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RUTILIUS CLAUDIUS NAMATIANUS

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Originally appearing in Volume V23, Page 943 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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RUTILIUS See also:

CLAUDIUS NAMATIANUS , See also:Roman poet, flourished at the beginning of the 5th See also:century A.D. He was the author of a Latin poem, De Reditu Suo, in elegiac See also:metre, de-scribing a See also:coast voyage from See also:Rome to See also:Gaul in A.D. 416. The See also:literary excellence of the See also:work, and the flashes of See also:light which it throws across a momentous but dark See also:epoch of See also:history, combine to give it exceptional importance among the See also:relics of See also:late Roman literature. The poem was in two books; the exordium of the first and the greater See also:part of the second have been lost. What remains consists of about seven See also:hundred lines. The author is a native of S. Gaul (See also:Toulouse or perhaps See also:Poitiers), and belonged, like Sidonius, to one of the See also:great governing families of the Gaulish provinces. His See also:father, whom he calls Lachanius, had held high offices in See also:Italy and at the imperial See also:court, had been See also:governor of Tuscia (See also:Etruria and See also:Umbria), then imperial treasurer (comes sacrarum largitionum), imperial See also:recorder. (See also:quaestor), and governor of the See also:capital itself (praefectus urbi). Rutilius boasts his career to have been no less distinguished than his father's, and particularly indicates that he had been secretary of See also:state (magister officiorum) and governor of the capital (i. 157, 427, 467, 561).

After reaching manhood, he passed through the tempestuous See also:

period between the See also:death of See also:Theodosius (395) and the fall of the usurper Attalus, which occurred near the date when his poem was written. He witnessed the chequered career of See also:Stilicho as actual, though not titular, See also:emperor of the See also:West; he saw the hosts of Radagaisus rolled back from Italy, only to sweep over Gaul and See also:Spain; the defeats and triumphs of See also:Alaric; the three sieges and final See also:sack of Rome, followed by the marvellous recovery of the See also:city; Heraclian's vast armament dissipated; and the fall of seven pretenders to the Western diadem. Undoubtedly the sympathies of Rutilius were with those who during this period dissented from and, when they could, opposed the See also:general tendencies of the imperial policy. We know from himself that he was the intimate of those who belonged to the circle of the great orator See also:Symmachus—men who scouted Stilicho's compact with the Goths, and led the Roman See also:senate to support the pre-tenders See also:Eugenius and Attalus in the vain See also:hope of reinstating the gods whom See also:Julian had failed to See also:save. While making but few See also:direct assertions about See also:historical characters or events, the poem forces on us important conclusions concerning the politics and See also:religion of the See also:time. The attitude of the writer towards paganism is remarkable. The whole poem is intensely See also:pagan, and is penetrated by the feeling that the See also:world of literature and culture is and must remain pagan; that outside paganism lies a See also:realm of barbarism. The poet wears an See also:air of exalted superiority over the religious innovators of his See also:day, and entertains a buoyant confidence that the future of the See also:ancient gods of Rome will not belie their glorious past. Invective and See also:apology he scorns alike, nor troubles himself to show, with Claudian, even a suppressed grief at the indignities put upon the old religion by the new. As a statesman, he is at pains to avoid offending those politic See also:Christian senators over whom See also:pride in their See also:country had at least as great See also:power as See also:attachment to their new religion. Only once or twice does Rutilius speak directly of See also:Christianity, and then only to attack the monks, whom the temporal authorities had hardly as yet recognized, and whom, indeed, only a See also:short time before, a Christian emperor had forced by thousands into the ranks of his See also:army. Judaism Rutilius could assail without wounding either pagans or Christians, but he intimates, not obscurely, that he hates it chiefly as the evil See also:root whence the See also:rank plant of Christianity had sprung.

We read in See also:

