Claudian: Court Poet as Artist

Abstract

Claudian was the last important poet of Rome, the more striking in his talent because of the lack of competitors in the age in which he lived. It is interesting to note that of the people who have actually read his works, most can find in them something attractive or entertaining enough to justify the effort. One example is the opinion of Gibbon:If we fairly balance his merits and his defects, we shall acknowledge that Claudian does not either satisfy or silence our reason. It would not be easy to produce a passage that deserves the epithet of sublime or pathetic; to select a verse that melts the heart or enlarges the imagination … [but] he was endowed with the rare and precious talent of raising the meanest, of adorning the most barren, and of diversifying the most similar topics; his colouring, more especially in descriptive poetry, is soft and splendid; and he seldom fails to display, and even to abuse, the advantages of a cultivated understanding, a copious fancy, an easy and sometimes forcible expression, and a perpetual flow of harmonious versification.