The Complete Works of Claudian

This volume offers a modern, accurate, and accessible translation of Claudians work, published in English for the first time since 1922, and accompanied by detailed notes and a comprehensive glossary. Claudian (active 395404 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 Claudians 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 Probinuss Consulship, Panegyrics on Honoriuss Third, Fourth, and Sixth Consulships, Invective Against Rufinus, Fescennines and Epithalamium for Honorius and Maria, The War With Gildo, Panegyric on Manlius Theodoruss Consulship, Invective Against Eutropius, Stilichos 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 Claudians 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.