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"Literary Criticism in Claudian's Carmina Minora" 137th Annual American Philological Association, Montreal.

[Handout - PDF]

This paper examines the manifestation of literary criticism in Claudian’s scoptic epigrams. Of the fifty-three poems in the Carmina minora, the collection of assorted minor verse by Claudian, five contain responses to past literary criticism or include attacks on their target’s intellectual or poetic ability: carm. min. 13 (In Podagricum Qui Carmina Sua Non Stare Dicebat), 23 (Deprecatio ad Alethium Quaestorem), 43 (In Curetium), 44 (In Eundem), and 50 (In Iacobum Magistrum Equitum).

Although isolated assessments of the function of literary criticism in Claudian’s scoptic epigrams have been made (e.g. Cameron 1970, 287-8; Michners 2004: 180), much of the scholarly attention to these poems has focused on determining the extent to which they represent reactions to authentic grievances and attacks on real personages (e.g. Cameron 1970 passim; Brummer 1972: 339-52; Moroni 2002: 75-96; Consolino 2004: 142-74; Michners 2004: 175-86). Rather than pursuing these biographical phantoms, this paper explores the vocabulary and modes of literary criticism in Claudian’s scoptic epigrams in the context of traditional epigrammatic critiques of literature and late antique modes of literary criticism, most notably those found in Ausonius.

The four-verse carm. min. 13 is a heated attack on the poetic abilities of a critic who has assailed the narrator’s prosody and that critic’s fitness to judge the narrator’s craft. The poem employs technical vocabulary of literary criticism (e.g. pedibus, scandere, claudicat, and nutat) in a manner reminiscent of Ausonius’ epigrams targeting the grammaticus Auxilius (Epig. 81 Green) and the rhetor Rufus (Epig. 45-52). The twenty-verse carm. min. 23 is a mock capitulation to an unnamed quaestor, who has objected vehemently to the narrator’s previous criticisms of his own poetry. Rather than face the wrath of his social better, Claudian’s narrator promises—with tongue firmly in cheek—that he will praise with a cry of “sophos” whatever emanations (flatus, v. 19) the poetaster manages to produce. It is possible that the poem’s target is the grammaticus mentioned in v. 6—and so the poem may participate in the traditional epigrammatic critique of grammatici as seen in the Palatine Anthology (11.138-40), the Epigrammata Bobiensia (46, 47, 61, and 64), and Martial (14.120). The fourteen-verse carm. min. 50 combines the familiar and alien, as a defense of the narrator’s poems (ne laceres versus, dux Iacobe, meos, v. 1 and 14) brackets what appear at first glance to be unrelated invocations of Christian saints and withering mockery of Iacobus’ courage. Unlike Claudian’s other scoptic epigrams, which are cast explicitly as part of literary disputes, the ten-verse carm. min. 43 and the eight-verse carm. min. 44 target Curetius, the son of a crooked astrologer, Uranius, who wastes his patrimony by paying to perform cunnilingus. Yet, the criticism of Curetius’ poetic abilities in carm. min. 44. 4 (procul a Musis) and the presence of puns on literary terminology in carm. min. 43 (hiatus in v. 7; lingua in vv. 9 and 10) suggest an affinity with the mode of criticism found in Ausonius’ scoptic series against Eunus the Syrian (Epig. 82-87), where intellectual critique is masked within sexually explicit invective.

In the process of discussing Claudian’s practice of and response to literary criticism and his engagement of poetic models, this paper explores the production of epigrammatic literature and the reception of contemporary Latin verse in late antiquity.

"Vulgar Invective in the Epigrams of Ausonius and Claudian," 40th International Conference on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo.

[Handout - PDF]

This paper discusses sexually explicit invective in the epigrams of Ausonius and Claudian. The engagement by these poets with the tradition of vulgar Latin invective, in particular the composition of groups of vulgar epigrams addressed to a single character, points to the continued interest in playful, mocking literary production of the sort not usually associated with late antique poetry.

Nearly eight hundred years have passed since Ausonius and Claudian were reckoned among the elite of Latin poets. Thomas Cahill's How the Irish Saved Civilization brought Ausonius brief infamy in the late 1990s, when he held the poetry-writing professor up as the quintessential "Late Antique Man," as spiritually vacant as he was poetically derivative, a man of deep but pointless learning who spun out attenuated poeticisms while passing time until the Gothic invasions swept away his world. Cahill's portrait of a dry, boring poetaster accords well with Ausonius's reputation in the time since Gibbon contemptuously dismissed the author and his age. Yet, the image of Ausonius as a fusty professor falters before the reality of his poetry, in particular the playful, shamelessly vulgar invective found in his (sadly, almost-unread) epigrams, no fewer than eight of which are ribald enough to cause even a jaded reader of Martial to blush. Ep. 74 and 82-86 ridicule two characters, Castor and Eunus, who perform cunnilingus; Ep. 75 criticizes the vicious libido unleashed by orgies; and Ep. 100 suggests that a man's overzealous grooming points to a predilection for being a pathicus.

