ennobles their father’s Baetis River, that Maria’s lovely seed has made the empire fertile, that all hope Stilicho will be grandfather to emperors?”

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49 The narrator refers indirectly to the downfalls of Gildo and Rufinus. See the introductions to Gildo and Rufinus. 50 The emperor Hadrian constructed the temple of Venus and Rome on the Palatine Hill in 128 CE; it was later restored by the emperor Maxentius in 307.

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Then fierce blond Gaul, her hair combed back, a lovely torque encircling her neck, came wielding twin javelins. She spoke from her spirited breast: “He conquered the Germans and Franks for me, all by himself—why don’t the Fasti see his name yet? Why does that page still not know such a name, which was long since appropriate to list? Does pacifying the Rhine bring so little glory?” Then came Britain, wrapped in a Scottish beast’s skin, her cheeks tattooed with steel. A blue robe trailed her footsteps, mimicking the Ocean’s swell. “I was also perishing at neighboring people’s hands”, she said. “Stilicho fortified me, when the Scots roused all Hibernia, and hostile oars made the Ocean foam. Thanks to his concern, I need not fear Scottish missiles, nor tremble at the Picts. I don’t have to survey the whole coast for Saxons arriving on unpredictable winds.” Then Africa, her hair adorned with grain and ivory tusks, flushed from the seething sun spoke thus: “Now Gildo’s dead, I hoped no further delays would be created for Stilicho’s consulship. Yet even now he refuses, and hesitates to award the fasces to such a triumph. Who let me completely disregard the grievous Moors?” After them came Italy, twining ivy with the supple vine, and overflowing with wine from massive grapes. “Do you burn so much”, she said, “to have Stilicho ennoble the curule chair, that only glory can please? How much worthier the passion that drives me on! I want to enjoy his presence, follow him as he ascends the tribunal, and hail him as he opens the year’s doors!” The provinces zealously took turns begging Rome and urged her to go on their behalf. She readily completed her duty, grabbing her weapons right away and heading out swifter than a meteor falling through the clouds. She flew across Tuscany, grazing the Apennines, the Po reflecting her shield’s lightning. She stood before Stilicho, her grave expression no worse than Minerva’s,

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no lesser than Mars’s. Her brilliant shield made the house tremble, and her helmet’s crest touched the ceiling coffers. Then Rome addressed astonished Stilicho with a welcome complaint: “Honored Stilicho, I acknowledge that you saved the curule chair, but haven’t yet adorned it. What good to exile Eutropius, and his slave’s 280 disgraceful mark upon the year? Are you shunning the very office you defended, rejecting what you worked so hard to protect? Are you declining the consulship on offer, the one you fought for when it was under threat? What’s the cause of your delay? What’s your thinking in making me wait once more? There’s nothing to fear from the North, 285 and every southern shore is quiet. Moorish Gildo’s fallen, Germany’s yielded, and deep peace seals Janus’s temple.51 Don’t you yet think me worthy of your consulship? Should I think it is a trivial title with little luster, though the emperors confess that it ennobled them, and with it I captured kings and led their peoples beneath my yoke? 290 If Nature marked coming disasters with Eutropius’s prodigies, that disgrace didn’t stain me. That omen was only for the Eastern court. That said, I don’t know this story because of any events: Rumor hardly even laughed at such a crime. No one believes we’re disgraced, nor has a letter come divulging the unspeakable. 295 Your courage is the greatest in this matter: you counsel the senators regarding all else, yet you keep silent about Eutropius the monster. In the end, no presentiment of disgrace to be expunged defiled the senators’ sacred gathering, nor did my Curia spread around that man’s ill-omened name. 300 Hesitation would’ve been participation in the crime. Whatever profane page came from the Sun’s eastern threshold, I destroyed before it reached the Ocean. His shameful deeds’ examples wouldn’t assault Italy’s chaste ears. How much your care achieved! This public madness deserved secrecy. Whoever left off inscribing the Eastern Fasti

51 The doors of Janus’s temple in Rome were closed when the empire was at peace.

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should rejoice; these portents escaped the Western ones. They should work hard to cover their own stain. Why should I rejoice that Eutropius was removed? I never learned or sensed he’d been made consul. They regret their crime; we couldn’t believe it even happened. Yet if it had become one crime for all, and spread right down to our consular axes—all the more reason you should take up the greatest authority, so such an ancient honor may not perish, which always was high office’s harbor. No consul but Stilicho can remedy our loss. Your mind well saw the future, and so put off the time. Back then you could have grown through the consul’s title, now the title may grow through you. As consul, come to the aid of past and future consuls burdened by Eutropius’s shame. Hand down your year, so secure posterity may follow, nor may the past which you defended regret it. As Brutus invented the consul’s robe, Stilicho avenged it. The people regained their liberty through the fasces when Brutus was the first consul. He banished slavery through these very fasces. Brutus instituted this sublime honor: Stilicho defended it. It’s a greater feat to safeguard an invention than to seek out something new. Why are you reddening and nodding so slowly? Why is your customary blush spreading over your forehead? Conquer your shame at last, Stilicho, you who conquer everything!

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Though certainly no bribe can corrupt you, also wear this robe52 330 willingly and admire it. Minerva wove it with me on her divine loom for you. Together we combined the threads from our wool baskets, repeatedly dying them purple, and sewed it with the same gold thread that Lachesis used to fashion my Golden Age under your rule. On it, I announced your promised offspring, and the children 335 the world hopes for. Soon you yourself will prove me a true prophet, and the coming destiny will inspire faith in my loom.” Thus Rome spoke, and held forth the gift from her lap, a stiff consul’s robe, heavy with gold. Minerva’s outstanding work breathed forth,

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52 Diptychs made of ivory from late antiquity show consuls wearing elaborate robes like the ones sewn by Proba for Olybrius and Probinus at O&P 177–82. See Dewar 2010.

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featuring the palace’s shining columns, and Maria’s holy delivery. Childbirth goddess Lucina consoled her pain. Maria lay on a shining bed. Her worried mother, next to her, grew pale amid her joy. The Nymphs, their temples crowned, took up the baby and washed him in a golden basin. You’d think that infant laughter and crying were rising up from the fabric. And now the child had grown up, and his face was like his father’s. Stilicho, a man of maturer years, handed down war’s teachings to his grandson, who would rule.53 In another part of the garment, youth’s first flower marked Eucherius’s face. He turned a seething warhorse, bloody foam on its silken reins. His golden javelins and bow struck purple deer raising golden horns. Here Venus, carried by doves, joins a third marriage in royal partnership.54 Winged Loves crowd round the bride, born from emperors, sister to emperors. Eucherius lifts the veil from the timid virgin’s face, and Thermantia smiles on her happy brother. For the palace looked for crowns from both sexes, and produced both queens and husbands for queens.

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Goddess Rome welcomed Stilicho with such gifts, holding forth an ivory scepter for his right hand. She shook the urn with solemn auspices, and her bird omens favored these beginnings. Then Rome covered Stilicho’s shoulders, more fit for fighting, with Romulus’s robe. Latin adornment settled on his breast, and the toga did him honor instead of his chestplate.

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Likewise Mars returns in triumph from the Danube or the Scythian North. He lays down his shield and gently dons his robe, entering the city on shining horses. Romulus Quirinus guides the loose reins, and Bellona marches before her father’s bloodstained chariot. She lofts

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53 As Honorius and Maria never had a child, this passage is a fantasy. 54 The three marriages are: Stilicho and Serena; Honorius and Maria; and Stilicho’s hoped-for but unachieved marriage between his son Eucherius and Theodosius’s daughter Galla Placidia.

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an oak branch to the sky, decked out with rich spoils. Fear and his brother Trembling attend them, tying iron chains around barbarian necks, and laurel wreathes their helmets. 375 Close by the horses, Terror brandishes an enormous axe, her robe hitched up. When Rome saw she’d gained the consul she desired, she said, “I’m in the mood to rush to the Elysian fields right now, so I can tell the Curii and the Fabricii the miracle: our prayer was answered! Rumor of Eutropius recently wounded them, and they wept for the downtrodden consul’s toga. Now let choruses dance 380 upon the Elysian fields, and severe Catos be unashamed to play. Let ancient Brutus hear of this, and the Scipios who terrified the Carthaginians, that I’m free at last from twin injuries, and thanks to Stilicho’s aid alone, I’ve recovered both Africa and the fasces. 385 As for the rest, bravest of consuls, add one thing to my prayers. Grant Rome swiftly what it requests— your arrival. You’ve banished war and famine, and once more given the city rule over the world. Let the shining Rostra take you up, a second Camillus. 390 Let the Romans see you, their avenger and savior, and the common people, whom you love as their leader. Thanks to you, Africa sends them its crops, as does the Rhône—unheard-of before! Whether Libyan grain or Gallic fertility, let it be profit, let the moist South Wind carry in the harvest, 395 now the North Wind, and every wind enrich my silos. How many thousands of people then will pack the Flaminian way!55 Oh, how often the deceptive dust will fool our love, and keep it in suspense, as each hour you’re expected to arrive! Mothers will long to see you, and flowers will strew all the roads, when you ascend the Pincian hill’s steep height, exalted consul, the Roman Senate’s ancient image.

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55 Claudian’s personified Rome describes Stilicho’s consular procession through the city, observed by all the citizens. This typical feature of ancient panegyric celebrated the connection between the new consul and his people, as at Honorius’s Sixth Consulship 543–51 (MacCormack 1981). Rome indicates crowds assembling on three of the city’s seven hills.

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How much applause you’ll receive in Pompey’s theater!56 How often the Murcian valley will shout your name to the skies, echoing from the Aventine and Palatine hills. Now leave your camp behind, let me look at you, and soon I’ll see you with your son-in-law in your second consulship.”

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As Rome said this, Rumor was already flying across the Ocean on her chattering wings. Her thousand tongues called forth the nobles and ordered them to hurry. Old age stopped none from journeying, 410 nor did the Alps’ winter storms. Love conquered them. Already retired, famous from their former tenure of the fasces, they hurried for their colleague’s year, for their avenger. Likewise the unique Phoenix uses life-giving death to renew its youth, carrying its father’s bones and ashes in its dutiful talons, 415 heading from the furthest East up to the Nile’s banks. The eagles come together, as do birds from all over the world, to admire the Sun’s bird. Setting itself on fire, the Phoenix shines far and wide, and its perfumed pyre smells of cinnamon. Heaven’s chorus was no smaller. 420 Both the Theodosiuses, your gods,57 rejoiced, the Sun himself crowned his chariot with spring, and prepared a year worthy of you, Stilicho.58 Far off, there is an unknown cave, which our minds cannot penetrate. The gods hardly approach it. The years’ disheveled mother, 425 the cave of boundless Time, supplies moments from her massive breast and calls them back. A serpent whose gentle divinity consumes all things embraces the cave. Its scales continually flourish, and its mouth devours its own tail as it silently glides, retracing its own beginnings. 430 Ancient Nature, nobility in her face, sits as guardian before the entrance doors, and flying souls hang from each one of her limbs. A venerable old man writes laws that endure forever. He apportions measures to the stars, and paths 56 In 55 BCE, Pompey built the first permanent stone theater in Rome, whose remains stand in the modern Largo di Torre Argentina. 57 The translation follows Charlet’s interpretation. Another possible translation is “and your gods”, which would refer indirectly to Stilicho’s Christian faith. 58 For the comparison of the new consul to the sun, see O&P 3.

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and stable periods. All things live and die by these fixed laws. He decrees how Mars’s uncertain path will benefit the world, and Jupiter’s sure one, the Moon’s swift orbit, Saturn’s slow one, how far Venus’s serene chariot will stray, or Mercury, the Sun’s companion.

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As the Sun stopped on this cave’s great threshold, powerful Mother Nature came running up, and the old man bent his white head toward the brilliant rays. Then of its own accord, the adamant opened and released the doors. The innermost sanctuary’s depths lay open. Time’s seat became visible, as did its secrets. The world’s ages 445 dwelled here, each in its fixed place, different metals marking their appearances. Here clustered the bronze centuries, iron ones stood stiffly over there, and there shone silver ages. The shining years stood in an outstanding part of the palace, a golden band, hard to encounter on earth. The Sun chose a remarkable one, precious metal covering its body, to assign to Stilicho. Next he ordered the other years to follow behind, and instructed them as they went: “Here is the consul, for whom we delayed the better metals’ ages! Go forth, you years that mortals yearn for! Lead out the virtues, flourish once more in men’s minds, rejoicing in wine, fruitful in grain. Don’t let the Serpent hiss forth icily between the northern Pleiades, don’t let the Bear rage with immoderate cold, nor the Lion roar with gaping jaws, nor vicious heat burn the Crab’s pincers, nor Aquarius’s generous pitcher let loose a storm and drown the planted seeds. Let the golden Ram’s rosy horn bring forth a fertile spring, but don’t let the Scorpion’s hail smash the plump olives. Let Virgo bring autumn’s harvest to ripeness, and may Sirius the Dog Star bark more gently at the swollen grapes.”59 Speaking thus, the Sun went forth with his golden rays into the dewy East and his own valley. A fiery river encircled it,

59 The Sun catalogs constellations imagined to be harbingers of the weather.

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supplying huge flames to the well-watered grass, which fed the Sun’s horses. The Sun bound his hair with fiery wreaths, and tied them on his horses’ manes and tawny bridles. On one side, Lucifer adorned his frozen hair, Dawn on the other. Beside him, the golden year toyed with the reins, and held forth the consul Stilicho’s name. As the stars revolved their axes once more along new paths, they wrote Stilicho’s name on heaven’s Fasti.

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Stilicho’s Consulship, Preface to Book 3 The greater Scipio, who alone turned the Punic invasion away from Italy’s shores, back to its source, didn’t wield arms without the Muses’ arts. This general always took the greatest care of his poets. For courage is pleased to call the Muses to witness, and whoever does deeds worthy of song loves song. And so Scipio, youthful avenger of his father’s spirit,60 subdued the Spanish coast under Roman law. His unerring spear was ready to smash Carthaginian strength, and he brought terrifying battle standards to Africa’s shores.

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Learned Ennius stayed close by his side, and was used to traveling in all his encampments, amid the battle horns. The infantrymen applauded his singing after the trumpets ceased, and the knights, still bloodstained from fresh slaughter, praised the poet. Scipio triumphed over both Carthages: he conquered 15 New Carthage to avenge his father, and Old for his fatherland.61 At last, after the long war’s devastation, he forced lamenting Africa to march before his chariot. Victory led the Muses home with her, and Mars’s laurel wreathed the poet Ennius. 20 Stilicho is our Scipio! Before him, another Hannibal fell, one more fierce than ancient Hannibal. After five years,

60 Scipio Africanus’s father died fighting in Spain in 211 BCE. 61 Scipio Africanus conquered New Carthage (modern Cartagena, Spain) in 209 BCE and forced the Carthaginians to surrender at the battle of Zama, Tunisia, in 202 BCE.

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Rome has returned you to me, and ordered me to be present for her prayers’ fulfillment.

Stilicho’s Consulship, Book 3 Look, Rome, at the man whom you sought in the people’s applause and the nobles’ voices! Now stop counting his long journey’s hours, and leaping up every time you see dust. Your doubtful wishes won’t torment you further. Once he was only in our thoughts, now he’s entirely before our eyes, greater than our hopes, better than his fame. Honor his curule chair, which has restored the fasces to you. Take his hand, which once more brought the Carthaginians beneath the Roman yoke. Embrace his great-spirited breast, which guides the empire’s reins, and whose senses keep the world in balance. Look now with joy upon his holy face, which you honor on bronze statues, and admire on golden ones. Here is the warrior successful everywhere: Africa’s protector, the Rhine and Danube’s pacifier. If Stilicho desired to display his labors in the ancient fashion, and show the public the peoples he defeated, both sides of the world would compete for equal victory laurels— one with Alamannic plunder, the other richer from southern spoil. On one side, the blond Sygambrians would process, on the other, the black-haired Moors. White horses would carry Stilicho, and the soldiers following his laurel-wreathed chariot would shout joyous songs. They’d drag enslaved kings; others would carry metal images of towns or mountains and captive rivers. Here African rivers, horns shattered, would lament; there Germany would mourn for the chained Rhine. But your consul, Rome, does not boast excessively about his own honor. The reward doesn’t please him as much as the work itself. He disdains meaningless hubbub, and he triumphs with greater pomp in people’s minds. Certainly Rome’s hills never received another leader with more fanfare, not when Fabricius returned from Pyrrhus’s defeat, nor when Paulus, conqueror of Macedon, ascended the Capitol in his chariot. Similar glory didn’t open Latium’s gates for Marius 282

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after conquering the Numidians, nor Pompey after the trumpets of his eastern campaign.62 Each man always faced a rival faction that bitterly reproached his praise. Jealousy’s evil goads followed on their deeds, mighty though they were. Through his courage, this man alone has left behind Envy’s territory and the human scale. Who could be jealous that the stars never perish, that Jupiter possesses the lofty sky, that Apollo knows all things? There’s space for merit that no measure of raging envy can seize. Moreover, favor split for other commanders: the senators liked Pompey better, but the people hated him. Popular enthusiasm strengthened Marius, but he lacked the Senate’s favor. Discord ceased among the various orders for Stilicho alone. The knights rejoice, the senators applaud, and plebeian prayers compete with patrician favor. Fortunate man, whom rescued Rome calls its father! Shared love of the world, for whom all Gaul fought, whom Spain joined in royal marriage, whose coming the Romans sought with frequent shouts, and the Senate earned, thanks to your outstanding son-in-law!63 Young women don’t desire flowers, crops don’t desire rain, nor tired sailors favoring winds, the way the people longed to see you. Do Delos’s shores raise up prophetic laurels at such divinity, each time Apollo’s bow shines forth announcing his arrival? Does Pactolus’s gold-bearing stream make Lydia swell like this when Bacchus appears after conquering the Indians? Don’t you see that crowds are covering the roads, and mothers the roofs? Through your victory, Stilicho, unexpected salvation shone again for all these people. Survey Rome’s Seven Hills—the sheen of gold blunts the sun’s rays, spoils hang from the arches, the temples rise level with the clouds, and everything such triumphs have heaped up. How much you helped, how great a city you saved— 62 See the Glossary for these Roman commanders. 63 Honorius.

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measure it with your astonished eyes. Certainly all this would be mere story, if the Carthaginians were still weighing on the South. Our ancestors’ armies had a custom: when a brave soldier defeated the enemy, rescuing another citizen from falling in death, they wreathed his temples with oak leaves.64 But what civic crown could we give you for saving such great walls? What crowns would repay your deeds? Rome confesses that it owes not only its people’s lives to your arms—but what’s sweeter than that, it enjoys a life of honor, its reputation’s venerable weight, regaining its lost strength and its dominions. Now Rome doesn’t send envoys to beg the arrogant East for lost Libya, nor does it beseech its slaves (shameful to say!). Rather, relying on its consul’s strength, Roman anger at last avenges itself under your leadership. Rome itself commands the battle standards, and the toga-clad consul directs the soldier. The Eagles await the senators’ decree.65 Rome itself has given you your consul’s robe of its own accord, offering the curule chair to its avenger, and compelled you to ennoble the Fasti. Rome misses nothing of its ancient honor, nor longs for freer ages, when it bestows the fasces, when it declares wars, and even sees itself expand. Who remembers when Gaul’s plains toiled for Italy, and the Senones’ mattocks? Is there an earlier example of the Tiber carrying in harvests from the fertile North that the Lingones’ plows sweated over?66 This crop not only brought relief to the city: it was also proof, Rome, of how much you can do. Rome reminded other peoples of her mastery, and as good as a trophy, brought back unfamiliar tribute from the icy shores.

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64 For the oak-leaf wreath as a reward for saving a fellow soldier’s life, see Aulus Gellius Attic Nights 5.6.11–14. 65 See note to Stilicho’s Consulship 1.332. 66 Claudian mentions two Gallic peoples whose grain supplemented Rome’s nutritional needs after Gildo cut off grain shipments from North Africa. See Gildo.

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This deed also increases Roman majesty: Africa’s rulers now fear our people’s judgement, and each leader, after leaving offices, accounts on pain of death for how much Carthaginian plows harvest, how much the moist South wind brings to Rome. The men who gave haughty replies to lands far and wide now tremble here, abased. Now the Rostra puts the men who recently terrorized Africa on trial. Stilicho offers the example of hoary antiquity’s virtues. He rouses people who forgot their ancient grandeur back to the practice of ruling. They’re feared, they tread on mighty offices, weigh accusations justly, dutifully forgive mistakes, approve pure-hearted people, condemn criminals, and once more mercifully exercise their ancestral arts.

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Whoever believes that living under such an outstanding leader is slavery is mistaken. Liberty’s never more welcome than under a dutiful monarch. Stilicho submits to the people’s and the senators’ judgment 115 those men whom he appoints to govern the state. He yields willingly to them, whether they request rewards for deserving people, or wish to punish them. Imperial purple now puts aside contempt, and isn’t indignant when judgment’s passed about it. Thus father-in-law Stilicho taught Honorius to rule, thus he put chaste reins on his youth, 120 and filled his son-in-law’s tender years with his own morals. Truer father of the emperor,67 our guarantee in war, our counsel in peacetime! Thanks to him, an old-fashioned age has shaken off its squalor, and Romulus’s arts now flourish. Rome’s power was long shattered, and almost handed over. 125 Thanks to him, it’s not exiled, enslaved on foreign fields, forgetting itself, but has been led back to its own home, returning victorious destiny to our land. Rome again enjoys the auspices that it once clung to, and reunites its head with its wayward limbs.

67 A reference to Stilicho both as a patrician (see Glossary “patrician”) and his role as Honorius’s guardian.

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Consul akin to the gods! You look out upon so great a city. The sky embraces nothing loftier on earth. No sight may take in its expanse, no heart its glory, no voice its praise. Rome plants its rooftops so their metal’s gleam vies with the nearby stars. The seven hills imitate heaven’s zones. As the mother of arms and laws, it infuses its rule throughout the world, and provided our rights’ first cradle. Rome originated in a small territory and expanded to both sides of the world. Its armies set out from a tiny capital and spread following the sun. Rome went up against destiny as it fought countless battles all at the same time. It captured Spain, besieged the Sicilian cities, and overthrew the Gauls on land, the Carthaginians by sea. It never succumbed to its losses, nor feared any wound: it roared all the greater after Trebia and Cannae. Even when flames oppressed Rome and the enemy struck at its walls, it sent an army into furthest Spain.68 Nor did Rome stop at the Ocean: its oars plunged into the deep, seeking to conquer the Britons in their separate world.

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Rome is the only power to take defeated peoples into its bosom and care for the human race under a shared name, like a mother, not a master. It calls the people it conquers “citizens”, and unites distant places in bonds of duty. All of us owe to Rome’s peacemaking ways that foreigners access our territory as if it were their homeland. We’re allowed to change our dwelling place, it’s sport to visit Thule and enter its hiding places, so frightening before. Here and there we sip from the Rhône, we drink from the Orontes: we’re all one people. Roman power will never end!

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Luxury and vice overturned other kingdoms, along with arrogance and hatred. That’s how the Spartans smashed Athens, corrupted at its height, and fell in turn to the Thebans. That’s how the Medes took power from the Assyrians, and the Persians in turn from the Medes.

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68 Claudian recalls events of the Second Punic War (218–202 BCE). Roman armies campaigned in Spain while simultaneously defending Italy against Hannibal’s invasion and suffering major defeats at the battles of Trebia and Cannae.

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The Macedonians subjugated the Persians, and yielded in turn to the Romans.69 The Sibyl’s auguries strengthened Rome, Numa’s religion filled its soul. Here Jupiter hurls his thunderbolt, Minerva covers it entirely with her Gorgon shield. Vesta brought her secret fires here. Great Mother Cybele, her head crowned with towers, brought her orgies and her Phrygian lions. Gliding peacefully, Asclepius crept here of his own accord to defend the city from disease. The Tiber Island sheltered the god, a healing serpent carried across the waves.70 Outstanding Stilicho, you oversee this city along with the gods. Your shield protects this homeland of generals and kings, that’s especially your own. This city gave life’s beginning to Eucherius, and his royal mother brought the boy from here to show the emperor. His grandfather71 was overjoyed, and held the boy as he crawled on his purple robe. Rome rejoiced in its foreknowledge of coming fate: it earned Stilicho as a citizen thanks to such a child.

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Yet please don’t believe your people are ungrateful, or ignorant of how to return a benefit. If you choose to unroll the ancient annals, see how often Rome went to war on behalf of its allies, how often it handed over lands that Roman bloodshed won, 185 as a gift to friendly kings! But never before did public thanks pour forth from such widespread assent. What emperor didn’t command everyone’s deference, insisting on being called master and father— names that heaven echoed for you, whole days through? 190

69 Claudian surveys various historical transfers of power: the Spartans defeated the Athenian empire in the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BCE) and were in turn defeated by the Thebans at the battle of Leuctra (371 BCE). The Medes defeated the Assyrians at the end of the seventh century BCE. Cyrus the Great overthrew the Median monarch Astyages and established the Achaemenid (ancient Persian) empire in 549 BCE. Alexander the Great defeated the Achaemenid emperor Darius III in several battles in the late 330s BCE. Rome established the province of Macedonia in 146 BCE. 70 See Glossary for Cybele. Asclepius was a Greek god of healing who carried a staff entwined with serpents. His cult was established at Rome following a plague in 293 BCE. 71 Theodosius.

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Hail to your new titles, consul! Mars’s Roman people confess you’re their master, and Brutus doesn’t object. For love of Stilicho, they grant what to this day no fear could force free Romans to accept. The people eagerly rejoice wherever they catch sight of your glory, and they raise your name to the stars. Nor can they ever satisfy their wandering eyes looking at your beloved face: whether you enter the Circus, resplendent in your consul’s golden robe, or you celebrate the games, or sitting high up on your ivory throne, your judgments gird the Forum, or your lictors, wielding axes, ascend the Rostra amid a dense whirling crowd. How indeed the nobles clamored, how certain were their joys, when lofty Victory herself rose up on unfurled wings, opening holy temples to leader Stilicho. O virgin guardian of our empire, you delight in flourishing victory palms, you love trophies, you alone treat our wounds, and you teach us not to feel our effort. Perhaps Ariadne’s Crown has pleased you, or the place next to the Lion that shines in summer.72 Whether you orbit Jupiter’s sublime scepter, or Minerva’s aegis, or soothe fatigued Mars’s panting, always be here for Italy, goddess, and nod your favor to the Senate’s prayers. May Stilicho often adorn your temple’s threshold, as he leads you back to camp. Favor this man, accompany him in war, then return him to our councils dressed in the peacetime toga. He always dealt gently with you, Victory, and kept you dutiful toward defeated people. Savagery never defiled your laurel. He doesn’t look down on the citizens, his brow full of arrogance; his legions don’t trouble fearful Rome. Rather, he’s a true consul to his homeland. When fighting ends, he’s content to return with lictors, protected by love alone, and doesn’t seek an armed guard’s futile defense.

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Stilicho wasn’t stingy with his immense resources. He didn’t put off doubling his vast outlays. After the miracles he performed for the army and his son-in-law Honorius, he keeps still greater benefits for Rome. 225 72 Two constellations, Corona Borealis and Leo.

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They say that Jupiter indulged the Rhodians by raining gold when Minerva was born. The Hermus River changed color, brightening to gold, when Jupiter’s thigh opened to birth Bacchus. Midas’s greedy wish caused him to suffer hunger, as whatever he touched turned to tawny gold. Whether they sing fable or truth, Stilicho’s generosity outdid Hermus’s spring, the Midas touch, and Jupiter’s rain.73 His hand’s the same in war and gifting, overshadowing the ancients and sure to overshadow those to come. If fire melted the mighty masses of silver he’s given, as if only counting their weight, lakes and rivers could flow forth. Nor did Stilicho show only a little concern for you, Diana, you who rule alike over woods and stars. You also worked to distinguish our games with noble beasts. From the Alpine crag’s highest peak, you set aside your bow and gathered your chaste nymphs, an inviolable council of quiver-bearing comrades. They came, arms and shoulders bare, spears arming their hands, quivers on their backs, disheveled yet beautiful. Their dusty faces were flushed and sweaty, their raw girlhood didn’t reveal their sex, and their hair was unruly. Two girdles kept their tunics from hanging down their shins. Blonde Liontamer ran ahead of her friends. Deerslayer, raised on Mount Lycaeus, followed her, as did Huntress, whose missiles mastered Mount Maenalus. Fiery Sweetmaid from Cretan Mount Ida hurried after, and Wolfmaid whose speed wouldn’t yield to the West Wind. Twin sisters born in Scythia joined them: Farshooter feared by beasts, and Opis, the hunter’s favorite goddess. They preferred Delos to the northern frosts, that made them powerful goddesses of the woods. These seven were the leaders. Another troop of Nymphs marched with them, Diana’s lovely army. A hundred came

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73 The narrator references three myths involving gold. Jupiter birthed his daughter Minerva from his head after swallowing her mother Metis, and he carried his son Bacchus to term in his thigh after inadvertently destroying Bacchus’s mother Semele. See Glossary for Midas.

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from Taygetus’s peak, another hundred from Mount Cynthus, and the same number born from the Ladon River’s chaste stream.74 When Diana saw them gathered, she began to speak: “O my companions, who hate marriage’s laws like me, virgin troop running across the cold mountains! You see how the gods work eagerly together to adorn this year for Italy, how many herds of horses Neptune gives from all over the world. None of my brother Apollo’s lyres leaves off playing praise. Stilicho should also see our resources; we owe them to his merits. This task doesn’t call for arrows; they can stay dry in shut quivers for now, and our bows hold off from their customary hunting. This bloodshed should be saved for the arena alone. We must capture wild animals with nets and lead them into cages. Put off killing them, hold back your yearning arrows. Spare these beasts to die for the consul’s applause.

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Split your forces and hurry out. My path heads for the seething Syrtes, and Cretan Wolfmaid and Sighter will come with me. We love to travel through the sterile heat. Mauretania furnishes animals as a gift to other peoples, but owes this tribute to Stilicho alone, as if in defeat. While we’re searching for Libya’s monstrous beasts, you others meanwhile comb through Europe’s glens and crags. The shepherd may set aside his fear and play, and his pipe sing of Stilicho in the safe woods. Let his games bring peace to the mountains, as his laws do for cities.”

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Diana spoke and straightaway headed from the tree-covered Alps across the sea. Yoked stags carried her chariot, ones whom the dewy Moon had birthed in her fertile cave on the primeval sky’s first evening, in honor of the goddess. The deer shone like the untrodden snow. Their variegated foreheads sprouted gold, their lofty horns matching the tallest beech trees, rising up like branching metal.

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74 See the Glossary for these Greek sites.

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Sighter held the reins, Wolfmaid carried fine-meshed nets and golden snares. Amid the clouds, immortal Molossian hounds ran barking around the cliffs. Five other Nymphs, similarly armed, rushed through different regions, as Diana had ordered, and each one led her own cohort. Dogs followed them, all different in breed, appearance, temperament. Some were good at biting deeply, others were fast on their feet, or had keen noses. Shaggy Cretan hounds barked, as did slender Spartans, and British dogs that could break a bull’s great neck. Hair flying loose, Sweetmaid led them through Dalmatia’s groves and Pindus’s jagged ridges. Liontamer surrounded the Gallic coverts, and shook out the German swamps, in case some huge boar, tusks curved from great age, sheltered in the Rhine River’s reeds. Farshooter readily wore out the cloudy Alps, the Apennine hollows, and Mount Garganus’s snows. Huntress took her dogs to explore the Spanish caves, thrusting out monstrous bears from the hollow recesses. The Tagus River’s waters often failed to satisfy the animals’ bloody jaws. When cold tired them out, the Pyrenees’ ilex hid them in concealing foliage. Virago Deerslayer hunted stags on the Corsican heights and Sicilian cliffs. Less dangerous animals she chained up; enticements for the reveling arena, a forest procession. They captured animals with fearsome teeth, outstanding crests, noble horns, stiff bristles—the entire forest’s glory and terror. Timid animals didn’t hide, strong ones didn’t use their bulk to resist, nor swift ones run away in rapid flight. Some groaned as nooses bound them up, others were carried off in oaken cages. There weren’t enough carpenters to smooth the beams. They built leafy stalls from ash or rough beech. Some animals traveled on loaded boats over the seas and along the rivers. The rowers froze, bloodless at their oars, and the sailors feared their own cargo.

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Others led the animals by land on wagons. A long line of carts filled with mountain trophies held up the roads. Worried oxen carried the captive beasts, who were used to satisfying their hunger on them. The cattle drew back fearfully from the wagon pole whenever they turned and saw them. And now Diana, Apollo’s sister, had travelled across Libya’s burning shores. She’d gathered outstanding lions who’d often chased the Hesperides and terrified Atlas,75 their manes flying swiftly in the wind. Far and wide they’d devastated Ethiopia’s flocks. The shepherds never heard their resounding roars without losses. Burning torches didn’t capture the beasts, nor branches laid over a collapsing pit trap, nor hanging goats whose cries provoked their hunger, nor a deceitful ditch. The beasts chose freely to be captured, and are happy to be such a mighty goddess’s prey. The pastureland breathes at last. The Moorish farmers, now safe, unbar their huts. Next Diana collects spotted leopards and the South’s other monsters, along with massive tusks. Steel cuts the ivory into tablets, sparkling with gold. The consul has his shining name inlaid in gold, and distributes these tablets among the nobles and common people. All India feels great shock as elephants wander, tusks ripped out, shorn of their glory. Diana sits on their black necks as they groan, and shakes loose the fixed ivory and tears it out from the bleeding roots, and disarms their gaping jaws. Indeed, she also wanted to lead these wonders before us, but worried that their thick bulk would slow her down. The fleet carrying the Libyan animals resounds across the Tyrrhenian Sea, and a lion twists his tail on the stern, and lounges on the prow. The slow ship can barely lift one of these beasts. The lowest depths hear them roaring, and all the whales leap up. Sea god Nereus compares these land monsters to his own, and confesses his don’t measure up.

75 See the Glossary for these North African divinities.

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It’s the same whenever victorious Bacchus sails the Indian Ocean: Silenus turns the helm, keen Satyrs sweat at the oars, and the beat from the Bacchantes’ bull hide tympani urges the god’s oars onward. Ivy binds the crossbeams, twining vine leaves clothe the mast, and drunken snakes slip down the yard-arm. Lynxes run and jump on rigging wet with wine, and tigers marvel at unaccustomed sails.

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12 THE GOTHIC WAR

Introduction The Goths, a confederation of Germanic peoples, had previously occupied the left bank of the lower Danube River. In 375, they crossed the river under pressure from incursions by the Huns, a people of the Eurasian steppes. The emperor Valens (ruled 364–378) granted the Goths the right to settle as federates (Roman allies) on the Danube’s right bank in Moesia in the northern Balkans. The disastrous battle of Adrianople followed on 9 August 378, where Gothic rebels killed Valens, destroyed his army, and caused heavy losses.1 This was the background to the interactions in the subsequent decades between the Theodosian dynasty and Alaric, the leader of a large confederation of Goths that made frequent incursions into Roman territory. Several of Claudian’s earlier poems detail Stilicho’s previous encounters with Alaric. He had potentially been able to capture Alaric during a confrontation in 395 in Greece, though his actual ability to do so remains doubtful (see Rufinus introduction). A recall of the Eastern legions in his army came from the Constantinople court. Rufinus introduced the claim that this order represented a “stab in the back”, and Claudian’s three-book panegyric Stilicho’s Consulship revisits the argument. The present poem narrates Alaric’s invasion of Italy in November 401, which prompted Honorius to move his court from Milan to Ravenna. The war featured a major battle at Pollentia (modern Pollenzo, in the northern Italian Piedmont), fought on Easter Day, 6 April 402. A subsequent battle occurred at Verona; see Honorius’s Sixth Consulship. Though Alaric afterward withdrew from Italy, Stilicho did not achieve a conclusive victory over the Goths, as they would return throughout the decade to harass the Western Empire. As often, Claudian’s panegyric

1 See Ammianus Marcellinus 31.3–16.

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presents Stilicho as the guarantor of safety in an ambiguous and menacing situation. In the Preface, Claudian describes a Senate gathering at the Temple of Palatine Apollo in Rome, where he earlier recited Stilicho’s Consulship, Book 3, and The War With Gildo. He celebrates his reward of a bronze statue in Trajan’s Forum.2 The poem then opens with a narrative of the mythical Argonauts’ exploits, including passing the Clashing Rocks that crushed ships and defeating the Harpies that stole food. Stilicho’s genuine defeat of the rapacious Goths has outdone these myths (1–35). His defeat of Alaric, like Jupiter’s victory over Typhoeus and the Giants, has made society orderly and peaceful once more (36–76). Though Alaric escaped, he is now in disgrace without his army or family; Stilicho spared his life as an act of mercy (77–123). A series of comparisons juxtaposes Stilicho with the leaders of Rome’s wars from the third through first centuries BCE. Stilicho’s rapid repulse of Alaric outdoes the lengthy campaigns against Pyrrhus, Hannibal, and Spartacus (124–165). Other contemporary sources indicate that Stilicho’s failure to destroy Alaric incurred severe criticism and accusations of treasonable collusion.3 Claudian endeavors to justify his patron’s conduct by suggesting that turning Alaric away from Italy was enough, that sparing the defeated Goths was honorable, and that Stilicho exemplifies the Roman tradition of choosing prudent leaders over those who take extravagant risks for victory. The narrative then shifts to relate the origins and events of the war. Thirty years before, the Goths crossed the Danube and began to devastate Greece. Rumors spread that they had also captured Rome. The inhabitants lost trust in their walls and prepared to flee (166–226). Evil omens increased their fear, including lunar eclipses, hailstorms, a comet, and wolves who concealed human hands in their entrails (227–266). Stilicho rallies the despairing Romans and reminds them how Rome defeated Gallic invaders in the third and second centuries BCE. He announces his intention to keep his family in Italy (267–318); then he marches to the Raetian Alps (319–363). Stilicho rebukes the Vandals for their incipient revolt and enrolls them as auxiliaries. He gathers other legions stationed in Britain and on the German frontier (363–429). The narrator compares Stilicho to Camillus, who rescued Rome from a Gallic invasion in the fourth century BCE. Rome’s

2 For Claudian’s statue and its inscription, see the volume introduction, Section 1.1 “Claudian’s Career.” 3 See Orosius 7.37.2; Zosimus 5.26, 29.