Gibbon that " See also:Honorius excluded all persons who were adverse to the See also:catholic See also:church from holding any See also:office in the state," that he " obstinately rejected the service of all those who dissented from his religion," and that " the See also:law was applied in the utmost See also:latitude and rigorously executed." Far different is the picture of See also:political See also:life impressed upon us by Rutilius. His See also:voice is assuredly not that of a See also:partisan of a discredited and over-See also:borne See also:faction. We see by the aid of his poem a senate at Rome composed of past office-holders, the See also:majority of whom were certainly pagan still. We discern a Christian See also:section whose Christianity was political rather than religious, who were See also:Romans first and Christians afterwards, whom a new See also:breeze in politics might easily have wafted back to the old religion. Between these two sections the broad old Roman See also:toleration reigns. Some ecclesiastical historians have fondly imagined that after the sack of Rome the See also:bishop See also:Innocent returned to a position of predominance. No one who fairly reads Rutilius can cherish this See also:idea. The air of thecapital, perhaps even of Italy, was still charged with paganism. The court was far in advance of the See also:people, and the persecuting See also:laws were in large part incapable of See also:execution. Perhaps the most interesting lines in the whole poem are those in which Rutilius assails the memory of dire Stilicho," as he names him. Stilicho, " fearing to suffer all that had caused himself to be feared," annihilated those defences of See also:Alps and See also:Apennines which the provident gods had interposed between the barbarians and the Eternal City, and planted the cruel Goths, his " skin-clad " minions, in the very See also:sanctuary of the See also:empire. His wile was wickeder than the wile of the Trojan See also:horse, than the wile of See also:Althaea or of Scylla.

May See also:

Nero See also:rest from all the torments of the damned, that they may seize on Stilicho; for Nero smote his own See also:mother, but Stilicho the mother of the world! We shall not err in supposing that we have here (what we find nowhere else) an See also:authentic expression of the feeling entertained by a majority of the Roman senate concerning Stilicho. He had but imitated the policy of Theodosius with regard to the barbarians; but even that great emperor had met with passive opposition from the old Roman families. The relations, however, between Alaric and Stilicho had been closer and more mysterious • than those between Alaric and Theodosius, and men who had seen Stilicho surrounded by his See also:body-guard of Goths not unnaturally looked on the Goths who assailed Rome as Stilicho's See also:avengers. It is noteworthy that Rutilius speaks of the See also:crime of Stilicho in terms far different from those used by See also:Orosius and the historians of the See also:lower empire. They believed that Stilicho was plotting to make his son emperor, and that he called in the Goths in See also:order to climb higher. Rutilius holds that he used the barbarians merely to save himself from impending ruin. The Christian historians assert that Stilicho designed-to restore paganism. To Rutilius he is the most uncompromising foe of paganism. His crowning See also:sin (recorded by the poet alone) was the destruction of the Sibylline books—a sin worthy of one who had decked his wife in the spoils of Victory, the goddess who had for centuries presided over the deliberations of the senate. This crime of Stilicho alone is sufficient in the eyes of Rutilius to See also:account for the disasters that afterwards befell the city, just as See also:Merobaudes, a See also:generation or two later, traced the miseries of his own day to the overthrow of the ancient See also:rites of See also:Vesta. With regard to the See also:form of the poem, Rutilius handles the elegiac See also:couplet with great metrical purity and freedom, and betrays many signs of See also:long study in the elegiac See also:poetry of the Augustan era.

The Latin is unusually clean for the times, and is generally fairly classical both in vocabulary and construction. The See also:

taste of Rutilius, too, is comparatively pure. If he lacks the See also:genius of Claudian, he also lacks his overloaded gaudiness and his large exaggeration, and the directness of Rutilius shines by comparison with the laboured complexity of See also:Ausonius. It is See also:common to See also:call Claudian the last of the Roman, poets. That See also:title might fairly be claimed for Rutilius, unless it be reserved for Merobaudes. At any See also:rate, in passing from Rutilius to Sidonius no reader can fail to feel that he has See also:left the region of Latin poetry for the region of Latin See also:verse. Of the many interesting details of the poem we can only mention a few. At the outset we have an almost dithyrambic address to the goddess See also:Roma, whose See also:glory has ever shone the brighter for disaster, and who will rise once more in her might and confound her See also:barbarian foes. The poet shows as deep a consciousness as any See also:modern historian that the grandest achievement of Rome was the spread of law. Next we get incidental but not unimportant references to the destruction of roads and See also:property wrought by the Goths, to the state of the havens at the mouths of the See also:Tiber, and the general decay of nearly all the old commercial ports on the coast. Most of these were as desolate then as now. Rutilius even exaggerates the desolation of the once important city of See also:Cosa in Etruria, whose walls have scarcely changed from that day to ours.

The See also:

port that served Pisae, almost alone of all those visited by Rutilius, seems to have retained its prosperity, and to have foreshadowed the subsequent greatness of that city. At one point on the coast the villagers everywhere were " soothing their wearied See also:hearts with See also:holy merriment," and were celebrating the festival of See also:Osiris.

End of Article: RUTILIUS CLAUDIUS NAMATIANUS

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