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Claudian Table IMG 1073-black
Claudius Claudianus, known in English as Claudian (; c. 370 – c. 404 AD), was a Latin poet associated with the court of the Roman emperor Honorius (emperor), Honorius at Mediolanum (Milan), and particularly with the general Stilicho. His work, written almost entirely in dactylic hexameter, hexameters or elegiac couplets, falls into three main categories: poems for Honorius, poems for Stilicho, and classical mythology, mythological epic. Life Claudian was born in Alexandria. He arrived in Rome in 394 and made his mark as a court poet with a eulogy of his two young Patronage in ancient Rome, patrons, Anicius Probinus, Probinus and Anicius Hermogenianus Olybrius, Olybrius, consuls of 395. He wrote a number of panegyrics on the consulship of his patrons, praise poems for the deeds of Stilicho, and invectives directed at Stilicho's rivals in the Eastern court of Arcadius. Little is known about his personal life, but it seems he was a convinced pagan: Augustine of Hippo, Augustine r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Honorius (emperor)
Honorius (9 September 384 – 15 August 423) was Roman emperor from 393 to 423. He was the younger son of emperor Theodosius I and his first wife Aelia Flaccilla. After the death of Theodosius, Honorius ruled the western half of the empire while his brother Arcadius ruled the eastern half. In 410, during Honorius's reign over the Western Roman Empire, Rome was sacked for the first time in almost 800 years. Even by the standards of the Western Empire, Honorius's reign was precarious and chaotic. His early reign was supported by his principal general, Stilicho, who was successively Honorius's guardian (during his childhood) and his father-in-law (after the emperor became an adult). Family Honorius was born to Emperor Theodosius I and Empress Aelia Flaccilla on 9 September 384 in Constantinople. He was brother to Arcadius and Pulcheria. In 386, his mother died, and in 387, Theodosius married Galla who had taken a temporary refuge in Thessaloniki with her family, including her ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The City Of God
''On the City of God Against the Pagans'' ( la, De civitate Dei contra paganos), often called ''The City of God'', is a book of Christian philosophy written in Latin by Augustine of Hippo in the early 5th century AD. The book was in response to allegations that Christianity brought about the decline of Rome and is considered one of Augustine's most important works, standing alongside '' The Confessions'', '' The Enchiridion'', '' On Christian Doctrine'', and ''On the Trinity''. As a work of one of the most influential Church Fathers, ''The City of God'' is a cornerstone of Western thought, expounding on many questions of theology, such as the suffering of the righteous, the existence of evil, the conflict between free will and divine omniscience, and the doctrine of original sin. Background The sack of Rome by the Visigoths in 410 left Romans in a deep state of shock, and many Romans saw it as punishment for abandoning traditional Roman religion in favor of Christianit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rufinus (consul)
Flavius Rufinus ( el, Φλάβιος Ῥουφῖνος; – 27 November 395) was a 4th-century East Roman statesman of Aquitanian extraction who served as Praetorian prefect of the East for the emperor Theodosius I, as well as for his son Arcadius, under whom Rufinus exercised significant influence in the state affairs. He was the subject of the verse invective ''In Rufinum'' by the western court poet Claudian. Life Tall and always in movement, he is described as acute, ambitious, greedy and without principles, but a rigorous Christian. His difficulty with the Greek language is recorded by the sources, as well as his Aquitanian origin. In 388 he was appointed ''magister officiorum''. In 392 he served as Roman consul and in that same year he was appointed as Praetorian prefect of the East. Upon his appointment, he retained the responsibilities of the ''magister officiorum''. In order to become prefect, Rufinus is said to have persuaded the emperor that Eutolmius Tatianus, the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rembrandt - The Rape Of Proserpine - Google Art Project
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (, ; 15 July 1606 – 4 October 1669), usually simply known as Rembrandt, was a Dutch Golden Age painter, printmaker and draughtsman. An innovative and prolific master in three media, he is generally considered one of the greatest visual artists in the history of art and the most important in Dutch art history.Gombrich, p. 420. Unlike most Dutch masters of the 17th century, Rembrandt's works depict a wide range of style and subject matter, from portraits and self-portraits to landscapes, genre scenes, allegorical and historical scenes, biblical and mythological themes and animal studies. His contributions to art came in a period of great wealth and cultural achievement that historians call the Dutch Golden Age, when Dutch art (especially Dutch painting), whilst antithetical to the Baroque style that dominated Europe, was prolific and innovative. This era gave rise to important new genres. Like many artists of the Dutch Golden Age, such as J ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Proserpina
Proserpina ( , ) or Proserpine ( ) is an ancient Roman goddess whose iconography, functions and myths are virtually identical to those of Greek Persephone. Proserpina replaced or was combined with the ancient Roman fertility goddess Libera, whose principal cult was housed in the Aventine temple of the grain-goddess Ceres, along with the wine god Liber. Each of these three deities occupied their own ''cella'' at the temple. Their cults were served or supervised by a male public priesthood. Ceres was by far the senior of the three, one of the dii consentes, Rome's approximate equivalent to the Greek Twelve Olympians. She was identified with Greek Demeter and Liber was identified with Bacchus and Dionysus. Libera is sometimes described as a female version of Liber Pater, concerned with female fertility. Otherwise she is given no clear identity or mythology by Roman sources, and no Greek equivalent. Nothing is known of her native iconography: her name translates as a feminine form ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Epic Poetry
