Böcker av Claudian

An exhaustive study of Claudian's unfinished mythological epic, with a text, apparatus criticus, and commentary. The long introduction begins with a catalogue of manuscripts; and this leads to an investigation into the manuscript tradition and the history of the poem's transmission. Dr Hall then surveys the most important printed editions of the poem.

Claudius Claudianus (c. 370-c. 410 CE) gives us important knowledge of Honorius's time and displays poetic as well as rhetorical skill, command of language, and diversity. A panegyric on the brothers Probinus and Olybrius (consuls together in 395 CE) was followed mostly by epics in hexameters, but also by elegiacs, epistles, epigrams, and idylls.

This is an edition of Claudian's poem which celebrates the defeat of Alarci the Visigoth's first invasion of Italy (402 AD). This book provides an analysis of the historical background and of Claudian's language, style, imagery, and use of a wide range of other Greek and Latin sources.

I would urge anyone who thinks that Statius only wrote gruesome epic and Claudian only dull panegyric to read this slim and sprightly volume."-Bryn Mawr Classical Review

A simplified text of the poem, with a facing-page translation to make the work accessible to non-specialists. The book aims to set Claudian in place as a distinctive creative writer of late antiquity with the roots of the whole classical tradition before him.