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resurgence reminds him of various mythical figures who returned from the dead. Stilicho’s return prompts rejoicing at Rome (430–468). Meanwhile, Alaric calls a council of Gothic nobles. An elderly statesman warns him to beware of Stilicho and to realize that he owes his life to Rufinus’s treasonable order to withdraw. Alaric points to his prior victories and appeals to a prophecy that claims he will come as far as “The City” (469–557). The prophecy deceives him, however; while “The City” was the typical way of referring to Rome, it is also the name of a northern Italian river, the modern Orba which flows into the Tanaro. To the Romans, the river’s Celtic name sounded like Urbs or “City” in Latin. Stilicho rallies his troops at the battle of Pollentia, Easter Day 402. He sends Saulus, leader of the Alans, to die in combat against Alaric’s forces. The Alans were nomadic peoples who lived in the Eurasian steppes; Huns invaded their territory in the late fourth century and pressured them to move westward. The Roman troops then plunder the Goths and liberate their prisoners. Alaric returns home to his wife’s laments, and the narrator concludes the poem with praise of Pollentia (568–647). He imagines a double victory monument commemorating both Stilicho’s victory and Marius’s victory at Vercellae (50 km from Pollentia) over the invading Cimbrians in 101 BCE. Contemporaries viewed Pollentia as a Roman victory, but later sources viewed it as a victory for Alaric.4 Claudian revisits the battle in Honorius’s Sixth Consulship (280–299) where the narrator appears to admit that the losses inflicted upon Alaric did not prevent him from regrouping and fighting once more at the subsequent battle of Verona. Nor would this be the last significant war between Goths and Romans. Alaric campaigned once more in Italy not long after the events described in this poem and sacked Rome in 410. In 476, the Gothic king Odoacer deposed the young Western emperor Romulus Augustulus and thereby ended Roman control of the Western Empire. Although the Eastern Roman Empire would continue for another 1000 years in the form of the Byzantine empire, we conventionally refer to this event as the “fall” of the Roman empire. The Gothic War, Preface As if awakened from long sleep, after many years at rest, my Muse Thalia once more rejoices in Rome’s choruses. The same palace renews the gatherings I desired, and Apollo’s familiar bard makes his temple resound. 4 Roman victory: Prudentius Against Symmachus 2.715ff; Gothic victory: Cassiodorus Chronicle 2.154; Jordanes Gothic Affairs (Getica) 155. See Dewar 1996: xxxiv.

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Here I sang of consul Stilicho’s fasces, how he regained Libya, and here I’ll sing how he defeated the Goths in war.5 My earlier success granted me a bronze statue,6 and the senators consecrated my image. Here the emperor approved the Senate’s request for the inscription. Look, Muse, how serious the judgement you undergo! A hurried reward for my talent would diminish its favor, and such gifts deny indulgence to my song. The zealous critics toil more attentively because my face can be seen and my deeds can be read in the middle of Trajan’s Forum. Yet my subject itself aids me, helpfully lightening a good part of my customary fear when I recite. For the war’s own merits, or our love for Stilicho, secure a welcome audience more devotedly for me.

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The Gothic War The daring Argo once broke through the untouched Black Sea’s barriers, guarded by the Clashing Rocks, in search of Aeëtes’ Colchis. Impending danger stunned everyone. They say that only helmsman Tiphys, aided by the gods, preserved the ship with merely light damage. He evaded the looming mountains’ crash, thwarted the wandering cliffs’ collision, and led the victorious ship into the deep water. This man’s craft stunned the haughty Clashing Rocks and mastered them. They submitted to the ground’s new rules, stood still, and now afford easy passage to every ship, after learning defeat for the first time. Now if glory carried deserving Tiphys aloft thanks to his harmless ship’s achievement, what praise will be enough, Stilicho, after you repulsed the danger from our great empire? Let the poets exaggerate all they celebrate, boasting

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that Minerva herself labored to cut the Argo’s beams. She joined together not deadwood from a silent forest, but cut down Jupiter’s oracular grove at Dodona, and from prophetic trees she brought speaking planks to life. Poets may heap on many miracles with diverse prodigies, as their songs capture tender imaginations: vicious Harpies; a sleepless dragon, its coils spread to guard the Golden Fleece; yoked bulls burning with consuming fire; furrows sprouting warriors’ helmets, Mars’s fertile plowland, war’s seeds sprouting into a crop— the poets will give us nothing like the truth.7 Indeed, is blocking the rapacious Harpies, holding them off from one man’s table, a nobler claim to fame than turning aside so many Gothic jaws, aimed at plundering Italy? Should I marvel that the Earthborn men fell in their own furrows, warriors for whom life began and ended on a single day? Rather than at the ranks of slaughtered Goths, men whom war goddess Bellona nourished with so many victories, men who spent their whole lives on campaign, hair turning gray beneath their helmets? Thanks to you alone, Stilicho, the empire shrugged off surrounding darkness and regained its form. The bloodless laws, released from their grim prison, dare to walk free. And now justice’s traditional order observes the social distinctions that our fear had previously put on the same level, under a single cloud. Your hand rescued us from impending destruction. Peoples whom Fate condemned return to their fields and houses, reborn now through your courage. Now fear doesn’t shut us in like cattle as we look out upon savage fires burning the fields, or measure the rivers’ height, praying doubtfully for them to delay our destruction. We don’t ask the streams’ trusty waves to keep us safe, nor complain that the dispersing clouds and a shining sky conspire against us. Now Rome itself,

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7 Claudian lists some of the highlights of the story of the Argonauts, one of the most popular ancient myths.

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fatigued by the citizens’ self-directed madness, also lifts up secure hills in greater calm. Rise up, I pray, honored mother Rome, have sure faith in favoring gods, get rid of old age’s lowly fear! O City, heaven’s equal, iron Fate Lachesis will exercise her rights against you only when Nature makes new laws at last to change the world; only when the Don River waters Egypt, the Nile the Sea of Azov, when the East Wind blows from the sunset, the West from India, the hot South from the dark Caucasus Mountains, and the North Wind binds African sands with ice. Alaric’s fated troops made it this far, and their threats, which unending omens signaled, were dissipating. The stars never have constant peace, and (if it’s right) they say Jupiter himself feared Typhoeus’s revolt. The monster armed each of his hundred hands with mountains. He twisted his coils, and his serpents stretched out to lick the stunned Great Bear’s stars. Why should we wonder if toils harass mortal kingdoms, when the twin brothers, fathered by cruel Aloeus, threw Mars in chains, and tried to build forbidden paths to the stars? In that heavenly war, the universe almost stood still when three mountains were torn up. But their excessive rage brought no success. Perverse hope never rejoices for long, and Aloeus’s sons never matured to full strength. Apollo killed Otus as he strained to uproot Mount Pelion. In death, his brother Ephialtes weakly dropped Ossa sideways on his flank.8 Your head already higher, Rome, look at your enemy! Look how sparse the army that inglorious Alaric leads back, thrust from Italy. How unlike the man he was before, who’d sworn by his ancestral Danube’s god that everything would fall to his assault. He wouldn’t take off his breastplate till he trampled down our Rostra in the Forum!9

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8 For the Gigantomachy, see the volume introduction, Section 1.2 “Mythology and Religion.” 9 There is an allusion here to an attempted invasion of Rome by the Insubrian Gauls in 225 BCE, who vowed not to remove their sword belts until they captured Rome’s Capitol. According to Florus (Epitome of Roman History 1.20.4), the Roman commander, Aemilius Papus, forced them to remove their belts in defeat.

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Oh, how Fate and circumstances change! Alaric threatened Roman girls with disgusting rape, but saw his own children dragged off with his concubines. In his mind, he drained the City’s vast wealth,10 but he himself became prey to us, his conquerors. Alaric once tried to sway our army’s loyalty with bribes, but all his people deserted him, and he left shorn of troops and arms. Also put aside hatred and consider: Goths can merit pardon from death. It’s honorable to forgive someone already abased. Watching them beg is a kind of punishment. What vengeance ranks higher: when fear turns back arrogant men, and poverty afflicts a man used to plunder? But as we took concern for Rome, greater mercy flowed from other sources. Rome’s caution forced Alaric to leave an escape open for his siege victims, in case tight circumstances and awareness of approaching death made them rage worse. The Goths didn’t think it worth losing their name and race to attack Rome close at hand. Let Jupiter on high hold them off, not letting barbarians defile Numa’s shrines and Romulus’s seat, even with their impious eyes, nor catch sight of our great empire’s holy mystery. However, if I recall ancient conflicts correctly, even when our ancestors prospered in lovely liberty and their own native-born troops flourished far and wide— they always sought fame’s tokens from wars that allowed them to exercise their strength safely, far away across diverse seas. They led chariots and chained kings through crowds that jeered to avert fate’s excess.11 But whenever a dark storm surrounded Italy, and hung over its very head, threatening harm, they looked seriously to their safety, not to empty flattery’s windbag reasoning. Leaders who’d risk all in one headlong downfall didn’t please them.

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10 Reading profundas. Charlet reads profunda, which would mean “vast mind.” 11 Jeering occurred at Roman triumphs to humble the triumphing general. Suetonius Life of Julius Caesar 49 gives examples of insulting songs sung during one of Caesar’s triumphs.

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Instead, they wanted one who’d lead them through crisis, whether favorable or bitter, his wisdom mature, neither unequal to grim setbacks, nor arrogant in success. He’d know the proper space for delay, then to change the reins and take victory’s measure. The skilled doctor treats severe illnesses and ulcers near the heart more cautiously. He slices sparingly, so he won’t push the scalpel too deep and make an irrevocable mistake by cutting vital organs. Antiquity’s sublime voice surely sings of Curius, who thrust Pyrrhus, descendant of Achilles, from Italy’s shores. Paulus’s and Marius’s triumphs were not more glorious, those men whose chariots drawn by white horses led captured kings. Pyrrhus’s retreat earns more praise than Jugurtha’s chains: though Pyrrhus fled, exhausted by two defeats, from Decius’s trumpet and Fabricius’s heart, which no vice could enter, unconquerable by bribes and battle alike— yet Curius drove out Pyrrhus to gain the entire victory.12

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We see how much greater the labor that Stilicho accomplished by himself! He conquered a mighty people, whom the Great Bear’s hardy stars led forth from snowy regions, not the Chaonians or Molossians, 135 whom Pyrrhus’s Epirus nourished. Stilicho didn’t conquer Dodona’s troops, who boast uselessly of their prophetic oak.13 Fabius was the first to hold back thundering Hannibal with slow struggle. Next, Marcellus dared teach Hannibal defeat in open battle. But it was the third, Scipio, whose courage at last frightened him away from Italy’s shores. One man, Stilicho, could equal these three commanders in his various strategies against this enemy. He smashed raging Alaric through delay, conquered him in arms, and banished him in defeat. And he did such deeds so quickly! Grieving Italy endured Pyrrhus hurling firebrands for five whole years. African horses galloped over Italy’s grasslands for nearly eighteen years as the Carthaginians pillaged.

12 For these various Roman generals and their opponents, see the Glossary. 13 For these various Greek peoples, see the Glossary.

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Youth born after the war began avenged their fathers so late, and barely pushed aged Hannibal back to his own land. Swift Stilicho made the storm afflicting the state last no longer than a single winter. Summer’s first months brought fair weather instead, both to the skies and war. But why should I recall how we struggled against Hannibal and Pyrrhus for so many years? Vile Spartacus, rioting through Italy’s whole length with fire and sword, so often went against the consuls in open battle. He kicked lazy generals out of their camps, and his slave soldiers laid low the cowardly Eagles in a disgraceful slaughter.14 We’ve been free of fear, and luxury has softened our times. So we whine helplessly if an ox is stolen from its plow, or a harvest is touched. The slave workhouses didn’t send this army against us; this wasn’t a crowd of rebels from the arena. The Thracians, Haemonians, and Moesians15 could tell you what kind of enemy Stilicho overthrew. Thirty cold winters stripped Mount Haemus of leaves and swathed it in ice. As many springs melted the snows and clothed the mountain in green again. From that time, the Goths forgot their native Pleiades. They crossed the Danube and set their ill-omened feet on Thracian soil for the first time. Either fate called them forth, or the gods plotted a series of disasters in their grave anger.

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After that, wherever the Fury thrust those vagrants,16 they rushed headlong through remote places like hail or plague, through obstacles. No river or cliff could defend 175 its territory. Mount Rhodope was no help to the Thracians, nor vast Athos, nor the Hebrus River. The Goths scorned the Strymon River and leaped easily over it, while the Bessians cursed the Haliacmon’s swift but useless currents. The Macedonians were stunned 14 The gladiator Spartacus (died 71 BCE) led the most extensive slave revolt in Roman history. 15 See the Glossary for these various Balkan peoples. 16 In lines 173–193, the narrator catalogues various places in Greece that Alaric and the Goths devastated.

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to see them wandering over Mount Olympus, which the clouds 180 couldn’t reach, as if it were a level plain. Thessaly grieved because the Vale of Tempe was no help, while the Goths laughed at Mount Oeta’s conquered crags. The Spercheius River and the Enipeus that young women love washed barbarian hair. Mount Pindus’s barriers didn’t save the Dryopians, nor did Leucas’s cloudy promontory keep Actium’s shore safe. On their first try, the Goths broke through the same Thermopylae which once had stood firmly against the Persians.17 Sciron’s cliffs walled by the sea lay open, as did the Isthmus of Corinth whose continuous wall connects two seas, and narrow Lechaeum’s barrier. Mount Erymanthus’s leafy crags couldn’t protect the Arcadian farmers, and fearful Amyclae saw Gothic cavalry riding on high Taygetus’s peak. The Alps punished the Goths at last, on behalf of all those mountains. The victorious Po at last avenged so many rivers. Now the outcome has taught us that Fate hides its secrets deeply. Once the Alps lay open, who would’ve believed that Italy’s shadow would endure? Didn’t wretched rumors that Rome itself was captured run across the waters, across Gaul and the Pyrenees? Rumor girded its dark wings with Terrors, and dragged everything along with it from Cadiz right up to Britain. It terrified the Ocean, and made Thule so far from our sky tremble at war’s unfamiliar clash.

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All the terrors we endured —shall we entrust them to the South Wind’s gales, 205 so such griefs don’t vex our ears as we celebrate? Or would it help rather to remember? Don’t past sufferings always increase in turn our unexpected joys? Just as the merciless Ocean makes the calm harbor seem all the better for sailors tossed around as the Pleiades set, 210 that’s how much greater Stilicho is for me when I measure our happiness against past dangers, and those upheavals fill my heart once more. 17 A small Greek force famously held off an invading Persian army at the narrow mountain pass of Thermopylae in northern Greece in 480 BCE.

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Though adamant strengthened our walls, didn’t they seem fragile, about to fall, their towers weak, and the iron gates ready to open themselves to the Goths? The rampart and close-packed stakes couldn’t stop their horsemen’s flying leaps. The Romans were ready to board their ships and live in Sardinia’s bays and Corsica’s inhospitable cliffs, and let the foaming ocean save their lives. Even Sicily distrusted its narrow strait. It wanted to retreat further off, if Nature would permit, and withdraw Cape Pelorus to widen the Ionian Sea. The rich despised their coffered ceiling panels on golden supports, and would’ve preferred to live more safely in Aeolian caves. Now they thought their riches burdensome, and greater cares at last overwhelmed and halted their greedy desire. Fear is talkative by nature, and allows many things to be invented and believed. So then dreams were told in public, divine prodigies and sinister warnings: what the birds were planning, what the fiery lightning in the sky meant to say, what the linen rolls demanded, whose prophetic song guarded Rome’s eternity.18

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The moon’s constant eclipses and her darkened face terrified them. People clashed cymbals all night and roared throughout the cities. They didn’t believe that the earth’s disc had interposed and forbidden the Sun’s light to his cheated sister. Rather, they thought 235 Thessalian witches had followed the barbarian camp, and used their homeland’s poison to defile the moon’s splendor.19 Then their anxiety added the previous year’s portents, and any omens those quiet times perhaps neglected, to these new ones: hailstorms of stones, 240 swarming bees, fires igniting for no reason that rushed wildly and burned up houses all about.

18 The narrator lists various forms of Roman divination, including augury and consulting the Sibylline books written on linen rolls stored by priests. 19 See Rufinus 1.145–153 for the magical powers traditionally ascribed to witches.

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Comets are never seen in the sky without trouble: one first came forth from the Sun’s rosy dawning, where old Cepheus shines alongside his starry wife Cassiopeia. Then it was pushed little by little to Lycaon’s daughter Callisto, and its wandering tail smeared the Gothic Plowman’s stars, until at last it died and vanished in a tiny flame.20

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But the omen of the slaughtered wolves horrified the Romans’ minds more deeply. Under Honorius’s gaze, as he exercised 250 his horses on the field, two wolves violently attacked the troops, and were hit by their spears. They caused a portent terrible to tell, a remarkable sign for our future. For at that moment, both beasts sent forth from their pierced sides two hands from a human body. One had 255 a trembling left hand, the other a right hand hiding in its guts, both with outstretched fingers, pulsing blood. If you want to learn the truth, these fierce messengers of Mars revealed that the enemy would fall before the emperor’s eyes. Just as their guts were cut open to reveal living hands, 260 so Roman courage shone forth when the Goths broke through the Alps. But fear, a wretched interpreter of events, took the whole augury for the worse: the nursing wolf and the severed hands were a threat to Rome and its rule. Then they counted the years, blocked one of the vultures’ flights, and cut off some centuries to hurry on Rome’s ending.21

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Stilicho was the only augur whose hand promised the desperate people better. As we doubted our survival, this same man 20 According to the evidence provided by Chinese astronomers, this comet appeared on 19 March 400; see Dewar 1996: xxxvii. The Romans regarded comets as threatening omens. Cepheus and Cassopeia were the mythical king and queen of Ethiopia, who became neighboring constellations after death. Callisto became Ursa Major, the Great Bear constellation. As at line 169, Claudian calls the Plowman “Gothic” because it is a northern constellation like the Pleiades. 21 The wolves remind the Romans of the she-wolf that nursed Romulus and Remus. The Roman scholar Varro (preserved at Censorinus 17.15) interpreted the 12 vultures that appeared to Romulus when he founded Rome in 753 BCE as signifying that the city would last 12 centuries. The early years of the fifth century CE would have seemed close to this endpoint.

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was both general and prophet. “Just hang on a bit longer”, he said. “Knock that effeminate whining out of your mouth, and let’s endure Fate’s burden. The sailors’ wailing doesn’t help a storm-tossed ship. Lazy complaints or empty promises don’t calm the winds and waves. Now it’s right for us to put our hands to the work, to struggle now with all our strength for our common survival. See to the sails, bail out the water, fit out the various ropes, and obey your experienced captain’s every order. The Goths have invaded, treacherously seizing the moment for breaking through our borders, while Raetia tied up our strength and our forces sweated in a different war. Yet this doesn’t mean all hope has disappeared. I’d find it remarkable, if by a new trick or fortuitously discovered path, the ignorant barbarians invaded the unknown Alps. Indeed the repeated defeats of the two tyrants22 publicized the notorious road. The familiar route didn’t escape the enemy: our civil wars taught them. They came by the usual way, and Roman discord provided the approach for the barbarian war to follow. This circumstance wasn’t unknown in previous centuries. I admit Italy was often wounded, but not without avenging itself. Our blood doused the Senonian Gauls’ fires, and though we once lay exposed to the Germans’ rage, we saw the Cimbrians’ rough necks in chains.23 It’s a cheap sort of glory when terror doesn’t build it up beforehand! Massive contests redouble mighty triumphs. Why are you already thinking about shameful retreat, why do you look to Gaul’s plains? Why are you happy to leave Italy behind and run off to camp around the distant Saône River? Indeed, after handing the city over to these northern peoples, will Rome’s dominion settle down on the Rhône River,

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22 For Theodosius’s campaigns against Maximus and Eugenius, see the volume introduction, Section 1.1 “Claudian’s Career.” 23 Stilicho refers to Camillus’s defeat of the Gallic chieftain Brennus (390 BCE) and Marius’s victory over the Cimbrians at Vercellae (101 BCE). See this poem’s final lines for another reference to Vercellae.

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surviving with its head cut off? If your children rouse your feelings, just the same natural concern gnaws at me. My heart’s not hard as iron; I wouldn’t refuse to recognize how sacred the name “father-in-law” is, how sweet “husband”, how great my love for my children. But my sense of duty never will forget its honor, never be cowardly and ask for a shameful hiding place.

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I wouldn’t counsel you bravely and then take care just for myself: my wife’s right here, as are my children, and here’s my son-in-law, dearer to me than light itself. I’ll take no part of myself out of this storm. Land of Italy, take these bonds of my mind’s affection, 310 who’ll endure these shared misfortunes along with you. Grant me a short delay and defend your walls, till I return, bringing home a hand-picked force to the bugle’s blast.” With these words, Stilicho strengthened the fearful crowd’s stunned hearts, and kept the fleeing court from relocating. Then, shadows banished, Italy first dared to re-emerge, as it saw the emperor shared the danger with her, and stood firm with such a hostage to its destiny. Shady olive-trees clothe Lake Como’s banks, and its sweet waters imitate the sea. Stilicho straightaway sped across the lake in a little boat. From there he quickly climbed the Alps, mountains inaccessible in winter, paying no mind to the season or the weather. A lion likewise leaves his hungry cubs in their cave, and heads out more wildly into the winter night. He heads over the deep snow, silently raging, frost roughening his mane, icicles hanging from his golden fur. He doesn’t think about dying, doesn’t care about storm clouds or cold, so long as he provides food for his cubs. Raetia’s highlands extend toward the north, bordering the Hercynian forest. Raetia boasts that she’s the Rhine’s and Danube’s mother, stretching forth both rivers to Romulus’s empire. These rivers are small at their sources, but deep channels soon predominate, 307

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forcing lesser streams to change their names as their waters come together. The North Sea’s Cimbrian coast swallows 335 the Rhine that divides into a double course. The Thracian coast devours the Danube’s five channels. Both rivers are fit for sailing, chariot wheels slice both their frozen surfaces, and both are allies of the North Wind and war. But on the side where Raetia borders Italy, jagged cliffs strike the stars, and a frightening path barely lies open in summer. Many people stiffen from the cold, as if they’d seen the Gorgon. Mighty masses of deep snow swallow many others, and often wagons along with their oxen are shipwrecked and submerge in this white abyss. Now and then the ice slips and the mountain suddenly collapses. A warm spell can undermine the overhanging ground’s untrustworthy foundations. Stilicho headed through such places amid the cold. There were no cups of wine, and grain was scarce. Grabbing bites of snatched food, still in armor, satisfied him. He spurred his freezing horse, soaked gear loading him down. No soft coverlets made his bed when he was tired. If the dark night’s shadows held back his journey, he either entered a beast’s frightening cave, or lay under a shepherd’s roof, head propped on his shield. The shepherd stood by, terrified by his exalted guest, while his country-bred wife showed her filthy child Stilicho’s famous face—but she didn’t know his name. Those hard beds in the bristling woods, those nights he slept on the snow, his anxiety and watchful labor, granted quiet to our land, unhoped-for peace to our state. Those Alpine huts brought Rome its salvation. Hearing of Italy’s defeat, the fierce Vandals broke their treaties, and held the Vindelician woods and Noricum’s fields.24 Slaves likewise dissolve into debauchery when a lying messenger tells fake news of their master’s death. They feast and get drunk

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24 Ancient Vindelicia comprised parts of eastern Württemberg and western Bavaria; Noricum, most of Austria, and part of Slovenia.

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amid wine and dancing, and they prance all over the empty house in their unbridled freedom. If some unexpected chance brings their lord home, they freeze, astonished, and hate their liberty, and slavish terror shakes their guilty hearts. That’s how the sight of Stilicho stunned all these rebels.

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And now the emperor and Italy and all Rome shone forth in this one man. His appearance wasn’t joyful, 375 but it was no grimmer than appropriate, nor downcast from these evils. Rather, anger spread across his noble face, like Hercules’s pain when Eurystheus commanded shameful deeds,25 or when angry Jupiter forces dark clouds to trouble the sky. “Does such trust in Gothic arms”, Stilicho said, “uplift you? That’s why you swell up with vain courage, to no effect? Fate’s violence hasn’t crushed the name of Rome so much it can’t punish your revolt using just a part of itself. I won’t delay you with a far-fetched speech. Recognize this ancient deed’s example. Fierce Hannibal was smashing Italy’s cities, and Cannae’s vicious slaughter had doubled Trebia’s losses. Vain hope pointlessly pushed Philip of Macedon26 to try his feeble sword against the Romans, as if we were afflicted. Though greater dangers impended, the terrible insult deeply moved the senators. They took it hard that lesser peoples dared to act when famous cities were clashing over world rule. They decided not to delay punishment, but entrusted war to Consul Laevinus, even as he fought the Carthaginians. Laevinus obeyed his orders. While Philip planted his pathetic forces among powerful peoples, a Roman contingent conquered him in passing. He learned a mighty country may be in distress, but its anger shouldn’t be provoked.” With this warning, Stilicho both nipped the war in the bud and found new allies. He enrolled Vandals as auxiliaries;

25 The mythical king Eurystheus assigned Hercules his 12 Labors. 26 See the Glossary for Philip V of Macedon.

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they begged to serve. He took a suitable number, neither weighing on Italy nor worrying their commander. Our legions no less came together as they heard the rumor, their love for their commander driving them on, their standards 405 hurrying from all directions. They recovered their courage as they saw Stilicho, and they mingled tearful joys and various sobbing. Likewise when a turbid winter storm scatters a herd of cattle through the huge forest, they search eagerly for their herdsman’s song, his familiar whistle, and their ancestral valley’s pastures. 410 They guide themselves in turn to his voice, and happily respond with faithful mooing. Wherever his call strikes their ears, their horns show here and there through the dark forest’s leaves. A neighboring band hurried up, tested recently in defending Raetia, enriched by Vandal spoils. A legion came from deployment in farthest Britain, which had bridled the fierce Scots, reading lifeless tattoos traced in steel on dying Picts.27 Even the troops sent against the blond Sygambrians, who subdued the Chatti and the untamed Cheruscans,28 turned all their threats this way. They withdrew their garrison, and fear of us alone left the Rhine safe. Will any future generation believe this? Once Germany had fierce tribes that our emperors could hardly hold back with all their might. Now they offer themselves peacefully to Stilicho’s reins, neither trying to tread upon the exposed land, stripped of its border defense, nor crossing the Rhine: they’re afraid to touch its unguarded banks. Stilicho, greater than all, equaled only by Camillus! Your arms shattered Alaric’s madness, his stilled Brennus’s. Both of you gave divine help to our troubled state: but he came too late as captured Rome’s avenger; you avenged a secure city. Oh, how our fortune changed at your return! Strength spread equally 27 See Honorius’s Third Consulship 54 for the Picts’ tattoos. 28 Various Germanic peoples.

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through our dominion’s every limb, and healthy color returned to our ailing cities. It’s believed that Hercules’s strength renewed Alcestis’s life, who sacrificed herself to her beloved husband’s fate. And using Circe’s magic herbs, Diana revived Hippolytus, a young man torn to pieces by his scorned stepmother’s crime. And if the tale they tell is true, Crete saw Glaucus, son of Minos, split open his tomb and come forth. Polyidos, the elderly prophet, found him from the birds’ cries, and restored him with herbs. For by Fate’s strange gift, sweet honey caused death, while a horrible snake gave him life.29 But your arrival, Stilicho, led forth not just one body from the shadows, but so many peoples lying under a common death sentence, and so many cities from Tartarus’s jaws.

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Rome sounded forth commander Stilicho’s arrival, though the rumor’s 450 originator is still unknown. That very day, shouting joyously, the citizens applauded this augury of certain triumph, protected by their Stilicho. Who indeed could describe Honorius’s happiness, the courtiers’ eager embraces? From our high towers, we saw an uncertain cloud of dust, 455 and we didn’t know whether this throng brought friends or enemies. In suspenseful silence, our thoughts hung in the balance, until Stilicho’s helmet flashed forth like a star from the dusty whirlwind, and his familiar white hair shone bright. A sudden shout rose up from the rejoicing walls: “He’s arrived!” The crowd poured out through every gate in safety to welcome the battle standards. No more wretched levies, nor will the reaper lay his sickle down in the field and pathetically brandish a javelin. Grain goddess Ceres won’t throw aside her rakes, and try to heft a shield, and make war goddess Bellona laugh. New warlords’ noisy uprisings have been humbled. A true army and a true leader, Mars’s living image, is at hand instead.

29 The narrator gives three examples of mythical individuals restored to life.

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But the Goths were deprived of the flourishing hopes Stilicho added to our minds. After opening the Alps, Alaric’s head touched the stars. He promised himself everything, and thought there was nothing left to do. He saw so many outstanding youth, so many infantry swiftly conscripted, so many cavalry wings, our fields encircled by many walls and rivers. He was caught like a snared beast, and secretly burned inside his breast. He regretted now he’d rushed to attack Italy too eagerly, and the Rome he’d hoped to capture seemed far off already. His mighty undertaking disgusted him. Yet Alaric’s face hid his fear. He ordered his top-ranking men to take counsel, those respected for their war service and their age. Long-haired nobles took their seats, a court of pelt-clad Goths. Scars from many war wounds ennobled them, spears aided their trembling steps, and their old age hadn’t disarmed: instead of canes they leaned upon long lances. Then one of the oldest, whose words of advice they greatly trusted, fixed his gaze upon the ground and shook his hair. Leaning on his ivory hilt, he said: “Unless I’ve got the number wrong, almost the thirtieth winter’s run by since we crossed the swift Danube, and for so many years we’ve eluded Rome’s armies. Yet, Alaric, Mars has never shut your affairs in such a tight spot. Trust this old man: so many battles have taught me well. I took your father’s place from your childhood years, I’d give you a little quiver to carry, and I’d put a small bow on your young shoulders. Often I warned you, in vain, to keep the Roman treaty, and remain safe in Macedonia. But even if hot youth’s fire took hold of you, now at least, if you have any care left for your people, I beg you, escape this prison. While the Roman forces are far off, while you can, slip quickly out of Italy, in case you lose what you’ve gained as you lust for new plunder. You’ll pay the shepherd for your previous crimes, like a wolf caught inside the sheepfold. What’s the fertility of Tuscany’s vineyards to me, or this Rome that you’re always talking about, with its Tiber, whatever it is? 312

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If our ancestors speak the truth, no one who attacks that city in crazy war returns rejoicing over his assault, nor do the gods abandon their seat. They say thunderbolts shoot from far off against his enemies, and divine fires fly before the walls, whether it’s heaven or Rome that thunders. If you scorn the Olympian gods, look out for mighty Stilicho. Fortune always serves him as he crushes the unjust. You know yourself how thickly he piled our bones on pyres along Arcadia’s shores, how massively our blood flowed and heated Greece’s rivers. You’d have died, if treason under law’s name, and the Eastern emperor Arcadius’s favor hadn’t shielded you.”30

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Alaric’s face blazed as the old man spoke. He glared at him sidelong and couldn’t take any more. Rather, his arrogance was fired up and he burst out raging: “You’ll be forgiven, 520 because you’ve no mind left, and old age stole your senses. Else the Danube would never endure unavenged your tongue’s shameful insults, not while I’m alive. I’ve made so many emperors run—the Hebrus River’s my witness—31 so should I put up with you suggesting turning tail? 525 Even when all nature yields to my commands? We saw mountains subside beneath our feet, rivers dry up. Never may the Gothic gods and my ancestors’ ghosts make me switch my course and retrace my own steps! I’ll hold this land—either ruling it as a conqueror, or dying in defeat. I’ve barreled through so many peoples and cities, smashing the Alps, drinking the Po from my victorious helmet. What’s left for me but Rome? Our people were also strong, back when we had no other arms to rely on. But rule over Illyria was handed down to me, and its people made me their leader.32 I forged so many spears, swords, and helmets from the Thracians’ endless sweat. I’ve forced Roman towns through legal commands to convert

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30 A reference to Rufinus’s “stab in the back” that recalled the Roman troops from their earlier pursuit of Alaric; see Rufinus introduction. 31 See Honorius’s Sixth Consulship 108. 32 See note to Eutropius 2.214.

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their yearly iron tribute to my needs. That’s how Fate cherishes me. The men whom I devastated each year became my slaves. They wept as they gave me weapons to harm them. The ironsmith mourned as metal softened long in the fire, as his skill made it redden for his own loss. Add the fact that the gods insist! I didn’t have prophetic dreams or see birds in flight. Rather, a clear voice spoke openly from a grove: ‘Quit delaying, Alaric; break eagerly through the Italian Alps this year, and you’ll penetrate as far as the City.’33 The way’s been given to me so far. Who’s cowardly enough to waver after these signs or to hesitate to obey heaven’s call?”

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Alaric encouraged his men, readying them for battle 550 and a journey. Oracles increased his empty arrogance. Oh, prophecies’ cryptic ambiguities are always hostile! After it’s too late, the event lays bare the truth—and it’s harmful to the prophets themselves! Alaric came to Liguria’s outermost border, to a river with the remarkable name of “City.”34 555 There he was conquered and at last he barely realized, as his downfall explained it, that the ambiguous prophecy’s words had deceived him. Stilicho also quick-marched his army, looking for a fight, and spurred them on as they went, saying: “Now, my comrades, take vengeance now for besmirched Italy at last. Your emperor was besieged! Fight to overturn his outrage, use your swords to efface our grievous wound at the Timavo River, and the shame of breaching the Alps. You defeated Alaric so often on Greece’s plains, whom a world in discord, collapsing in civil war, long protected— not his own strength. Meanwhile he tricked us, laughing at treaties, and sold his lies to each court in turn. Think now how all dire Britain’s people, all those whom the Rhine and Danube nourish, stand ready on the lookout. Win so many battles with them in a single war! Restore Rome’s glory, and prop the collapsing empire’s weight

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33 In Latin, the first and last letters of these two lines spell R-O-M-A. Acrostics like these are an occasional feature of Latin poetry. See Socrates Ecclesiastical History 7.10 for the oracle. 34 See the introduction to this poem.

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on your shoulders. This battlefield avenges everything, and our victory guarantees peace throughout the world. We aren’t fighting on Thracian Mount Haemus, nor taking our stand where Mount Maenalus overshadows the Alpheus’s banks, nor defending Tegea here, nor Argos. You see that we’re making war amid Italy’s entrails, in its very heart. Defend your father Tiber with your shields!”

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Stilicho said this, mixing now with the infantry, now with the cavalry. At the same time, he sent commands to the foreign auxiliaries. 580 Obedient to Roman rule, the Alans marched where our trumpets commanded them. Their leader Saulus, outstanding among them, taught them to seek death on Italy’s behalf. Nature had placed a mighty spirit in his short limbs and tinged his eyes with massive anger. 585 No part of Saulus’s body was free of scars, and lances had sliced him, glory shining forth more proudly from his wounded face. Yet at Stilicho’s command, from far off he spurred his horses and hurried forward—to bite Italian dust. Fortunate Saulus earned my song and the Elysian fields. He burned more eagerly to cleanse his loyalty, which we’d wrongly suspected, even through his death. The enemy’s sword judged him: his honored blood wiped clear an unjust accusation. The man’s death overwhelmed his cavalry; they turned their reins, and the whole column would’ve broken, having lost its wing. Stilicho came quickly, his legion in good order, and the infantry’s aid renewed the cavalry fight. Though the Muses or even Apollo himself filled them, who could tell how much Mars gave that day to the city he originally founded? We’d never plunged our swords more deeply into Scythia’s throat, nor smashed the arrogant Don River in such destruction, nor shattered the Danube’s horns. Our soldiers thirsted to drain the blood they hated: they skipped the variegated robes, carts piled with gold, and heaps of silver. Greedy for slaughter, they trampled on the enemy’s scorned wealth. Blood was worth more to them than gold. Their anger raging, here and there 315

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they overlooked plunder and wasted their chance. They drew their swords to satisfy their fury. The wily enemy tossed at our advancing soldiers’ feet Valens’ purple robes and finery from his fire,35 heavy wine bowls from suffering Argos and lifelike statues from burning Corinth—to no avail. This ill-omened plunder didn’t delay the Romans, but reminded them of their grief and offered righteous encouragement.

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They freed a crowd of prisoners from chains, and all the peoples speaking different languages, whom the Goths had dragged into slavery. Redeemed at last thanks to their masters’ slaughter, these people tenderly kissed the Romans’ bloody hands and saw their abandoned homes once more and their happy children. 620 Each person’s family marveled at them as they related their disasters, and then the miracle of Stilicho’s welcome victory. How you grieved then, Alaric, when your wealth perished in war, and your goods acquired through prolonged plundering. Your wife’s cries struck your ears, your wife who trusted in her husband, so long invincible. Crazily she demanded Italian matrons’ gem-encrusted necklaces for her proud neck and Roman slave girls! Indeed she’d begun to tire of Argive girls, and Corinthians, and even pretty Spartans. But the goddess Nemesis, who blocks outsized wishes, groaned and turned her wheel. Bitter poverty mastered the conquered Goths, and in one day Roman forces restored everything we lost in thirty years. Oh Pollentia, my song shall celebrate you for all time! Oh deserving name, fit for fortunate triumphs! Soil destined for our courage, memorable tomb for barbarians! For often in these places and regions, vengeance for aggrieved Rome returns satisfied. The storm of Cimbrian invaders, roused from the Ocean’s farthest waters, smashing through a different part of the Alps,

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35 Gothic troops defeated the emperor Valens at the battle of Adrianople in August 378. Ammianus Marcellinus 31.13.15 narrates how after the battle the emperor was burned to death in a nearby cottage.

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collapsed there, on the same fields.36 Straightaway the coming age should mix the bones of these two peoples and mark a double title on a shared trophy: “Here Italian soil covers Cimbrians and brave Goths, killed by Stilicho and Marius, famous generals. You crazy folk, learn not to disdain Rome!”

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36 A reference to Marius’s defeat of the Cimbrians at Vercellae (50 km from Pollentia) in 101 BCE.