An epic poem, or simply an epic, is a lengthy narrative poem typically about the extraordinary deeds of extraordinary characters who, in dealings with gods or other superhuman forces, gave shape to the mortal universe for their descendants. Etymology The English word ''epic'' comes from Latin ''epicus'', which itself comes from the Ancient Greek adjective (''epikos''), from (''epos''), "word, story, poem." In ancient Greek, 'epic' could refer to all poetry in dactylic hexameter (''epea''), which included not only Homer but also the wisdom poetry of Hesiod, the utterances of the Delphic oracle, and the strange theological verses attributed to Orpheus. Later tradition, however, has restricted the term 'epic' to ''heroic epic'', as described in this article. Overview Originating before the invention of writing, primary epics, such as those of Homer, were composed by bards who used complex rhetorical and metrical schemes by which they could memorize the epic as received i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Late Antiquity
Late antiquity is the time of transition from classical antiquity to the Middle Ages, generally spanning the 3rd–7th century in Europe and adjacent areas bordering the Mediterranean Basin. The popularization of this periodization in English has generally been credited to historian Peter Brown, after the publication of his seminal work '' The World of Late Antiquity'' (1971). Precise boundaries for the period are a continuing matter of debate, but Brown proposes a period between the 3rd and 8th centuries AD. Generally, it can be thought of as from the end of the Roman Empire's Crisis of the Third Century (235–284) to the early Muslim conquests (622–750), or as roughly contemporary with the Sasanian Empire (224–651). In the West its end was earlier, with the start of the Early Middle Ages typically placed in the 6th century, or earlier on the edges of the Western Roman Empire. The Roman Empire underwent considerable social, cultural and organizational changes starting wit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ancient Greek Language
Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek Dark Ages, Dark Ages (), the Archaic Greece, Archaic period (), and the Classical Greece, Classical period (). Ancient Greek was the language of Homer and of fifth-century Athens, fifth-century Athenian historians, playwrights, and Ancient Greek philosophy, philosophers. It has contributed many words to English vocabulary and has been a standard subject of study in educational institutions of the Western world since the Renaissance. This article primarily contains information about the Homeric Greek, Epic and Classical periods of the language. From the Hellenistic period (), Ancient Greek was followed by Koine Greek, which is regarded as a separate historical stage, although its earliest form closely resembles Attic Greek and its latest form a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Olympiodorus Of Thebes
Olympiodorus of Thebes ( grc-gre, Ὀλυμπιόδωρος ὁ Θηβαῖος; born c. 380, fl. c. 412–425 AD) was a Roman historian, poet, philosopher and diplomat of the early fifth century. He produced a ''History'' in twenty-two volumes, written in Greek, dedicated to the Emperor Theodosius II, detailing events in the Western Roman Empire between 407 and 425. His friends included philosophers, provincial governors and rhetoricians. He made several journeys in an official capacity, accompanied for twenty years by a parrot. He was a "convinced but discreet" pagan, who flourished in a Christian court, and whose work influenced several subsequent historians, including writers of ecclesiastical history. Life Olympiodorus was born between 365 and 380 in Thebes (modern Luxor, Egypt), in the Roman province of Thebaïd, into a curial family. Thebes at that point was a flourishing centre of literary learning, and a cradle of politicians and public figures. He received a classical e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sack Of Rome (410)
The Sack of Rome on 24 August 410 AD was undertaken by the Visigoths led by their king, Alaric I, Alaric. At that time, Rome was no longer the capital of the Western Roman Empire, having been replaced in that position first by Mediolanum (now Milan) in 286 and then by Ravenna in 402. Nevertheless, the city of Rome retained a paramount position as "the eternal city" and a spiritual center of the Empire. This was the first time in almost 800 years that Rome had fallen to a foreign enemy, and the sack was a major shock to contemporaries, friends and foes of the Empire alike. The sacking of 410 is seen as a major landmark in the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Jerome, St. Jerome, living in Bethlehem, wrote: "the city which had taken the whole world was itself taken".St Jerome, ''Letter CXXVII. To Principia'', s:Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II/Volume VI/The Letters of St. Jerome/Letter 127 paragraph 12. Background The Germanic tribes had undergone massive technological ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Serena (wife Of Stilicho)
Serena (died 409) was a Theodosian imperial woman, niece of Theodosius I. In 384, Theodosius arranged her marriage to a rising military officer, Stilicho.Stephen Williams & Gerard Friell, ''Theodosius: the Empire at Bay'', (Routledge, 1994): 42, 189 Stilicho's marriage to Serena ensured his loyalty to the House of Theodosius in the years ahead. A resident at the court of her cousin, Honorius, she selected a bride for the court poet, Claudian, and took care of Honorius' half-sister, her cousin Galla Placidia. She and Stilicho had a son, Eucherius, and two daughters, Maria and Thermantia, successively the first and second wives of Honorius. According to the pagan historian Zosimus, Serena took a necklace from a statue of Rhea Silvia and placed it on her own neck, however this was later dismissed; Serena was not a pagan and did not associate with them. Stilicho was executed on Honorius' orders in 408. During the siege of Rome by the Visigoths The Visigoths (; la, Visigoth ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roman Forum
The Roman Forum, also known by its Latin name Forum Romanum ( it, Foro Romano), is a rectangular forum (plaza) surrounded by the ruins of several important ancient government buildings at the center of the city of Rome. Citizens of the ancient city referred to this space, originally a marketplace, as the ', or simply the '. For centuries the Forum was the center of day-to-day life in Rome: the site of triumphal processions and elections; the venue for public speeches, criminal trials, and gladiatorial matches; and the nucleus of commercial affairs. Here statues and monuments commemorated the city's great men. The teeming heart of ancient Rome, it has been called the most celebrated meeting place in the world, and in all history. Located in the small valley between the Palatine and Capitoline Hills, the Forum today is a sprawling ruin of architectural fragments and intermittent archaeological excavations attracting 4.5 million or more sightseers yearly. Many of the olde ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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