In light, then, of the uniqueness of Claudian’s war epics, let us focus in what remains not on the more popular De raptu Proserpinae but on the De bello Gildonico. Despite its greater familiarity to readers, the De raptu Proserpinae is something of a footnote to Claudian’s career; it may well be, as von Albrecht claims, that “Claudian’s picture of the world and society [in the De raptu] reflects the hierarchical structure of the late Roman Empire’’ (1999: 326), but on the whole it reads rather more like a luxurious escape fTom the pressures of the imperial court than an attempt to engage it in mythological guise. In any case, fine introductions to the De raptu Proserpinae may be found elsewhere (see, e. g., Connor 1993; Gruzelier 1993: xvii-xxxi; von Albrecht 1999: 317-27). The De bello Gildonico, on the other hand, affords the reader many opportunities to examine the intersections between Claudian’s poetic and political techniques, the tools most responsible for his fame in antiquity.
The De bello Gildonico supports Cameron’s assertion above that Claudian’s poetry consists mainly in speeches and descriptions at the expense of narrative (see esp. 1970: 263-4). The poem opens with the poet’s elation at the restoration of harmony between the western and eastern empires in the wake of Gildo’s astonishingly rapid defeat. The scene then shifts to the run-up to war, and in the first speech, a vividly personified Rome comes before Jove and the rest of the Olympian gods to lament her hunger and mistreatment at Gildo’s hands. She is followed by a personified Africa, who continues the complaint against Gildo, portrayed as a monster of competing appetites and vices. Jove breathes new life into Rome and decides to send Theodosius I and his father, Theodosius the Elder, to the two sleeping emperors. The former visits Arcadius in the East and upbraids the young ruler for preferring the utility and profit of an alliance with Gildo to what is right and best for the entire empire (‘‘ergo fas pretio cedet? mercede placebit / seditio,’’ 260-1: ‘‘and so will what is right yield to profit? is rebellion for sale?’’), and advises him to heed the wise counsel of Stilicho. Arcadius wakes and immediately resolves to heed his father’s words. In the West, the shade of the elder Theodosius, invoking his earlier triumphs in North Africa, rouses Honorius to arms. Honorius promptly summons Stilicho, who tells him not to dignify Gildo’s defeat with his presence, but rather to make use of Mascezel, who deserves vengeance for the inhuman crimes that Gildo has perpetrated on his family. Stilicho prepares the troops, and Honorius delivers an inspiring speech to his men in which he derides the worth of Gildo’s troops and Gildo himself, described as a drunken, overly perfumed wretch, enfeebled by old age and incest. An omen bolsters Honorius’ confident rhetoric, and the ships are launched. They face dangerous weather before reaching various harbors. The poem ends there, well before the army (presumably including Mascezel, though Claudian does not say so) is ready to engage Gildo.
The De bello Gildonico challenges our comfortable notions of the boundaries between genres - or, seen another way, demonstrates epic’s capacity to subsume the techniques and motifs of other genres, in this case panegyric and invective. On a formal level, the traditional epic panoply is on conspicuous display: the concilium deorum; the personification of Rome (found in Lucan, for example); the cast of exempla fTom Rome’s heroic past (e. g., Regulus, 79; Fabius and Marcellus, 89; Cincinnatus and Curius, 111; Tullus Hostilius, 254); the catalogue (415-23); the simile (the departing fleet, for instance, is compared to the one that embarked at Aulis against Troy, 484-5); and a hoary twin bill: the omen of the eagle and serpent (467-71), and the reference to the war of the cranes and pygmies (474-8), each of which is found in Homer (Il. 12.200-7 and 3.2-7, respectively). Alongside these are panegyrical elements: the portrayal of the emperors, so quick to heed the commands of the august Theodosii, as properly deferential to their elders; Theodosius I’s fulsome praise of Stilicho (288-320); the flattering representation of Honorius, rousing the troops with spirited oratory (427-66; we must remember that Honorius was only thirteen years old at this time); and the brave Roman sailors damning the storms and cliffs that hinder their desire to carry out the emperor’s will (486-515). Invective also has its place, as we have seen: the depiction of Gildo’s army as undisciplined and timid (432-43), and of their leader as on the one hand murderous, greedy, and expert in the criminal arts (‘‘instat terribilis uiuis, morientibus heres’’, 165: ‘‘he looms as a terror to the living and heir to the dying’’) and on the other as effeminate, diseased, and cowardly (444-50), recalls the verbal carpet-bombing practiced in the In Rufinum and In Eutropium.