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13 PANEGYRIC ON HONORIUS’S SIXTH CONSULSHIP

Introduction Claudian performed this panegyric in Rome in 404 to celebrate Honorius’s assumption of his sixth consulship. We speculate that the poet’s career may have ended shortly after this moment, on the assumption that he would have returned to celebrate subsequent events given his success up to this point. As in the prefaces to several other panegyrics, the narrator speaks about his role as a professional poet. He claims that, like other professionals such as judges and merchants, he dreams about his craft at night. His dream was about singing of the Gigantomachy before Jupiter’s court on Mount Olympus. When he woke, he found that his dream was not fantasy: he will sing at the emperor’s court, earth’s equivalent to Olympus (Preface). In the panegyric’s opening section, the narrator claims that Honorius’s presence in Rome creates an occasion to celebrate the restoration of the city’s traditions. He compares the emperor’s journey from his capital at Ravenna, 350 km north of Rome, to Apollo’s return from the far North to his sanctuary at Delphi (1–38). A description follows of Honorius’s palace on the Palatine Hill, surrounded by temples displaying captured spoils. The narrator recalls the few days that Honorius spent in Rome during his father Theodosius’s triumph over Maximus in 389. Though Honorius was very young and his visit was brief, it caused him to fall in lifelong love with the city (39–87). The narrator continues to review Honorius’s childhood. As Arbogast and Eugenius began their uprising, Theodosius made his son Honorius an Augustus.1 His niece and adoptive daughter Serena, Stilicho’s wife, brought Honorius from Constantinople to Italy. Theodosius took vengeance on his enemies, possibly including defectors from his own army (87–121). The 1 See volume introduction, Section 1.1 “Claudian’s Career.”

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DOI: 10.4324/9780429353345-13

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narrator can now give thanks for the successful conclusion of the war against Alaric, which he compares to a Roman trireme capturing a pirate ship (122–145). A Naiad informs the Po River that Alaric is in retreat. The Po puts on a cloak embroidered with the Phaethon story, which ended with the reckless young man falling into the river.2 The god then chides Alaric, inquiring if Phaethon’s fate did not instruct him about the peril of excessive ambition. He then summons Italy’s other rivers to mock Alaric (146–200). Despite his agreement to a ceasefire, Alaric fights another battle at Verona. This passage is our only attestation to this battle, which may have taken place in summer 402. Alaric escapes and takes refuge on Mount Pholoë in Arcadia, Greece. Christian sources accuse Stilicho of collusion with Alaric after the Gothic king’s escape; Claudian diverts blame to the Alan king Saulus’s imprudent attack (223–226).3 Alaric’s followers begin to desert as they suffer hunger and disease. He tries to recall them but fails like a beekeeper who cannot control his swarm (201–264). Alaric then regrets his unsuccessful invasion of Italy and mourns his defeat at Stilicho’s hands. His sufferings include the capture of his possessions and the desertion of his followers. Various evil personifications follow him as he withdraws (265–330). The Romans now long for Honorius’s return to the city as they had once longed for the homecomings of Trajan (reigned 98–117 CE) and Marcus Aurelius (reigned 161–180 CE). Personified Rome appears to Honorius and urges him to visit the city (331–425). Lines 366–8 suggest that the emperor did not visit the city after the war against Gildo. Rome observes that emperors have more recently passed through the city to celebrate victory in civil wars. She refers to three triumphs, likely those commemorating the emperor Constantine’s defeat of Maxentius in 312, Constantius’s defeat of Magnentius in 357, and Theodosius’s defeat of Maximus in 389. Instead of these grim recollections of the killing of other Romans, Rome wants to see the celebration of victory over a foreign enemy. Honorius’s return will recall the more optimistic days of emperors such as Trajan and the Antonine and Severan dynasties. Honorius replies that he sent Stilicho instead of visiting himself. As attestation to Stilicho’s heroism, he recalls how the commander rescued him from Alaric’s siege of Milan, which may have occurred in winter 402, perhaps in late February or March. Stilicho’s exploit at the Adda 2 See volume introduction, Section 1.2 “Mythology and Religion.” 3 Jerome Letters 123.17 called Stilicho a “half-barbarian traitor.” See also Orosius 7.37.1–2. For Saulus, see the introduction to Gothic War, a poem in which he receives a more favorable presentation.

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River, a tributary of the Po east of Milan, outdid the mythological night raid of Homer’s Iliad and the legendary resistance by Horatius Cocles at Rome’s Sublician bridge (426–493). Honorius then travels from Ravenna to Rome along the Flaminian Way, noting remarkable features of the Italian landscape along his journey (494–522). Rome tries to please Honorius with its appearance, like a mother beautifying her daughter to impress her suitors. The city’s walls have been restored, and good weather shows heaven’s favor. A crowd assembles for Honorius’s procession. Claudian focalizes the scene through a young woman in the crowd who admires the dragon banners and the knights in full armor (523–577). Stilicho rides beside Honorius in his triumphal chariot. The narrator catalogs the virtues that the regent taught his young son-in-law. The narrator briefly describes the golden statue of winged Victory, which had stood in the Senate house since 29 BCE (578–602). There had been conflicts between Christians and polytheistic senators throughout the late fourth century over removing and restoring the statue. A decree of Theodosius in 391 had ended the polytheistic rituals performed in the Senate house, but we do not know the ultimate fate of the statue. Cameron (1970: 238) suggests that the statue remained in the sanctuary but no longer received ritual sacrifice. Honorius’s chariot finally passes along the Sacred Way on the way to his palace on the Palatine Hill. His people demonstrate their genuine love for him without the cash distributions that frequently characterized imperial appearances. In the Circus, soldiers perform choreographed war games. Rome rejoices to see a consul once more, and the narrator declares that this year will outdo Honorius’s previous consulships (603–660). Claudian reviews aspects of Alaric’s campaign already described in Gothic War, further excusing Stilicho’s unfortunate inability to capture or destroy Alaric. At 280–299, the narrator appears to admit that the losses inflicted by the Romans at Pollentia were not crushing. Alaric had the opportunity to regroup, contemplated an assault on Rome, and was able to engage in an unexpected battle at Verona. Claudian is our only source for this battle, and he does not provide enough context or detail to answer several basic questions. The date is quite uncertain: the summer of 402 is the most likely hypothesis. To characterize the choice to give battle, as Claudian does, as backstabbing by Alaric, the lifelong traitor, is likely too simplistic. Other possibilities include the following: Alaric’s own forces may have felt threatened and so pushed him into battle, or Stilicho may have seen an opportunity to smash his enemy (Dewar 1996: xli).

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The distance between Ravenna and Rome made Honorius’s visit for his consular inauguration all the more significant. Emperors generally visited Rome when they needed to shore up their relationships with the wealthy senators. These relationships had been threatened by the Eastern Senate’s earlier declaration of Stilicho as a public enemy, the threat of food shortages caused by Gildo, and the uncertainty about Alaric’s current whereabouts and capacities. Claudian accordingly devotes much of the lengthy poem to a celebration of the city of Rome itself, including its people, its monuments, and its traditions. The poet also presents the emperor Honorius as an ideal Roman in perfect accord with Senate and people. Thanks to Stilicho’s careful instruction, he has acquired the most desirable set of imperial virtues. The young emperor is deferential to the senators and as welcome to the people as earlier “good” emperors such as Trajan and Marcus Aurelius. Such praise of an emperor’s “civility” (civilitas) was also a feature of imperial prose panegyric. Pliny presented an influential model in his description of the emperor Trajan’s accessibility to senators and lack of arrogance (Panegyric of the Emperor Trajan 2). More recently, Pacatus’s panegyric of Theodosius (389 CE) emphasized the emperor’s loyalty to his friends and willingness to elevate them (Latin Panegyrics 10(II)16). Preface Welcome rest brings back to our sleeping hearts all the desires that our minds churned during the day. Though the hunter lays his tired body on his bed, his mind still returns to his woods and beasts’ retreats. Judges dream about cases, while the charioteer dreams of his chariot, 5 and his night-time horses skirt the fantasy turning post. The lover rejoices in secret pleasure, the merchant exchanges his goods, and the greedy man wakes, looking for riches that slipped away. Sleep flows over thirsty sufferers and pours them soothing drinks from a cool spring—but to no purpose. 10 In the quiet night, my devotion to the Muses also goads me often with my familiar craft. For I seemed to lay my songs before highest Jupiter’s feet, in the middle of starry heaven’s citadel. The gods were applauding my words—so sleep flattered me—as did the holy audience gathered around.

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I sang of Enceladus and conquered Typhoeus: one lying under Inarime, heavy Mount Aetna oppressing the other. How heaven rejoiced when welcoming Jupiter after the war, and taking in plunder from the Phlegraean Fields!4

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Look! My vision didn’t deceive me, but receives confirmation. The false ivory gate didn’t send forth a meaningless dream.5 See our emperor, see earth’s summit drawing level with Mount Olympus. See the gods, just as I remember from my dream, a revered gathering. My sleep couldn’t have dreamed up anything greater; 25 the lofty court has offered this poet an audience equal to heaven’s.

Honorius’s Sixth Consulship Our forefathers vowed golden temples to Homecoming Fortune for their generals’ return.6 Yet this goddess never would demand more worthily a large temple for her service, than when both the consulship and Rome recover their own majesty together. The Campus Martius’s annual election 5 and the voters’ urn aren’t being mocked as usual, nor is this a mere show clashing with the gathering. Its luster isn’t the foreign imitation of simulated rights. Our native palace puts on local dress, and Romulus allies the Roman people with their country’s army, while Mars restores imperial suffrage to his own field.7 10 What will this year be like for the world, which Evander’s Palatine Hill8 presents with Roman bird auguries, which the Tiber inaugurates? All the years named for you have given unfailing omens of success, and victory trophies always accompany your fasces.9

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4 For the Gigantomachy, see the volume introduction, “Mythology and religion.” 5 In Virgil’s Aeneid (6.893–896), dreams rise from the Underworld to visit sleepers. False dreams went through a gate made of ivory, true ones through a gate of animal horn. 6 The Senate established the cult of Homecoming Fortune (Fortuna Redux) on 12 October 19 BCE, to celebrate the emperor Augustus’s return from Asia Minor. 7 The narrator expresses the (fantasy) notion that the voters freely chose their candidate for the consulship rather than acclaiming a previously designated nominee. 8 In Roman legend, the Arcadian king Evander built a small settlement on Rome’s Palatine Hill and hosted Aeneas. 9 For a similar claim, see Honorius’s Fourth Consulship 619–637.

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Yet this year’s remarkable beginning promises more than all others, blessed by Rome and her emperor’s twin godhead. Babylonian astrology claims that favoring stars announce the best destinies for human beings when the heaven-dwelling gods hold the sky’s summit and their path follows the zenith, and a low position in the sky doesn’t hide their brightness. Likewise, when the Roman court’s sublime standard-bearer has placed the empire’s star in its proper seat, he lifts Italian hopes. More certain omens rise up, born from our victorious soil.

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When lovely 25 Apollo surveys his northern altars, Delphi lies idle. Then Castalia’s waters are no different from common streams, the god’s laurel is indistinguishable from an ordinary tree, and his sad caverns fall silent, and no one visits their innermost recesses. But if Apollo is present in Delphi, seeking his tripods once more, 30 turning his yoked griffons’ reins from the northern sky, then the woods, then the caves speak, then the springs come alive. The waters give a holy shudder, and echoes pour forth clearer from the sanctuary, and the knowing rocks breathe forth prophecies. Look! Veneration grows for the Palatine Hill. 35 Its holy emperor dwells there: it exults and unfolds oracles greater than Delphi’s for suppliant peoples everywhere. It orders its laurels to grow green once more for our battle standards. Certainly no other home suited the world’s leaders, on no other hill does power value itself more highly, and sense rule’s greatest summit. Lifting its peak above the Rostra below, the palace sees so many shrines surrounding it, and such protection from the encircling gods. It’s a joy to see the Giants hanging from the Tarpeian Rock, beneath Thundering Jupiter’s sanctuary, the chiseled temple doors and statues floating amid the clouds. The air’s thickened from temples crowding so close. Bronze prows are planted on columns clothed from many captured ships, and the buildings rest on the massive slopes, as human hands have increased nature’s work. Plunder sparkles on countless triumphal arches. Metal’s brilliance stuns our gaze, left dulled and hesitant from the surrounding gold.

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Do you recognize your home, honored emperor? These are the places you once marveled at, as your dutiful father showed them to you, still a boy in your earliest years. This man, 55 best of the gods, achieved nothing more fortunate his whole life long than that during his triumph he shared several days with you inside Rome’s walls. He added his own example to the best ones and lived as an ordinary citizen. He shed all his awe and joked around with common people, enduring kindly teasing. 60 He put all arrogance aside and deigned to visit patrician mansions and private households throughout the city. That’s how to kindle the public’s affection, when modesty bends the royal highness to the people’s level, its conduct balanced. Though you were still an unformed child, and the crown didn’t yet encircle your hair, 65 your father made you a companion in his honors, and hugged you on his purple-clad lap. Small though you were, he gave you a taste of triumph, and taught you your exalted destiny’s prelude. Peoples who spoke various languages, and Persian nobles sent to negotiate treaties, once saw you sitting with your father in this palace. They bent their knees to you and lowered their crowns. Along with you, your father convened the Tribes and generously enriched them.10 He wore his triumphal11 robe and entered the assembled Senate’s gleaming temple with you. He was happy to present his son for the Romans’ approval, to get his new heir used to rule even then. That’s how Rome clung to you more tenaciously, its strong roots grafted deeply all through your heart. Love for your cherished city, conceived in your tender years, grew up along with you. When you returned, your nursemaid, the Bosporus, couldn’t change you in its own palace. Each time your father, playing with you, would let you choose which city you preferred as your part of the Empire, you’d freely

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10 Roman citizens had been historically divided into 35 voting tribes, though these had lost their political significance by Claudian’s time. The passage refers to the congiarium, a periodic distribution of cash by the emperors. 11 The term trabeatus typically refers to the consular robe. Since Theodosius was not consul in 389, however, Dewar 1996: 112 observes that the term likely refers to the ceremonial robe worn by a triumphal victor.

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leave your brother Arcadius the inheritance reserved for him, the Dawn’s rich throne. “He can rule over the willing Assyrians”, you said, “he can have the Egyptian Nile and the Tigris River; let my Rome fall to me.” The outcome didn’t disappoint your wishes. Fortune was already looking to make Italy yours when she raised up the new usurper. As the second war broke out, you were swiftly summoned from the Eastern court, and you received Italy, which your father captured twice in war.12 Serena left the East behind. No misfortune frightened her: she came herself as your companion through Illyria’s cities. She tended to you with motherly concern, as Italy’s future ruler and her future son-in-law. In that world crisis, when your aged father made for the heavens above, she thoughtfully took charge of you, keeping you safe through so many dangers, and restored you to her husband’s army and her uncle’s throne. Her household competed in affection, and Stilicho received you in his care, brought back safe thanks to his faithful wife’s duty. Your father was lucky to enter heaven free of care because you would succeed him. How happily he looks down from the sky and sees your deeds increase his memory! For there were two enemies from Africa and Europe: Moorish Mount Atlas had nourished crazy Gildo, wild Peuce Island Alaric.13 Their unholy minds had often scorned your father. As Theodosius came from Thrace, Alaric blocked him at the Hebrus’s waters.14 Gildo, the other rebel,

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12 For Theodosius’s campaign against Arbogast and Eugenius, see the volume introduction, Section 1.1 “Claudian’s Career.” 13 For these campaigns, see Gildo and Gothic War. 14 Claudian briefly references an event unknown to us but clearly well known to the audience; see also Gothic War 524. Scholars hypothesize a connection to the events of Theodosius’s campaign against the usurper Maximus in 388–391 as related at Zosimus 4.45.3, 4.48–9. There were rumors that Maximus had bribed some of the non-Roman troops in the Eastern army. They fled into Macedonia, and Theodosius made a brief foray against them in 388 before proceeding to Italy against Maximus. Claudian may refer to an incident in 388 in which Theodosius confronted Alaric’s troops near the Hebrus River. The survivors, meanwhile, continued to raid the region, and Theodosius focused on hunting them down after returning from his defeat of Maximus in 391. For fuller discussion, see Dewar 1996: 132–133.

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disdained the emperor’s summons and denied assistance for the nearby war. He took possession of Libyan territory through naked perjury. 110 Not forgetting his righteous anger, calling it to mind, Theodosius now enjoys their punishment, and triumphs thanks to his avenging son. Orestes’s sword punished Aegisthus, but an unspeakable deed tarnished his act of duty, and put his slaughter’s glory into doubt. 115 He weighed his praise against his mother’s crime.15 Augustus fed his father Caesar’s ghost on enemy blood, but his filial duty was a false pretext when he made civil war for his father’s sake and to his country’s grief.16 But your father’s cause was part of public welfare, and so doubled your victory’s glory. The same trophies 120 restored freedom to the world and avenged your father. Long since my Parnassian lyre’s Pierian strings sang of captured Moorish Gildo. Just now, before Stilicho, I celebrated his Gothic victory in fresh song. Now my Muse is pleased to give forth holy rites for your arrival, and begin the theme of thanksgiving, now the war’s complete. The slaughter at Pollentia diminished Alaric. We’d granted him his life, as experience advised, but he’d lost so many allies, and we’d seized all his resources too.17 We ordered our enemy to retreat from Italy. He retraced his path, ashamed, whirled downward from his destiny’s mighty summit. He was like a pirate ship that terrorized the whole sea, raiding many vessels over the years, loaded down with crime’s riches. When it falls upon a huge war trireme, thinking it can plunder as usual, it’s emptied as its oarsmen are cut down. They enfeeble it, rending the sails, removing the rudder, and wounding it by shattering the yard-arms.

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15 Clytemnestra, the mythical queen of Mycenae, conspired with her lover Aegisthus to kill her husband Agamemnon upon his return home from the Trojan War. Her son Orestes avenged his father by killing her and Aegisthus. 16 The emperor Augustus claimed that his defeat of Brutus and Cassius at the battle of Philippi in 42 BCE was vengeance for their murder of his adoptive father Julius Caesar. 17 See the introduction to this poem and Gothic War.

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Winds and waves toss it as the ocean’s plaything, and at last the waters it devastated punish the ship. Alaric likewise withdrew his empty threats from Rome and fled Italy. What had been easy once during the Goths’ advance was hard and difficult now as they retreated. In his terror, he thought every path closed off, and as he returned, he feared the rivers at his back, which he’d recently made tremble. As it happened, in his waveswept home in glassy caves, Father Po, still unaware of these events, was then turning mighty concerns in his breast. What would the war’s outcome be? Would Jupiter approve laws and empire and the Romans’ quiet way of life? Or would he hate all right and condemn future ages to primitive lives, like animals? As he anxiously considered such matters, a Naiad rushed up, her hair unbound. She hugged her father and said: “Look at Alaric, hardly the same man we recently saw triumphing. His bloodless face will amaze you, father! You’ll have fun counting up his army and numbering the few remnants of such a mighty people. Now stop whining and looking sad. Let my sister Nymphs get back to our dances.” After she spoke, Father Po lifted his sublime head above his gentle waves. His golden horns spread their light over his entire bank, flashing from his dripping face. He didn’t veil his wet hair with reeds, a trivial honor; rather the Heliades’ flourishing branches overshadowed his head, and amber flowed all over his tresses. A cloak covered his broad shoulders; an embroidery of Phaethon and his father the Sun’s chariot lit up its grey fabric. A starry urn, gloriously engraved, resting in his lap, displayed his divine glory. The Sun had incised in heaven all his grief’s causes:18 old Cygnus, Phaethon’s relative, transformed into a swan, his sisters into trees; the river washed his scorched son’s wounds. The Charioteer

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18 Claudian lists a number of constellations related to the Phaethon myth; see the Introduction to this volume. The Hyades similarly wept for their brother Hyas and were transformed into stars. Eridanus is both a constellation and an alternate name for the Po River.

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was there in his icy region; the Hyades followed on their brother’s traces, while the Milky Way sprinkled its companion Cygnus’s outstretched wings. Starry Eridanus watered the bright southern sky, wandering as its course curved, and its celestial channel flowed beneath frightening Orion’s sword. Glittering in this finery, the god looked out and saw the Goths on the move, their necks bowed. Then he said: “Are you changing your plans and hurrying back so fast, Alaric? Are you sick already of Italy’s shores? Aren’t you feeding your horse already on the Tiber’s grassy banks, as you thought you would? Or fixing your plow in the Tuscan hills? You’ve more than earned all the Underworld’s punishments! Are you readying an attempt on the gods’ city, your fury like the Giants’? You criminal, didn’t my Phaethon’s example scare you at least? He fell headlong and breathed out lightning in my waters, when his mortal hand tried to turn heaven’s fiery reins, and he hoped to spread daylight from his human face. Believe me, whoever hopes to plunder Rome or hold the Sun’s reins is trying the same insane crime.” The Po spoke and rose up, shouting loudly to summon rivers in Liguria and the Veneto. They lifted their wet heads from their leafy banks, lovely Ticino, blue Adda, swift Adige, slow-moving Mincio, and Timavo that surges through nine mouths. They all mock runaway Alaric, and invite joyful herds back to the peaceful meadows. Now they call back Lycaean Pan and now Dryads and Fauns, the country gods. What Verona added to this triumph over the Goths wasn’t small. Pollentia didn’t contribute more to Italy’s welfare, nor Asti’s avenging walls.19 Here Alaric broke the treaty once again. His losses forced him to try to change his situation in a desperate gamble. He saw his insane treachery hadn’t helped him at all, and his new location hadn’t changed his fate. Dire vultures

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19 We do not have other evidence for a battle at Asti, 30 km from Pollentia. Alaric may have retreated to this city and found its walls barred against him.

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fed on many of his men, and the Adige River bloodied the Ionian Sea as it whirled those enemy corpses. Once Alaric violated the treaty, Stilicho seized the chance 210 at battle he’d prayed for constantly. Rome was far from danger out here, and the Po flowed between them as war’s arbiter. The opportunity offered by this treachery, clashing in rebellion, overjoyed Stilicho. He presented a hard-working example, enduring the burning sun and summer dust. He was on the spot, 215 his fighting hand terrifying the Goths. He covered every point, arraying unexpected troops. He came from every direction where need called. If the soldiers tired and the line failed, he called up the auxiliaries, caring nothing for his losses. He cleverly weakened the fierce Danubians by using soldiers of the same origin. 220 He gave battle for a double gain, turning barbarians against themselves, who died on both sides for our profit. He would’ve captured Alaric and handed him over to death, but a hotheaded Alan king,20 hurrying heedlessly at the wrong moment, wrecked his careful plan. Alaric barely dodged capture 225 as he whipped his panting horse: we don’t regret his escape. Go on, rather, remnant of your people, sole survivor from so many Danubians. Live on as our trophy! Yet such massive defeats didn’t suppress Alaric’s grim spirit. He tried to cross the mountains by a hidden path, in case he could find an unexpected way over the crags to the Raetians and Gauls. But Stilicho labored more bravely to block him. Who indeed could trick that man’s godlike heart, his eyes ever awake and on duty for the empire? Enemies never discovered his plans, nor could they hide their own. He knew the Goths’ secrets first and his mind swiftly confronted their treachery. His every effort blocked, trembling Alaric camped on a single hill. His horses browsed on bitter leaves, setting their teeth into the trees’ bark. Rotted food spread raging plague, and the season’s heat increased it.

20 For the Alan king Saulus, see the introductions to this poem and to Gothic War.

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Our proud soldiers piled reproaches upon besieged Alaric and showed off his captive children.21 Yet neither wasting from disease, nor hunger that readies people to risk every danger, nor grief for his lost plunder, nor shame, nor anger at our unrestrained mockery pushed him to dare close combat. He wouldn’t trust himself to the battlefield, which he’d tried before so often and failed. There’s no greater victory than the one which also forces the enemy to confess their defeat in their hearts.

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Already constant desertion began to pick away at Alaric’s diminished 250 strength, and every day the numbers in his camp decreased. No longer were just a few of them surrendering in secret, but whole squadrons and formations openly went over. Alaric followed them, and screamed uselessly, trying to hold on to them, and now he fought a war against his own troops. Soon he begged them, crying and praying, 255 calling on his men by name. He reminded them of their past victories and offered his throat to them, in vain: they let him go. His mind fixed on his misfortunes, he saw his own limbs desert him, his own hands. Alaric was like an old beekeeper on Mount Hybla who rattles Cybele’s bronze cymbals. He makes noise from far off 260 and tries to call back his scattered bees who chose to desert their honeycombs. Exhausted by the useless sound, he mourns his stolen honey and his treacherous swarm that forgot their familiar home and emptied their wax cells. And so when grief loosed the reins and freed his stifled voice, Alaric looked through tear-stained eyes at the familiar Alps. He mulled over his lucky invasion and his present retreat, such different strands of fate. Back then, he’d made war just by whispering, effortlessly stretched out his lance to shatter city walls, and laughed at the cliffs. Now hopeless and deserted, he offered the mountains he’d assaulted a spectacle of retribution. Then looking at the Italian sky, Alaric said:

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“Alas! This region was deadly for my Goths, this land I marched through 275 under sinister omens. Let the slaughter of my guilty soldiers satisfy it and our sufferings incline it to mercy at last. 21 Alaric’s troops took refuge on Mount Pholoë in Arcadia, Greece. For the capture of his plunder and concubines, see Gothic War 604–634.

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Look at me: I soared higher than the whole world, fortunate before I approached Italy. Now, like an outlaw or a convicted criminal, my pursuers press after me and their breath gets closer. Wretched me! which of my losses should I lament first, which last? It wasn’t so much Pollentia, or the seizure of my goods that tortured me. Fate’s bitter lot and war’s changes bring such things. I hadn’t yet collapsed in battle completely: I still had close-packed troops and cavalry squadrons, and I made it unscathed to the mountains they call the Apennines with my remaining force. A local told me this range stretched from Liguria’s borders as far as Sicilian Cape Pelorus, enclosing all Italy’s peoples. Its continuous chain splits the seas that graze the extent of the peninsula’s two coasts. If I’d wished to keep making my way straight along these cliffs, as my furious mind had earlier intended, and given up on life in my despair—then what? I might’ve died in greater glory, burning everything up! And certainly I’d see Rome closer up as I died, and my death itself would’ve cost my conqueror dear as he pursued me over the tended fields. But the Romans held my children captive, my dearest concubines, my plunder—thanks to that, I should’ve been better prepared to hurry my stripped-down army forward! Oh! Stilicho, always deadly, used such treachery, such skill to surround me! Even as he appeared to spare me, he turned back my aggressive intention, and he succeeded in shifting battle back across the Po. Curse that treaty, worse than slavery’s yoke. Then Gothic strength was blotted out: that’s when I agreed to my own death. His mercy defeated my people, more violently than all his fighting. War even more bitter hid under that peace, and he caught me in turn with my own favorite trick. I’m so tired: who will give me comfort or counsel? My ally’s more suspect than my enemy. How I wish I’d lost all my men in war, for anyone who fell in the hard struggle would never stop being mine. Better that swords had killed them; defeat would’ve taken my comrades from me less grievously than treachery. Don’t I have any clients left? 331

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My companions are hostile, my family loathe me. Why prolong my hateful life? Where shall I bury my shipwreck’s fragments? What territory shall I seek where the names of Stilicho and almighty Italy shall never resound in my ears?”

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Saying this, Alaric fled from the Eagles he knew and feared as Stilicho pursued him. Paleness accompanied him, as did dark Hunger, livid Grief with its wounded face, and a hellish army of shrieking Plagues. A skilled priest likewise grimly whirls a purifying torch around a sufferer’s limbs to purge them of sickness. The torch’s smoky flame reeks of dark sulfur and black pitch. He sprinkles holy water and herbs that ward off evil spirits, as he prays to terrifying Jupiter and Diana of the Crossroads. Hands turned back, he throws the torches over his head, into the South Wind, to carry off his magical ritual’s pollution.

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Meanwhile a keener desire to see the emperor burned in both the Senate and the Roman people. They demanded Honorius’s return that he’d so often refused. Publicly vowed sacrifices didn’t burn throughout the city in such a general consensus (so say our ancestors), when warlike Trajan smashed the Dacian revolt, and brought 335 the rebellious North back under our laws, when the Roman fasces surrounded the Hypanis River, and a Roman tribunal stunned the Sea of Azov and made it marvel at Roman law.22 Our country didn’t call back the merciful emperor Marcus as eagerly to the temples, when Fortune released Italy, surrounded on all sides by hostile peoples, from similar danger. Marcus’s generals earned no praise, for a rain of fire fell on the enemy.23 A scorched warhorse carried one terrified man on its smoking back, while another collapsed, nerveless under his dissolving helmet. Lightning made molten

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22 Ancient Dacia compromised modern Romania and Moldova and parts of neighboring countries. Trajan conquered the region in 101–102 CE. Claudian exaggerates the extent of the campaign in extending it to the Hypanis, the modern Bug River in Ukraine, which the Romans regarded as a boundary between Europe and Asia. 23 This event occurred during Marcus Aurelius’s campaign against the Marcomanni in 172–3 CE. See Historia Augusta 24.4; Cassius Dio Roman History 72.10.

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spears glow, and swords suddenly vaporized and disappeared. The battle remained celestial and knew no need for mortal weapons. Either the Chaldeans’ spells armed our gods through magic rites, or—as I think—Marcus’s virtuous life earned Thundering Jupiter’s compliance.

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Here and now also, even if our forces came up short, Italy wouldn’t lack Olympus’s defense. Rather, heavenly providence didn’t want to take glory away from human effort. Emperor, the lightning shouldn’t aim to take the victory laurel which Stilicho’s courage earned and his sweat secured. 355 The envoys sent so often had brought back “Wait” as your reply, until Rome herself couldn’t bear to put the city’s universal prayer off any longer. She leaped out from her innermost sanctuary and openly revealed her shining face. She urged on hesitant Honorius with her personal complaints:

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“As your mother, emperor, I’m complaining that you’ve put me off too long and my love for you has suffered harsh rebuffs. How long will you prefer the Ligurians and let them have what I pray for? Will the Rubicon River keep torturing the Tiber24 with your godhead so near,25 forbidding it to enjoy your light close by, such a short space separating its joys? 365 Wasn’t spurning me once enough, when Africa, restored through war, teased the city with hope that you might visit, yet all our prayers couldn’t move your hardened ears? Still I was harnessing two horses, outstandingly white, who’d lift your chariot higher. I’d already built a triumphal arch with your name. You’d pass through it dressed in a shining victory toga. I was dedicating war monuments, their eternal inscriptions testifying to Africa’s defense.26

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24 Honorius’s previous capital was in Liguria at Milan. The Rubicon River is 50 km from his new capital at Ravenna. 25 Reading numine. Charlet reads nomine, which would mean “your name so near.” 26 Honorius did not in fact construct a triumphal arch. A few inscriptions (CIL 6.1187, 1730, 31256) commemorate the victory over Gildo.

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Already we were preparing tableaux27 for the coming procession to show Jupiter on the Tarpeian Rock: a fleet engraved in metal, its oars cutting through the tawny waves. Images of African towns marched before your chariot. Conquered waters carried Triton, Minerva’s reeds binding up his hair. Girded cohorts carried a bronze Atlas, trembling in his enslavement. Gildo himself, ready to undergo Jugurtha’s punishment of imprisonment, offered his fierce neck to the yoke. Rome’s force of arms captured him, not Bocchus’ or Sulla’s tricks.28 But I’ll let this first war go. Can the present victory laurel from the Gothic war elude me also? Will any other place better contain such great glory? Even as you delay, your good deeds surround you, and your courage, tied to your merits, loves the people whose lives it has saved. Now for the hundredth summer, the reapers’ sickles are cutting Mount Gargarus’s golden harvest. The hundredth consul speeds on the returning centuries, that celebrate games that no one lives to see twice.29 During these years, numbering twenty times five,30 three times I’ve seen emperors enter my sacred boundary.31 They came at various times, but civil war was the same reason for their triumph. These arrogant men came, for sure, so I’d get a good look at their chariots soaked in Roman blood! Who’d think a dutiful mother rejoices at her children’s laments? Soldiers supported the usurpers, yet died as my people.

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27 A customary feature of triumphal processions; see MacCormack 1981. 28 For Bocchus and Jugurtha, see the Glossary. 29 The Secular Games were celebrated roughly every century and were regarded as particularly significant because no one could live long enough to see them twice. They could have been celebrated in 404, 100 years after the emperor Maximian perhaps celebrated them in 304 (the evidence for the celebration is not conclusive). In any event, Honorius did not choose to continue the tradition. 30 Rome refers to the lustra, the five-year periods between each taking of the census. 31 The pomerium was Rome’s religious boundary, which was much smaller than the fourthcentury city’s actual extent. An emperor could only enter the area with his troops if he was celebrating a military triumph. For the three triumphs, see the introduction to this poem. There were other imperial visits to Rome during this period, but Claudian likely discounts them because they were not accompanied by triumphal processions.

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Caesar boasted publicly of his Gallic wars, but kept quiet about Pharsalus. Just as defeat is wretched, victory’s never honorable between armies of the same people, who carry related battle-standards. Thanks to you, let truer glory restore the old-fashioned custom. Now return my profit in sincere praise won from enemies, that I haven’t had for so long. Use plunder seized from rage directed outward to absolve those guilty triumphs. How long, I beg you, will you keep your power separate, exiled from its home, and let your rule wander from its own seat? Why does my Palace, which gave its name to all others, decay in neglected squalor?32 Why don’t you believe that you can rule the world from here? Though the Sun’s beams brighten everything, it never deserts its middle course through the sky. Those former emperors who dwelled in my house— did they hold the Danube or Rhine more lazily? Did the Tigris and Euphrates fear us less, when the Persians and Indians begged for treaties and hoped for peace from my palace? Here lived those emperors whom shared virtue chose and adopted into the same name, leading forth a glorious line for the Roman state. thanks not to blood but judgement. Here lived the Aelian clan that traced its descent to Nerva, the peaceful Antonines, and the warlike Severans.33 Respect this chorus of emperors, citizen Honorius, and bring back your face that we saw long ago. Recalling that earlier procession in his memory, let the Tiber who took you up in your tender youth as your father’s companion now worship you as a young man. Let your father-in-law Stilicho lead you here.”

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As Rome begged him, Honorius interrupted to console her: “You’ll never complain you asked in vain for something, 32 The word “palace” (Latin palatium) derives from the Palatine Hill in Rome, where Rome’s first emperor Augustus resided. 33 The emperor Nerva (reigned 96–98 CE) adopted Trajan; see the Glossary. The Antonine dynasty of adoptive emperors reigned from 138 to 192 CE. They were succeeded by the Severan dynasty, which ruled until 235 CE.

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Goddess Rome; it’s not right for me to block the laws’ mother. But don’t go on blaming your people with false complaints. I didn’t disregard my country’s call after the African war. I sent Stilicho instead and brought the consul’s curule chair to you, Rome, so that instead of an emperor a consul might fill my place, a father instead of a son-in-law.34 In him, you saw me as well. My sense of duty believes it’s found a father, not through blood alone, but rather his glorious deeds.

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Indeed, I couldn’t even touch with a hundred tongues on all the deeds he does for me and the world. But from all of them, I’ll tell you just one, Rome, if rumor hasn’t laid it bare already. I saw it with my own eyes, and I was the witness or the cause of it. Alaric had devastated Greece and Thrace, successive victories driving him insane. His monstrous spirit hoped to smash the Alps. Safer now thanks to winter’s help, he’d laid siege to the fearful Ligurian cities. The merciless weather favored these Goths; they’re used to this climate. Alaric threatened to trample my rampart and besiege me, nurturing his hopes that perhaps, in empty terror, my defenders far away, fear pressing me down, I’d agree to any terms he wished. But no fear could compel me, for I trusted that Stilicho would come. Also I remembered Rome’s generals: even with death at hand, they never consented to lose their glory through cowardly love of life. It was night, and far and wide I saw the Goths’ watchfires burning like stars. The trumpet had already roused the first watch when noble Stilicho arrived from the frozen North. But the enemy had shut off the road between me and my father-in-law, and they held the bridge which cut the Adda River and frothed its waves even foamier.

34 See Stilicho’s Consulship for the details of Stilicho’s tenure as consul in 400 CE.

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What was Stilicho to do? Put off his journey? My danger allowed no delaying his approach. Should he break 460 the Goths’ column? But he only had a few men with him; he’d left many of them behind in hurrying to rescue me, foreign auxiliaries as well as Roman forces. Placed in this peril, he thought waiting for reinforcements would be long and slow. He put his own men’s danger 465 second and hurried to overcome mine. Fired up with dutiful courage, caring nothing for his own safety, he headed right through the middle of the enemy. Sword drawn, he laid low everyone in his path, and his lightning rush cut through the barbarians’ tents. Now let the poets’ songs praise Diomedes,35 because he trusted in his comrade Ithacan Odysseus, when Dolon’s information opened the way for them. Drowsy Rhesus’s Thracian troops had feasted and were deep asleep when they broke in and carried captured horses back to the Greek camp. If we can put any trust in the Muses who exaggerate everything, these horses were faster than the winds, whiter than the snows.

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Here was Stilicho, a man who didn’t deceive his sleeping enemy in silence. His sword openly cleared his path, and he came back covered in blood, outdoing Diomedes in glorious daring, as much as light shines brighter than shadow, as open battle than secret ambush. 480 Add the fact that Alaric was better defended, encamped on the riverbank, and even when Rhesus was awake, he was no comparison: Rhesus ruled Thrace, but Alaric conquered it. Missiles didn’t slow Stilicho down, nor did he pause when rivers blocked him. Horatius Cocles pushed back the menacing Etruscan force before the collapsing bridge. 485 Then as Tarquin gaped, he swam across the Tiber River with the shield he’d used to defend our city, and he gazed back triumphantly at Porsenna from the middle of the water. My father-in-law Stilicho likewise cut across the swift Adda River. But Horatius showed his back to the Etruscans when he swam, while Stilicho showed his breast to Goths in war. 490 35 In Homer Iliad 10, the Greek warriors Odysseus and Diomedes raid the Trojan camp at night to steal the Thracian king Rhesus’s horses.

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Now, Rome, lead out choruses trained to sing of battles that bring such praise. All your eloquence, in which your great minds excel, should deservedly sound forth for my foster father.” After Honorius spoke, his troops vacated ancient Ravenna’s walls. He left behind the Po’s mouths and the river harbors where nature’s fixed laws govern the intruding ocean’s surge. At one time following waves carry ships headlong, at another they return to the sea. The water leaves behind the shore, stripping the waves, mimicking the ocean tides caused by the moon.

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From here Fortune happily hosted Honorius in her ancient Fanum,36 500 and he looked down at the Metaurus River wandering through a jagged valley. Here human skill opened the mountain, cutting an arch of living rock, and granted a path through the sliced cliff’s guts.37 He climbed above Jupiter’s temple and altars that sit menacingly on the crag, tended by Apennine shepherds. 505 Indeed, Honorius, you thought to visit the Clitumnus’s currents, that victors worship, that supplies shining white bulls for Roman triumphs. You didn’t overlook the spring’s miracle: if someone walks up to it quietly, it flows slowly, but its waters swirl and seethe if people pick up the pace and shout louder. Though all pools have the same nature of reflecting our bodies in their waves, these waters alone boast an unusual property: they’re quick to imitate people’s character.38 From there, you galloped on your imperial stallion through high Narnia that looks down on the open fields. The strange-colored Nar39 River flows close by, giving the town its name: squeezed between dark woods, under a dense holm-oak forest, its channel shines white as it twists between two mountain peaks. Then you greeted the Tiber, pouring the river’s water as a libation.