Ausonius's composition of vulgar epigrams in the style of Martial and the Palatine Anthology, however, does not appear to have been an isolated poetic experiment. Two vulgar epigrams mocking a single character survive in the collection of minor verse by Ausonius's younger contemporary, Claudian, who assails the profligate son of an astrologer who wastes his father's ill-gotten gains by paying to perform cunnilingus (carm. min. 43 and 44). That the two greatest secular poets of Late Antiquity would compose poems so similar in tone and subject, yet so at odds with their general reputation, is suggestive of a more diverse literary scene than is usually recognized.

With the exception of a brief article by H. Szelest (1976) on Ausonius's "Spottepigramme" and J. Adam's analysis (1983) of Ausonius Ep. 87, little attention has been paid to the vulgar epigrams of Ausonius and Claudian's poems have been overlooked entirely. Thankfully, recent commentaries by N.M. Kay and M-L. Ricci permit a fuller consideration of this aggressive strain of late antique epigrammatic writing. These poems, in both their tone and their engagement of literary models, reveal rich, playful poetry and sardonic poetic personae utterly at odds with the sterility condemned by Gibbon and his progeny.

"Epistolarity in Claudian's Carmina Minora," 136th Annual American Philological Association Meeting, Boston.

[Handout - PDF]

This paper examines epistolarity in Claudian's carmina minora in the context of late antique Latin epistolography. Expanding on J. Altman's influential treatment of epistolarity, – i.e. "the use of the letter's formal properties to create meaning" (Altman 1982: 4) – recent works by Wilcox (2002) and de Pretis (2002) have explored how casting a classical text in the form of an epistle shapes the literary act. The study of epistolarity is a natural field for scholars of late antiquity, which witnessed a renaissance of secular prose epistolography (Ausonius, Symmachus, Sidonius) and, of course, the maturation of Christian letter writing (Paulinus, Jerome, Ambrose, Augustine).

Seven poems in Claudian's carmina minora have traditionally been recognized as verse epistles. That these poems were not transmitted as part of a coherent collection of letters, but rather are scattered throughout the carmina minora, presents a challenge in determining which of them are properly epistles, with all the attendant expectations of that complex genre, and which are placed in that category on the authority of conjectural, post-antique titles. By considering the formal aspects of these poems and comparing them to other examples of verse epistles, this paper will determine which of Claudian's poems can be said to manifest genuinely the traits of epistolarity. In the process of exploring how and why some of Claudian's poems are cast in the form of epistles, this paper addresses the methodological challenges of analyzing possibly fragmentary epistles transmitted outside of a coherent collection; Claudian's relationship with contemporary epistolary production, specifically the verse epistles of Ausonius and Paulinus; his engagement with classical predecessors, in particular Horace's Epistles and Ovid's exile poetry; and Claudian's manipulation of the epistolary form to address the challenges of corresponding with persons of superior social rank.

The traditionally recognized epistles of Claudian range in length from 4 lines (c.m. 3) to 62 lines (c.m. 31) and exhibit a variety of themes and tones. Ad Aeternalem is a condensed declaration of a poet's embrace of his chosen art. The Epistula ad Gennadium, an ironic apology for not sending a poem, strikes a tone familiar from Horace and combines a poet's deference to his patron with an artist's confidence in his craft. The Deprecatio ad Hadrianum, the only of Claudian's epistles written in hexameter, pleads with a powerful figure to relent from his anger; frequent allusions to Ovid's exile poetry, however, suggest that the poem's dire, hyperbolic rhetoric masks a request for a ceasefire in a literary battle between friends. The Deprecatio ad Alethium drips with scarcely concealed mockery and none-too-subtle self-promotion. The celebratory epistle to Serena, which profusely thanks Serena for her assistance in securing a marriage above his social rank, deftly tempers intimacy with lavish praise. The two poems to the brothers Olybrius and Probinus are both variations on the theme of  "why don't you write?" Approaching these poems through their engagement of the epistolary genre can augment our understanding of both the poems themselves and late antique verse epistolography.

 "Elucidating Claudian in Alain de Lille's Anticlaudianus," Vagantes 2004 Conference, Cornell University.       

