Author: CLAUDIAN
Biography:
CLAUDIAN (b c. 370)
Claudius Claudianus was a Greek born in Alexandria. Nothing is known of his life before he arrived in Rome in 395 to establish himself as a poet writing in Latin. He was in demand for poems that celebrated his patrons and promoted their interests, and soon became the favoured court poet of the emperor Honorius. For Honorius and his minister, the army general Stilicho, he produced stately panegyrics and epic poems about their martial exploits. But he also wrote lighter, shorter works—idylls, satires, an epithalamium, and the unfinished mythological Rape of Proserpine. He is presumed to have died about 404, when the flow of verse came to an end. Jacob George Strutt, the first of the English translators included here, chose the minor poems especially for their relative freedom from the taint of flattery that is evident in the political verse of Claudian. Strutt also translated the Latin and Italian poems of John Milton, q.v., and a brief biography of him is included in Milton’s headnote. “A. Hawkins, Esq., F.H.S.” (fl 1787-1817) is difficult to identify with certainty. He also translated a history of the Turkish empire from French (1787) and was an occasional contributor to William Nicholson’s Journal of Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, and the Arts (1797-1814). Henry Howard was Henry Edward John Howard (1795-1868), born at Castle Howard, Yorkshire, the youngest child of the fifth earl of Carlisle, Frederick Howard (q.v.), and his wife Margaret Leveson-Gower. Educated at Eton and at Christ Church, Oxford (matric. 1814, BA 1818, MA 1822, BD 1834, DD 1838), he went into the church, held various livings, and rose to be Dean of Lichfield. There he played an active role in the restoration of the cathedral. He and his wife Henrietta Elizabeth Wright, married in 1824, had ten children. Besides sermons, his publications were mainly translations: his Claudian, and the first five books of the Old Testament (1855-57). He died at Donington rectory on 8 Oct. 1868. (OCD 6 May 2025; ODNB [Strutt, Howard] 6 May 2025; ancestry.com 6 May 2025; findmypast.com 6 May 2025) HJ
Other Names:
- Claudianus