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36 Ancient Fanum (modern Fano) was home to a famous temple to Fortune. 37 The emperor Vespasian (reigned 70–79 CE) excavated a tunnel at Intercisa, modern Gola di Furlò. 38 The Clitumnus River (modern Clitunno) runs through Umbria, Italy. Pliny Letters 8.8 describes the river at length, but Claudian is the only ancient source to mention this miraculous variation in its currents. See also Shorter Poems 4. 39 The modern Nera River, a Tiber tributary. For the river’s high sulfur content, see O&P 256.

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Rome’s arches took you in, its roads built with tremendous effort, and all the structures set before such a great city’s entrance. Rome was like a mother who beautifies her daughter’s appearance even more skillfully as the hoped-for marriage draws closer, trembling as she serves. As the suitor approaches, she keeps her hands busy primping her clothing and girdle. Green jasper ties back her daughter’s breasts, gems are arranged in her hair, a necklace encircles her throat, and gleaming pearls weigh down her ears.

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Rome likewise rose more gloriously on higher hills to please your eyes. The city presented itself for you to see, greater than we knew 530 it before. New walls added a beautiful appearance, completed recently thanks to the rumor of approaching Goths.40 Fear had been the craftsman advancing this glorious work, and in a remarkable change, war shook off old age brought on by peace. Fear suddenly raised up towers and made the seven hills 535 grow young once more, embraced within a continuous wall. The sky itself favored our prayers and shone brighter than usual, though nonstop rain had ruined the previous night. But the sun and the emperor’s shining rays wiped the clouds away. For the South Wind’s rains had upset everything in the preceding days, and drenched the new moon, so that heaven would know it saved clear skies for you. A crowd with a single appearance filled everything from the Mulvian Bridge to the Palatine hill, and up as high as they could get on the roofs. You could see waves of men down below, while women shone on the high buildings. Youths were glad to be young like the emperor, old men scorned the past, and congratulated themselves that their lucky fate persisted to this day. They praised this era’s moderation, the approachable emperor . . . in his heart forbade Roman senators to march before his chariot.41

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40 An inscription (ILS 797) attests to this restoration of Rome’s walls in winter 401/2. 41 Editors suspect that the text is corrupt here. Charlet reads solus, which would mean “with a unique heart.” Dewar reconstructs “as mild to approach as he is [mild?] of heart.” A

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Eucherius’s blood was royal on both sides, and his sister was the empress Maria. Yet he performed his soldierly duty for triumphing Honorius. Thus his father Stilicho’s stern affection taught him, sparing as he was both for himself and his children, 555 refusing his son what he offered to noblemen’s honor. Anxious elders and mature men approved as they judged the present court’s display against its predecessors’: earlier emperors entered Rome as masters, Honorius as a citizen. Women never stopped wondering at his cheeks, outstandingly 560 in flower, the hair beneath his crown, his limbs shining green from the gems on his consular robes, his strong shoulders. His neck rose amid Red Sea emeralds, rivaling Bacchus the wine god’s. A naïve young woman, whose simple modesty burned in her cheeks, looked at everything around her and asked her old wet nurse: what did the dragons’ faces on the banners intend? Were they flowing in the wind or threatening with real hisses? Were their jaws about to seize an enemy and haul him off? As she saw the knights in their steel armor and the horses concealed under bronze, she asked: “What people have these iron men come from? What land shapes horses born from metal? Did Vulcan the craftsman god add whinnying to iron and make a living effigy of war?” She was fearful but having fun, as her finger pointed to Juno’s peacock decorating the figured crests on the soldiers’ helmets, or how the red silk shimmered on the horses’ golden-armored backs, rippling over their strong shoulders. At that time, Stilicho, Fortune paid the reward in full for your great labors. You rode in the same chariot through the city with your son-in-law, and witnessed him triumphant in the flower of his youth. In your heart, you recalled that day when in fear and confusion, the world in suspense, dying Theodosius entrusted his son for you to raise. Your diverse virtues now know the fruits they’ve harvested: loyalty kept its deposit safe; constancy set a little boy

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senatorial escort would have been expected at Honorius’s triumph, but the emperor apparently released the senators from this obligation.

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in charge of the world; affection cared for a family member. This is the boy who now calls the Romans to the Rostra, and sitting on his father’s ivory throne tells the senators his accomplishments’ causes and outcomes in their proper order. He follows the ancients’ example 590 and submits his rule’s deeds to the Senate’s judgment. Trustworthiness doesn’t pile up words and hides nothing. His mind’s aware of true praise and disdains help from deceptive speech. The nobles recognize him as a peer, the Senate house is packed with generals wearing togas and an emperor in a consul’s robe. 595 It serves with the authority of a court geared up for war. Winged Victory herself, the Roman toga’s guardian, is present in her temple. Her golden wings shelter the revered shrine where the senators gather.42 She’s your armies’ untiring companion. 600 Now she has her wish at last: she promises for all eternity that you’ll be Rome’s and she’ll be yours. From there the Sacred Way, now truly named, carries you back to your ancestral home.43 You didn’t gather the crowds and throw gold to tempt them, yet they burn eagerly and harmoniously for you. 605 Your treasury doesn’t try to corrupt loyalty by hunting after purchased applause. Pure minds offer unbought favor to your merits. For each person’s safety obliges them; it’s dearer than any gift. Bribery, begone! If someone owes their life to love, they don’t go looking for pay. 610 Oh, how much secret divine power the presence of the Empire’s guardian spirit adds to the people! When the emperor, dressed in purple, reveres the crowd packing the Circus’s rows of seats, how great is the return his majesty makes to theirs! As you honor the people, their shouts resound unanimously 615 from the hollow valley44 up to heaven. From all Rome’s seven hills, a single echo thunders “Honorius Augustus!” The race track isn’t only for horses. A palisade surrounds the ground that’s used to chariots, and the quickly built arena offers the spectacle of Libyan animals’ blood pouring out on a foreign valley. 620

42 See the introduction to this poem. 43 The Sacred Way (Via Sacra) led through the center of the Roman Forum. 44 The Circus Maximus sat in the valley between the Aventine and Palatine hills in Rome.

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They also practice war games here: we can often see armed bands, their retreats and their advances in undisturbed order choreographed according to fixed rules of movement. They demonstrate beautiful skill as they wander, battling for our pleasure. When the commander cracks his whip and gives the signal, 625 so many troops produce changed movements in unison. They strike their bucklers against their sides, or wave them again in the air. The shields resound deeply, the swords ring keenly, and as they drum on their shield bosses, the resounding striking of swords in turn breaks up the iron harmony. 630 As one, the whole phalanx kneels and so many helmets nod to salute the emperor. Then the squads divide, wheeling this way and that in trained order. Neither the half-human Minotaur’s Cretan labyrinth, nor the Maeander River’s endless twists could outdo their turns. Then the ranks whirl about in separate paces and curve into circles. Janus forces war into eternal prison behind immovable doors,45 and through celebratory imitation of warfare, the god offers combat’s harmless rewards to peace.

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And now Janus crowns his double head and opens the new year 640 with lucky Fasti. Now the Tiber sees in one man Brutus’s consular robe and deified Romulus’s scepter. The Palatine hill rejoices to see a consul again after so many centuries, while the Rostra recognize the curule chair our ancestors once heard of. The royal lictors gird 645 unfamiliar golden fasces around Trajan’s Forum. Meanwhile Honorius, Gothic laurels wreathing the axes he holds for the sixth time, triumphs over the Danube and tramples on its peoples’ necks. Let this year go forth throughout the world’s peoples, more glorious than all that came before, born from its own true source. No stranger took up the honor 650 in a foreign land, but a man whose infancy the Senate nurtured, whom Rome’s residents were first to see, whom prophetic Victory gave birth to after crushing war. Ordinary citizens were consuls, their titles yielding to yours; your warlike father and his predecessors held the consulship,

45 The doors of Janus’s temple in Rome were closed when the empire was at peace.

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in a variety of places. May all their years honor this year as divine! Let your five previous consulships worship this one too, Honorius Augustus, as well as those you’ll hold in future in this city. Even if you were the sole consul in all the coming years, yet this sixth one will glory in its mighty title: outdoing its predecessors, the model for those to come.

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14 IN PRAISE OF SERENA AND LETTER TO SERENA

These poems are traditionally numbered 30 and 31 in the collection of Claudian’s Shorter Poems. I have put them in their own section to focus on this important noblewoman. Serena was born c. 370 in Spain to Theodosius’s older brother, the elder Honorius—not to be confused with Theodosius’s son and successor, the Western emperor. After his brother’s death, Theodosius adopted his niece and arranged her marriage to Stilicho in 384 (see Stilicho’s Consulship 1.69–96). In his Epithalamium (228–341), Claudian praises Serena for her diligent raising of her daughter Maria and recalls the army’s enthusiastic support for Serena’s earlier marriage to Stilicho. Serena also aided Claudian in arranging his own marriage, for which he thanks her in the Letter to Serena. The incomplete Poem 30 likely dates to 404. In its opening, the narrator asks the Muse to crown Serena with his poetry (1–10). Serena outdoes the heroines of mythology and legend, including faithful Greek wives such as Alcestis and Penelope, as well as exemplary Roman women such as Cloelia and Claudia Quinta (11–34).1 Her descent from the Elder Theodosius and her homeland of Spain prove her nobility. The natural and divine world signified her outstanding qualities, and numerous goddesses helped to raise her (35–95). Her uncle Theodosius adopted her and brought her to court along with her sister Thermantia.2 He then married her to Stilicho, who outdid the suitors of mythology by earning the right to marry her (96–185). Stilicho proved his fitness for leadership over more senior commanders, and his loyal wife protected him from conspiracies at home (186–236). 1 For Alcestis and Cloelia, see Glossary. Claudia Quinta was accused of adultery but cleared herself from the accusation when the Romans brought a statue of Cybele up the Tiber River in 204 BCE. When the ship stuck on a sandbar, she touched the rope to free it, proving thereby that the goddess approved of her. 2 Not be confused with Serena’s daughter Thermantia, who would become Honorius’s second wife.

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DOI: 10.4324/9780429353345-14

IN PRAISE OF SERENA AND LETTER TO SERENA

Poem 31 may date to 400–1 CE. As in the preface to Proserpina Book 2, Claudian compares himself once more to Orpheus, the greatest singer of mythology. As Juno honored Orpheus by attending his wedding, so Serena honored him by helping to arrange Claudian’s marriage (1–36). She sent a letter commending Claudian that helped to persuade his in-laws to accept him, despite his relative poverty. Claudian and his unnamed wife have travelled to Africa; in closing the poem, he asks Serena to grant them a safe homecoming (37–63).

In Praise of Serena (Shorter Poems 30) Tell me, my Calliope, why you waited so long to crown deserving Serena with the Muses’ wreath? She’s accustomed to wear a crown of gems and shine with Indian Ocean pearls. Do you think it a cheap gift, my queen, to garland another queen’s hair? But with flowers neither frozen by the North Wind, nor scorched by the Dog Star. Rather, Aganippe’s3 waters, source of the Permessus River, raise flowers blushing with Spring’s eternal charm. Dutiful bees feed here and pluck the field’s blossoms, and pass Mount Helicon’s honey down to future ages. Has any woman’s virtuous deed ever so worthily challenged other poets? Chaste Thessalian Alcestis4 chose to redeem her husband, yield to his fate, and didn’t object to transferring her years of life to him. The Greeks commemorate this deed. Tanaquil5 prophetess of fate inspired Latin poets’ songs, as did Cloelia who swam back over the Tiber’s waves, and Claudia whose virgin hair led the hesitant goddess Cybele across the same river. Does ancient Homer’s profound mind elaborate anything better in the whole extent of his song?6 Charybdis armed her whirlpool against Ulysses, Scylla her dogs, Circe her potions. He dodged the Laestrygonian cannibals’ hunger, plugged the oarsmen’s ears to carry the ship past the Sirens’ compelling song,

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tricked the Cyclops out of his eye, and rejected Calypso— all to Penelope’s glory! Ulysses performed this whole 25 drama of fidelity for her alone. All his exploits on land and sea, as many harsh years on the waves as he spent in wars, demonstrated his marital loyalty. Let’s consider Claudia fortunate that Cybele was her witness, and divinity confirmed her life was chaste, releasing both the ship’s obstruction and the accusation of immorality. 30 Penelope tricked her suitors, stringing them along, and duped those young madmen, unweaving Laertes’s shroud by night on her loom. Yet neither woman would dare to compete for honors with Serena! But if nobility opens the door to all praise, and every cause looks back to its beginnings—what blood could be nobler, 35 what origin greater than royalty? No private household gave Serena this, nor could a poor dwelling feature such a name. Your uncle was the emperor, and your warlike grandfather, the elder Theodosius, 40 raised you to high estate.7 He brought his battle standards to British waters, and pushed aside African arms. Let Cornelia keep quiet about the famous line of Scipios, and boast less about her dowry of Carthaginian triumphs.8 You hold forth victory laurels from both sides of the world! Your grandfather’s Scottish spoils gird you, as do his southern ones. 45 This house hadn’t yet taken up rule over the world, when Lucina, goddess of childbirth, added you to the stars’ fortunate rays, O greatest glory of the world: your house learned to rule after you were born, Serena. What can human voices say in fitting commemoration of Spain, your homeland? India washes the Sun first in the Ocean: Spain bathes its tired chariot when day is done, and stars rest in its waters. You’re rich in horses, Spain, your crops grow easily, precious metals abound—and you raise good emperors. The ages owe you Trajan, and the Aelian clan flows from this origin. Father Theodosius came from here, as did his young sons’ crowns.

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7 For the elder Theodosius’s career, see the introduction to Honorius’s Fourth Consulship. 8 Cornelia (c. 190–115 BCE), a traditional example of virtuous Roman motherhood, was the youngest daughter of Scipio Africanus (for whom, see Glossary).

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Rome took in other peoples by treaty, or conquered them in battle, and fitted them to the empire’s varied needs. Egypt’s grain crop and Carthage’s harvest become the soldiers’ food. Gaul supplies the army’s strength, Illyrian cavalry sweat in battle on the wings. Spain alone gives novel tribute to the Roman state: it supplies emperors. Crops, cash, soldiers flow in from all directions, gathered throughout the world. But Spain creates those who rule everything. Nor is Spain satisfied to count men’s praise only, unless its women also triumph, and outshines others through both sexes, giving us Flacilla and Maria and lovely Serena. They say the Tagus River swelled when you were born, Serena, and poured its gold over the fertile farmlands. Galicia laughed as it flowered, and here and there on the pretty Duria’s rose-covered banks, sheep’s wool turned royal purple. The Cantabrian Sea spewed pearls on the neighboring shore, and pale Asturian miners didn’t wander through their mountain diggings. Instead the veins shot forth gold everywhere, as an offering for Serena’s holy birth. The river Nymphs gathered fiery onyxes deep in Pyrenean caves. The Nereids came openly up the flowing tide, following the swelling waves up the rivers’ altered channels. They applauded Serena, acknowledging her as their mistress, and sang an omen for her future marriage. At that time, little Stilicho was growing up on the other side of the world, still ignorant of his desire. Though far distant, his wife Serena was owed to him. The world’s end was preparing the conjoining of their great destinies. Nor would a merely mortal nurse deserve your cradle. The Hours9 first suckled you in their perfumed bosoms. The three Graces, bare arms embracing you, breathed upon you and taught you to speak. Roses came forth wherever you crawled on the grass, and bright lilies sprouted up.

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9 The Hours (Horae) were both goddess of the changing seasons and personifications of justice and order.

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When your eyes closed in peaceful sleep, purple violets arose to make a flowery bed, and a royal couch blossomed. Your mother Maria didn’t dare to reveal such mighty omens. Thinking of her secret wish, she concealed her own success in fearful hope. Your father Honorius carried you, holding you tight. Each time the future emperor Theodosius, still a private citizen, came to his brother’s door, he’d give you kisses and happily lead you to his house. Turning and crying childishly to your mother, you’d say, “What? Taking me away from my own house? He’s always ruling over us!” Your mistake played the role of an omen, and your child’s tongue foretold his future reign. When your father died, your exalted uncle Theodosius adopted you, and offered solace for your soul’s great grief. He loved his dead brother’s child more tenderly than if he’d fathered her himself. Mutual concern didn’t bind the Dioscuri more closely. He also gave his brother’s name to his own son Honorius, and through this gift he restored his lost brother’s image for himself. When at last he was chosen to assume the empire’s highest reins, he didn’t bestow his love upon his own children, before he’d summoned you and your loyal sister Thermantia from Spain to Constantinople’s Eastern shore.

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They left behind the Tagus’s banks and the West Wind’s home, and hurried to the Dawn’s subject cities. The two girls came, his brother’s children, the younger one, Serena, and the older one, Thermantia. Both lacked experience of marriage: Hymen hadn’t yet placed Venus’s marital yoke upon their snow-white necks.

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Both girls’ eyes flashed timidly, and pretty torches shone in their faces. They were just like Diana and her sister Minerva, born from Jupiter alone, when they happen to visit their uncle Neptune’s ocean. The foaming waves yield the way, honoring the chaste goddesses’ footsteps. Flirtatious Galatea doesn’t play around, nor does wicked Triton

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dare to touch Cymothoë.10 Modesty decrees strict morals for the whole ocean, and Proteus forbids the sea monsters any shameful groping. The elder Honorius’s daughters likewise crossed the royal threshold, and went to see the sceptered emperor’s palace. He embraced both girls and showed a father’s love, but his duty deservedly went more eagerly toward you, Serena. Often the burden of public affairs constrained Theodosius, and he came home saddened or swollen with burning anger. Then his sons would run from their father, or Flacilla would fear her disturbed husband. But you alone could blunt his rage, and your gentle speech could soothe him.11 He clung to your conversation, [loyally . . . secrets . . .]12 Your old-fashioned respect outstripped your youthful years. Homer didn’t offer such praise to Alcinous’s daughter Nausicaä, when he compared her to Diana. She was washing her clothes by the seashore and happily leading her attendants in dances. As she tossed her golden ball, she was shocked to find Ulysses making his way through the underbrush after waking from his shipwreck.13

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The Muses’ work and the ancient poets’ songs were your game: the books which Smyrna’s Homer gave us, and those by Mantuan Virgil. As you ran over them, you blamed Helen, and you didn’t forgive Dido. But nobler examples claimed your chaste attention: Laodamia, who followed Protesilaus as he returned to the dead, 150 and Evadne, rushing eagerly to add her own ashes as her husband Capaneus burned on the pyre. Honored Lucretia fell on her chaste dagger:14 her self-inflicted wound condemned the tyrant’s crime,

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See Glossary for Galatea and Epithalamium introduction for Triton and Cymothoë. For Theodosius’s temper, see Ambrose On the Death of Theodosius 13. One or more lines is likely missing here. See Homer Odyssey 6.85–141. The mythical warrior Protesilaus died at Troy and visited his wife as a ghost. Capaneus died in the assault on Thebes, and his wife Evadne joined him on his funeral pyre. For Lucretia, see the Glossary.

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and armed men in righteous rage to make war for their country. Tarquin was exiled, and Lucretia died, remembered for avenging her chastity and Rome’s liberty with her blood. You read eagerly of such deeds, no less virtuous yourself, but with a better fate. And now you’d reached the age of marriage, which made the emperor anxious. Uncertain wishes held the court in suspense: who’d have the great good fortune of marrying you? The Muses’ pages speak of ancient kings whose dire law commanded suitors to compete. They’d gain their marriages through mortal peril, and cruel fathers rejoiced as heroes risked death to woo their daughters. Pelops fled the Pisan king’s spears15 in his ocean chariot. For treacherous Myrtilus, himself deceived, had betrayed King Oenomaus by sabotaging his chariot’s axle. Fearful Hippomenes duped swift Atalanta with his golden apples, as she pursued him in the race, wielding her sword. From their high walls, all Calydon watched Hercules wrestling with the resisting river, and Deianira was the prize for the exploit.16 Hercules roared, panting breathlessly as he defeated Achelous, who changed color and fled. The astonished Nymphs tended his wounds, and the suffering river, his horn torn off, turned pale.

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But no Hesperides’ golden apples won you, Serena, no conquered river, no axle that deceived a father-in-law. The emperor instead judged Stilicho and deemed him worthy: his record of conquests stood out, and his courage 180 gained him a royal dowry. Often leaders have offered crowns earned in war: the mural honor wreathes one man; the civic oak garlands another; the naval crown commemorates conquered ships.

15 Reading tela. Charlet reads praeda, which would mean “as the Pisan king’s prey.” 16 The narrator retells stories of three mythological suitors. Pelops married Oenomaus’s daughter Hippodamia after using sabotage to win a chariot race. Hippomenes threw golden apples to distract Atalanta in a running race. Hercules wrestled the Achelous River to win Deianeira.

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But Stilicho alone deserved a remarkable reward for his service: his father-in-law gave him the crown of marriage. Thermantia’s uncle Theodosius showed her the same concern: she also married a general.17 But your sister’s fate was far inferior to yours. For you, Rome’s Divine Safety18 lit torches with greater godhood, and your marriage was the reason for greater garlanding. Stilicho’s first command was levying the horses, in the palace’s sacred stables, who came from Phrygian mares and Cappadocian seed, fed on Argive grass. Then soon he led troops from double origin.19 He performed all duties entrusted to him, working so hard that the emperor always rightly owed him more, although he gave him much. If the cloud of war was looming, you would see aged captains of cavalry and infantry yielding to Stilicho. Although his years and authority were lesser, they would openly trust the whole war to him, nor did his rank or shame about his age stop older men from choosing to obey a younger man. Likewise everyone claims that they should guide the ship when the breeze is gentle and the sea is calm. But the sailors stop arguing if a violent South Wind strikes and waves beat on both sides. They’re content to let a better hand guide them, they confess their fear, and the storm puts an end to their insistence.20 No differently, Stilicho was chosen as sole leader when the Thracian war’s storm raged,21 as everyone else yielded together. Indeed their fear was the judge and carried the true choice through. Concern for safety conquered their ambitions, and terror pushed back envy and laid it low.

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We do not know whom Thermantia married. For the personification of Divine Safety, see Stilicho’s Consulship 1.373. In his capacity as Count of the Imperial Bodyguard. Charlet removes an interpolated line after 205: “they hand the ship over to one man’s command.” 21 Stilicho campaigned in Thrace in 392 to avenge the killing of Promotus; see Eutropius 2.411–16.

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What trembling you then felt throughout your body, Serena, and how copiously your tears fell, when the trumpets called Stilicho forth to savage war! You turned your moist face toward his eyes, praying to get him back safe, and you stole swift kisses, 215 pushing them through your husband’s menacing crested helmet. What joys you felt once more, when at last the horns sounded victory, and your heavenly arms embraced his ironclad breast. Through the chaste night’s sweet repose, you ordered him to recall the story of his battles in safety. 220 When Stilicho was at war, you never combed your shining hair, and you didn’t wear your customary array of jewels. You devoted yourself to the gods and prayer, and swept your hair along the floor in supplication. You wore away your beauty, and let your appearance go: it’d come back when your husband did. 225 Your cares didn’t rest, and your love didn’t become lazy and stale. For women, prudence substitutes for praise in war. While Stilicho fought other peoples, your vigilant forethought looked out for everything: in case some mad jealousy (courage’s eternal enemy) or evil rage dared to try anything against your absent husband; 230 in case any covert trickery lurked to harm your household after distant war ended. How diligent you were back when Rufinus was plotting evil, when he looked for tricks to destroy his master Stilicho, and paid court to the Goths as they conspired against our Roman javelins. You discovered the hidden uprising, 235 and fearing for your husband, you warned him through letters and orders . . . The unfinished poem breaks off here.

Letter to Serena (Shorter Poems 31) When the gods first joined Orpheus in matrimony, and marriage god Hymen’s celebration filled the Thracian countryside, the beasts and multicolored birds each competed to give better gifts to their poet. They recalled the cave where echoing rocks often provided a remarkable theater for Orpheus’s sweet lyre. Lynxes brought crystals from the Caucasus mountains, and griffins tawny masses of gold from far northern lands.

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Through the air, Venus’s doves carried flowery wreaths commingled with roses pilfered from the meadow. From the Po River where swans cluster, one brought amber broken off from the Heliades’ branches, Phaethon’s noble sisters. After fighting the Pygmies, the cranes crossed back over the Nile, plucking the Indian Ocean’s costly seed pearls with their beaks. The immortal Phoenix came from the furthest East, carrying rare cinnamon in its hooked talon. There was no bird or beast that refused to bring a well-deserved wedding tribute to Orpheus’s lyre.

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Then diligent Calliope adorned her daughter-in-law, Orpheus’s bride, with all the wealth of Helicon’s domain. 20 This mother, furthermore, dared to invite Juno, starry Olympus’s queen, to her son’s wedding. The queen of the gods didn’t reject her request, either to honor the mother, or out of proper admiration for Orpheus the dutiful poet. So often he’d worshipped at Juno’s altars with his songs, 25 singing of her godhead in his alluring voice. He told of her thundering husband Jupiter’s battles with the Giants at Phlegra, and how he shattered Enceladus and the Titans’ threats. Immediately Juno honored the wedding night with her arrival, and added holy gifts to increase the marriage bed, ones not found in human beings’ adornment, gifts only the gods are allowed to have. But just as Juno was accommodating to Thracian Orpheus, so could you, Serena, be likewise to my prayers. The stars are Juno’s servants and await her nod, as you rule land and sea beneath your feet. When I was courting my wife, I didn’t promise pastures full of herds, as suitors customarily do. I didn’t promise thousands of hills hidden by vines, nor fat olive trees, their grey leaves waving. Many reapers’ scythes didn’t gather my harvest, golden pillars didn’t hold up my house’s high roof. It was enough that a goddess ordered our marriage. Your letter, Serena, was herd and crop and house enough for us. Your name’s mere shadow and your request’s authority

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covered for my poverty and won over my in-laws. When a letter brings Serena’s voice, is there anything that the empire’s spirit or the love of duty can’t accomplish? If only we’d celebrated our long-awaited wedding day in your radiant presence, 50 in your husband Stilicho’s camp, before your son-in-law Honorius’s throne! Auspicious imperial purple would’ve conjoined us, the court’s holy chorus would’ve surrounded us, and your hand, which had earlier promised me my wife in writing, would’ve given her in marriage, as matron of honor. 55 Now the sea lies between us, jealous of my greatest wishes: I’m separated from you on Libya’s shores. Though you’re away from me, my queen, at least favor us, happily nod your starry brow for a fortunate homecoming. Open the world’s paths, order gentle winds and a favoring sea that remains at peace. So may the Muses and Aganippe gushing wisdom sing the thanks you’re owed for saving me, your client.

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15 SHORTER POEMS

As a successful court poet, Claudian produced shorter poems for various occasions. As we have seen in earlier chapters, he praises various patrons, such as Stilicho’s wife Serena (Poems 30–31) and the young consuls Olybrius and Probinus (Poems 40–41). Other recipients of praise include the proconsuls Aeternalis and Gennadius (Poem 3 and Poem 19) and the tribune and notary Palladius, celebrated for his marriage to Celerina (Poem 25). As in the longer invectives against Rufinus and Eutropius, the poet also lashes out at various enemies. Some of these targets are identifiable, such as Hadrianus (Poems 21–22), Alethius (Poem 23), and Jacobus (Poem 50). Others such as the gout sufferer (Poem 13) and the debauched astrologer Uranius and his son Curetius (Poems 43–44) were either known to Claudian’s circle or may be literary stereotypes. We assume from Claudian’s ongoing success as a court poet that these feuds did not have serious consequences for him. Either they were jokes shared by courtiers, or the poet attacked his enemies after their downfall, as in the invectives. Claudian also writes on a wide variety of traditional subjects. These include topics such as: • • • •

descriptions of buildings and artwork, such as the Smyrna harbor (Poem 2), a marble statue of a chariot (Poem 7), and a bronze statue of the dutiful brothers Amphinomus and Anapis (Poem 17). mythical subjects such as the cattle of mythology (Poem 4), the immortal Phoenix (Poem 27), and the Gigantomachy (Poem 53). unusual animals such as the porcupine (Poem 9), Gallic mules (Poem 18), the lobster (Poem 24), and the electric eel (Poem 49). interesting features of the natural world, such as the magnet (Poem 29), an ice crystal (Poems 33–39), or a conch shell (Poem 45) and rivers and springs, such as the Aponus thermal lake (Poem 26) and the Nile River (Poem 28).

DOI: 10.4324/9780429353345-15

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We have no way of knowing how the shorter poems were originally collected. Our surviving manuscripts reflect different perspectives on the contents of the collection and their order. Scholars make the plausible assumption that Poem 1, which is also the third Fescennine, serves as a programmatic introduction to the collection, showing that Claudian remembers to honor his patron on all occasions. I have preceded many of the poems with brief contextualizing introductions. Most of the poems’ titles are not authentic (see Poem 8 for a clear example); I have accordingly marked them, as Charlet does, with [square brackets]. I have excluded from this translation a few shorter poems generally agreed not to be by Claudian. 1. [To Stilicho.] This poem is also the third Fescennine. See the introduction to Chapter 7. A helmet usually shines on your hair, Stilicho: now twine a soft wreath in it. Let war trumpets fall silent and the lucky torch of marriage banish savage Mars far from here. Let the bloodline drawn from the palace return once more to the palace, through a father’s duty. Join these children with your powerful right hand. You were once an emperor’s son-in-law, now, in turn, you will be an emperor’s father-in-law. What madness will jealousy have now? Or what pretext will be furnished to envy? Stilicho is both the father-in-law and the father.

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2. [A description of the Smyrna harbor.] Smyrna (modern Izmir, Turkey) was an important port in antiquity. The city stretched out to meet our gaze before the tranquil sea conceals the mountain peaks. Headlands shield the port and keep the North Winds from the peaceful waves. Here a girdle of land shuts in the sea, disarms it, and teaches it to observe a tranquil rest. 3. [To Aeternalis.] Aeternalis (PLRE 2.18) was proconsul of Asia in 396. Whatever Apollo breathes from Castalia’s spring, whatever his tripod bellows from its prophetic cave— 356

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these are poems. But the Muses deny me ordinary speech. I speak poems only. That’s how my Apollo fills me. 4. [A description of a herd.] Claudian assembles a poetic herd from various mythological bulls. For Geryon, see the Glossary. For the Clitumnus River, see Honorius’s Sixth Consulship 506. Jupiter transformed himself into a bull when he abducted the princess Europa and carried her from Phoenicia to his childhood home in Crete. A bull impregnated the Cretan queen Pasiphaë, who gave birth to the Minotaur, a creature with a man’s body and a bull’s head. The land once under three-bodied Geryon’s sway didn’t bear such lovely herds. The Clitumnus’s currents don’t wash such bulls sacrificed in pious worship to Tarpeian Jupiter. No such bullock scattered the Phoenician sands when Jupiter carried Europa, the burden he desired. Not Crete, nor Knossos that knew the bull in love, nor Mount Ida ever pastured similar beasts. Even the Minotaur, who combined mismatched parts to make a monster, and whose strange face proved his mother’s crime— that Cretan boy couldn’t have shown such beauty even if his wild limbs had reproduced his father’s. 5. [A sight of a far off place.] There is a secluded place far off in a huge bay, where an island compels the gentle currents to subside. Its long flank stretches out, and through the broken waves, steep headlands curve into a peaceful port. 6. [Anger makes a weapon for the person who looks for one.] Madness changes whatever’s at hand into a weapon. Everything can arm insanity, everything can fly like a steel spear, when a fierce hand rages in bloodshed. Anger makes whatever he’s carrying into a missile. 7. [A marble statue of a chariot.] Who made these countless figures from a single marble block? The chariot rises into the charioteer; similar bridles restrain 357

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the like-minded horses. Their shapes may be different, but they’re made from the same material with no distinction. The driver flows into his chariot, the horses grow out of the axle, each proceeding from the other. How great the sculptor’s power! A single stone conjoins so many limbs. Guided by art, a marble mountain submits to the chisel and transforms into varied shapes.

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8. [Polycaste and Perdiccas, or Perdix.] Claudian’s poem describes an unknown mother who feels erotic passion for her own infant son. The title is likely inauthentic; Fulgentius Mythologies 3.2 mentions a Perdix who fell in love with his mother Polycaste. Is there anything cruel Love’s divine fires won’t force people to do? A mother’s afraid to love her own blood’s child.1 An anxious nurse, she holds the wretched boy to her snowy breast, already nurturing forbidden desire, though she’s his mother. Put down your avenging bow at last, Cupid: go ask Venus: perhaps she’s feeling the same grief.

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9. [The porcupine.] Several of the shorter poems concern unusual but real animals, such as the lobster (Poem 24) and the electric eel (Poem 49). The Stymphalus swamp in Arcadia, Greece, was associated with the myth of Hercules’s Labors. He killed mythical birds that shot steel feathers to wound their enemies. The Parthian archer cavalry would pretend to retreat and then wheel to shoot at the pursuing enemy, often to overwhelming effect. Cretan archers were famous in antiquity for their accuracy as sharpshooters. I’d heard once that the famous Stymphalian birds scattered arrows and caused wounds as they flew. This myth of steel feathers long seemed unbelievable. Look! Here’s proof: the well-known porcupine corroborates the birds that Hercules killed. Its long snout resembles a pig’s. Rigid quills, similar to horns, stand on its forehead. Red fire blazes in its eyes. It has a puppy’s small feet under its bristling back. Yet Nature thought it proper to have remarkable defenses

1 Reading affectum with Charlet. Hall reads affectu, “with blood’s affection.”

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protect this little beast. A menacing forest rises all over its body; bristling spears, a colorful crop, sprout up for battle. The quills spring up from white roots fixed in the porcupine’s tenacious hide, dark bands alternating with varied shades, and they grow out shaped like solid feathers. Gradually they narrow and stretch smoothly to a sharp point. But the porcupine’s armaments don’t stay fixed like the forest hedgehog’s. It attacks of its own accord, repeatedly hurling quills, and protects its limbs at a safe distance. Its homegrown missiles shake free from its back and fly whizzing through the air. Sometimes it wounds its pursuer by running away like the Parthians. Other times, as if arraying its army in order, it strikes with a dense wave of these terrifying darts, and arms its shoulders with its own blood’s missiles. The beast’s whole body fights, and its shaking back resounds raucously. You’d think that trumpets fired up armies, and their battle standards came together and clashed: such a great noise rages in a narrow space. The porcupine adds cunning to its fighting, and fear keeps it thrifty. Anger never wastes its missiles; it’s content to threaten cautiously, and it never spends a quill except to save its life. It doesn’t miss; skill guarantees a sure hit, and distance doesn’t affect its reckoning. It shifts its hide to keep its aim true and practiced effort guides the missile’s thrust. Do people’s planning and wise effort achieve so much? People rip the horns from fierce Cretan goats, then force them to soften on the fire. They string bows with cattle guts, and fit feathers on their arrows, as iron arms the shaft. Look! This little beast arms itself with its own weapons, and doesn’t look for outside help. It carries everything, using itself as its own quiver, bow, and arrow. One animal possesses all of war’s crafts. But if all our lives’ activities developed little by little from examples, then I think here’s where we found our missiles that seek 359

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their enemy far off. Here’s where the Cretans derived their method of fighting, where the Parthians learned to shoot while retreating, both following the model of an animal bearing arrows. 10. [A beaver hide coat.] Line 2 makes a pun on “beaver” (castor) and the typical Roman oath by the god Castor (see Glossary). The speaker expresses frustration at having paid too much for the worthless coat. All that’s left of it’s an old name’s shadow! I can’t call it a beaver coat, even if Beaver swore to it. I paid six gold coins for it! Now you can know what it’s like. If you don’t trust me, believe the price at least. 11. [A beautiful woman’s tomb.] The Fates’ law doesn’t let beauty last long. The great suddenly collapse; the noblest abruptly fall. Here lies a beautiful woman, her figure like Venus, whose outstanding beauty earned her envy. 12. [Quintius’s Baths.] Quintius, also called Quintilianus in some manuscripts, is otherwise unknown to us. Rest awhile, traveler, in these clear waters, then take your way again refreshed. As his guest, you’ll marvel much at the water’s master, who put these baths along this hard road. 13. [Against a gout patient who said that his poems don’t “stand.”] Claudian makes a traditional pun on the rhythmic feet that compose a line of poetry and the disease podagra, gout of the foot. “Climbing”, “limping”, “nodding”, and “standing” are all evaluative terms that describe a line’s rhythm. What business do you have with feet? Why blame my poems? You don’t know how to climb, but you attack my little verses? “This verse limps”, you say, “this syllable nods.” But you don’t think anything can stand—since you suffer from gout. 14. [To Maximus.] Maximus is a common name; we cannot identify this individual. 360

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You always send me sweet gifts, Maximus. And whatever you send me, it’s right to think it’s honey. 15–16. [The penniless lover.] Harsh poverty and dire Cupid are conquering me. Hunger’s tolerable, love isn’t. * I’m hungry and broke, and Love’s arrows are burning me up. Between the two evils, I’ll choose poverty. 17. [On the dutiful brothers and their statues.] The mythical brothers Amphinomus and Anapis risked their lives to rescue their parents from an eruption of Mount Aetna in Sicily, and they became a traditional example of filial devotion. As with the charioteer poem (Poem 7), Claudian describes their statues in detail. The final passages compare the brothers to other mythical examples of familial loyalty: the exemplary brothers Castor and Pollux who shared their immortality by spending alternate days alive and dead; Aeneas who rescued his father from burning Troy; and Cleobis and Biton who harnessed themselves to their mother’s cart. See the brothers sweating under their parents’ revered weight! They deserve worship with divine honors forever. The consuming fire yielded to them out of due respect, and Mount Aetna marveled and pushed back its roaming flames. They seize their parents and hoist them on their shoulders, then raise their faces and hurry away. Carried high on their two sons’ backs, the elderly parents clasp their children tight, tenderly delaying. Don’t you see how the old man points to the fierce flames, how the mother’s fearful mouth calls on the gods? Fear raises their hair, and shivering pervades the whole mass of metal. The astonished bronze has turned pale. You can see resolute horror in the young men’s bodies: they’re frightened for their passengers and care nothing for themselves. The wind throws back their cloaks. One has raised his right hand, as his left is strong enough to carry his father. But his brother does a more careful job for his weaker mother by clasping both elbows together in a knot. 361

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As you pass by the sculpture, don’t overlook what the sculptor’s silent hands have well deserved: for he shaped the brothers with the same appearance, yet one looks more like his mother, the other his father. Artistic skill characterizes different ages: each child’s face reflects one or the other parent. And the craftsman has varied the affection in their faces, creating new distinctions between similar brothers.

