Rome Personified, Rome Epitomized: Representations of Rome in the Poetry of the Early Fifth Century

Abstract

THE LAST YEARS OF THE FOURTH AND THE BEGINNING of the fifth century (the reigns of Theodosius and his sons) mark a crucial stage in the Christianization of Rome. 1 The hold of the city and all it stood for on the imagination of the ruling classes was as strong as ever. But Theodosian legislation had definitively established the dominance of Christianity in the empire, and even in Rome the aristocracy was becoming progres- sively more Christian. 2 These changing circumstances find expression in the way Rome was represented in contemporary literature. While still indebted to the traditional language of the laudes Romae and to well- established literary traditions, the authors of the period find new ways to inflect the image of Rome that mirror their differing religious and cul- tural allegiances. Three poets make the largest contributions to that evolution in the representation of Rome. Claudius Claudianus was born in Alexandria (c. 370) but came to Rome in 394. His first Latin poem celebrated the consuls of 395, Probinus and Olybrius, but thereafter most of his poems served the interests of his patron and the emperor Honorius' chief min- ister, the Vandal general Stilicho. Of particular importance for the repre- sentation of Rome are his consular panegyrics, for the consulships of Honorius (396, 398, and 404) and Stilicho (400), and his two historical epics on the campaigns against the African warlord Gildo (De bello Gildonico 398) and against Alaric in 401-402 (De bello Getico 402). Claudian wrote his last dated poem in 404. Nothing is heard of him after that date and it is likely he died soon thereafter. Claudian's Christian contemporary, Aurelius Prudentius Clemens, was born, according to the verse preface he wrote to his collected works, in 348. After a successful career in the imperial administration, he