Claudian’s first political epic is also a remarkable example of this poet’s ability to marshal epic themes and motifs into the service of political authority, each reinforcing the other. It is significant, for example, that Claudian presses the Theodosii, sources of unimpeachable authority after their death, into service as messengers of Jove. On a generic level, they play the traditional epic role of the authoritative divine messenger (Mercury, typically, but other gods as well) whose words must perforce be heeded by the dutiful hero; one might think, among a number of examples, of Mercury’s admonition to Aeneas at Aen. 4. 265-76. Thus the content of their advice (in a word, trust Stilicho), which according to the norms of the epic genre can hardly be disobeyed, may acquire, on a real-world political level, a greater potency and greater weight in the aristocratic circles of Claudian's audience. Moreover, like Aeneas, Honorius and Arcadius are approvingly figured as dutiful sons, fit continuators of their forebears' virtues and wardens of the future of Roman empire. Claudian’s representation of political figures in an epic landscape flatters all involved and reinforces the rightness of their actions. A modern public relations firm could hardly do better.
A thorough account of the political tact and guile on display in the De bello Gildonico would include Claudian's diminishment of Mascezel; his representation of Stilicho as the rightful regent of both emperors; his subtle reminder of Stilicho’s position as father-in-law to Honorius, a position that acquires greater authority in light of the emphasis, as we have just seen, on filial duty; and the way in which Claudian suggests that Gildo is but another in a long line of African rebels, when, in fact, he had rendered invaluable aid to the Romans in the elder Theodosius’ war against Firmus in Mauretania in 373-5. (On all these matters the reader is referred to the fundamental analysis of Cameron 1970: 93-123.) We might wonder, too, why the poem ends where it does. A sequel describing the victory was either never written or destroyed (Cameron 1970: 115-16). An account of the actual battle, in which even Claudian would have been hard pressed to avoid celebrating Mascezel, would have won Stilicho little political capital and even proved embarrassing if not handled just right. Stilicho could gain only so much credit for a war in which he did not fight. Plus, why antagonize the eastern court, which no doubt saw the outcome as a blow to its designs? And why remind the western court of the good service of Mascezel, when Stilicho (probably) had just had him assassinated? Best to emphasize a restoration of the concord between the two halves of the empire, as Claudian does in the opening lines, and keep silent about all the uncomfortable details.
The present discussion may end with a brief word on another representation of the Gildonic war, one fashioned by Claudian a year and a half later. It serves as a revealing commentary both on the demands of Claudian’s job as court propagandist and on Claudian’s own powers of generic manipulation. When Claudian delivered the first book of his panegyric of Stilicho’s consulship in January of400, he briefly recapitulated the war against Gildo. But whereas in the earlier epic we saw that he had portrayed Gildo as a pathetic, drunken sybarite and his troops as cowardly skirmishers, at Stil. 1.246-69 the same man and army are represented as menacing, even terrifying opponents. To signal the measure of the threat, Claudian employs a characteristically epic technique, the catalogue, to describe the exotic and gruesomely outfitted array of Nubians, Garamantians, and Nasamonians that threaten to overrun North Africa. They are now a formidable, awesome lot. The skies over Carthage are darkened by their arrows (258). Gildo is nothing less than a second Memnon or Porus (264-7). But all this epic furniture is of course to the greater glory of Stilicho, who opposes Gildo as another Alexander and Achilles (268-9). Here we may see clearly the essence of Claudian’s political and poetic art: though his patron demands a rewriting of the history of the Gildonic war, one in which he, not Mascezel, assumes the chief role, Claudian’s technique remains the same. To achieve so brazen a political goal - the re-presentation of Stilicho’s role in the entire war, and even of the nature of the war itself - requires a deft manipulation of the vocabulary and the conventions of epic.
World History