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O how well you remembered a child’s nature, you paragons of divine justice, gods among youth, every aged parent’s wish! You spurned your wealth and rushed right into the middle of the flames, to take away nothing but your parents’ revered white hair. 30 I think it well deserved that such courage halted the fires and shoved them back in Enceladus’s throat. Vulcan fire god himself held back overflowing Mount Aetna, so it wouldn’t harm these models of filial duty. The elements 35 sensed their loyalty: Air was on hand for the boys’ father,2 and caring Earth helped carry the mother’s weight. But if their famous love lifted Castor and Pollux to the skies, and Aeneas rescued his father from burning Troy, if ancient glory ennobled Cleobis and Biton, the Argive brothers, who harnessed their own necks to their mother’s cart: 40 why didn’t Sicily dedicate a temple for all eternity in honor of Amphinomus and of you, my brave Anapis? Though Sicily may have offered many examples of the highest praise, it should know it’s never birthed a greater one. It shouldn’t grieve the wandering flames’ destruction, 45 nor weep for the dwellings that the furious fires razed. Filial duty couldn’t have been tested without a fire: the mighty disaster gained them eternal glory. 18. [Gallic mules.] See the torrential Rhône River’s obedient children, who are yoked on command and wander on command. How variously they turn their way according to their master’s different calls, and they follow a sure path as his voice guides them. 2 Reading patri; Charlet reads pater, “Father Air.”

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Each one runs its own course without any reins, and their liberated necks remain free from the hard yoke, Yet they obey as if they were bridled, enduring their labors, and their docile ears take in their driver’s foreign calls. Their distant master’s far-off orders command them, and a man’s tongue leads them instead of reins. From a distance he can collect them, or disperse them once gathered. He stops them from running, or orders them to hurry up. Does he order “Left!”? They take a path toward the left. Does he change his tune? They head toward the right. They’re not chained slaves, nor headstrong in their freedom: they’re free of restraints, yet under his control. In an equal agreement, tawny hides bristling, they cooperatively drag along the noisy carts. Do you wonder at Orpheus whose voice tamed wild beasts, when Gallic words direct submissive animals?

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19. [A letter to Gennadius, the former proconsul.] Gennadius Torquatus (PLRE 2.1124) was proconsul of Achaea and imperial prefect of Egypt in 396. Claudian praises his eloquence as second after Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 BCE), viewed in the Roman Empire as the greatest orator of all time. All Italy’s renown, dwelling by the lovely Rubicon River, second glory of the Roman Forum, Greece’s inhabitants know you, as does my Nile: both peoples fear and love your fasces. Are you asking for poems to soothe your hungry throat? I swear by our friendship that I have no poems at home. For soon they trust in their own wings and leave the nest behind, rejecting their home and flying off, never to return.

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20. [An old man of Verona.] He’s a fortunate man who has passed his life in his ancestral fields; the same home saw him as boy and old man. Leaning on his stick, he walks over the same sand where he once crawled, and numbers his long years in a single house. Fortune didn’t drag him through a variety of upheavals, and he wasn’t a stranger on the move, drinking from strange rivers. 363

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He didn’t fear the ocean as a merchant, nor the war trumpet as a soldier, nor did he endure the noisy Forum’s lawsuits. He was untrained in other matters, unaware of the nearby town, but enjoyed his freer view of the sky. He counted years by the alternating harvests, not the consuls: his fruits marked the autumn, his flowers the spring. The same fields see the sun rise and set, and the peasant measures the day by his own sun’s path. He remembers the mighty oak when it was a little acorn, and sees that the grove has grown old along with him. For him, nearby Verona is further than dark India; he thinks Lake Garda far off as the Indian Ocean. Yet his strength remains unconquered, and the third generation sees a muscular grandfather with strong arms. Let others wander and explore the far off Caucasus: they have more of a journey, but he has more of a life.

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21. [Manlius Theodorus and Hadrianus.] For Manlius Theodorus, see Manlius Theodorus’s Consulship. Hadrianus (PLRE 1.406 Hadrianus 2) was Count of the Sacred Largesses at the Constantinople court from 395 and Master of Offices from 397. Manlius Theodorus lazes in sleep, both day and night. Hadrianus, the sleepless Egyptian, steals everything sacred and profane. People of Italy, ask for this in all your prayers: Manlius, wake up! Egyptian, go to sleep! 22. [Apology to Hadrianus.] An apology for the insult of the previous poem. Lines 55–58 suggest that Hadrianus, like Claudian, may have come from Alexandria. Claudian references mythical and historical stories of forgiveness to dramatize his plea. Achilles first dragged Hector’s corpse behind his chariot, then ransomed it to Hector’s father Priam. Orestes killed his mother Clytemnestra to avenge her murder of his father Agamemnon; the god Apollo purified him for his crime of matricide. Hercules sacked Troy in the generation before the Trojan war. Alexander defeated the Persian King Darius III at the battle of Gaugamela in 331 BCE. The king’s relative Artaxerxes V assassinated the king the following year. For Porus, see Glossary. Alexander also founded the city of Alexandria, and his general Ptolemy established the Macedonian dynasty in Egypt. Claudian 364

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accordingly refers to “our homeland” at the end of the poem in speaking to a fellow Egyptian. How far will your anger’s assault extend? Will my tears have no end? Does your favor change into sudden hatred? Where’s your mind that doesn’t know how to do harm, where’s your sense of duty gone? Will your hatred have such scope? Will hostile rumors have such power? Incautious anger drew me on, as did unstable youth; arrogance3 pushed me forward, just as passion led me astray: yet it isn’t proper for you to attack me with the same weapons. People’s quarrels never touch the gods, nor do their random reproaches break through heaven’s serenity. My punishment has gone beyond the norm: spare a man when he’s down. Look, here I am: I confess my crimes and I’m begging you for mercy. Savage Achilles forgave Hector’s corpse, Orestes placated his mother’s avenging Furies, Hercules returned to Priam the city he’d captured. Kings’ downfalls affected young Alexander the Great: they say he wept when a slave killed Darius, and he built him a massive tomb to console him in death. Alexander handed a bigger Indian kingdom back to King Porus, his captive. He was our homeland’s founder; that’s how he spared his enemies. It suits your virtue to emulate his example. If there’s some god I’ve harmed, let him assault my neck and feed his fury.

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All my favor has flowed away, and funereal poverty follows after me. My house has emptied out, and I’ve been stripped of my dear friends. One man dies under torture, another’s chased into exile from every side. 25 What’s left for me to lose? What savage dangers remain? The power to seize and kill makes anger gentle. Wild beasts pass over defeated animals, and fierce lions burn to lay their victims low, yet abandon their prostrate prey. Only a fighting bull’s nobler neck gratifies their hunger.4

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Envy has cut down my nascent wishes, piled on grief and ruined my joys. Be at peace and look at me now, abased and exhausted by punishment. Why do you think a client5 like me worth such effort? Wind god Aeolus never tests himself on shallow waves, and low hills don’t endure the North Wind’s striving. It shakes the Alps instead and wearies Rhodope’s summits. Heavenly fire never settles on willow trees, nor do small shrubs earn Thundering Jupiter’s anger. His lightning strikes mighty oaks and ancient ash trees.

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I’ll give you this poem instead of the suppliant’s branch from Minerva’s olive tree, instead of incense. Pity your clients! Alas! Return me, I beg you, to the life I had, heal my severe wounds, order my livelihood and reputation to be restored. My circumstances collapsed thanks to you, and thanks to you they may rise once more. 45 Achilles’s magical herbs let Telephus go home cured. He’d withstood the man’s strength, and he felt the same man’s hand as deadly and gentle. Medicine came to him through his enemy. Achilles banished the very same sufferings he’d inflicted.6 But if neither my prayers, nor all my tears, can sway you, 50 tread on my Muses, seize my office, my fruitless insignia, and expel me, your former comrade, from your fellowship. A triumph over a poor poet must certainly be outstanding— no doubt you’ll be arrayed as a conqueror with outstanding spoils! My fellow countryman’s power should savage the wretched citizens, 55 the land we share in common should hear of this, as well as the Pharos lighthouse that ships far and wide know. Let the Nile lift its weeping face from its channel, and mourn my downfall across its many banks.

5 Claudian points out the significant power differential between himself and the powerful courtier Hadrianus. 6 As they made their way to Troy at the beginning of the Trojan war, the Greeks attacked Mysia. Achilles wounded Telephus, the region’s king, in the thigh. Apollo’s oracle later ordered Telephus to ask Achilles to heal him. In some versions of the story, Achilles used rust from his spear.

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23. [Apology to Alethius, the quaestor.] Alethius (PLRE 1.39, Alethius 1) was a Quaestor of the Sacred Palace, one of the emperor’s legal advisors responsible for answering petitions and drafting laws. I wouldn’t cross Ethiopia’s fields in summer, nor endure a winter exposed to the northern sky. I wouldn’t trust swollen sails to the Ionian Sea when the Kids constellation has brought a rainy night. So may the Furies’ hellish whips not drive me to re-read an angry schoolteacher’s poems! No petulant chutzpah deranged my senses, and my tongue wasn’t any freer than the norm. I confess I criticized some little verses; my tone wasn’t careful. Alas, wretched me! I didn’t realize how serious my crime was. Others freely attack the Orphic books, and Virgil’s fame doesn’t keep him safe. Even Homer, father of poets, Mount Helicon’s prince, took heavy fire from the critics’ judgment.7 But Virgil wouldn’t launch an accusation, nor would Homer, as neither held the rank of quaestor and both were poor. Look, I’m clapping! Look, pale with terror, I’m praising everything, and I loudly repeat three and four times “It’s brilliant!” Alethius should become gentle, forgive me at last, stop all his huffing, and safely recite what he wants. It’s all good to me.

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24. [The lobster.] Horns bristle atop his head, fierce eyes rise up from the middle, and a covering he grew himself hardens on his back. Nature has armed his skin, and his scarlet prickles with their little points have sharpened many [red . . .].8 25. Epithalamium of Palladius and Celerina. We do not know when the marriage of Palladius and Celerina took place; scholars have proposed dates between 398 and 403. Palladius was a tribune and notary, the same rank that 7 Homer, Virgil, and the mythical Orpheus were regarded as three of the greatest poets of antiquity. 8 Though Charlet defends the transmitted text, editors have suspected it, as it repeats words for “red” twice in two lines. Among the numerous proposed solutions, Gervais commends Bonnet’s suggestion tumores: “have sharpened many bumps.”

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Claudian had achieved by 400, and would become consul in 416. Claudian embeds praise of his friend in a mythological narrative. The wedding celebration rouses Venus from a nap (1–27). She goes to find Hymen, god of marriage, and turns him from playing pastoral songs to uniting the couple (28–98). Hymen praises the couple’s parents. Palladius’s father, also named Palladius, was imperial prefect of Egypt in 382 and eventually became city prefect at Constantinople (64–68). When introducing the bride Celerina, Claudian recalls one of her distant ancestors, as well as her father, head of the notaries (72–91).9 Stilicho’s endorsement (93), however, represents Claudian’s most significant praise. The gods then travel to the marriage chamber. Venus joins the couple’s right hands, a gesture often shown in visual representations of Roman marriages, and instructs them to live harmoniously.

Preface Though it’s a rush job, I wouldn’t deny a marriage poem to the bridegroom—and I couldn’t say no to his father-in-law. Palladius is my peer, Celerinus my superior. One shares my rank at court, the other shines far above us. Palladius and I are the same age, and we share our pursuits. Celerinus’s age and office set him before me. Affection demands a poem for the bridegroom, respect for the father-in-law: it’s a poet’s duty, a soldier’s obedience to commands.

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Epithalamium Venus withdrew one day into the bosom of a cave overgrown with vines, seeking to nap in its pleasant chill. She’d spread her heavenly limbs on the thick grass, reclining on a pile of flowers. Dark vine shoots unfurled and aired out grapes dripping must. Sleep enhanced her unmade face, she shunned a blanket in the summer heat, and her bare breasts shone through the leaves. Her Idalian attendants lay nearby, and the three Graces, twined together, slept under a huge oak tree.

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9 For Palladius, see PLRE 2.819, Palladius 2; for Celerina, see PLRE 2.278; for Palladius’s father, see PLRE 1.660–1, Palladius 14; for Celerina’s father, see PLRE 1.1011, Anonymus 34.

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Winged Cupids lay scattered about them, wherever the shade lured them. Their bows swayed, and their quivers hung from nearby branches, breathing out gentle flame. Some remained awake, and played or wandered through the brush, looking for birds’ nests or happily picking dewy apples, Venus’s gifts. They crept along the twisting vines and hovered on their wings at the elm-trees’ tops. Others guarded the wood and drove back the bold Dryads who longed to gawk at them, along with the country spirits and the woodland gods. They aimed fiery arrows at the lustful Fauns, who peeped at the cave from far off. Then suddenly there came varied shouts from the nearby city, and young peoples’ lucky applause. Throughout the fields, they heard lyre music accompanying the dances. Across all Italy’s mountains, they sang of Celerina, and every field echoed her husband’s name, Palladius. The lovely sound came to the goddess Venus’s ears. She sat up, awakened by the noise. Her shining thumb scrubbed the remaining sleep from her eyes. Then she rose from her soft bed, just as she was, hair scattered, breasts uncovered, and looked for marriage god Hymen, amid her retinue, the countless Loves. Venus, goddess of Cythera, chose to set Hymen, the Muse’s son, as ruler over the marriage chamber. It’s not lawful to conjoin bedrooms without him, nor to lift the first wedding torch.

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Venus caught sight of Hymen at last. He was sprawled under a tall plane tree, binding disparate reeds together with wax. 35 He was trying out Mount Maenalus’s rhythms and shepherds’ songs, practicing them on his lips. As his mouth ran through the music, he changed his varied breaths on the slender reeds. He stopped playing as he saw Venus. The pipe fell silently to the ground as his fingers loosened. 40 Hymen’s eyes sparkled sweetly. Both the sun and his blushing modesty had tinged his snowy cheeks with fire. His untrimmed hair covered his cheeks’ scanty shadow of peach fuzz. Venus called to him as he remained silent: “Boy, won’t you ever lay aside those songs

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you love? Don’t your mother’s gifts ever satisfy you? 45 You’re dedicated to the Muses’ pursuits, too much your mother’s rival. Why are you practicing by yourself amid the heat? Does the lyre already seem wretched to you? Are Lycaeus’s woods dear to your heart now and cattle herds and echoes resounding from the cliffs? Come here now and tell me the reason for such celebration. 50 For whose marriage is this renowned procession ringing out, what new bride is being dowered? Tell me their hometowns and families, what lands raised them, from whose seed they descend. You can’t be unaware, no marriage eludes you, and newlyweds enjoy their wedding nights by your arrangement.” 55 Hymen replied: “Goddess, I’ve been surprised that you’ve delayed so long, still uninvolved in such a marriage. They’ve no low birth, these people entrusted to you. Two houses have come together, famed for their consuls, founded on the laws’ summit, their blood the most distinguished in the world. 60 What island in the Red Sea’s barking waves, what Ethiopian backwater, what region hides away, sheltered from this news? Where hasn’t the fortunate account reached: our love for Palladius’s father, his mind’s kindly moderation, his learned wit and his pleasant old age? 65 He’s climbed every rung, held every position at court, and occupied the highest office’s summit. He rules the Eastern senate under stable laws. That’s his son the bridegroom’s fame. Ancient Tomis10 on the Danube was the bride Celerina’s cradle. Her mother’s side exults in warrior nobility 70 and ancestors’ victories and spoils. The family derives immense glory from an earlier Celerinus’s bravery. When he was ordered once to defend Meroë and the Nile, his soldiers offered him the throne, after Carus’s death by thunderbolt in Parthia.11 They wanted to set Celerinus at the head of the state, 75 10 Modern Constanța, Romania. 11 The interpretation of this obscure passage hinges on the word at the end of line 74. Heinsius conjectured Cari, referring to the emperor Carus, who died when struck by lightning on campaign in Parthia in 283 CE (Historia Augusta, Carus 8). Charlet retains the manuscript reading caro, which would mean “dear to [the soldiers],” and sees a pun on Carus’s name. Reconstructions based on line 73 have made this older Celerinus prefect of Egypt for that

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but he scorned their cheers and preferred retirement to rule. They offered him what other men tend to seek by force of arms, by violence, setting aside their duty—and he rejected it. Then for the first time, imperial purple was a lesser matter than virtue, and the throne on offer deserved refusal. Fortune mourned as she confessed she was beneath 80 this man. Being presented with power proves a man is great: rejecting it proves he’s greater still. Celerina’s father has taken up the full set of commander’s titles. Step by step, he’s been carried on high, as head of the notaries; no other duty’s more illustrious. He assigns the lists for every magistrate’s office, calculates our subject kingdoms’ forces, and brings together as one the empire’s scattered strength. He reviews the disposed formations: which garrison the Don’s banks, which block the savage Goths, which legions restrain the Saxons or the Scots, how many cohorts surround the Ocean, how many soldiers pacify the Rhine. Celerina’s house is pure, its loyalty sincere, and it’s smart and hardworking. Stilicho has chosen her; no further praise or judgement can be added. When a bride like this marries, isn’t it wrong not to be there, Venus? Come on and lead everyone there, right away. I want to shake drooping wreaths, brandish torches, and spend the night in play. Now my pipe will also offer no trivial service in responding to the chorus.” Hymen had hardly finished, as Venus washed in the cold spring, arranged her hair, and adorned her beautiful body. She took from the clothes press amazing garments woven by her mother Dione. Flowers were heaped on her chariot, its yoke breathed flowers, and flower reins held back her purple doves. From all directions, birds flocked together, those whose song calms the roaring

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same year (PLRE 1.190); we have no other evidence, however, for this man or for the troops’ acclamation.

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Adige River, whom Lake Como hears, whom Lake Garda nurtures, whom the Mincio’s quiet stream receives. Its current has fallen silent now the birds’ calls are gone. The departing swans laid bare the Po’s banks and Padusa’s resonant marshes.12 As the fierce Loves rejoice, the harnessed birds carried them through the clouds. Each one displayed himself to Venus as they clashed in a mighty uproar. They bent and stretched forward to strike, but toppled out unharmed, then flew better in pursuit, and the charioteer outraced his own swan chariot.

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As they reached the marriage chamber’s doors, they overturned their baskets brimming red with spring flowers, and scattered great floods of roses and violets from their full quivers. They’d collected these flowers on Venus’s meadows. The Dog Star had spared the tender blossoms and nurtured them in kindly weather. 120 Other Cupids poured balsam from gem-encrusted jugs all over the palace. When a sharp fingernail wounds this Nile tree, its bark sweats this rich resin.13 Venus approached the bride, and drew her, still weeping, from her mother’s chaste lap. Celerina’s maidenhood was swelling ripe, her skin was paler than lilies or the snow, and her blonde hair proved the Danube was her homeland. Then Venus took the husband’s right hand and placed it in his wife’s, and sanctified the marriage with these words: “Live harmoniously and learn my duties. May your thousand kisses sound forth, your embraces bruise your arms, your lips conjoin your souls. Young man, don’t trust in violent courage; you’re not to master her through fear, but persuade her through your prayers. And you, Celerina, yield to your husband. Don’t choose to brandish dangerous nails and show Scythian anger. Permit yourself to be conquered, I beg you: that’s how you’ll be a wife and mother. Young lady, why are your eyes moistening? Trust me, you’ll soon love the man whom you now fear.”

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12 Padusa is the Po River’s delta. 13 Balsam, the aromatic resin collected from various species of tree, served as the foundation for many ancient perfumes and medicines.

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Thus Venus spoke, and summoned from her winged throng two Cupids whose hands excelled at the bows. Young Blaze and Fiery, their tawny feathers flecked with purple, jumped right out. One aimed arrows dipped in pure honey at the bride, the other at the groom. They drew back their twanging bows: the sure shots cut together through the air, and together the arrows stuck, fixed in the couple’s bones.

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26. [Aponus.] The ancient Fons Aponi is the modern Abano Terme on the eastern slope of the Colli Euganei, 10 km southwest of Padua, Italy. Two small thermal lakes, Lispida and Costa d’Arquà, remain today (Ricci 2001: 134). In the following century, Cassiodorus (c. 490–c. 585) wrote a letter on behalf of the Ostrogothic king Theoderic, ordering the court architect to restore the baths; see Variae 2.39. This is the first of a cycle of four descriptive poems (ekphrases) on wonders both real and mythical, including the Phoenix (Poem 27), the Nile River (28), and the magnet (29). Throughout this series, Claudian delights in paradox, focusing in this poem on the proximity of the opposites fire and water in the thermal spring.14 The narrator opens the poem by addressing the spring. He cannot remain silent when its miraculous waters have elicited such responses from the people. As at many other ancient healing shrines, there are graffiti attesting to the spring’s healing powers (1–10). A description of the site follows (11–26), moving from the surroundings to focus on the lake itself and the paths taken by its waters (27–66). The narrator attributes the spring’s powers to the gods and hails the farmers who are lucky to have it nearby to cure their ailments (67–100). Aponus spring, you offer life to Padua, Antenor’s city, your nearby waters thrust back harmful fates, and your miracles grant speech even to the mute. The people’s honor for you dictates songs, and there’s no hand whose thumb hasn’t traced letters recalling and attesting to the prayers you fulfilled. Wouldn’t the Muses and the Nymphs both accuse me, if I was the only one who let you slip by unmentioned? How can it be right for a poet to laugh at this place and leave it behind, when it’s called forth so many peoples’ praise?

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14 For the role of paradox in this poem, see volume introduction, Section 1.5 “About This Translation.”

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Lower than a high hill, yet higher than the flat fields, a rise swells gently, its curve easily noticed, abounding with seething water. Wherever liquid drills through its caverns, opposing fire thrusts it back. The crumbling soil exhales, and water trapped under seething pumice pierces the cracks. The region is moist with flame, earth’s breast spews Vulcan’s fire, a sulfurous zone’s burning kingdom. Who wouldn’t think the land was sterile? Yet the smoking pastures grow green, and grass spreads thickly over the fire-hardened flint. Though heat melts the tough crags, the daring plants scorn the fires and flourish. Furthermore, the marble’s been cut into deep furrows, and long paths slice through the wounded rock. The story goes these indicate the track of Hercules’s plow, or else chance did a plowshare’s work. In the mountain’s middle, a blue lake stretches its enormous gulf, resembling an ocean burning far and wide. It’s spread over a huge space, but it’s even greater when it enters the deep and heads beneath the cliffs’ hidden emptiness. It’s thick with vapor all its own, and harmful to touch or drink, but its glassy waters are clear to the bottom. Nature took care that Aponus shouldn’t be totally hidden, and she let our gazes in where the heat forbids us to go. When the winds’ force scatters the turbid vapor, and calms the steaming water’s grey surface, then you’ll marvel at the entire valley’s limpid depths. Ancient lances,15 royal gifts, flash forth, and between them a varied gulf, darkened by black sand’s shadows, guides the waters headlong. Hidden recesses appear below which the black whirlpool fills as it leads to unseen chambers in the cave. At that time the mountain’s secrets lie open: curved into an arc, an overhanging border bounds the water’s surface. A living theater shapes the steam into a crown, and the ground floats lightly on a thin crust. It will never yield to the weight of people treading on it,

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15 Archaeological excavations have not found these lances. If they indeed existed, they may have been religious offerings, likely made in the pre-Roman period.

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and the faithful ruin sustains our fearful feet. You would think people’s hands made it: a smooth path circles the shore, thin but firm the whole way. Still water fills the lake to the same level as its banks, and hesitates to overflow its prescribed limit. The river rolls what does wash over down the sloping crag, and seeks the plain’s curving back. A low wall forms a natural channel to carry away water: from there it flows into open lead conduits. The white pipes, darkened by the water’s ash, rain down a foaming snow of salt. The conduits distribute bounty in several directions; each obeys the craftsman’s skill, twisting its flexible path wherever his hands ordered. They flow under conjoined bridges, rushing in their fervor, and their traveling fire warms the heated arches. The water collides within and forces out steaming vapor more fiercely amid the raucous stones’ roaring. Travelers exhausted from sweating head from here to the still pools, where time’s long passage has created pleasant chill. Hail, Aponus, noble bestower of healing waters, hail, great glory of Italian soil. You’re the public’s refuge from disease, the common aid of doctors, a divinity here at hand, an unpurchased salvation. Whether Hell’s rivers of fire burst their banks and rush here, and the Phlegethon River wanders into our world to heat it—or a cold river sinks into sulfur veins and, as the odor shows, catches fire as it flows on— or the mountain makes a judgment, weighing the flames against the water, and calls the elements to a truce, so that neither’s beaten and yields, but each one may endure the other’s force on equal terms. Whatever the reason, whatever origin sends it forth, it’s certain Aponus doesn’t flow without design.

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Who’d dare ascribe such merits to random chance? Who’d deny the creator gods ordained them?16 The universe’s father, whose stars measure out the ages, 16 See the opening of Rufinus Book 1 for a similar contrast between random chance and divine design.

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also set you to be worshipped among the foremost rites.17 He took pity on our bodies’ fragile condition, and ordered the earth to pour forth healing waters. The ridges loosened and streams darted out that could win mercy from the Fates’ severe distaffs. Fortunate farmers who deserve Aponus as their own, who possess this spring by right under their control! No earthborne plague infects them, nor the South Wind’s corrupting gusts, nor does the Dog Star’s savage fire harm them. Even if Lachesis the Fate condemns them with her lethal thread, here they seek more fortunate outcomes for themselves. If evil humors happen to swell up in their limbs, or excess toxins flourish in their sickly guts, they needn’t cut open their veins or cure wounds by wounding, nor drink medicines mixed from bitter herbs. These waters restore their lost vitality without harm, and soothe the sufferers’ pain as they take their ease.

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27. [The Phoenix.] The Phoenix was a mythical bird that lived in an imaginary paradise in the furthest East. When it grew old, it regenerated itself by burning itself on a pyre, and thus it could live forever. Ancient authors referenced it for two main purposes: as an allegory of regeneration and as an image of a distant paradise. Thus in Stilicho’s Consulship (2.408–423), Claudian presents an extended simile comparing the former consuls attending Stilicho’s inauguration to the birds attending the Phoenix’s rebirth. Furthermore, in his Letter to Serena (31.15–16), Claudian imagines the Phoenix bringing rare cinnamon from its distant land as a gift for Orpheus’s wedding. In this poem, he narrates the Phoenix’s rebirth without assigning it to a specific political context. The Phoenix lives in a grove where the sun’s heat and the ocean’s breezes nourish it instead of ordinary food (1–16). The narrator describes the bird’s extraordinary appearance and regenerative process (17–44). It calls on the Sun, who lights the funeral pyre with one of his divine rays (45–71). The reborn Phoenix then buries the ashes of its former self in Egyptian Heliopolis, or “Sun City” (72–100). The poem closes with praise of the immortal

17 Reading coli. Charlet reads poli, which would mean “has placed you among heaven’s foremost rites.”

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bird (101–110). The paradox central to this poem is that death is not an endpoint but a new beginning. A grove flourishes beyond India and the East Wind, surrounded by Ocean’s furthest waves. Dawn’s panting horses rouse it first; it hears the nearby whips when the dewy chariot resounds upon the moist threshold. The coming day reddens from this place. Dawn’s shining wheels blow upon far-off Night, who sheds her dark covering and grows pale. The Sun’s bird, the all-too-fortunate Phoenix, tends this domain, and the hostile environment alone defends it. It possesses a region untouched by wretched creatures, and doesn’t endure the human world’s contagion. This bird is the gods’ peer, its lifespan equals the stars’, and it wears out the ages, enduring as its limbs regenerate. Food doesn’t satisfy its hunger, nor do any waters keep the Phoenix from thirst. Rather, the sun’s purer heat nourishes it, and it tastes the ocean’s breezes for food: it harvests harmless vapor as its nourishment. Its eyes radiate mystic brilliance, and exalted fire wreathes its face. A star born on its gleaming head rises upon its crest, its serene light cutting through the shadows. Its legs are colored royal purple, and its wings, bordered in flourishing blue, enriched by scattered gold, fly faster than the West winds. The Phoenix wasn’t conceived, nor born from a seed; it’s its own uncreated son and father. A regenerative demise refreshes its worn-out limbs, and it seeks its next life through so many deaths. A thousand long summers turn their paths, and as many winters end, as many springs pass through their cycles, and return to the farmers the shade that autumn took from them. Then, at last, the sum of time overcomes the Phoenix, weighed down by many years. It totters like a tall pine tree on the Caucasus mountains, wearied by storms, whose collapsing weight threatens eventual ruin. Steady wind knocks down one part of the tree, rain eats up and breaks off another part, while destructive old age destroys a third. 377

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Now the Phoenix’s eyes contract and age’s slowing frost dulls their starry pupils. The Moon’s horns likewise waver and vanish when clouds surround it. The Phoenix’s wings once sliced through the middle of the clouds; now it can hardly lift them from the ground. Then it becomes aware of its declining age and readies itself to recall its body’s beginnings. It plucks dry herbs from the warm hills, and weaves the Sabaeans’ priceless incense fronds into a structure, building both its funeral pyre and its future birth. The Phoenix sits on the pyre and hails the Sun with its enticing call. As it weakens, it sings and prays in supplication, asking for fire to grant it new strength. When Sun god Phoebus sees it from far away, he holds back the reins, halting quickly, and consoles his dutiful offspring by saying:

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“You’re going to shed your old age on this pyre, and you’ll be born anew from this false sepulcher. You’re used to being reborn often through your destruction, rejuvenating yourself from your own death. Take up your beginning once more and leave behind your perishable body. Change your shape and go forth better.”

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Having spoken, the Sun quickly shook his head, tossing one of his golden rays to strike the eager Phoenix with rejuvenating brightness. For it’s burned up of its own accord so it may return. It rejoices to die and hurries toward its new beginning. The heavenly missile ignites the perfumed pyre and consumes the elderly Phoenix. The stunned Moon reins in her shining oxen and the heavens don’t speed along their sluggish axis. The pyre gives birth, and Nature labors diligently not to destroy the eternal bird. She calls upon the faithful flames to restore the world’s immortal glory.

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Straightaway strength rushes in and disperses throughout its limbs, and the rejuvenated blood heats up and inundates its veins. The ashes live on and begin to move, no one forcing them, and feathers clothe the newborn ash. What had once been the Phoenix’s father now jumps forth as its son and succeeds it anew. Only the fire’s small separation distinguishes the boundaries between two lives.

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to Egypt’s shores. Quickly it heads for the foreign land, carrying the funeral remains shut in a grassy covering. Countless birds accompany the Phoenix, and on high, an avian cohort crowds round it as it flies. A mighty army clouds out the sky far and wide along its varied path. Nor does any bird from so many thousands dare to encounter its leader, but they worship their fragrant monarch’s path. The fierce hawk doesn’t attack, nor does the eagle, Thundering Jupiter’s arms-bearer: they observe a public treaty from respect. The Parthian monarch likewise leads barbarian troops beside the Tigris River. He luxuriates in his jewels and rich clothing, and royal garlands ornament his head. His bridle is golden, and embroidery marks out his robes dyed in Assyrian purple. Swelled up with power, he exults among the servile troops under his lofty command. Heliopolis, a city celebrated throughout in Egypt, is famous for its peaceful sacrifices worshipping the Sun. A massive temple sits on a hundred columns quarried from the Thebaid’s mountains. It’s said the Phoenix customarily lays its ancestor’s gathered ashes there, and worships the Sun’s face as its master. And now it entrusts its burden to the fire, now it dedicates to the altars its generative seed and its remains. The temple’s threshold marvels and shines brightly as the altars breathe forth holy fumes. As far away as the Pelusiac swamps, Indian incense enters peoples’ nostrils, and its healthgiving essence fills them. Air sweeter than nectar steams across the dark Nile’s seven mouths. Fortunate Phoenix, heir to your own self! Death that destroys us all grants you strength. Your ashes provide your origin, and your old age passes away, but you don’t die. You’ve seen everything that has been, and witnessed all the ages cycle round. You know when the Ocean raised its waves and poured them across the inundated mountains, and what year got burned up when Phaethon lost control. But no disaster claimed you: as the lone survivor, you remained when the Earth was overcome. The Fates didn’t choose evil threads for you, and had no power to harm you. 379

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28. [The Nile River.] This poem describing the Nile River focuses on the paradox that Egypt is a desert region yet boasts great fertility thanks to the river’s regular inundation. The farmers rely on the Nile instead of rain (1–7). The Nile spreads throughout eastern Africa from an unknown source (8–23). Its floods come from waters collected from the rest of the world’s rivers (24–42). Though Egypt may have been Claudian’s homeland, he draws many of the claims presented in this poem from the Greco-Roman tradition of scientific writing about the Nile. See, for example, Seneca Natural Questions 4.1–2. How fortunate is the farmer whose plow slices Egypt’s soil! He doesn’t have to hope for clouds that bury the sky in darkness, nor call upon the winds to blow heavily with chilly rain, or the rainbow that shines with variegated light. Fertile Egypt has no clouds; it’s the only place to get water from clear skies. It doesn’t care about the sky, or need the wind: it’s happy with the waters which it draws overflowing from the Nile. The river flows swiftly from the middle of the south, where it endured the fiery zone under burning Cancer. The Nile runs from an unknown source into our world, spilling from a secret spring that always hides, though useless reason searches after it. No one’s managed to see its origin, and so it’s said that created without a witness it pours out waters that know an alien sky. And then the Nile’s wandering path spreads throughout all Libya, and it runs through Ethiopia’s thousand dark kingdoms, as it waters places eternally condemned to the sun’s heat. Thirsty peoples’ salvation, it wanders through Meroë and the fierce Blemmyae and black Syene. The Garamantians who ride unbridled drink the Nile, as do the Girraeans,18 tamers of wild animals, who dwell in vast caves under the cliffs. So too the peoples who gather ebony branches and ivory tusks, and those who arrange arrows to cover their hair. The Nile’s overflowing waves don’t have the same causes or timing as other rivers. It doesn’t flood because ice melts,

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18 Syene is modern Aswan, Egypt. Claudian lists various peoples of the Nile and North African regions.

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or because rain from the surrounding cliffs inundates it. The Nile holds to its banks when grim winter swells other rivers’ currents. But when their waters grow still and quiet, then the Nile floods; its rules are different. Indeed, Nature brings to the Nile whatever moisture the summer stole from all the other rivers, and calls water collected from the whole world together into a single river. When the Dog Star arms the sun to burn brighter, and its heat steals the moist dew and dries the aquifers, and heaven sweats under its powerful rays, then winter comes to the Nile, an opposite season from the world. It restores the usual water to the fainting farmers, and floods wider than the Aegean Sea, rougher than the deep Ionian sea, and unfolds itself all over the open plains. Every field is floating, and oars often sound on the plowed furrows. When a shepherd happens to lie down, to nap in the summer heat, he wakes to see his flocks swimming along with their stables.

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29. [The magnet.] A description of the magnet closes this short cycle of poems on marvels both real and mythical. The narrator seeks to understand the stone’s power among other interesting natural phenomena (1–9; compare the opening of Rufinus Book 1). The stone has an unimpressive appearance but extraordinary effect (9–21). The narrator next describes a temple containing an iron statue of Mars and a magnetic gem representing Venus. A priest brings the two together, symbolizing the attraction between the gods (22–50). The magnet’s power of attraction is an example of how Cupid controls the world (51–57). Whoever pursues the universe with diligent reason and seeks out the origins of things—why the moon suffers eclipses, what cause makes the sun grow pale, where comets come from, glowing with deadly hair, why the winds blow, what movements shake the fearful earth’s guts, what fissure produces lightning, why the clouds thunder, what light blossoms into rainbows— if their mind can seize on any truth, please can they aid my inquiry? There’s a stone called the magnet; it’s dark, dull, and plain. It doesn’t adorn kings’ coiffed hair, nor young women’s pale necks, 381

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nor does it shine on belts’ outstanding brooches. But if you look at this dark stone’s extraordinary miracles, then it outdoes lovely finery, or any jewels the Indians hunt amid the seaweed on the Red Sea’s eastern shores.

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The magnet gains its livelihood from iron and consumes its hardness; thanks to iron, it knows both nourishment and tasty feasts. It renews its own strength from this source. This rough food, poured through its limbs, preserves its secret power. The magnet dies in iron’s absence; grim hunger shrivels 20 its dying limbs, and thirst consumes its opened veins. Mars, whose bloody spear strikes cities, and Venus, who loosens human anxieties in relaxation, share a common shrine in a golden temple. There isn’t a single image for these gods, but Mars shines 25 in iron form, and a magnetic gem represents Venus. The priest, according to custom, celebrates their marriage. A torch leads out the choir; festive myrtle wreathes the threshold, roses are piled high on the couches, and purple wedding fabrics cover the marriage chamber. 30 Here a miracle occurs: of her own accord, Venus seizes her husband, and in imitation of their earlier union in heaven, clasps Mars’s breast and pants lustily. She holds his massive weight aloft and twines her arms around his helmet and entirely encircles him in lively embraces. 35 Her breath provokes him from far off, and his gem of a wife draws him to her with secret chains. Nature becomes their matron of honor, and her binding breath marries the iron to the magnet. The two gods are suddenly conjoined in secret. What heat infuses mutual unity into these twin metals? What harmony conjoins their hard natures? The magnet pants and burns; wounded by love, it senses friendly material, while the iron recognizes a gentle love. Venus is likewise used to restraining war’s horrifying king and her expression softens him, when he burns and rushes headlong for blood, and draws his sword to sharpen his anger. She runs up to his fierce horses all by herself, and relieves the swelling in his breast, and her fire balances out his angry heart. As tranquil peace enters his soul, he leaves off his hot warfare, and bends his tawny helmet to kiss her. 382

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Cupid, cruel boy, what power is off-limits for you? You master the mighty lightning and force the Thunder God to leave the sky and moo as a bull in the middle of the sea.19 Now you strike cold cliffs and bodies that lack living sense, now even rocks are your missiles’ victims. Its own desire leads on stone, your attraction holds iron fast, and love’s fire rules in hard marble.

