The Description of Landscape in the Poetry of Venantius Fortunatus: The Moselle Poems

Abstract

Venantius Fortunatus is the last major Latin poet of late antiquity. Born near Treviso in northern Italy, he studied grammar and rhetoric in the still thriving schools of Ravenna before moving in 566 to Gaul, where he sought to employ his literary education and talents in the service of Merovingian and Gallo-Roman patrons. Fortunatus's poetry gives ample evidence of his early studies: he shows familiarity with classical poetry, especially Virgil, Ovid, Lucan, and Statius, and with the main Christian poets of late antiquity. In a passage at the beginning of his verse Life of St. Martin, Fortunatus lists Juvencus, Sedulius, Orientius, Prudentius, Paulinus, Arator, and Alcimus Avitus as preeminent in Christian poetry, thereby naming all of his most important Christian Latin predecessors.