[Handout - PDF ]

The influence of the late antique poet Claudian on Alain de Lille's Anticlaudianus is immediately recognizable. Alain frames his narrative of the perfect man's creation and his resistance to the forces of temptation as an inversion of Claudian's Against Rufinus, in which the forces of Hell unleash the perfect villain upon the world. Thus, Alain's title refers not to a polemic against Claudian but rather to a thematic inversion, in which his ideal man, unsurprisingly named "Anti-Rufinus," will triumph over the assembled powers of darkness.

Despite the clear impetus Claudian provided to the Anticlaudianus, scholars have long observed that authors such as Boethius, Martianus Capella, and Bernard Silvestris exerted greater influence on Alain's work. Nevertheless, it is remarkable to note that a systematic study of Claudian's textual and narrative influences on the Anticlaudianus has yet to be produced. Most discussions simply note in passing that Claudian provided a model to Alain; or infrequently a brief list of similar passages may appear in surveys of Alain's sources (e.g. Bossuat 1955). The only exception in the scholarship to date is Bossard 1885, who dilates on the relationship between the texts for a scant two pages in a work focused on the Anticlaudianus's debt to Dante. 

This paper therefore will seek to will address this scholarly lacuna by exploring the textual and narrative relationship between Claudian and Alain's Anticlaudianus as part of a broader investigation of the fortuna of Claudian in the twelfth-century and how Alain mediated between classical and contemporary influences.

"Grappling with Antiquity's End: Nostalgia and Reality in Rutilius Namatianus's De Reditu Suo," 21st Annual Graduate Student Conference on Medieval Studies, University of Connecticut.

Recent work in late antique studies has correctly emphasized the importance of understanding the transition from the later Roman Empire to the early Middle Ages in terms of continuity and transformation rather than through the distorting prism of "decline and fall." Rutilius Namantianus's Itinerarium, however, provides a compelling portrait of an individual grappling with both of these interpretative impulses. As Rutlius journeys from Rome to his native Gaul, his poetic travelogue presents a brutally realistic vision of a society in the midst of a profound dislocation. Yet as Rutilius travels past deserted, ancient towns, he inscribes classical culture onto the physical landscape, in effect substituting memory for man. Rutilius's description of the fifth-century Empire, therefore, repeatedly oscillates between images of decline and continuity. For example, when Rutilius pauses at Ostia, awaiting a ship that will carry him back to his devastated homeland, he notices the distant smoke rising from Rome, a complex image that evokes both domesticity and destruction. Immediately, however, he corrects himself, noting the radiant glow that stretches from the Eternal City to heaven, a traditional image of Rome's triumph over temporal forces. Standing as he does at the dawn of the Middle Ages, Rutilius's strategies for providing meaning to his changing world illustrate both the continuity of classical culture and the emergence of a new reality.  This paper seeks to elucidate the complex fusion of nostalgia, regret, hostility, and hope present in Rutilius, an individual conscious of the transformations occurring in his world, who nevertheless labors to preserve his cultural memory in a changing world.

"Deciphering the New Music and the Development of Greek Drama," Picking up the Pieces Conference, Brown University.

The importance of music in Greek culture would be difficult to overestimate. From the formal setting of religious and theatrical festivals to private symposia and prayers, in choral competitions and songs to celebrate victories in battle and athletics, and in unifying the activities of rowers, soldiers, and builders, music saturated the ancient Greek world. Yet, despite the abundance of visual representations of musical production on vase paintings, a few inscriptions of musical notation, and hundreds of pages of ancient writings on music theory, an understanding of what music accompanied a lyric recitation, a Aeschylean kommos or an Aristophanic play remains elusive and the ancient Greek world maddeningly silent. 

The evidence we do have, however, points to a rapid and accelerating evolution of traditional musical forms in the fifth century BCE. This musical revolution is characterized as the "New Music", in which artists consciously broke from established artistic forms, provoking (apparently) enthusiastic support from the general public and harsh condemnation from partisans of the traditional forms. With the increased emphasis on improvisation and musical skill, musicians at this time attained great prominence and eventually the musician who accompanied a dramatic performance received billing above the dramatist and even the choragus.

In general, the evidence for Greek music is fragmentary, often embedded in larger texts or teased out of tangentially related works. Our evidence for the New Music, its development and reception, is equally fragmentary and presents the additional difficulty that much of the evidence for what happened in fifth century music derives from contemporary critics who were at least ambivalent – and often intensely hostile - to the innovations of the New Musicians. Using Pherecrates' (fragmentary) denunciation of the New Musicians as a jumping off point (Pherecr. fr. 155), this paper will seek to coordinate the fragmentary ancient evidence on the evolution of music in the fifth century BCE. In doing so, it will engage the problems of dealing with fragments of hostile authors as the primary source for a broader tradition and those of synthesizing fragments from multiple media (epigraphic, textual, etc.) into a coherent, if shadowy, whole.