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[For Shorter Poems 30 and 31, see In Praise of Serena and Letter to Serena.] 32. [The Savior.] Claudian was most likely not a Christian but could write verse for his Christian patrons. This poem may have been written for an Easter court ceremony. As with the preceding series of paradox poems, Claudian focuses on the paradoxes of Christ’s birth and resurrection. Christ, the world’s ruler, the returning ages’ founder, God the highest’s voice and thought, whom the Father gave forth from his deep mind and gave a share in his immense kingdom: you have overcome our human life’s sinful crimes. You let your divinity20 be clothed in bodily form, and spoke openly to the world and confessed yourself a man. You were enclosed in Mary’s womb soon after she saw the angel; her virginal belly swelled, and the virgin mother was astonished that a mystic birth was filling her body. She’d give birth to her originator; a mortal heart covered the heavens’ maker; the universe’s inventor became part of the human race, and the one who embraces the whole world’s extent hid inside a single bosom. He who cannot be contained in earth’s expanses, in the ocean waves, nor in heaven—he flowed into a tiny body’s limbs. Indeed, Christ, you endured a prisoner’s name and chains to rescue us from destruction, and through your own death put death to flight. Soon after, you rose into the heavenly sky, and sought God the Father, who rejoiced that you’d purified the world. Pray bless our emperor, so that often on this holiday he may celebrate in pure ritual the yearly Lenten fast.

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19 A reference to Jupiter’s rape of Europa; see Shorter Poems 4. 20 Reading Koch’s conjecture numen, reflecting the mystery of Christ’s Incarnation. Charlet reads mundum, which would mean “humanity.”

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33–39. [On an ice crystal.] Some manuscripts present the following seven short poems as a single work, others divide it into a series of epigrams. As often, Claudian’s goal is to present a paradox, here that the same structure contains both solid and liquid components. 33. This ice displays the signs of its former nature: it’s become part stone, while part has resisted freezing. Cunning winter played with it: it didn’t solidify completely and this gem swells all the prouder with living waters. 34. Waters that cover more water in a similar prison, you who are water now and were water before, what mind joined you together? What craft of cold made this extraordinary stone freeze and yet be wet? What shut-in heat protects this carefree liquid? What warm breeze melted the ice inside? A secret flux moves this gem: what kind of prison makes the frost harden or loosen? 35. The Alpine ice froze so hard the sun couldn’t conquer it, and the unusual freeze made it precious. But it couldn’t pretend to be a gem all the way through— revealing liquid remained in the middle. Yet its value increased: the liquid rock’s miracle grew, and the preserved water was worth all the more.

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36. See this extended vein, this shining fracture, whose path stretches right through the clear ice. The concealed water doesn’t feel the wind or cold but flows back and forth along its varied path. Winter doesn’t halt it, nor the burning Dog Star, nor does devouring length of time waste it away. 37. A stream is locked away from harm in this convex covering, a wandering spring shut in frozen waters. Don’t you see how the gem foams inside its own pools, and guides living liquid flowing through its gulfs? When the sun disturbs its hidden chill, its rays paint a moist rainbow as they collide. Amazing rock, amazing liquid! By rights, it outdoes streams and stones, because it flows and yet it’s still a rock. 384

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38. Kids love to touch this slippery crystal and turn the cold lump with their little fingers. They see water trapped in the clear rock, the only liquid which hard winter knew to spare. They put the dry sphere against their thirsty lips and plant pointless kisses on the waters they want.

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39. Don’t overlook this crystal sphere. It surpasses royal wonders, and it’s no worse than Red Sea pearls. It’s shapeless ice, an unformed rock, and its appearance has no charm, but it’s counted as one of the rarest riches. [For Shorter Poems 40 and 41, see Letters to Olybrius and Probinus.] 42. [The boar and the lion.] Hercules conquered both the Erymanthian boar and the Nemean lion as part of his mythical Labors. A fierce boar and a tawny lion matched their proud strength against one another. One’s bristles made him vicious, the other his mane. Mars praised the boar, Cybele the lion. Both ruled the mountains, and both had made Hercules sweat. 43–44. [Against Curetius.] We cannot identify Curetius. His father Uranius, or “Heavenly”, has such an appropriate name for an astrologer that we should assume the two are literary stereotypes. Claudian attacks his target with insults familiar from the invectives against Rufinus and Eutropius, though he uses cruder language than in those longer poems. Curetius’s father Uranius knew how to set false stars in a glass sphere. He’d often complain that Saturn was wandering, and he’d promise a favoring Jupiter for a few pennies. This father passed his lies down to his son Curetius, whose mouth is paying, a bit late, the penalty he owes. For he licks greedy whores’ disgusting slits, and he gulps down his entire estate at scandalous parties. And so the son’s tongue is refunding the same wealth that his father’s deceitful tongue gathered in. * If you’re looking to know all about your stars, Curetius, I’ll tell you even more certainly than your dad. 385

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Hostile Mars’s unkindness made you a madman, and a weak Mercury made you and the Muses strangers. You owe it to the Moon and Venus, female signs, that you suffer a shameful disease and your ass is already white. Saturn has trashed your wealth. I’m stuck, however, on this one point: what makes you lick pussy?

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45. [A shell.] Poems 45–48 celebrate luxury objects created by or associated with Stilicho’s wife Serena, the emperor Honorius’s adoptive halfsister and mother-in-law. The mythical winged horse Pegasus stamped his hoof on Mount Parnassus to create the Castalian spring, imagined to inspire poets. Nymph of Mount Helicon, bring your clear waters here; let them flow through this rich conch’s open circle. For the water that has washed learned Serena’s face will have divine powers beyond Pegasus’s Castalian spring. 46. [On a cloak and bridle.] In Homer’s Iliad (18.368–617), the goddess Thetis asks Vulcan to create magical armor to protect her son Achilles in combat. Diligent Thetis didn’t always seek to create for her beloved son the round shield that terrified the world, nor was she always approaching fire god Vulcan’s cave, begging him to make a crested helmet for Achilles. She also gave him gentle clothes and peacetime’s soft adornment. After the Trojan war ended, he would’ve shone in these, outstanding among the Greek leaders. Thetis used her own hands to weave cloaks from purple and gold, and reins to ennoble swift Xanthus and Balius, his horses. She took care to weigh them down with gemstones collected from the ocean.

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But your in-laws, most exalted emperor, compete to give you different presents. Stilicho gives you Mars’s gifts, from barbarian slaughter and triumphs over the Rhine. Serena is content to keep to a queen’s ways, and works her loom assiduously to give you clothing.

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47. [A gift horse.] O fortunate horse, you earned the right to wear our divine emperor’s reins and obey his holy bridle. Whether your mane plays with the wind on the Spanish plains, or Mount Argaeus’s snowmelt washes you as you swim in a cold Cappadocian valley, or at your usual rapid gallop, you skirt Thessaly’s fertile fields— take this royal gear and, cockily lifting your mane, cover its green emeralds with foam. Show off the gem-encrusted collar on your proud neck, and let noble purple swathe your gold-covered shoulders. A girdle that chaste Serena’s hands toiled over, flowers varying its colors, loops around your middle, decorated in the Persian style. Indeed she worked with a mother’s care, and didn’t think it beneath her to craft harness medallions to bring distinction to her son-in-law.

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48a. [Horse medallions sent by Serena.] Honored emperor, take your sister’s little gifts, which she made herself with her own hands. While your spirited horse wears golden medallions, while gems shine on his reins, encircle his belly with this belt. Whether the Armenian pastures nourish him, or the turbid Halys River washes him with Mount Argaeus’s snowmelt, his bloodstained mouth deserves to bite on green emeralds, and purple-dyed cloth should glow upon his back. How he lifts his shoulders, so aware of his beauty, and shakes his mane, tossing it over his proud neck! The gift may be small, but Serena’s affection enlarges it for her brothers: she even adorns their swift horses.

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48b. [A belt sent by Serena to the emperor Arcadius.] Woven with outstanding skill from shining thread, this belt binds the horse’s regal back. Honorius’s sister sent it from the Western world, an honor for her Eastern brother, a gift for her kindred blood. Swift Arion would want this belt for his flank, and Castor would want it to gird his own horse. 387

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49. [The electric eel.] This poem describes an unusual animal, similar to the earlier poems on the porcupine and lobster (9, 24). Who hasn’t heard of the terrible eel’s unmatched skill and the unique power that grants its name?21 It’s soft and moves slowly, swimming lazily, hardly denting the sand as it languidly creeps along. But Nature armed its flank with chill poison, and imbued its marrow with the cold it uses to freeze all living things. It carries its own winter in its innards. Its tricks help its own nature: aware of its gifts, it employs its cunning. It remains motionless, stretched out at length in the weeds, relying on its touch. Whoever the eel touches lies still. Then it rises up, happy in its victory, and feasts fiercely, without worry, on its prey’s living limbs. If it’s ever careless and bites on metal hidden in bait, and feels the curved hook rein it in, it doesn’t run away or try futile biting to tear it out. Instead it cunningly joins itself to the dark line, and though it’s caught, it remembers its power. From afar through the waters, it slowly pours the blast from its poisonous veins. The force travels through the line from the deep and leaves the waves behind to overcome the distant fisherman. A fearsome shock flashes forth from the lowest waves and follows its path up the hanging line. The mysterious cold crosses the fishing rod’s knots, binds the fisherman’s victorious hand, and makes the blood stand still. The fisherman tosses away his troublesome burden, his rebellious catch, and goes home disarmed, without his rod.

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50. [Against the cavalry commander Jacob.]22 This poem was likely written in the context of Alaric’s invasion, perhaps shortly before the battle of Pollentia (Easter 402); see Honorius’s Sixth Consulship. As Charlet observes, Claudian is not attacking Jacob for his Christianity, which would be impossible at Honorius’s Christian court, but for his reliance on prayer alone to end the military threat. The comparison of enemy defeat to the drowning of Pharaoh’s horses (Exodus 14) was common in Christian poetry 21 In Latin, torpedo, related to the word “torpor.” As ancient biologists did not understand electricity, they associated the eel’s shock with cold. 22 For Jacob’s career, see PLRE 2.581–2 and Woods 1991.

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and historiography in Claudian’s era; see e.g. Eusebius Ecclesiastical History 9.9. By Saint Paul’s ashes, by Saint Peter’s threshold, don’t attack my verses, Commander Jacob. So may Saint Thomas defend your breast in place of a shield, and Saint Bartholomew be your companion in battle. So with the saints’ aid, may the barbarians not invade from the Alps, and may Saint Susanna lend you her strength. So may whatever fierce invader crosses the cold Danube drown like Pharaoh’s swift horses. So may an avenging spear smite the Gothic troops as favoring Saint Thecla leads the Roman forces. So may your party guests die drinking and grant you a mighty triumph, and overturned barrels overcome your thirst. So may enemy blood never stain your right hand: don’t attack my verses, Commander Jacob.

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51. [Archimedes’s sphere.] The Syracusan philosopher Archimedes (c. 287–c. 212 BCE) made a mechanical model displaying the orbits of the sun, moon, and some of the planets; see Cicero, On the Republic 1.21–22. Salmoneus was a legendary king of Elis, Greece, who attempted to imitate Jupiter. Jupiter laughed when he saw heaven in a little glass, and made the following speech to the gods: “How far does the power of human thought extend? Now they mock my effort with a fragile globe? Look! Through his skill, old Syracusan Archimedes has transferred 5 rights over heaven and Nature’s arrangement and the gods’ laws. The force shut inside serves the various stars and thrusts the living structure along predetermined paths. An artificial Zodiac runs through its own year, and a simulated Moon returns at each month’s beginning. 10 Why should I wonder about criminal Salmoneus and his fake thunderbolt? We’ve found that a man’s ordinary hand is Nature’s rival.” 52. [A woolworker.] (fragment) We have no context for these fragmentary lines. A dirty cloak hangs from his shoulders in a knot . . . They exercise their horses and comb their manes . . . 389

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53. The Gigantomachy. Throughout his longer poems, Claudian uses the Gigantomachy as a metaphor for political conflict.23 This fragmentary poem narrates the outbreak and opening of the battle. Earth grows angry at the Olympian gods and commands her children to attack them (1–41). Iris gathers the gods and Jupiter exhorts them (42–59). The earth loses some of its characteristic features as they clash (60–65). The Giants throw mountains at the gods; Mars counterattacks and kills Pelorus and Mimas (66–91). Minerva turns three Giants to stone with her Gorgon aegis (91–112). Porphyrion tries to uproot Delos to throw at the gods; the island begs Apollo to protect his birthplace (109–128). Mother Earth once raged against the heavenly realms as she pitied the Titans’ unending misery. Giving birth to unspeakable horror, she filled all Tartarus with her monstrous brood. Such offspring swelled her with pride. She opened Phlegra and sent her enemy host against heaven. Clamor broke out. The Giants burst forth from Erebus,24 not even fully formed, yet readying their hands for war and provoking the gods. Their thundering footsteps whirled along their double course.25 The stars immediately turned pale, the Sun turned his rosy horses, and fear taught him to backtrack. The Bear’s stars that never sink headed for the Ocean; they learned to endure setting.26 Then eager Mother Earth encouraged her children for battle and said: “Young men, you’ll beat the gods! Whatever you see, you’ll gain by fighting. Victory brings you the world. At last Jupiter himself will feel my anger. He’ll know what Earth can do, if any strength can beat me, if Cybele made anything better. Why does no one respect Earth? Why am I always used to suffering bitter losses? What form of harm is missing? Here unfortunate Prometheus, nailed to a Scythian cliff, feeds the eagle from his living breast. There Atlas’s head holds up

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23 See the volume introduction, Section 1.2 “Mythology and Religion.” 24 Reading Hall’s conjecture Erebo; Charlet reads crebri, “crowd”, likely an eyeskip from line 2. 25 The Giants were typically represented in visual art as having serpent tails extending from human torsos. 26 See note to Proserpina 2.190.

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the sky’s fiery weight, and the harshest ice hardens on his white hair. What should I say about Tityos, whose guts grow back under the fierce vulture, as they struggle against severe punishment?27 But you are the army coming to avenge me at last! Free the Titans from their chains and defend your mother! Here are seas and mountains for you: don’t spare my limbs; I won’t refuse you any weapon to destroy Jupiter! Go, I beg you, overthrow heaven, raze the starry towers. Seize Jupiter’s thunderbolt and scepter, Typhoeus; let the sea obey Enceladus’s orders, and another guide the Dawn’s reins in place of the Sun. May Apollo’s Delphic laurel adorn you, Porphyrion, as you hold his temple at Cirrha.” As Earth’s counsels fooled their empty minds, the Giants thought they’d already conquered the gods and dragged Neptune in chains through the middle of the ocean. One thought to lay Mars low, another to tear out Apollo’s hair, a third promised himself Venus, hoped to marry Diana, and longed to rape chaste Minerva. Meanwhile, messenger Iris called the gods together, those who dwell in pools and rivers. Dead souls girded themselves to help. The shadowy gates didn’t keep Proserpina away. The king of the silent dead himself rode in Lethe’s chariot. Unfamiliar light amazed his frightened horses, who exhaled thick shadow from their dark blue nostrils as they rushed in fear. As when an enemy siege engine terrifies a city, and citizens run together from all directions to defend the citadel, likewise gods formed up in all kinds of troops and came to their father’s home. Then Jupiter spoke: “Army that will never die, offspring owed to heaven forever, unharmed by any fate, do you see how Earth conspires against our world with her new offspring,

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and has fearlessly given forth yet more births? So as many children as this mother has borne, let’s give her that many deaths. Let her live through the centuries with her unending grief, condemned to a number of tombs equal to those births.” And now the clouds’ trumpet resounded, and now Sky gave the signal to advance, as did Earth. Confused Nature feared once more for her master. The powerful mob disordered the world’s distinctions. Now islands left the sea, now cliffs hid from the ocean. How many shores were left bare! How many rivers changed their former banks!

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One Giant whirled Thracian Mount Oeta with his massive strength, another’s hands strained to brandish Pangaea’s cliffs, icy Mount Athos armed a third. Another moved to pick up Ossa, this one tore up Mount Rhodope along with the Hebrus River’s source,28 and split its united waters, while the Enipeus River rose 70 on a high crag and washed the Giants’ shoulders. Earth sunk down into the open fields, stripped of her mountains, scattered among her children. Horrifying crashing came from all directions as air divided the battle’s space. First Mars, no slouch, drove his Thracian horses into the terrifying battle line. He often uses these to harass the Gelonians or Goths. His golden shield burned brighter than fire, and shining crests rose up on his helmet. Then he attacked Pelorus, and pierced him with his sword, where the half-beast’s double snakes attached to his groin, twisting from his loins’ endpoint, and finished three lives29 with a single blow. Then he eagerly ran his chariot in triumph over the Giant’s dying limbs, and sprinkled lots of blood over the wheels.

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Mimas rushed to help his brother, and tore hot Lemnos from the foaming waves, along with Vulcan’s home. And he would’ve thrown it, if Mars’s spear hadn’t gashed his face and poured out his brain. Though all Mimas’s human parts died, his serpent lower half

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28 Reading fonte. Charlet reads ponte, “bridge.” 29 The Giant’s humanoid part and the two snakes.

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still lived. Even after death, his rebel part attacked his killer, roaring fiercely. Virgin Minerva leaped forth, displaying the flashing Gorgon on her chest. Satisfied with its appearance, she didn’t use her spear— looking at it once was enough. And first, at a distance, she turned raging Pallas30 into a stone statue. Far off he froze, though unwounded, in sudden knots, as he sensed himself stiffening at the deadly sight. And already he’d stood still, almost a stone. “What am I turning into?” he said. “What stone is creeping over my limbs? What sluggishness is binding me motionless, this marble curse?” Hardly had he said this, and he became entirely what he feared. As savage Damastor looked for his spear to drive the enemy away, he threw his brother’s rigid corpse instead of a cliff. Then indeed Echion marveled at his brother’s death: he wanted to assault his killer, not knowing who. And he looked at goddess Minerva, whom no one could look at twice. He lost his daring, earned his punishment, and learned in death that she was a goddess. But Pallaneus, crazy with anger, terrible as he held his gaze averted, advanced and stretched his hands out blindly for Minerva. The goddess struck him close up with her spear. Immediately the Gorgon’s cold stiffened his serpents, and throughout his single body, steel killed one part, looking killed the rest. Look! Porphyrion’s serpent coils slipped into the water, and the evil Giant tried to tear up frightened Delos, to hurl at the gods’ heaven. The Aegean Sea recoiled; Thetis fled her watery cave with her ancient father. Neptune’s palace, worshipped by the ocean’s servants, now stood deserted. The gentle Nymphs called out from Mount Cynthus’s peak, those who taught Apollo to hunt wandering beasts with his first arrows, who made weeping Latona’s

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30 Though Pallas is an alternative name for the goddess Minerva, it refers here to one of the Giants.

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first childbed. When giving birth to heavenly lights, she ornamented our world with her twin children.31 Terrified Delos begged its Apollo, asking for help: “If Latona whom you love so much poured you into my bosom, come to my aid, I’m begging you. Look how I’m once more shaken!”

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The unfinished poem breaks off here. 54. [Sweets.] (fragment) A wall of nectar enclosing sweet sands. * You have a sweet name; but if something sweet touches you, you’ll be sweet thereafter both in your mind and habits. 55. [The hippopotamus and crocodile.] The fertile Nile River nourishes both beasts: one whose bite devours, one whose mouth roars. 56. [The eagle.] This epigram describes a cameo depicting an eagle. Its surface curves into an eagle’s colored wings. Its flowery brilliance distinguishes it, a lifelike figure has been worked into it, and the gem mimics a bird’s flight without feathers. 57. [Isis’s ship.] This festival featuring Isis’s ship was celebrated on March 5th and marked the opening of the sailing season. Isis, you deign now to appear, abounding with new crops, nor do you need help to bring Ceres’s gifts of grain. For you are our goddess, and the god of silence himself doesn’t deny you: he knows who carries your sails. For Zephyr the West Wind and winged Mercury favor you—please don’t depart from our region!

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31 Latona’s children Apollo and Diana were associated with the Sun and Moon respectively.

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58. [A bath.] While we do not know the precise location of the baths described here, numerous Roman baths are attested on the Black Sea coast, e.g. at Varna and Constanta. If you want to gleam after a clear and limpid wash, enter the noble Pontic baths. Not even Alexander’s mother Olympias merited such a bath at sunset; not even Orata’s various outpourings,32 gushing through openings from its lowest depths with Syrian perfume, which always imparts a rosy flavor. This water plays gently around your thighs and calves and arms, and douses you like a rain shower. Splashing little by little toward your neck, its light smell and welcome aroma gently touch your nostrils. It has no awareness of artificial skill. Come here, Florens, and relax on a holiday. Banish your mind’s burdens and its dark cares, which [ruin] your forehead’s distinction . . .

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This fragmentary poem breaks off here. 59. [Venus.] Dawn and the Sun’s chariot had happened to make a noisy gust across her son Memnon’s noble marble statue,33 when I saw you arrive, my lovely Venus. You deigned to cross my threshold, your entrance welcome. You’d used roses and gentle perfume’s remarkable pleasures to make yourself enticing. Then came olive leaves and the laurel that overlooks no one. My reception room was in flower, and the plane trees pushed their roots across my threshold, and the wild strawberry came right up to the door. Fertile, abundant tree, imitating Mount Pindus’s miracle, which envy will never destroy, nor its own extreme age. All too charming Venus, you appeared to your humble poet, as you thought it was a crime not to listen to the Muses!

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32 Gaius Sergius Orata (c. 95 BCE) was credited with refinements in bath technology; see e.g. Valerius Maximus Memorable Deeds and Sayings 9.1.1; Pliny Natural History 9.168. 33 The “Colossus of Memnon”, which was reported to make a noise at dawn, stands in the Theban necropolis west of Luxor, Egypt. This enormous statue in fact represented the fourteenth century BCE Pharaoh Amenhotep III, but was misinterpreted by the Romans as representing the mythical hero Memnon, son of the Dawn.

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60. [Wax.] Flora was the Roman goddess of flowers and fertility. The speaker describes making wax statuettes for the Floralia, the goddess’s festival celebrated on April 28th. Flora is coming! “Who’s Flora?” A goddess. “Is she Latin?” I don’t think so. In the fields she’s called Chloris. The lamps are burning at night for her arrival, for she shines and illumines everything with her own light. We need waxy material from our friendly bees. I pray that Flora’s kind to my flowers and gardens, not so I can gather honey (I don’t like the stuff), but so that wax may turn white on Flora’s holiday.

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Acis. The modern Jaci river in Sicily. See Polyphemus. Adonis. A mythical young man once loved by the goddess Venus. When he died, she transformed his blood into the anemone flower. Aeëtes. See Argonauts. Aegaeon. One of the Giants who fought against Jupiter during the Gigantomachy. See Gigantomachy. Lucius Aemilius Paulus. (c. 228–160 BCE). A Roman general who defeated Perses of Macedon at Pydna in June 168 BCE, ending the Macedonian monarchy and bringing a massive amount of plunder into the Roman treasury. Aeolus. A god who imprisoned the winds in a mountain and let them loose at Jupiter’s command. Mount Aetna. The most active volcano in Europe, located in Sicily. Agave. See Pentheus. Alans. A people of the Eurasian Steppes whose migration put considerable pressure on the Eastern Roman Empire in late antiquity. Alamanni. A Germanic people residing south of the Main River and east of the Rhine. Alcestis. A mythical queen who agreed to die in place of her husband Admetus. Hercules rescued her from the Underworld. Alcyoneus. One of the Giants killed by Hercules during the Gigantomachy. See Gigantomachy. Allecto. One of the three Furies; the others are Megaera and Tisiphone. Alpheus. The largest river of the Peloponnese, which runs through Arcadia to the Ionian Sea. See Arethusa. Amphion. A mythical founder of Thebes, along with his brother Zethus. When he played his lyre, stones magically arranged themselves to build the city’s walls.

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Amphitrite. Wife of the sea god Neptune; sometimes a personification of the sea. Ancyra. Modern Ankara, the capital of Turkey, 450 km from Constantinople (modern Istanbul). It was a customary place for the Eastern court to take a summer vacation. Antaeus. One of Hercules’s mythical Labors was to kill the giant Antaeus, a son of the goddess Earth, who would regain his strength every time he fell to the ground. Antenor. A mythical refugee from Troy who was imagined to be the founder of Padua, Italy. Antiochus III the Great (c. 241–187 BCE). After his defeat at the battle of Magnesia in 190 BCE, Antiochus ceded his territory north and west of the Taurus mountain range to Rome. Apis. A sacred bull worshipped in Memphis, Egypt. Apennines. A mountain range branching from the Alps near Genoa into central Italy. Araxes. The modern Aras, Ras, or Yerash river, running between modern Turkey and Armenia. Arbogast. A Frankish general who declared the usurper Eugenius emperor in August 392. He committed suicide shortly after Theodosius defeated him at the battle of the Frigidus River in September 394. Arethusa. A water nymph associated with a spring on Ortygia near Syracuse. The Alpheus River was imagined to be in love with her. See Alpheus. Argaeus. The modern Mount Erciyes, a volcano in south central Turkey. Argonauts. Greek heroes led by Jason who sailed on the Argo to Colchis on the eastern end of the Black Sea to retrieve the Golden Fleece from King Aeëtes. Arion. The horse of the mythical king Adrastus of Argos. Arsacids. The Iranian royal dynasty, who ruled in Persia from c. 250 BCE to 428 CE. Athos. A mountain in northeastern Greece. Atlas. A mountain range near modern Morocco, named after the god who was imagined to hold the world on his shoulders. Atreus. See Thyestes. Atropos. See Fates. Lake Avernus. Modern Lago d’Averno, a volcanic crater west of Naples in south Italy, imagined to be an entrance to the Underworld. Bactria. A region between modern Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Baetis. The modern Guadalquivir, a long river in the Iberian Peninsula.

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Balearic Islands. An island archipelago in the Mediterranean Sea, off the Iberian Peninsula. Balearic Islanders were famous in antiquity for their skill with slingshot weapons. Bastarnians. A people living along the Danube River. Bellona. A Roman goddess of war. Her name derives from the Latin word for “war” (bellum). Bessians. A Thracian tribal people. Bocchus. A king of Mauretania, he joined the Roman war effort against the Numidian rebel Jugurtha, whom he captured in 106 BCE and delivered to Marius’s subordinate Sulla. See Jugurtha, Sulla. Boreas. The personified North Wind, which brings cold wind from Thrace to Greece. Bosporus. The Bosporus Strait separates Europe from Asia and connects the Black Sea with the Sea of Marmara. Constantinople (modern Istanbul), the site of Theodosius’s and Arcadius’s capital, sat on the Bosporus. Brennus. A Gallic chieftain who captured Rome in 390 BCE and held it for ransom. As the Romans weighed out his payment in gold, Brennus threw his sword on the scale and called out “Woe to the conquered!” Briareus. A hundred-headed monster who aided Jupiter in the war against the Titans. Bructeri. A people of northwest Germany. Lucius Junius Brutus. Sextus, son of the legendary king Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, raped the noblewoman Lucretia, and she committed suicide out of shame. In response, Brutus expelled the Tarquin dynasty in 510 BCE and established the Roman Republic, serving as one of the first consuls. See Tarquin. Busiris. A mythical king of Egypt who sacrificed his victims at altars; his story is likely based on Greek misunderstanding of Egyptian religion. Hercules killed him as part of his Labors. Cacus. A fire-breathing monster who lived in a cave on the Palatine Hill in Rome. Hercules killed him after Cacus stole some of his cattle. Cadmus. The mythical founder of the Greek city of Thebes in Boeotia. He killed a dragon and planted its teeth, from which armed warriors sprung up; see Stilicho’s Consulship 1.318–324. Marcus Furius Camillus (c. 446–365 BCE). A Roman nobleman who returned from exile to defeat the Gauls who had sacked Rome in 390 BCE. Cannae. The largest battle of the Second Punic War (218–202 BCE). Hannibal defeated the Roman army at this town in Apulia in 216 BCE, resulting in very high Roman casualties.

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Castor and Pollux. Also called the Dioscuri, the sons of the god Jupiter by the Spartan princess Leda. They were imagined to appear during storms to aid sailors in the form of St. Elmo’s fire. According to Roman legend, they helped Rome to victory against the Latins at the Battle of Lake Regillus in 499 or 496 BCE. Cato the Elder (234–149 BCE). A Roman politician who demanded the destruction of Carthage in the Third Punic War (146 BCE). Cato the Younger (95–46 BCE). Great-grandson of Cato the Elder, he led the resistance to Julius Caesar after the death of Pompey the Great (48–46 BCE). Cecrops. A mythical king of Athens. Celaenae. A Phyrgian city associated with the goddess Cybele. See Cybele. Cephisus. The modern Kifisos River, flowing through Delphi, Greece. Chalcedon. A suburb of Constantinople on the Asian side of the Bosporus Strait. Chaonia. The northwest region of Epirus in modern Greece and Albania. Charon. The mythical ferryman who carried dead souls across the river Styx in the Underworld. Cheruscans. A Germanic people who lived near the Weser River in modern Saxony, Germany. Cimbrians. A people of northeast Italy, conquered by Gaius Marius in 101 BCE. Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus (c. 519–430 BCE). A Roman politician remembered for being called from his small farm to take supreme command of the Roman military as Dictator in 458/7 BCE. Cinyps River. A small river in Libya, the modern Wadi Ka’am. Circe. A mythical sorceress in Homer’s Odyssey who turned men into pigs. Cirrha. The port of Delphi, Greece, near Apollo’s oracular shrine. Clashing Rocks. Jason and the Argonauts travelled through the Clashing Rocks, imagined to be on the Dardanelles, as part of their quest for the Golden Fleece. See Argonauts. Cloelia. A young girl taken hostage during Porsenna’s invasion of Rome (509 BCE). She led a group of Roman girls to freedom and swam across the Tiber. See Porsenna. Cocytus. The “river of tears”, one of the rivers of the Underworld. Colchis. See Argonauts. Corybantes. Supernatural beings who worshipped the gods Bacchus and Cybele with noisy dances. Croesus. A sixth century BCE king of Lydia in western Turkey who was proverbially wealthy. 400

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Cupid. The Roman god of desire and erotic love (Eros in Greek), often represented as a young, winged boy carrying torches and a bow. Curetes. Cretan gods who concealed the infant Jupiter by clashing their shields and cymbals. Manius Curius Dentatus. Consul in 290 BCE, responsible for ending the Third Samnite War. He had three triumphs in his military career and oversaw construction of Rome’s second aqueduct. According to Pliny Natural History 18.19, he denounced any man who was not satisfied with seven acres of land to cultivate. Cybele. An Anatolian mother goddess also worshipped at Rome. Her black basalt rock was brought from Pessinus to Rome in 204 BCE (Livy 29.11.7). Her priests, the Galli, castrated themselves in ecstatic rituals. Cyclopes. The Cyclopes, Brontes, Steropes, and Pyragmon, were mythical craftsmen who worked in Vulcan’s forge, imagined to be located on the volcanic Lipari Islands off Sicily. They made magical items for gods and heroes, including Jupiter’s thunderbolts. Cygnus. See Phaethon. Cynthus. A mountain on the Greek island of Delos, sacred to Apollo and Diana. Cyrus the Great. A Persian emperor (c. 600–530 BC) who vastly expanded his empire, including conquering Croesus. See Croesus. Dacians. A people who inhabited the Roman province of Dacia, a region west of the Black Sea and near the Carpathian Mountains. Danube. The second-longest river in Europe, flowing through Central and Eastern Europe. Publius Decius Mus. The name of three famous generals in the middle Republic. The first sacrificed himself in 340 BCE in a war against the Latins through a religious ritual called devotio. His son imitated his father’s example in a battle against the Gauls in 295 BCE. The son of this general fought against Pyrrhus; see Pyrrhus. Deidamia. A princess of the Greek island of Scyros. She fell in love with Achilles when his mother concealed him there, disguised as a woman, to avoid the Trojan war. Delos. An island in the Cyclades archipelago, the mythical location where the goddess Latona gave birth to Apollo and Diana. The island was imagined to wander across the sea until Latona fixed it in place after giving birth. Diana. A goddess associated with hunting, the moon, and witchcraft. Dindymon. A mountain in eastern Turkey, on the border of Phrygia and Galatia, the modern Arayit or Günüzü Dağı. The goddess Cybele had an important cult site nearby in the city of Pessinus. 401

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Dioscuri. See Castor and Pollux. Dodona. The oldest Greek oracular site and Jupiter’s sanctuary. He had a sacred oak there which appears in various sources. Eleusis. A cult site of Ceres (Demeter) and Proserpina (Persephone). See introduction to Proserpina. Enceladus. A giant killed by Minerva during the Gigantomachy. He was buried under Mount Aetna, a large volcano in Sicily. See Gigantomachy. Enipeus. A Thessalian river. Ephialtes. One of the Giants. See Gigantomachy. Erebus. Another name for the Underworld. Erymanthus. One of the mountain chains of southern mainland Greece, which ran near the center of the Peloponnese. The Erymanthus River also originates on the southern slopes of Mount Erymanthus. Flavius Eugenius. A usurper who was executed by Theodosius following his defeat at the Battle of the Frigidus River, on 5–6 September 394. Eurotas. The major river of Laconia in southern Greece, the mythical birthplace of the gods Castor and Pollux, the Dioscuri. Eutropius. See the introduction to Eutropius. Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus (283–203 BCE). One of the major Roman commanders in the Second Punic War. He employed guerrilla tactics against Hannibal’s invasion that earned him the nickname “Delayer” (Cunctator). Gaius Fabricius Luscinus Consul in 272 and 278 BCE and censor in 275 BCE. He defeated the Bruttii in 278 BCE. He was a legendary example of frugality, refusing bribes during the war with King Pyrrhus of Epirus (280–275 BC), and removing a senator for possessing ten pounds of silverware. Fasces. Bundles of wooden rods, sometimes containing an axe with its blade exposed. They were a symbol of power for Roman magistrates. Fasti. An inscription recording the names of the consuls. Fates. Atropos (“No turning aside”), Clotho (“Spinner”), and Lachesis (“Dispenser of Lots”) were goddesses imagined to spin threads that determined the course of each person’s life. Aelia Flavia Flacilla (31 March 356–386). First wife of the emperor Theodosius the Great, mother of his sons Arcadius and Honorius. Frigidus River. The modern Vipava River in Slovenia, site of the battle between Theodosius and Flavius Eugenius in September 394. Furies. Allecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, the three Furies, were Underworld demons who caused violence and suffering. Gaetulians. A nomadic people inhabiting parts of Algeria and southern Tunisia. 402

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Galatea. See Polyphemus. Galli. Eunuch priests of the goddess Cybele’s cult. Ganges. A major river that flows through the Indian subcontinent. Garamantians. A people of southern Libya. Garganus. A headland from Apulia to the Adriatic Sea and the “spur” on the boot of Italy. Gargara. The topmost peak of Mount Ida on Crete. Gelonians. A people of the Eurasian steppes whose migrations in this period put considerable pressure on the Eastern Roman Empire. For the political situation, see the Introduction. Geryon. A mythological monster with three bodies that lived in Spain. Hercules killed him and stole his cattle. Gigantomachy. A mythological conflict in which the Giants piled Mount Ossa on Pelion and tried to storm the gods’ home on Olympus. Jupiter and the other gods fought back and defeated them. Glaucus. A fisherman who was transformed into a half-man half-fish god after eating a magical herb. Graces. Goddesses of charm and beauty, attendants of the goddess Venus. Gruthungians. See Odotheus. Haemus, Haemonia. A mountain range in the Balkans. Halys. The modern Kızılırmak River in north central Turkey. Ba’al Hammon. The chief Phoenician deity. Hebrus. The modern Marica River in Bulgaria, the second longest river in the Balkans after the Danube. Hecate. A goddess associated with crossroads and witchcraft. Heliades. See Phaethon. Helicon. A mountain in Boeotia, Greece, imagined to be inhabited by the Muses. Hermus. The modern Gediz Nehri River in Turkey, which empties into the Aegean Sea. Hercynian Forest. An ancient forest stretching eastward from the Rhine River across southern Germany. Hesperides. Goddesses who lived near the Atlas Mountain range in northwest Africa. They were imagined to possess golden apples of immortality. Hippolyte. A mythical queen of the Amazons. Hercules assaulted her and seized her belt as one of his Labors. She later married the Athenian king Theseus. Hippolytus. A mythical worshipper of Diana who rejected sexuality. In revenge, the goddess Venus made his stepmother Phaedra fall in love with him; she falsely accused him of rape and committed suicide. His 403

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father Theseus then cursed Hippolytus; he died when Neptune sent a monster in response to destroy his chariot and was resurrected by Diana. Horatius Cocles. A legendary Roman warrior who held the Sublician bridge leading into Rome against Porsenna’s invading army until his comrades could destroy the bridge. He then swam across the Tiber River to safety. See Porsenna. Hybla. A mountain range in southeast Sicily, famous in antiquity for its honey. Hydaspes. The modern Jhelum River in Punjab, India, where Alexander the Great conquered King Porus in 326 BCE. Hydra. A monster with multiple heads that regrew when Hercules cut them off. Hyperion. A Titan, father of the Sun and Moon. Hyrcania. A region southeast of the Caspian Sea. Ida. The highest mountain in Crete, the mythological place where the infant Jupiter was raised. Idalion. A cult site of Venus on Cyprus. Illyria. The western side of the Balkans, stretching from the Adriatic Sea to the Alps and the Danube River. Inarime. An island in the Bay of Naples, modern Ischia. The giant Typhoeus was imagined to be buried under it. Iris. The goddess of the rainbow, who served the other gods as a messenger. Janus. The double-faced god associated with the month of January, when the new consuls took office. The gates of his temple were opened when Rome was at war and closed in peacetime. Jocasta. See Oedipus. Juba. A king of Numidia who participated in the civil war between Julius Caesar and Pompey (49–46 BCE). Jugurtha. A Numidian king who revolted against Rome by killing his cousin Hiempsal in 112 BCE. Hiempsal’s brother Adherbal fled to Rome and asked for Roman assistance. Gaius Marius eventually defeated Jugurtha in 106 BCE, with the assistance of Bocchus. See Marius and Bocchus. Lachesis. See Fates. Ladon. A river in southern Greece, a tributary of the Alpheus River. Latona. Mother of the gods Apollo and Diana. Leda. See Castor and Pollux. Lethe. The “river of forgetfulness” in the Underworld. The dead drank from it to forget their lives on earth.

