As the self-styled successor of Virgil, Claudian redefines the world of late antiquity in terms of classical Latin epic.

The historical importance of Claudian as writer of panegyric and propaganda for the court of Honorius is well established but his poetry has been comparatively neglected: only recently has his work been the subject of modern literary criticism. Taking as its starting point Claudian's claim to be the heir to Virgil, this book examines his poetry as part of the Roman epic tradition. Discussing first what we understand by epic and its relevance for late antiquity, Catherine Ware argues that, like Virgil and later Roman epic poets, Claudian analyses his contemporary world in terms of classical epic. Engaging intertextually with his literary predecessors, Claudian updates concepts such as furor and concordia, redefining Romanitas to exclude the increasingly hostile east, depicting enemies of the west as new Giants and showing how the government of Honorius and his chief minister, Stilicho, have brought about a true golden age for the west.

Distinguished Latinists examine the formation and evolution of Roman epic from its beginnings in the third century BC to the high Italian Renaissance.

The aim of this volume is to study Silius’ poem as an important step in the development of the Roman historical epic tradition. The Punica is analyzed as transitional segment between the beginnings of Roman literature in the Republican age (Naevius and Ennius) and Claudian’s panegyrical epic in late antiquity, shedding light on its ‘inclusiveness’ and its peculiar, internal dialectic between antiquarian taste and problematic actualization. This is an innovative attempt to connect epic poems and authors belonging to different ages, to frame the development of the literary genre, according to its specific aims and interests throughout the centuries.

Analyzes the poetics and story telling techniques of the fourth-century poet Claudian as tools of Late Antique political propaganda.

This comprehensive reassessment of the carmina maiora of the fourth-century poet Claudian contributes to the growing trend to recognize that Late Antique poets should be approached as just that: poets. Its methodology is developed from that of Michael Roberts' seminal The Jeweled Style. It analyzes Claudian's poetics and use of story telling to argue that the creation of a story world in which Stilicho, his patron, becomes an epic hero, and the barbarians are giants threatening both the borders of Rome and the order of the very universe is designed to convince his audience of a world-view in which it is only the Roman general who stands between them and cosmic chaos. The book also argues that Claudian uses the same techniques to promote the message that Honorius, young hero though he may seem, is not yet fit to rule, and that Stilicho's rightful position remains as his regent.

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.

After centuries of near silence, Latin poetry underwent a renaissance in the late fourth and fifth centuries CE evidenced in the works of key figures such as Ausonius, Claudian, Prudentius, and Paulinus of Nola. This period of resurgence marked a milestone in the reception of the classics of late Republican and early imperial poetry. In Classicism and Christianity in Late Antique Latin Poetry, Philip Hardie explores the ways in which poets writing on non-Christian and Christian subjects used the classical traditions of Latin poetry to construct their relationship with Rome’s imperial past and present, and with the by now not-so-new belief system of the state religion, Christianity. The book pays particular attention to the themes of concord and discord, the "cosmic sense" of late antiquity, novelty and renouatio, paradox and miracle, and allegory. It is also a contribution to the ongoing discussion of whether there is an identifiably late antique poetics and a late antique practice of intertextuality. Not since Michael Robert's classic The Jeweled Style has a single book had so much to teach about the enduring power of Latin poetry in late antiquity.

This is the first book-length study of the reception of Valerius Flaccus' Argonautica in the epic poems of Silius Italicus (Punica), Statius (Thebaid, Achilleid), and Claudian (De Raptu Proserpinae). It sheds new light on the importance of Valerius' poem and enhances our understanding of the intertextual richness of imperial Latin epic. The readings offered in this book provide new evidence to support the view that Valerius' Argonautica predates the Punica and Thebaid, thus helping to clarify the literary history of the Flavian period (69-96 CE). Stover shows how Silius, Statius, and Claudian use programmatic allusion to the Argonautica to present themselves as Valerius' epic successors. Silius, Statius, and Claudian rework Valerian material to achieve various effects; analysis of these effects is organized by the primary function of allusive interactions, such as 'reversal', 'enrichment', and 'contrast'. This study is essential for scholars of Latin epic poetry. Yet the Greek and Latin of its close readings are translated, making it accessible to all readers interested in intertextuality, comparative literature, and other related topics.

Building on Calvino’s observations on Exactitude in Six Memos for the Next Millennium, the present book elucidates on the possible definitions of exactitude, the endeavor of reaching exactitude, and the undeniable limits to the achievement of this ambitious milestone. The eighteen essays in this interdisciplinary volume show how ancient and medieval authors have been dealing with the problem of exactitude vs. inexactitude and have been able to exploit the ambiguities related to these two concepts to various ends. The articles focus on rhetoric and historiography (section I), exact sciences and technical disciplines (II), the peculiarity of quotations (III), cases of programmatic inexactitude (IV) and textual transmission (V). Several interconnected questions weave a net across the volume: to what extent is exactitude the goal in ancient and medieval texts? How can the concepts of accuracy and inaccuracy aid the reinterpretation of an already known text or fact? To what extent can certain definitions of exactitude be stretched, without turning into inexactitude? The volume presents an extensive study capable of highlighting the shrewdness and aptness of the concepts introduced by Calvino more than thirty years ago.