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Lictors. The attendants of the consuls, who carried the fasces, symbols of the office’s political power. Liguria. A region of northwest Italy, containing Honorius’s capital at Milan. Lingones. A Celtic tribe that lived near the Seine and Marne Rivers in Gaul. Lucretia. See Brutus. Lycaeus. A mountain in Arcadia, Greece. Lycurgus. A legendary Spartan political lawgiver imagined to live in the ninth century BCE. Lydia. A region of western Turkey, also called Maeonia. Maeander River. The modern Büyük Menderes River, the longest river in southwestern Turkey. It is distinguished by its frequent twists or “meanders.” Maenads. Women who worshipped the god Bacchus with ecstatic dances. See Pentheus. Maenalus. A mountain in Arcadia which was sacred to Pan. Maeonia. See Lydia. Magi. Persian priests. Maia. Mother of the messenger god Mercury. She gave birth to him on Mount Cyllene. Marcus Claudius Marcellus (270–208 BCE). An important commander in the Second Punic War. He captured the city of Syracuse, Sicily, in 212 BCE. Gaius Marius (c. 157–86 BCE). A Roman general and civil warrior. He succeeded where his commander Metellus had failed and conquered the Numidian rebel king Jugurtha in 106 BCE. He later fought a civil war against Sulla (see Sulla) and conquered Rome in 87 BCE. Marsyas. A satyr who challenged Apollo, god of music, to a musical contest. Apollo won and flayed Marsyas as punishment. Marsyas was associated with a river in southwest Turkey that flows into the Maeander; see Maeander. Massagetans. An Iranian nomadic people whose migrations in this period put considerable pressure on the eastern Roman empire. Massylians. A group of peoples in eastern Numidia, North Africa. Megaera. One of the three Furies; the others are Allecto and Tisiphone. Memnon. A mythical Ethiopian king, son of Aurora the Dawn, who fought in the Trojan War and was killed by Achilles. Meroë. A capital of the Kushite kingdom, near modern Shendi, Sudan. Quintus Caecilius Metellus Numidicus. See Marius.

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Mettius Fufetius. King of Alba Longa. The legendary third king of Rome, Tullus Hostilius (673–642 BCE), punished him for betraying Rome in a war with the neighboring city of Fidenae. He tied Mettius to two chariots which ran in opposite directions, ripping apart his body. Midas. A mythical king of Phrygia who turned everything he touched into gold. Mimas. One of the Giants. See Gigantomachy. Minerva. A virgin goddess of warfare and crafts, whom the Greeks called Athena. Minos. A mythical king of Crete who became a judge of the dead in the Underworld. Moesia. A Roman province in the Balkans, south of the Danube River. Molossians. A people of Epirus, Greece, famous for their hunting dogs. See Pyrrhus. Moors. Originally referring the inhabitants of the Roman province of Mauretania. By Claudian’s day, it had become a generalized term for the non-Romanized inhabitants of northwest Africa. Mucius Scaevola. After failing to assassinate Porsenna, Mucius stuck his right hand into a fire until it burned off, thereby acquiring the nickname “Lefty” (Scaevola). Porsenna was impressed by Roman courage and called off his siege of Rome. See Porsenna. Naiads. Water nymphs, local divinities of lakes and streams. Narcissus. A mythical Greek young man who fell in love with his own reflection. Unable to look away, he starved to death and was transformed into the narcissus flower. Nasamonians. A North African people. Nereids. A group of sea nymphs, daughters of the sea god Nereus. Nereus. A sea god, father of the Nereids (sea nymphs). Niphates. A mountain range in Armenia. Numa Pompilius. The second Roman king (715–673 BCE). Roman legend attributed agricultural and legal reforms to Numa. Nysa. A mythological region associated with the wine god Bacchus’s birth. Ancient mythographers variously placed it in Arabia, India, Libya, and other regions. Odotheus. King of the Gruthungians, a Gothic people. The Roman general Promotus defeated him after he led his people across the Danube in 386. Oedipus. A mythical king of Thebes who married his mother Jocasta in ignorance and blinded himself when he discovered his crime. Oeta. A mountain in central Greece. 406

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Orestes. The son of the legendary Mycenaean king Agamemnon. His mother Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus killed Agamemnon, and Orestes killed them to avenge his father’s death. Orion. A mythical hunter transformed into a constellation. Orontes. A river flowing from Lebanon through Syria and Turkey. Orpheus. The greatest singer of mythology, son of King Oeagrus of Thrace and the Muse Calliope. His song was imagined to have power over trees and wild animals. When his wife Eurydice died, he travelled to the Underworld to request her return. She died a second time, however, when he looked back to see if she was following him out of the Underworld. Ossa. A mountain in Thessaly. See Gigantomachy. Ostrogoths. A Gothic people. Othrys. A mountain in central Greece. Otus. See Gigantomachy. Pachynus. Modern Capo Passero, a promontory on the southeast of the island of Sicily. Panchaea. An island in the Indian Ocean, imagined to be a paradise. Pannonia. A Roman province south and west of the Danube River. Parnassus. A mountain outside Delphi, Greece, the traditional home of the Muses. Patricians. According to Zosimus 2.40.2, the emperor Constantine reintroduced this honorific title for senior magistrates. For the patricians as “fathers” of the emperor, see Sozomen 8.7.1; Philostorgius 11.4. Paulus. See Aemilius Paulus. Peleus. Father of the Greek hero Achilles by the sea goddess Thetis. Pelion. A mountain in Thessaly. See Gigantomachy. Pelopea. See Thyestes. Pelorus. Modern Capo Peloro, a promontory of northeast Sicily. Peneus. Modern Pineios, a river in Thessaly, Greece. Pentheus. A mythical king of Thebes who denied that Bacchus was a god. He was punished by being torn apart by the Maenads, including his own mother Agave and his aunts. See Maenads. Perses. See Aemilius Paulus. Persians. The Sassanid empire ruled Persia from 224 to 651 AD from its capital at Ctesiphon on the Tigris River. Its rulers during Claudian’s era were Bahram IV (388–399), followed by his son Yazdegerd I (399–421). Phaethon. The son of the Sun god. He attempted to drive his father’s chariot but could not control it and threatened to set the world on fire until Jupiter struck him down with a lightning bolt. His sisters, the 407

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Heliades, wept so much for him that the gods turned them into trees, as did his relative Cygnus, king of Liguria, who was transformed into a swan. The Romans associated the Heliades’ tears with the amber (fossilized tree resin) that they harvested from trees to make jewelry with. See Ovid Metamorphoses 2.329–366 and the volume introduction, Section 1.2 “Mythology and Religion.” Phalaris. The ruler of Agrigentum, Sicily, in the sixth century BCE. He was remembered as an example of cruelty, as he killed his victims by burning them to death inside a bronze bull. Pharos. The site of the lighthouse of Alexandria, Egypt, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Pharsalus. Modern Farsala in northern Greece. Caesar defeated Pompey’s forces here in 48 BCE in the conclusive battle of their civil war. Phasis. Modern Rioni, a river in western Georgia. The Argonauts sailed up the Phasis to reach the city of Colchis, where they stole the Golden Fleece. Philip II (382–336 BCE). King of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great. Philip V (238–179 BCE). King of Macedon, an ally of Carthage in the Second Punic War (218–202 BCE). The Roman general Marcus Valerius Laevinus inflicted several defeats on him. Phlegethon. The “river of fire”, one of the mythical rivers of the Underworld. Phlegra. Also called Pallene, on the modern Kassandra peninsula in northern Greece. This was one site where the mythological Gigantomachy was imagined to take place. See Gigantomachy. Phlegraean Fields. The modern Campi Flegrei near Naples in south Italy. This was one site where the mythological Gigantomachy was imagined to take place. See Gigantomachy. Phrygia. The region around Troy in northwest Turkey. Pleiades. The setting of the Pleiades constellation in late autumn traditionally marked the end of the sailing season and the onset of dangerous weather. Po. The longest river in Italy, which flows from the Cottian Alps into the Adriatic Sea, and runs close to Honorius’s capital at Milan. Polyphemus. The Cyclops, a one-eyed monster, fell in love with the seanymph Galatea. He killed her lover Acis, and Galatea turned him into the Acis river. Lars Porsenna. The legendary king of Clusium near Rome. He besieged Rome in 509 BCE in an effort to restore the deposed king Tarquinius Superbus. See Horatius Cocles and Mucius Scaevola. 408

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Porus. A ruler of the Pauravas, a people in India. Alexander defeated him at the battle of the Hydaspes River in Punjab in 326 BCE. Alexander then established Porus as a subordinate ruler in his former territory. Prometheus. A mythical Titan, son of Iapetus, who created human beings from clay and stole fire from Olympus to improve their lives. Proteus. A sea god who could change his shape. He lived on the island of Pharos off the coast of Egypt. Pyrrhus (318–272 BCE). King of Epirus in northwest Greece, who invaded southern Italy in 280–275 BCE. Curius Dentatus defeated him in 277 BCE and expelled him from Italy. Quirinus. A god identified with the deified Romulus, the mythical founder of Rome who became a god after his death. Raetia. A Roman province along the Alps, including parts of modern Bavaria and Switzerland. This province was set on the path of potential invasion routes into Italy. Marcus Atilius Regulus (c. 307–250 BCE). A commander in the First Punic War and consul in 267 and 256 BCE. He was defeated and captured by the mercenary commander Xanthippus near Tunis in 255 BC. The Carthaginians then sent him to Rome to negotiate terms for ransoming the Roman prisoners of war. Regulus argued that no ransom should be given. He then returned to Carthage and was tortured and executed. Rhodope. A mountain range in southeastern Europe, the bulk of which is in Greece and Bulgaria. Riphaean Mountains. Mentioned by various classical writers, but their location is unclear; Roman writers placed them in northern Europe or Asia. Claudian most likely follows Virgil’s Georgics 1.240, which places them in Scythia. Rostra. A public speaking platform that originally stood in the Roman Forum. Rufinus. See the introduction to Rufinus. Sabaeans. An Arabian people. Sarmatians. An Iranian nomadic tribe, closely related to the Scythians. Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio (?–211 BCE). Consul in 222 BCE. He fought in Spain during the Second Punic War (218–202 BCE). Publius Cornelius Scipio (?–211 BCE). Consul in 218 BCE. Hannibal defeated his forces at the Trebia River during the Second Punic War (218–202 BCE). Publius Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus (185–129 BCE). Adoptive grandson of Scipio Africanus. He razed Carthage in the Third Punic War in 146 BCE. 409

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Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus (236–183 BCE). Son of Publius Cornelius Scipio. He conquered Hannibal at Zama in 202 BCE, ending the Second Punic War. Scylla. A mythical sea monster that lived in the Straits of Messina and attacked sailors. Semiramis. A legendary queen of the Assyrians who restored the city of Babylon. Senones. A Gallic tribe who crossed the Alps to invade Rome in 390 BCE under their chieftain Brennus. See Brennus. Shapur III (reigned 383–388). The Sasanian monarch of Persia, who negotiated with the Constantinople court over the partitioning of Armenia (perhaps in 387). He was assassinated in 388. Sirens. Mythical winged women imagined to sing enchanting songs that lured sailors to their deaths. Solon. An Athenian politician and poet of the sixth century BCE, responsible for legal and economic reforms in Athens. Stymphalian birds. One of the mythical Labors of Hercules was to kill dangerous birds who resided in the marshes of Arcadia. Suebians. A Germanic people living east of the Elbe River. Lucius Cornelius Sulla (c. 138–78 BCE). Conquered Rome in a civil war in 82 BCE and established himself as Dictator. See Marius. Sygambrians. A Germanic people who lived on the Rhine River’s east bank. Syphax. A king of Numidia who allied with the Romans during the Second Punic War but then betrayed them. He was defeated in 203 BCE and died as a prisoner in Rome. Syrtes. The modern Gulfs of Sidra (Sirte) and Gabès off north Africa. In antiquity, sandbars on these waters made them dangerous to ships. Tagus River. The modern Tajo River in Spain, a traditional site for gold production in antiquity. Tarquin. Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, the legendary final king of Rome (traditionally reigned 534–510 BCE), expelled by Brutus. See Brutus. Taygetus. A mountain range in southern Greece. Tereus. A mythical Thracian king who raped his sister-in-law Philomela and cut out her tongue. His wife Procne avenged her sister by killing her son by Tereus and serving him to her husband. Terpsichore. The Muse associated with lyric poetry and dancing. Tethys. A sea goddess; sometimes a personification of the sea. Themis. The goddess of divine order and law. The Elder Theodosius (PLRE 1.902–904). Father of the emperor Theodosius and his brother Honorius, Serena’s father. Fought under Valentinian 410

G L O S S A RY

I in Britain against the Scots and Picts in 368–9, and against the North African nobleman Firmus in 373. See Ammianus Marcellinus 27.8 and 29.5 respectively. Theodosius the Great (346–395 CE). Emperor of Rome 379–395 CE. Following his death, his sons each inherited half of his empire: Arcadius inherited the East, Honorius the West. Thrace. A region of northern Greece. Thule. Sometimes identified in Greco-Roman sources with Norway or Iceland, but typically referring to an imagined northernmost point in the world. Thyestes. King of Mycenae, deposed by his brother Atreus. When Thyestes returned from exile, Atreus killed Thyestes’s sons and served them to his brother. An eclipse occurred at “Thyestes’s banquet” to signify the gods’ horror at this crime. Thyestes then raped his daughter Pelopea; their son Aegisthus grew up to murder Atreus’s son Agamemnon. Thyrsus. A giant fennel stalk covered with ivy. The followers of Bacchus, god of wine, carried this ritual implement. Tiphys. The helmsman of the Argonauts. See Argonauts. Tisiphone. One of the three Furies; the others are Allecto and Megaera. Titus Manlius Torquatus (fourth century BCE). A general who condemned his son to death for disobedience in combat and became an example of paternal authority taken too far. Trajan (ruled 98–117 CE). Conquered Dacia (101–102 CE) and captured the Persian capitol Ctesiphon (115 CE), near modern Baghdad. Later Romans remembered him as the second-best emperor after Augustus. Trebia. In 218 BCE, Hannibal’s Carthaginian forces defeated the Romans at the Trebia River, the modern Trebbia River in Liguria, Italy. Triptolemus. See introduction to Proserpina. Lake Triton. A lake in southern Tunisia, imagined to be the birthplace of the goddess Minerva. Tullus. See Mettius Fufetius. Typhoeus/Typhon. A mythological monster with snakelike heads and eyes of fire. He attempted to overthrow Jupiter. Vulcan. A Roman god of fire and metalworking, the equivalent of Greek Hephaestus. Zephyr. The god of the West Wind imagined to increase the world’s fertility.

411

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Except for editions of Claudian and some standard reference works, the bibliography is restricted to works written in English.

Abbreviations CIL = Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. https://cil.bbaw.de/cil_en/index_en.html ILS = Dessau, Hermann. 1892–1916. Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae. Berlin: Weidmann. PLRE = A.H.M. Jones, J.R. Martindale, J. Morris. 1971. The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Editions and Translations of Claudian Barr, William. 1981. Claudian’s Panegyric on the Fourth Consulate of Honorius. Liverpool: Francis Cairns. Birt, Theodor. 1892. Claudii Claudiani Carmina. Berlin: Monumenta Germanica Historica. Charlet, Jean-Louis. 1991–2018. Claudien. Œuvres. Paris: Belles lettres. Dewar, Michael. 1996. Claudian: Panegyricus de Sexto Consulatu Honorii Augusti. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fuoco, Ornella. 2013. Claudio Claudiano. Fesceninna dicta Honorio Augusto et Mariae. Bari: Cacucci Editore. Gioseffi, Massimo. 2004. Claudiano: Contro Eutropio. Milano: La vita felice. Gruzelier, Claire. 1993. Claudian. De Raptu Proserpinae. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hall, John Barrie. 1985. Claudii Claudiani Carmina. Leipzig: B.G. Teubner. Levy, Harry Louis. 1971. Claudian’s In Rufinum: An Exegetical Commentary. Atlanta: Scholars Press. Platnauer, Maurice. 1922. Claudian. London: Heinemann. Ricci, Maria Lisa. 2001. Claudii Claudiani carmina minora. Bari: Edipuglia.

412

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Simon, Werner. 1975. Claudiani Panegyricus de consulatu Manlii Theodori (Carm. 16 u. 17). Berlin: R. Seitz.

Other Ancient Sources Many of the ancient sources referenced in this volume are available in English translation in the Loeb Classical Library series. Here I list translations of ancient sources that are either not included in that series or are available in a more modern and accurate form in the translations below. Ambrose: Liebeschuetz, J.H.W.G. 2010. Ambrose of Milan: Political Letters and Speeches. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. Cassiodorus, Chronicle: Procee, Bouke. 2014. Cassiodorus: Chronicle. Cassiodorus_ Chronicle_Procee_2014.pdf (roger-pearse.com) Chrysostom, John. Homily on Eutropius 1 and 2: see Schaff and Wace. Codex of Justinian: Frier, Bruce W., ed. 2016. The Codex of Justinian. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Digest of Justinian: Watson, Alan. 2009. The Digest of Justinian. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Heather, Peter, and David Moncur. 2001. Themistius: Politics, Philosophy and Empire in the Fourth Century: Themistius’ Select Orations. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. Jordanes, Getica: Van Nuffelen, Peter. 2020. Jordanes: Romana and Getica. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. Latin Panegyrics: Nixon, C.E.V., and B.S. Rodgers. 1994. In Praise of Later Roman Emperors: The Panegyrici Latini. Berkeley: University of California Press. Marcellinus: Croke, Brian. 1995. The Chronicle of Marcellinus. Leiden: Brill. Menander Rhetor: Russell, D.A., and N.G. Wilson. 1981. Menander Rhetor. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Orosius: Fear, Andrew T. 2010. Orosius: Seven Books of History against the Pagans. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. Philostorgius: Amidon, Philip R. 2007. Philostorgius: Church History. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature. Rufinus of Aquileia. Ecclesiastical History: see Schaff and Wace. Schaff, Philip, and Henry Wace. 1885–1900. Ante-Nicene Fathers. Nicene and PostNicene Fathers. Grand Rapids: W.B. Eerdmans. Socrates. Ecclesiastical History: see Schaff and Wace. Sozomen. Ecclesiastical History: see Schaff and Wace. Themistius: Swain, Simon. 2013. Themistius, Julian, and Greek Political Theory under Rome: Texts, Translations, and Studies of Four Key Works. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Theodosian Code: Pharr, Clyde. 1952. The Theodosian Code and Novels and the Sirmondian Constitutions. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Zosimus: Ridley, Ronald T. 1982. Zosimus: New History. Leiden: Brill.

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Other Sources Addison, Joseph, ed., and George Washington Greene. 1853. The Works of Joseph Addison. New York: G. P. Putnam. Barnes, T.D. 1984. “The Victims of Rufinus.” The Classical Quarterly 34.1: 227–230. Bernstein, Neil W. 2011. “Locus Amoenus and Locus Horridus in Ovid’s Metamorphoses.” Wenshan Review of Literature and Culture 5.1: 67–98. Bernstein, Neil W. 2016. “Rome’s Arms and Breast: Claudian Panegyricus Dictus Olybrio et Probino Consulibus 83–90 and Its Tradition.” Classical Quarterly 66.1: 417–419. Bernstein, Neil W. 2019. “Nec tibi sufficiat transmissae gloria uitae: otium and ambition from Statius to Ennodius.” Classical Journal 115.1: 63–85. Blackhurst, Andy. 2004. “The House of Nubel: Rebels or Players?” In Andrew Merrills, ed., Vandals, Romans and Berbers: New Perspectives on Late Antique North Africa. London: Routledge. Pp. 59–75. Braden, Gordon. 1979. “Claudian and His Influence: The Realm of Venus.” Arethusa 12.2: 203–231. Cameron, Alan. 1970. Claudian: Poetry and Propaganda at the Court of Honorius. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cameron, Alan. 2010. The Last Pagans of Rome. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cameron, Alan. 2012. “Anician Myths.” Journal of Roman Studies 102: 133–171. Cameron, Alan. 2016. Wandering Poets and Other Essays on Late Greek Literature and Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cameron, Alan, and Jacqueline Long. 1993. Barbarians and Politics at the Court of Arcadius. Berkeley: University of California Press. Christiansen, Peter G., and David Christiansen. 2009. “Claudian: The Last Great Pagan Poet.” L’antiquité classique 78: 133–144. Coffee, Neil. 2017. Gift and Gain: How Money Transformed Ancient Rome. New York: Oxford University Press. Coombe, Clare. 2018. Claudian the Poet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dewar, Michael. 2010. “Spinning the Trabea: Consular Robes and Propaganda in the Panegyrics of Claudian.” In J.C. Edmondson and A.M. Keith, eds., Roman Dress and the Fabrics of Roman Culture. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Pp. 217–237. Dewar, Michael. 2014. Leisured Resistance: Villas, Literature and Politics in the Roman World. London: Bloomsbury. Doyle, Chris. 2018. Honorius: The Fight for the Roman West AD 395–423. London: Routledge. Errington, R. Malcolm. 2006. Roman Imperial Policy from Julian to Theodosius. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Evans-Grubbs, Judith. 1989. “Abduction Marriage in Antiquity: A Law of Constantine (CTh IX. 24. I) and Its Social Context.” The Journal of Roman Studies 79: 59–83. Fitzgerald, William. 2013. How to Read a Latin Poem If You Can’t Read Latin Yet. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Gervais, Kyle. 2020. “An Interpolation in Claudian, De Raptu Proserpinae 2.343–7.” Classical Quarterly 70. Gillett, Andrew. 2012. “Epic Panegyric and Political Communication in the FifthCentury West.” In Lucy Grig and Gavin Kelly, eds., Two Romes: Rome and Constantinople in Late Antiquity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pp. 352–378. Hardie, Philip. 2019. Classicism and Christianity in Late Antique Latin Poetry. Berkeley: University of California Press. Heather, Peter. 1996. The Goths. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Heather, Peter. 2005. The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hinds, Stephen E. 2013. “Claudianism in the De Raptu Proserpinae.” In T.D. Papanghelis, S.J. Harrison, S. Frangoulidis, eds., Generic Interfaces in Latin Literature. Berlin: De Gruyter. Pp. 169–192. Hinds, Stephen E. 2016. “Return to Enna: Ovid and Ovidianism in Claudian’s De raptu Proserpinae.” In Repeat Performances, ed., Laurel Fulkerson and Tim Stover. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Pp. 249–278. Holum, Kenneth G. 1982. Theodosian Empresses: Women and Imperial Dominion in Late Antiquity. Berkeley: University of California Press. Humphries, Rolfe. 1958. “Latin and English Verse: Some Practical Considerations.” Classical Journal 54.2: 63–69. Jones, Arnold Hugh Martin. 1964. The Later Roman Empire, 284–602: A Social Economic and Administrative Survey. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Kelly, Gavin. 2016. “Claudian’s Last Panegyric and Imperial Visits to Rome.” The Classical Quarterly 66(1): 336–357. Kulikowski, Michael. 2000. “The ‘Notitia Dignitatum’ as a Historical Source.” Historia: Zeitschrift Für Alte Geschichte 49(3): 358–377. Kulikowski, Michael. 2007. Rome’s Gothic Wars: From the third century to Alaric. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Long, Jacqueline. 1996. Claudian’s in Eutropium, or, How, When, and Why to Slander a Eunuch. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. MacCormack, Sabine G. 1981. Art and Ceremony in Late Antiquity. Berkeley: University of California Press. Maritz, J.A. 2000. “The Classical Image of Africa: The Evidence from Claudian.” Acta Classica 43: 81–99. Matthews, John. 1975. Western Aristocracies and Imperial Court, A.D. 364–425. Oxford: Oxford University Press. McCoy, Marsha B. 1985. “Corruption in the Western Empire: The Career of Sextus Petronius Probus.” The Ancient World 11.1: 101–106. McEvoy, Meaghan A. 2013. Child Emperor Rule in the Late Roman West, AD 367–455. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mulligan, Bret. 2007. “The Poet from Egypt? Reconsidering Claudian’s Eastern Origin.” Philologus 151: 287–312. Nathan, Geoffrey. 2015. “The Ideal Male in Late Antiquity: Claudian’s Example of Flavius Stilicho.” Gender & History 27: 10–27.

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O’Hogan, Cillian. 2019. “Thirty Years of the ‘Jeweled Style’.” Journal of Roman Studies 109: 305–314. Omissi, Adrastos. 2018. Emperors and Usurpers in the Later Roman Empire: Civil War, Panegyric, and the Construction of Legitimacy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pelttari, Aaron. 2014. The Space That Remains: Reading Latin Poetry in Late Antiquity. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Phelan, Joseph. 2012. The Music of Verse: Metrical Experiment in NineteenthCentury Poetry. London: Palgrave MacMillan. Raven, Susan. 1993. Rome in Africa. London: Routledge. Rees, Roger, ed. 2012. Latin Panegyric. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Roberts, Michael. 1989. The Jeweled Style: Poetry and Poetics in Late Antiquity. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Roberts, Michael. 2001. “Rome Personified, Rome Epitomized: Representations of Rome in the Poetry of the Early Fifth Century.” American Journal of Philology 122: 533–565. Sánchez Ostiz, Álvaro. 2013. “Lucretius, Cicero, Theodorus: Greek Philosophy and Latin Eloquence in Claudian’s Encomiastic Imagination.” ΤΑΛΑΝΤΑ: Proceedings of the Dutch Archaeological and Historical Society 45: 97–114. Sánchez Ostiz, Álvaro. 2018. “Claudian’s Stilicho at the Urbs: Roman Legitimacy for the Half-Barbarian Regent.” In D.P.W. Burgersdijk and A.J. Ross, eds., Imagining Emperors in the Later Roman Empire. Leiden: Brill. Pp. 310–330. Shaw, Brent D. 2014. “Who Are You? Africa and Africans.” In Jeremy McInerney, ed., A Companion to Ethnicity in the Ancient Mediterranean. Malden: Wiley. Pp. 527–540. Silk, Edmund T. 1977. “Claudian’s In Rufinum and the Congress of Fallen Angels in Paradise Lost.” Milton Quarterly 11.2: 37–38. Struthers, L.B. 1919. “The Rhetorical Structure of the Encomia of Claudius Claudianus.” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 30: 49–87. Thomas, Richard F. 1982. Lands and Peoples in Roman Poetry: The Ethnographical Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge Philological Society. Tougher, Shaun. 2020. The Roman Castrati: Eunuchs in the Roman Empire. London: Bloomsbury. Treggiari, Susan. 1991. Roman Marriage: Iusti Coniuges from the Time of Cicero to the Time of Ulpian. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ware, Catherine. 2012. Claudian and the Roman Epic Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ware, Catherine. 2013. “Learning from Pliny: Claudian’s Advice to the Emperor Honorius.” Arethusa 46: 244–269. Wasdin, Katherine. 2014. “Honorius Triumphant: Poetry and Politics in Claudian’s Wedding Poems.” Classical Philology 109.1: 48–65. Wasdin, Katherine. 2018. Eros at Dusk. Ancient Wedding and Love Poetry. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Webb, Ruth. 2009. Ekphrasis, Imagination and Persuasion in Ancient Rhetorical Theory and Practice. Surrey: Ashgate. Wijnendaele, Jeroen. 2016. “Stilicho, Radagaisus, and the So-Called ‘Battle of Faesulae’ (406 CE).” Journal of Late Antiquity 9.1: 267–284. Williams, Stephen, and Gerard Friell. 1995. Theodosius: The Empire at Bay. New Haven: Yale University Press. Woods, David. 1991. “The Early Career of the Magister Equitum Jacobus.” Classical Quarterly 41.2: 571–574.

417

INDEX

Abundantius 18, 19, 205, 213, 214 Achaea 235, 363 Achaemenid 161, 287 Achelous 350 Acheron 29, 33, 47 Achilles 79, 109, 110, 137, 143, 148, 152, 154, 257, 263, 301, 364, 365, 366, 386, 401, 405, 407 Acis 58, 397, 408 Adda 319, 328, 336, 337 Adherbal 184, 404 Adige 149, 328, 329, 372 Adonis 40, 148, 397 Adrastus 398 Adrianople 294, 316 Adriatic 105, 235, 403, 404, 408 Aeacus 118 Aeëtes 297, 397, 398 Aegaeon 16, 27, 59, 397 Aegean 26, 70, 158, 159, 236, 239, 263, 381, 393, 403 aegis 50, 58, 130, 233, 288, 390 Aegisthus 326, 407, 411 Aemilius 299, 397, 407 Aeneas 131, 257, 322, 361, 362 Aeneid 5, 74, 131, 257, 322 Aeolus 28, 80, 105, 366, 397 Aeternalis 355, 356 Aethon 143 Aetna 7, 23–6, 30–2, 37, 39, 45, 51, 54, 55, 58, 60, 61, 82, 194, 322, 361, 362, 397, 402 Africa 7, 19, 61, 66, 68, 109, 122, 125, 166, 167, 169–71, 173, 175, 177,

180, 181, 183, 185, 187, 192, 222, 250–2, 254, 263, 274, 278, 281, 282, 284, 285, 325, 333, 334, 345, 380, 403, 405, 406, 410, 414–16 African 31, 36, 53, 79, 166, 169, 171, 173, 174, 189, 214, 221, 252, 253, 254, 265, 281, 282, 292, 299, 301, 334, 336, 346, 380, 406, 411 Agamemnon 93, 186, 326, 364, 407, 411 Aganippe 200, 345, 354 Agave 117, 240, 245, 397, 407 Ajax 241 Alamanni 122, 139, 261, 282, 397 Alans 101, 112, 141, 258, 296, 315, 319, 329, 397 Alaric 3, 19, 20, 86, 101, 110, 124, 145, 185, 206, 208, 235, 238, 250, 252, 254, 294–6, 299, 300–2, 310, 312–16, 319–21, 325–32, 336, 337, 388, 415 Alcestis 311, 344, 397 Alcmena 142 Alcyoneus 53, 397 Alethius 355, 367 Alexander 124, 137, 193, 263, 287, 364, 365, 395, 404, 408, 409 Alexandria 1, 224, 364, 408 Alexandrian 11, 220 Allecto 35, 87, 91, 92, 397, 402, 405, 411 Allia 175 Alpheus 38, 103, 186, 260, 315, 397, 398, 404 Amazons 36, 38, 147, 149, 216, 220, 225, 236, 403

418

INDEX

Ambrose 4, 7, 76, 349, 413 Ammianus Marcellinus 63, 82, 101, 115, 122, 123, 167, 220, 294, 316, 411 Amphinomus 355, 361, 362 Amphion 142, 271, 397 Amphitrite 7, 29, 160, 398 Amyclae 30, 41, 303 Anapis 355, 361, 362 Anatolian 215, 401 Ancus 174 Ancyra 206, 231, 242, 398 Anician 1, 63, 64, 191, 414 Antaeus 36, 100, 398 Antenor 81, 373, 398 Antiochus 216, 266, 398 Apennines 128, 274, 291, 331, 338, 398 Apis 143, 398 Apollo 8, 15, 23, 26, 30, 36, 37, 41, 44, 57, 59, 66, 70, 87, 88, 90, 103, 129, 142, 148, 154, 191, 219, 229, 236, 241, 283, 290, 292, 295–7, 299, 315, 318, 323, 356, 357, 364, 366, 390–1, 393, 394, 400, 401, 404, 405 Aponus 17, 355, 373–6 Apulia 399, 403 Aquarius 280 Arabia 406 Arabian 161, 216, 256, 409 Arabs 79, 133, 219, 259 Araxes 69, 103, 137, 172, 247, 398 Arbogast 2, 7, 16, 18, 64, 75, 76, 79, 80, 85, 86, 107, 109, 123, 127, 128, 136, 137, 167, 169, 180, 185, 205, 252, 318, 325, 398 Arcadia 110, 124, 313, 319, 330, 358, 405, 410 Arcadian 29, 37, 100, 260, 303, 322 Arcadius 2–5, 12, 17–20, 75–7, 83, 85, 86, 89, 90, 108, 109, 115, 122, 129, 130, 146, 167–70, 177, 178, 181, 185, 197, 204, 206, 207, 219, 227, 235, 238, 246, 250, 251, 253, 257, 258, 269, 313, 325, 387, 399, 402, 414 Archimedes 389 Arethusa 38, 103, 260, 397, 398, 416 Argaeus 105, 232, 387, 398 Argive 70, 316, 351, 362

Argo 297, 298, 398 Argonauts 96, 295, 298, 397, 398, 400, 408, 411 Argos 35, 211, 315, 316, 398 Argus 264 Ariadne 163, 288 Arinthaeus 205, 210, 212, 224 Arion 143, 201, 387, 398 Armenia 105, 134, 161, 207, 398, 406, 410 Armenians 79, 107, 109, 142, 161, 178, 210, 216, 220, 227, 240, 259, 387 Arsacid 132, 222, 398 Ascanius 131 Asclepius 253, 287 Asia Minor 207, 247, 322 Assyrians 39, 78, 135, 208, 217, 220, 286, 287, 325, 379, 410 Asturian 347 Athamas 93, 140 Athenian 50, 110, 141, 184, 194, 218, 287, 403, 410 Athens 24, 27, 37, 184, 195, 197, 286, 400, 410 Athos 101, 108, 140, 233, 258, 302, 392, 398 Atlas 29, 42, 58, 80, 126, 176, 181, 250, 259, 262, 292, 325, 334, 390, 391, 398, 403 Atreus 180, 183, 398, 411 Atropos 33, 177, 398, 402 Augustine 3, 7, 8, 168, 189, 205 Augustus 2, 7, 18, 74, 77, 123, 130, 145, 154, 184, 207, 215, 216, 318, 322, 326, 335, 341, 343, 411 Aurora 143, 405 Autololes 265 Aventine 279, 341 Avernus 30, 47, 120, 398 Ba’al 129, 256, 403 Babylon 83, 129, 146, 208, 219, 256, 410 Babylonians 69, 129, 323 Bacchantes 161, 293 Bacchus 27, 39, 81, 84, 117, 129, 144, 148, 161, 163, 237, 253, 283, 289, 293, 340, 400, 405–7, 411

419

INDEX

Bactria 83, 146, 398 Baetis 150, 201, 273, 398 Balearic 79, 399 Balkans 86, 294, 403, 404, 406 Barce 176 Bastarnians 139, 257, 399 Belgians 261 Bellerophon 143 Bellona 68, 102, 112, 125, 206, 208, 219, 231–4, 235, 277, 298, 311, 399 Bessians 193, 302, 399 Bithynia 215, 236, 243 Biton 361, 362 Black Sea 178, 215, 217, 236, 259, 297, 395, 398, 399, 401 Bocchus 126, 171, 174, 182, 334, 399, 404 Boeotia 186, 200, 345, 399, 403 bora wind 7, 76, 80 Boreas 28, 399 Bosporus 96, 129, 130, 178, 229, 236, 239, 257, 324, 399, 400 Brennus 10, 175, 306, 310, 399, 410 Briareus 54, 264, 399 Britain 19, 95, 127, 193, 221, 251, 254, 274, 295, 303, 310, 314, 411 British 126, 171, 291, 346 Brontes 83, 401 Brutus 9, 10, 138, 144, 197, 223, 232, 276, 278, 288, 326, 342, 399, 405, 410 Busiris 36, 99, 214, 399 Byzantine 232, 296 Cacus 36, 399 Cadiz 126, 176, 220, 303 Cadmus 60, 159, 218, 264, 399 Calliope 201, 345, 353, 407 Callisto 201, 305 Camerina 38 Camillus 9, 10, 69, 138, 179, 230, 247, 278, 295, 306, 310, 399 Cannae 173, 286, 309, 399 Cantabrian 347 Capaneus 349 Capitol 135, 282, 299 Cappadocian 217, 232, 351, 387 Capri 135, 230

Carthage 10, 169, 173, 177, 187, 208, 219, 223, 262, 265, 266, 281, 347, 400, 408, 409 Carthaginians 9, 10, 69, 138, 169, 173, 198, 252, 272, 278, 281, 282, 284–6, 301, 309, 346, 409, 411 Caspian 51, 79, 105, 144, 404 Cassiodorus 296, 373, 413 Cassiopeia 305 Castalian 103, 323, 356, 386 Castor 72, 94, 143, 148, 178, 360–2, 387, 400, 402, 404 Cato 9, 10, 138, 223, 400 Caucasus 78, 95, 128, 149, 217, 233, 247, 299, 352, 364, 377 Cave of Time 251 Cecrops 27, 194, 400 Celaenae 218, 236, 400 Celaeno 240 Celerina 24, 355, 367–72 Celerinus 368, 370 Centaurs 36, 101, 142, 153 Cepheus 305 Cephisus 41, 90, 400 Ceraunia 111, 260 Cerberus 7, 29, 36, 100, 118 Ceres 7, 22, 24, 25, 27, 29–33, 41, 48, 50–6, 57–61, 219, 311, 394, 402 Chalcedon 105, 130, 229, 243, 400 Chaldaean 95, 129, 256 Chaos 25, 27, 34, 37, 43, 121, 183, 267 Charlet 6, 8, 17, 26, 34, 39, 49, 50, 56, 78, 82, 124, 127, 158, 167, 168, 170, 185, 187, 244, 255, 279, 300, 333, 339, 350, 351, 356, 358, 362, 365–7, 371, 376, 383, 388, 390, 392, 412 Charon 48, 120, 400 Charybdis 345 Chatti 310 Cheruscans 139, 310, 400 Chimaera 100 Chinese 70, 84, 133, 144, 161, 216, 305 Chiron 79, 109, 110, 152, 153 Christ 8, 383 Christian 7, 8, 11, 76, 87, 167, 190, 251, 279, 319, 320, 383, 388 Cicero 11, 12, 73, 89, 90, 363, 389, 416 Cilicia 216, 243

420

INDEX

Cimbrians 139, 296, 306, 308, 316, 317, 400 Cimmerian 217, 258 Cincinnatus 9, 10, 97, 138, 174, 190, 192, 223, 400 Cinna 99 Cinyps 171, 262, 400 Circe 95, 270, 311, 345, 400 Circus 201, 288, 320, 341 Cirrha 90, 391, 400 Claros 30 Clashing Rocks 96, 229, 295, 297, 400 Claudia 344, 345, 346 Cleobis 361, 363 Clio 201 Clitumnus 338, 357 Cloelia 223, 344, 345, 400 Clytemnestra 93, 131, 326, 364, 407 Cocytus 29, 35, 47, 119, 400 Code of Justinian 204, 213 Coeus 59 Colchians 259 Colchis 297, 398, 400, 408 Como 307, 372 Constantine 204, 230, 319, 407, 414 Constantinople 2, 18–20, 75, 85, 86, 88, 89, 96, 105, 107, 113, 115, 147, 166, 167, 169, 173, 174, 178, 204, 206, 207, 227, 229, 230, 240, 242, 250, 253, 257, 294, 318, 348, 364, 368, 398, 399, 400, 410 Corinth 99, 110, 140, 201, 211, 303, 316 Corinthians 316 Cornelia 346 Corona Borealis 163, 288 Corsica 187, 198, 304 Corybantes 33, 129, 237, 400 Crassus 225 Cretans 37, 129, 142, 163, 290, 291, 342, 357, 358, 359, 401 Crete 36, 100, 129, 215, 311, 357, 403, 404, 406 Crinisus 38 Croesus 97, 215, 216, 400, 401 Cupid 27, 152, 156–8, 358, 361, 369, 372, 373, 381, 383, 401 Curetes 45, 237, 401 Curetius 355, 385 Curia 200, 275

Curii 97, 223, 278 Curius 9, 10, 11, 97, 138, 174, 301, 401, 409 curule chair 77, 125, 130, 192, 200, 201, 209, 224, 274, 275, 282, 284, 336, 342 Cyane 38, 54, 55 Cybele 23–5, 32, 33, 45, 51–2, 56, 129, 174, 175, 201, 206, 218, 219, 237, 238, 253, 287, 330, 344–6, 385, 390, 400, 401, 403 Cyclades 401 Cyclopes 29, 33, 42, 44, 52, 59, 83, 240, 267, 346, 401, 408 Cygnus 327, 328, 401, 408 Cyllarus 143 Cyllene 28, 405 Cymothoë 152, 158, 159, 349 Cynthus 44, 129, 290, 393, 401 Cypriot 37, 162 Cyprus 152, 156, 204, 206, 227, 228, 229, 404 Cyrus 97, 215, 216, 287, 401 Cythera 33, 369 Dacia 135, 185, 260, 332, 401, 411 Dacians 135, 401 Dalmatia 81, 82, 105, 291 Danaë 211 Danube 68, 78, 82, 96, 100, 105, 126, 145, 163, 181, 199, 233, 247, 258, 261, 272, 277, 282, 294, 295, 299, 302, 307, 308, 312, 313, 314, 315, 335, 342, 370, 372, 389, 399, 401, 403, 404, 406, 407 Danubians 208, 234, 329 Darius 287, 364, 365 Decii 9, 10, 11, 69, 138, 223 Decius 301, 401 Deianira 350 Deidamia 154, 401 Delos 30, 38, 41, 70, 103, 129, 148, 283, 289, 390, 393, 394, 401 Delphi 44, 87, 90, 103, 129, 219, 318, 323, 391, 400, 407 Democritus 194, 195 Deucalion 172 Diana 23, 33, 37, 38, 41, 43, 55, 57, 70, 117, 130, 148, 161, 162, 191, 201,

421

INDEX

219, 241, 253, 289, 290–2, 311, 332, 348, 349, 391, 394, 401, 403, 404 Dictator 9, 10, 138, 400, 410 Dido 219, 349 Digest of Justinian 204, 213, 413 Dindymon 45, 233, 236, 401 Dione 61, 371 Dioscuri 72, 131, 348, 400, 402 Dirae 43 Dis 22–30, 33–5, 37, 42–8, 50, 93 Dodona 27, 81, 298, 301, 402 Dog Star 98, 148, 280, 345, 372, 376, 381, 384 Don 28, 39, 45, 58, 84, 95, 101, 104, 114, 116, 125, 133–7, 151, 180, 185, 197, 224, 225, 232, 247, 275, 280, 283, 299, 303, 315, 331, 361, 370, 371, 372, 384 Donatists 167, 168 Doto 159 Drusus 140, 250, 260 Dryads 50, 56, 60, 328, 369

Erymanthus 36, 140, 303, 385, 402 Ethiopia 68, 73, 78, 100, 177, 198, 214, 260, 265, 292, 305, 367, 370, 380, 402, 405 Etruscans 10, 129, 174, 209, 223, 337 Eucherius 4, 20, 88, 153, 165, 251, 253, 254, 258, 277, 287, 340 Eudoxia 19, 20, 85 Eugenius 2, 4, 6, 7, 18, 64, 67, 75, 79, 85, 86, 107, 109, 123, 127, 136, 167–9, 180, 185, 205, 246, 252, 259, 306, 318, 325, 398, 402 Euphrates 79, 137, 210, 256, 335 Eurotas 71, 132, 260, 402 Eurydice 407 Eurystheus 309 Eutropius 3, 4, 6, 8, 13, 18, 19, 21, 71, 85–7, 97, 116, 118, 132, 136, 145, 147, 166–9, 189, 200, 204–32, 234, 238–40, 244, 246, 247, 249, 250, 251, 253, 258, 269, 275, 276, 278, 313, 351, 355, 385, 402, 413

Ebro 155, 193, 273 Echion 393 Egypt 1, 95, 166, 167, 169, 170, 173, 215, 216, 224, 236, 299, 347, 363, 364, 368, 370, 379–80, 395, 398, 399, 408, 409, 415 Egyptian 1, 124, 143, 205, 219, 224, 325, 364, 365, 376, 399 Elbe 139, 163, 261, 410 Electra 24, 25, 53 Eleusis 22, 24, 27, 50, 402 Elysium 45, 46, 164, 223, 278, 315 Empedocles 194 Enceladus 25, 31, 41, 52, 54, 59, 82, 322, 353, 362, 391, 402 Enipeus 81, 303, 392, 402 Ennius 252, 281 Enyo 216 Ephialtes 299, 402 Epicureans 87, 91, 190 Epimetheus 207, 244 Epirus 10, 97, 235, 301, 400, 402, 406, 409 Erato 201 Erebus 27, 35, 44, 47, 91, 121, 390, 402 Eridanus 327, 328

Fabius 9, 10, 138, 174, 266, 301, 402 Fabricius 9–11, 97, 138, 179, 197, 223, 282, 301, 402 Fanum 338 fasces 9, 65, 71, 74, 77, 125, 138, 145, 146, 171, 201, 203, 209, 219, 223–6, 230, 232, 245, 262, 273, 274, 276, 278, 279, 282, 284, 297, 322, 332, 342, 363, 402, 405 Fasti 73, 130, 144, 200, 203, 206, 213, 219, 224, 226, 230, 232, 267, 274, 275, 281, 284, 342 Fate 16, 22, 28, 33, 37, 46, 47, 50, 51, 57, 60, 95, 96, 119, 134, 175, 177, 178, 203, 209–11, 213, 214, 228, 234, 243, 298–300, 303, 306, 309, 311, 314, 331, 360, 376, 379, 398, 402, 404 Fauns 49, 60, 153, 328, 369 Firmus 122, 123, 126, 166, 170, 181, 182, 411 First Punic War 10, 223, 409 Flacilla 131, 155, 166, 257, 347, 349, 402 Flaminian Way 73, 320 Flora 396

422

INDEX

Florentinus 23, 37 Fortune 29, 65, 74, 77, 87, 89, 91, 95, 110, 117, 132, 164, 179, 189, 192, 196, 209, 212, 226, 246, 266, 313, 322, 325, 332, 338, 340, 363, 371 Frankish 2, 85, 261, 262, 398 Franks 139, 221, 260, 274 Frigidus 2, 7, 18, 64, 66, 76, 80, 86, 107, 124, 128, 398, 402 Furies 7, 27, 33, 35, 43, 47, 50, 60, 87, 89, 92, 93, 96, 102, 176, 197, 229, 244, 302, 365, 367, 397, 402, 405, 411 Gaetulian 98, 139, 182, 202, 262, 402 Gaïnas 16, 19, 116, 206, 207 Galatea 58, 159, 348, 349, 403, 408 Galatia 210, 215, 236, 243, 247, 401 Galla 18, 123, 137, 251, 277 Galli 45, 401, 403 Gallic 10, 95, 107, 202, 208, 261, 278, 284, 291, 295, 306, 335, 355, 362, 363, 399, 410 Gallus 236 Ganges 69, 83, 100, 144, 199, 263, 403 Garamantians 262, 265, 380, 403 Garda 364, 372 Garganus 128, 291, 403 Gargara 32, 403 Garonne 107 Gaul 2, 23, 88, 94, 108, 109, 138, 140, 144, 191, 224, 251, 254, 255, 264, 274, 283, 284, 303, 306, 347, 405 Gauls 9, 10, 69, 97, 107, 109, 138, 158, 160, 175, 185, 236, 246, 265, 272, 286, 299, 306, 329, 399, 401 Gela 38 Gelonians 68, 78, 101, 141, 148, 178, 231, 258, 392, 403 Gennadius 355, 363 Germans 139, 221, 261, 274, 306 Germany 78, 182, 206, 221, 250, 252, 260, 275, 282, 310, 399, 400, 403 Geryon 36, 100, 357, 403 Giants 5, 6, 16, 25, 31, 42, 44, 54, 58, 59, 82, 87, 110, 142, 249, 295, 323, 328, 353, 390–3, 397, 402, 403, 406

Gigantomachy 5, 6, 44, 54, 82, 110, 249, 299, 318, 322, 355, 390, 397, 402, 403, 406–8 Gildo 3, 7, 8, 19, 21, 87, 123, 149, 166–88, 206, 207, 221, 222, 225, 228, 249–52, 254, 262–6, 272–5, 284, 295, 297, 319, 321, 325, 326, 333, 334 Glaucus 48, 159, 311, 403 Golden Age 5, 6, 45, 76, 83, 87, 88, 90, 190, 196, 276 Golden Fleece 298, 398, 400, 408 Gorgon 37, 43, 100, 287, 308, 390, 393 Goths 3, 19–21, 23, 28, 38, 68, 73, 78, 79, 82, 86, 88, 89, 101, 103, 105, 106, 107, 108, 110, 111, 116, 123, 124, 126, 140, 145, 166, 172, 178, 206–8, 216, 227, 234, 237, 249, 250, 254, 255, 258, 260, 294–8, 300, 302–6, 309, 312, 313, 316, 317, 319, 320, 325–31, 334, 336–9, 342, 352, 371, 389, 392, 406, 407, 415 Graces 157, 347, 368, 403 Gratian 2, 127, 128, 189, 190 Great Bear 42, 82, 201, 261, 299, 301, 305 Gruthungians 124, 145, 233, 234, 241, 403, 406 Hadrian 79, 273 Hadrianus 364, 366 Haemus 35, 102, 113, 114, 128, 164, 215, 225, 231, 233, 246, 258, 302, 315, 403 Halys 79, 105, 223, 236, 387, 403 Hammon 129, 214, 262, 403 Hannibal 10, 69, 173, 224, 252, 281, 286, 295, 301, 302, 309, 399, 402, 409, 410, 411 Harpies 93, 240, 295, 298 Hebrus 35, 68, 71, 82, 101, 225, 233, 242, 255, 302, 313, 325, 392, 403 Hecate 27, 95, 403 Heliades 327, 353, 403, 408 Helicon 41, 103, 200, 345, 353, 367, 386, 403 Heliopolis 379 Heraclea 89, 113

423

INDEX

Hercules 6, 23, 35–6, 42, 80, 84, 88, 93, 100, 113, 129, 142, 149, 184, 201, 202, 219, 250, 259, 309, 311, 350, 358, 364, 365, 374, 385, 397–9, 403, 404, 410 Hercynian Forest 139, 261, 307, 403 Hermus 39, 66, 94, 215, 233, 289, 403 Herodotus 42, 225, 236 Hesperides 126, 262, 292, 350, 403 Hippolyte 38, 149, 219, 403 Hippolytus 148, 311, 403, 404 Homer 5, 13, 15, 42, 56, 161, 186, 241, 257, 320, 337, 345, 349, 367, 386, 400 Honorius 2–9, 11–13, 16, 18–21, 24, 46, 64, 75–80, 81, 83, 86, 88, 90, 103, 107, 109, 122–5, 129–31, 136, 137, 139, 145, 147–8, 152–6, 158, 161–70, 177, 179–84, 186, 187, 189, 190, 195, 197, 200, 206, 207, 219, 221, 225, 228, 230, 244, 246, 249–51, 253, 254, 257, 268, 269, 272, 277, 278, 283, 285, 288, 294, 296, 305, 310, 311, 313, 318–22, 332–4, 335, 338, 340, 341–3, 346, 348, 349, 354, 357, 386, 387–8, 402, 405, 408, 410–12, 414, 416 Horatius 9, 138, 223, 320, 337, 404, 408 Hosius 239, 243, 246 Huns 3, 18, 88, 101, 112, 232, 239, 240, 247, 258, 294, 296 Hyacinthus 41 Hybla 39, 40, 151, 330, 404 Hydaspes 39, 58, 67, 73, 112, 144, 192, 404, 409 Hydra 36, 93, 100, 133, 404 Hymen 160, 164, 348, 352, 368, 369, 370, 371 Hyperion 38, 404 Hyrcanian 56, 78, 98, 404 Ida 32, 45, 50, 52, 59, 131, 154, 174, 237, 263, 289, 357, 403, 404 Idalion 151, 404 Illyria 66, 81, 109, 110, 185, 198, 231, 235, 260, 272, 313, 325, 347, 404 Inachia 35 Inarime 53, 322, 404

Indian Ocean 58, 84, 111, 159, 185, 209, 293, 345, 353, 364 Indus 69, 84, 231 Ino 140 invective 8, 11, 12, 14, 86, 89, 189, 204, 208 Ionian 26, 31, 37, 83, 140, 198, 260, 304, 329, 367, 381, 397 Iris 7, 48, 390, 391, 404 Isis 252, 394 Ixion 47 Jacob 8, 388–9 Janus 219, 275, 342, 404 Jason 398, 400 Jerome 63, 118, 166, 214, 319 jeweled style 14, 26, 152 Jocasta 218, 404, 406 John Chrysostom 206, 231 Juba 126, 171, 181, 404 Judaea 216 Jugurtha 169, 171, 173, 174, 184, 266, 301, 334, 399, 404, 405 Julius Caesar 135, 208, 300, 326, 400, 404 Juno 29, 30, 36, 40, 47, 48, 58, 61, 70, 175, 219, 239, 264, 340, 345, 353 Jupiter 5, 6, 8, 16, 22–4, 27–30, 33, 34, 39, 40, 42, 44, 48, 49, 50, 53, 58, 59, 61, 64, 68, 70, 72, 77, 78, 81, 82, 87, 92, 93, 120, 129, 131, 132, 143, 153, 157, 158, 168, 169, 172–5, 177, 184, 186, 191, 201, 211, 213, 237, 264, 267, 280, 283, 287–9, 295, 298–300, 309, 318, 321–3, 327, 332–4, 338, 348, 353, 357, 366, 379, 383, 385, 389–91, 397, 399–404, 407, 411 Lachesis 16, 28, 47, 60, 177, 237, 276, 299, 376, 402, 404 Ladon 260, 290, 404 Laevinus 309, 408 Laïs 211 Lake Triton 126, 262, 411 Laodamia 349 Latona 29, 30, 44, 47, 57, 70, 129, 161, 219, 391, 393, 394, 401, 404 Lebanon 215, 407 Leda 72, 131, 148, 178, 400, 404

424

INDEX

Lemnos 157, 392 Leo 102, 136, 207, 208, 240, 241, 242, 243, 246, 288 Lethe 35, 43, 46, 120, 177, 391, 404 Libya 36, 68, 79, 84, 100, 105, 111, 126, 139, 166, 172, 174–6, 180, 181, 186, 210, 222, 263, 265, 266, 284, 290, 292, 297, 354, 380, 400, 403, 406 Libyans 158, 182, 198, 214, 236, 238, 278, 292, 326, 341 lictors 9, 71, 125, 138, 226, 245, 288, 342, 405 Liguria 187, 314, 328, 331, 333, 405, 408, 411 Ligurian 143, 149, 160, 196, 333, 336 Lilybaeum 31 Lingones 284, 405 Lipari Islands 42, 83, 401 Livia 154 Livy 144, 179, 224, 401 Lucianus 88 Lucifer 40, 143, 281 Lucina 30, 69, 211, 277, 346 Lucretia 223, 349, 399, 405 Lutatius 223 Lycaean 328 Lycaeus 37, 140, 260, 289, 370, 405 Lycaon 201, 305 Lycians 88, 215 Lycurgus 141, 197, 405 Lydia 35, 66, 97, 144, 148, 161, 215, 236, 237, 247, 283, 400, 405 Macedonia 78, 185, 189, 192, 193, 287, 312, 325 Macedonians 113, 224, 233, 287, 302, 364, 397 Maeander 236, 237, 342, 405 Maenads 117, 144, 245, 405, 407 Maenalian 130 Maenalus 33, 44, 70, 140, 201, 260, 289, 315, 369, 405 Maeon 236 Maeonians 27, 39, 144, 236, 243, 405 Magi 129, 256, 405 Maia 28, 405 Marcellinus Chronicle 123, 124, 229, 250

Marcellus 174, 223, 301, 405 Marcomeres 262 Marcus Aurelius 11, 319, 321, 332 Maria 3, 4, 7, 19–21, 24, 86, 125, 147, 152–5, 158, 159, 161–3, 165, 168, 181, 207, 251, 254, 273, 277, 340, 344, 347, 348, 412 Marius 125, 145, 173, 174, 282, 283, 296, 301, 306, 317, 399, 400, 404, 405, 410 Mars 8, 30, 56, 67, 68, 81, 82, 88, 101, 102, 104, 125, 142, 149, 150, 160, 173, 175, 206, 216, 218, 227, 231–3, 263, 275, 277, 280, 281, 288, 298, 299, 305, 311, 312, 315, 322, 356, 381, 382, 385, 386, 390, 391, 392 Marsyas 236, 405 Mascezel 19, 167, 168, 170, 183 Massagetans 101, 142, 405 Massylians 126, 180, 405 Mauretania 122, 166, 167, 290, 399, 406 Medes 79, 219, 286, 287 Medusa 99 Megaera 60, 87–90, 93–6, 102, 103, 397, 402, 405, 411 Memnon 245, 263, 395, 405 Memphis 124, 143, 173, 196, 398 Menander 12, 413 Mercury 22, 28–30, 280, 386, 394, 405 Meroë 68, 73, 78, 161, 185, 214, 262, 370, 380, 405 Metellus 174, 215, 405 Mettius 9, 10, 138, 406, 411 Midas 96, 236, 289, 406 Milan 1–4, 12, 18, 20, 75, 76, 124, 152, 160, 167, 170, 171, 196, 253, 294, 319, 320, 333, 405, 408, 413 Mimas 59, 390, 392, 406 Mincio 149, 328, 372 Minerva 23, 33, 37, 38, 41, 43, 50, 55, 57, 67, 126, 130, 175, 217, 219, 236, 241, 247, 273, 274, 276, 287, 288, 289, 298, 334, 348, 366, 390, 391, 393, 402, 406, 411 Minos 47, 89, 94, 118–20, 311, 406 Minotaur 342, 357 Mithras 256 Mnemosyne 161

425

INDEX

Moesia 123, 126, 294, 406 Molossians 117, 273, 291, 301, 406 Moors 79, 126, 161, 167, 174, 177, 180–2, 185, 222, 225, 255, 265, 265, 266, 274, 282, 406 Mother Earth 5, 264, 390 Mucius 9, 10, 138, 223, 406, 408 Mulvian Bridge 339 Muses 5, 8, 23, 37, 64, 66, 69, 74, 77, 87, 88, 90, 91, 103, 104, 138, 153, 190, 191, 194, 196, 200, 201, 253, 255, 260, 267, 270, 281, 282, 296, 297, 315, 321, 326, 337, 344, 345, 349, 350, 354, 357, 366, 369, 370, 373, 386, 395, 403, 407, 410 Mycenae 60, 180, 183, 326, 411 Naiads 23, 38, 48, 72, 148, 319, 327, 406 Naples 135, 162, 230, 398, 404, 408 Narcissus 41, 223, 406 Narnia 338 Nasamonians 177, 262, 265, 406 Nemea 385 Nemesis 316 Neptune 29, 42, 76, 83, 93, 99, 140, 159, 160, 175, 201, 229, 290, 348, 391, 393, 398, 404 Nereids 70, 143, 152, 158, 159, 163, 228, 347, 406 Nereus 29, 48, 153, 159, 292, 406 Nero 10, 123, 135, 140, 230 Nile 1, 36, 65, 69, 84, 96, 112, 126, 137, 143, 156, 161, 172–4, 176, 185, 186, 199, 209, 213, 219, 227, 260, 262, 279, 299, 325, 353, 355, 363, 366, 370, 372–3, 379–81, 394 Niobe 241 Niphates 56, 79, 209, 406 Noricum 308 Nubians 262 Numa 94, 141, 287, 300, 406 Numidians 262, 399, 404, 405, 410 Nymphs 35, 39, 40, 43, 48, 53, 55, 56, 64, 71, 72, 156, 159, 277, 289, 291, 327, 347, 350, 373, 393 Nysa 144, 406 Odotheus 78, 124, 145, 403, 406 Oedipus 93, 218, 404, 406

Oenomaus 350 Oeta 80, 110, 153, 267, 303, 392, 406 Olybrius 1, 7, 8, 11, 12, 18, 21, 63–5, 69, 71–5, 251, 276, 385 Olympus 5, 6, 24, 42, 44, 49, 56, 78, 82, 110, 132, 154, 164, 168, 171, 198, 213, 249, 303, 318, 322, 333, 353, 403, 409 Ophion 59 Orestes 74, 93, 94, 326, 364, 365, 407 Orion 42, 65, 82, 187, 263, 328, 407 Orontes 59, 79, 105, 223, 232, 286, 407 Orosius 3, 8, 161, 168, 207, 254, 295, 319, 413 Orpheus 23, 35, 36, 37, 80, 161, 200, 271, 345, 352, 353, 363, 367, 376, 407 Ossa 5, 35, 42, 44, 110, 128, 154, 249, 254, 299, 392, 403, 407 Ostrogoths 78, 233, 206, 208, 233, 373, 407 Othrys 154, 407 Otus 299, 407 Ovid 6, 15, 17, 22, 25, 36, 42, 236, 408, 414, 415 Pacatus 89, 167, 321 Pachynus 31, 175, 407 Pactolus 66, 94, 215, 233, 283 Padua 81, 373, 398 Palaemon 140, 159 Palatine 6, 125, 174, 273, 279, 295, 297, 318, 320, 322, 323, 335, 339, 341, 342, 342, 399 Palladius 24, 355, 367–69 Pamphylia 243 Pan 36, 328, 405 Panchaia 39, 84, 407 Pandion 37 panegyric 3, 6, 11–14, 63–5, 75, 76, 122, 147, 167, 168, 189, 190, 207, 208, 249, 252, 253, 278, 294, 318, 321 Pangaea 101, 130, 231, 258, 392 Pannonia 105, 123, 272, 407 Pantagia 38 Paphos 159, 162, 228 paradox 17, 31, 373, 377, 380, 383, 384 Paraetonian 170, 176

426

INDEX

Parnassus 66, 90, 191, 326, 386, 407 Parthenius 41, 44, 260 Parthians 83, 135, 142, 148, 358, 359, 360, 379 patrician 212, 224, 225, 227, 246, 283, 285, 324 Paulus 282, 301, 397, 407 Pegasus 99, 143, 386 Peleus 152, 407 Pelion 5, 70, 81, 105, 110, 128, 153, 249, 254, 299, 403, 407 Pelopea 218, 407 Peloponnese 110, 397, 402 Pelops 47, 161, 350 Pelorus 31, 56, 304, 331, 390, 392, 407 Penelope 344, 346 Peneus 42, 153, 407 Penthesilea 219 Pentheus 117 , 245, 273, 397, 405, 407 Pergus 40 Permessus 345 Perses 266, 397, 407 Perseus 6, 88, 100, 211 Persia 76, 135, 161, 172, 222, 243, 256, 398, 407, 410 Persians 19, 27, 39, 43, 56, 67, 69, 79, 83, 97, 98, 101, 103, 108, 123, 129, 132, 133, 146, 172, 197, 207, 220, 231, 244, 250, 256, 259, 260, 286, 287, 303, 324, 335, 364, 387, 401, 405, 407, 411 Peuce 145, 325 Phaedra 403 Phaethon 6, 72, 81, 110, 111, 127, 319, 327, 328, 353, 379, 401, 403, 407 Phalaris 99, 177, 214, 408 Pharos 143, 156, 224, 366, 408, 409 Pharsalus 163, 335, 408 Phasis 79, 103, 217, 247, 408 Philip 124, 137, 179, 193, 266, 309, 408, 413, 415 Philomela 410 Philostorgius 85, 86, 118, 229, 407, 413 Phlegethon 27, 29, 46, 60, 94, 119, 375, 408 Phlegra 44, 54, 58, 59, 353, 390, 408 Phlegraean Fields 59, 322, 408 Phoenicians 157, 219, 357, 403

Phoenix 39, 251, 279, 353, 355, 373, 376–9 Pholoë 36, 124, 140, 319, 330 Phorcys 48 Phrygia 52, 206, 215, 233, 236, 237, 240, 241, 401, 406, 408 Phrygians 32, 45, 51, 61, 175, 201, 218, 228, 236, 241, 287, 351, 400 Picts 79, 122, 221, 274, 310, 411 Pierian 91, 326 Pirithous 94 Pisidians 236, 243 Plato 132, 194, 195, 197 Pleiades 139, 187, 280, 302, 303, 305, 408 Pliny Natural History 34, 56, 77, 202, 238, 262, 395, 401 Plowman 42, 55, 82, 131, 163, 187, 258, 305 Po 6, 42, 72, 81, 125, 149, 198, 221, 274, 303, 313, 320, 327–9, 331, 338, 353, 372, 408 Poetovio 2, 128 Pollentia 3, 20, 294, 296, 316, 317, 320, 326, 328, 331, 388 Pollux 72, 94, 178, 362, 400, 402, 404 Polycaste 358 Polyphemus 59, 397, 403, 408 Pompey 171, 216, 224, 225, 266, 279, 283, 400, 404 Pontus 105, 215, 258, 266, 395 Porphyrion 391, 393 Porsenna 175, 223, 337, 400, 404, 406, 408 Porus 137, 193, 263, 364, 365, 404, 409 praetorian prefect 2, 63, 85, 88, 106 Priapus 217 Proba 63, 64, 70, 251, 276 Probinus 1, 7, 8, 11, 12, 18, 21, 63–5, 69, 70, 72, 74, 75, 251, 276, 355, 385 Probus 20, 63–7, 69, 70, 415 Procne 410 Proculus 88, 98 Prometheus 132, 244, 390, 391, 409 Promotus 78, 85, 101, 124, 250, 257, 351, 406 Propontis 239 Proserpina 1, 6, 7, 15, 16, 20–7, 30, 32–8, 41, 43, 44, 45, 48, 50, 53,

427

INDEX

54–5, 56, 60, 71, 73, 82, 100, 120, 137, 147, 150, 153, 233, 258, 345, 390, 391, 402, 411 Protesilaus 349 Proteus 48, 156, 349, 409 Prudentius 251, 296 Ptolemy 205, 210, 211, 224, 364 Pyragmon 33, 83, 401 Pyrenees 222, 347 Pyrrha 172 Pyrrhus 9, 10, 97, 137, 138, 175, 179, 224, 266, 282, 295, 301, 302, 401, 402, 406, 409 Pythagoras 195, 197 Python 23, 70, 87, 90, 142 Quirinus 277, 409 Radagaisus 3, 20, 417 Raetia 139, 306, 307, 308, 310, 329, 409 Ravenna 3, 20, 253, 254, 294, 318, 321, 333, 338 Red Sea 99, 144, 172, 340, 370, 382, 385 Regulus 9, 10, 138, 173, 266, 409 Renaissance 25, 152 Rhadamanthus 119 Rhine 58, 69, 78, 95, 107, 124, 139, 140, 146, 163, 181, 183, 193, 221, 236, 254, 255, 260–2, 272, 274, 282, 291, 307, 308, 310, 314, 335, 371, 386, 397, 403, 410 Rhodope 30, 35, 80, 101, 113, 126, 142, 233, 258, 302, 366, 392, 409 Rhône 107, 193, 222, 236, 259, 278, 286, 306, 362 Riphaean 58, 82, 98, 409 Romulus 67, 71, 77, 125, 141, 145, 173, 230, 232, 265, 277, 285, 296, 300, 305, 307, 322, 342, 409 Rostra 278, 285, 288, 299, 323, 341, 342, 409 Rubicon 333, 363 Rufinus 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 11, 13, 16, 18, 19, 21, 23, 36, 75, 76, 78, 81, 85–91, 93–6, 97–121, 124, 169, 170, 180, 190,194, 199, 207, 208, 232, 246, 247, 250–3, 258, 260, 269, 273, 294, 296, 304, 313, 352, 355, 375, 381, 385, 409, 413, 414

Sabaeans 134, 378, 409 Sabines 174 Sacred Largesses 189, 193, 239, 364 Salmoneus 120, 389 Sangarius 237 Saône 107, 193, 222, 236, 306 Sappho 161 Sardinia 170, 187, 198, 304 Sarmatians 82, 101, 141, 151, 239, 258, 409 Saturn 5, 29, 30, 42, 45, 49, 56, 82, 93, 280, 385, 386 Satyrs 293 Saulus 296, 315, 319, 329 Saxons 126, 161, 221, 274, 371 Scipio Aemilianus 10, 409 Scipio Africanus 10, 223, 252, 281, 301, 346, 409, 410 Sciron 99, 303 Scorpio 196, 280 Scots 79, 126, 274, 310, 346, 371, 411 Scylla 62, 100, 218, 345, 410 Scyros 152, 154, 401 Scythians 57, 69, 78, 95, 100, 101, 141, 148, 198, 206, 217, 225, 233, 234, 277, 289, 315, 372, 390, 409 Sea of Azov 65, 101, 130, 178, 217, 239, 299, 332 Second Punic War 10, 252, 286, 399, 402, 405, 408, 409, 410 Seine 405 Semiramis 69, 135, 219, 220, 410 Senate 5, 65, 71, 172, 184, 191, 224, 227, 230, 232, 264, 265, 278, 283, 288, 295, 297, 320–2, 324, 332, 341, 342 Seneca 380 Senones 95, 284, 410 Senonian 175, 306 Serena 3, 18, 20, 82, 107, 152, 153, 158, 162, 164, 181, 242, 250, 251, 254, 256, 257, 266, 269, 277, 318, 325, 344–50, 352–5, 376, 383, 386–7, 410 Shapur 161, 207, 244, 410 Sibyl 129, 172, 209, 227, 287 Sicily 23, 25, 31–3, 38, 42, 43, 52, 55, 57, 83, 103, 173, 177, 185, 198, 214, 223, 260, 286, 291, 304, 331, 361,

428

INDEX

362, 397, 401, 402, 404, 405, 407, 408 Sidonians 34, 144, 161, 177 Sidonius 1, 8, 221 Silenus 293 Simois 59, 154, 263 Sirens 54, 56, 345, 410 Smyrna 349, 355, 356 Solon 141, 410 Sozomen 128, 205, 206, 407, 413 Spain 23, 58, 83, 94, 107, 109, 129, 147, 251, 255, 259, 273, 281, 283, 286, 344, 346–8, 403, 409, 410 Spanish 66, 73, 100, 122, 125, 138, 144, 149, 173, 193, 220, 222, 239, 253, 281, 291, 387 Spartacus 99, 225, 295, 302 Spartans 72, 110, 131, 140, 141, 178, 197, 234, 286, 287, 291, 316, 400, 405 Spercheius 303 Steropes 33, 83, 401 Stilicho 2–4, 6, 8, 11, 12, 18–21, 23, 24, 64, 75, 76, 78, 81, 82, 86–90, 99–104, 107–13, 117, 122, 124, 125, 139–40, 147, 148, 150, 152, 153, 155, 158, 160, 161, 163–71, 180–4, 190, 191, 197, 199–201, 204–8, 221, 225, 231, 232, 241, 242, 244, 245, 246, 249–69, 272–90, 294–8, 301, 302, 303, 305–21, 325, 326, 329, 331–3, 335–7, 340, 344, 347, 350, 351, 352, 354–6, 368, 371, 376, 386, 399, 415–17 Stoicism 87, 190, 195 Strabo 236, 237 Stymphalian 36, 358, 410 Styx 27, 30, 35, 45, 120, 121, 400 Suebians 146, 172, 221, 260, 261, 410 Suetonius 300 Sulla 99, 173, 223, 334, 399, 405, 410 Sunno 262 Syene 380, Sygambrians 139, 163, 182, 221, 261, 282, 310, 410 Symmachus 23, 166, 296 Synesius 122 Synnada 237 Syracuse 405

Syria 105, 215, 247, 395, 407 Syrtes 58, 61, 139, 175, 181, 262, 265, 290, 410 Tagus 66, 94, 144, 150, 201, 273, 291, 347, 348, 410 Tanaquil 345 Tantalus 47, 120 Tarbigilus 19, 206–8, 227, 234, 235, 238, 241–3 Tarpeian 172, 261, 323, 334, 357 Tarquins 10, 123, 135, 145, 175, 223, 337, 350, 399, 410 Tartarus 30, 33, 46, 47, 50, 60, 94, 121, 270, 311, 390 Tartessus 94, 159 Tatianus 88, 98 Taygetus 44, 201, 290, 303, 410 Tegea 315 Telephus 366 Tempe 303 Tereus 218, 240, 410 Terpsichore 153, 410 Tethys 25, 38, 144, 410 Thabraca 19, 168, 222, 228, 265 Thalia 64, 74, 162, 191, 296 Thebans 61, 142, 184, 286, 395 Thebes 129, 180, 184, 218, 245, 264, 271, 349, 397, 399, 406, 407 Themis 29, 33, 90, 410 Themistocles 197 Theodorus 3, 13, 19, 21, 122, 189–93, 196–8, 201, 202, 203, 253, 364, 416 Theodosian Code 85, 88, 107, 189, 206, 221, 227, 231, 239, 240, 250, 413 Theodosius 2–4, 6–9, 12, 13, 17, 18, 20, 63, 64, 66, 68, 69, 75, 76, 78–83, 85, 86, 87, 88, 90, 92, 94, 96, 104, 109, 116, 122–5, 127–31, 136, 137, 138, 139, 142, 145, 152, 153, 161, 164, 166–71, 177, 178, 180, 181, 205, 207, 250, 251, 257, 259, 268, 269, 277, 287, 306, 318–21, 324–6, 340, 344, 346, 348–9, 351, 398, 399, 402, 410, 411, 414, 417 Thermantia 20, 86, 153, 165, 254, 277, 344, 348, 351 Thermopylae 108, 303

429

INDEX

Theseus 94, 99, 403, 404 Thessalians 42, 95, 142, 154, 234, 304, 345, 402 Thessaly 42, 89, 105, 108, 109, 113, 303, 387, 407 Thetis 70, 81, 148, 152, 153, 154, 159, 386, 393, 407 Third Punic War 10, 400, 409 Thrace 18, 23, 30, 35, 78, 85, 99, 101, 105, 123, 130, 140, 186, 225, 246, 250, 255, 258, 325, 336, 337, 351, 399, 407, 411 Thracian 35, 36–37, 80, 82, 96, 102, 104, 113, 117, 126, 142, 161, 164, 205, 231, 233, 236, 242, 258, 302, 308, 313, 315, 337, 351, 352, 353, 392, 399, 410 Thule 79, 111, 126, 286, 303, 411 Thyestes 60, 69, 93, 180, 183, 218, 398, 407, 411 thyrsus 27, 411 Tiber 7, 42, 64, 67, 71–2, 143, 149, 175, 198, 222, 223, 232, 233, 272, 284, 287, 312, 315, 322, 328, 335, 337, 338, 342, 400, 404 Tiberius 10, 135, 140, 154, 230 Ticino 328 Tigranes 266 Tigris 126, 135, 161, 215, 244, 256, 325, 335, 379, 407 Timasius 205, 214 Timavo 81, 314, 328 Tiphys 297, 411 Tiresias 219 Tisiphone 27, 397, 402, 405, 411 Titans 6, 27, 28, 53, 87, 121, 132, 353, 390, 391, 399, 404, 409 Tityos 47, 82, 120, 391 Torquatus 9, 10, 138, 363, 411 Trajan 4, 5, 12, 19, 122, 123, 125, 135, 250, 251, 260, 295, 297, 319, 321, 332, 335, 342, 346, 411 Trebia 286, 309, 409, 411 tribune 4, 5, 191, 205, 210, 250, 355, 367 Triptolemus 24, 27, 50, 411 Triton 152, 158, 159, 160, 228, 334, 348, 349

Trojans 81, 110, 131, 152, 186, 218–19, 241, 245, 326, 337, 364, 366, 386, 401, 405 Troy 137, 154, 263, 349, 361, 362, 364, 366, 398, 408 Tullus 10, 179, 406, 411 Turkey 30, 39, 94, 194, 206, 215–17, 237, 266, 356, 398, 400, 401, 403, 405, 407, 408 Turnus 257 Tuscany 3, 186, 274, 312, 328 Typhoeus 53, 82, 295, 299, 322, 391, 404, 411 Typhon 37, 411 Tyre 187 Tyrians 77, 97, 129, 151, 181 Tyrrhenian 31, 54, 61, 72, 185, 198, 265, 292 Ulysses 94, 345, 346, 349 Underworld 7, 22–7, 35, 43, 47, 48, 50, 87, 89, 91, 93, 109, 118, 120, 176, 183, 223, 229, 257, 322, 328, 397, 398, 400, 402, 404, 406–8 Urania 201 Uranius 355, 385 Ursa Major 42, 201, 305 Valens 249, 255, 294, 316 Valentinian 18, 122, 123, 128, 137, 410 Vandals 11, 249, 295, 308, 309, 310, 414 Varanes 19, 207 Veientines 174 Venetian 149 Venus 23–5, 33, 37, 40, 42, 45, 55–7, 61, 82, 148, 151–3, 156–63, 175, 220, 224, 227, 273, 277, 280, 348, 353, 358, 360, 368–73, 381–2, 386, 391, 395, 397, 403, 404, 414 Vercellae 296, 306, 317 Verona 20, 294, 296, 319, 320, 328, 363, 364 Vestal 219 Vesuvius 53 Vindex 144 Virgil 5, 11, 13, 15, 34, 74, 131, 170, 257, 322, 349, 367, 409

430

INDEX

Virgo 102, 280 Visigoths 250, 251, 257 Vulcan 37, 42, 56, 60, 67, 76, 83, 156, 157, 202, 257, 340, 362, 374, 386, 392, 401, 411 Xerxes 89, 108, 260

Zama 10, 281, 410 Zephyr 23, 26, 39, 394, 411 Zodiac 29, 72, 102, 196, 259, 389 Zosimus 2, 3, 80, 85, 86, 88, 101, 107, 110, 116, 123, 124, 128, 147, 167, 168, 205–7, 212, 214, 243, 250, 254, 295, 325, 407, 413

431