Flavius Merobaudes was a 5th-century

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

rhetorician and

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral or writte ...

. Merobaudes was a Roman of Frankish origin who was raised in Spain, and likely was a descendant of the famous general of the same name who flourished during the fourth century.Bachrach, Bernard S. (University of Minnesota. Center for Early Modern History). ''City Walls: The Urban Enceinte in Global Perspective''. Cambridge University Press (2000), p. 19

He was the official laureate of

Valentinian III Valentinian III ( la, Placidus Valentinianus; 2 July 41916 March 455) was Roman emperor in the West from 425 to 455. Made emperor in childhood, his reign over the Roman Empire was one of the longest, but was dominated by powerful generals vying ...

and Aetius. Till the beginning of the 19th century he was known only from the notice of him in the ''Chronicle'' (year 443) of his contemporary

Hydatius Hydatius, also spelled Idacius (c. 400 – c. 469) was a late Western Roman writer and clergyman. The bishop of Aquae Flaviae in the Roman province of Gallaecia (almost certainly the modern Chaves, Portugal, in the modern district of Vila Real), ...

, where he is praised as a poet and orator, and mention is made of statues set up in his honour. In 1813 the base of a statue was discovered at

Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus (legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...

, with a long inscription belonging to the year 435 ( CIL vi. 1724) upon Flavius Merobaudes, celebrating his merits as warrior and poet. Ten years later, B. G. Niebuhr discovered some Latin verses on a

palimpsest In textual studies, a palimpsest () is a manuscript page, either from a scroll or a book, from which the text has been scraped or washed off so that the page can be reused for another document. Parchment was made of lamb, calf, or kid skin an ...

in the monastery of St Gall, the authorship of which was traced to Merobaudes, owing to the great similarity of the language in the prose preface to that of the inscription. Formerly the only piece known under the name of Merobaudes was a short poem (30

hexameter Hexameter is a metrical line of verses consisting of six feet (a "foot" here is the pulse, or major accent, of words in an English line of poetry; in Greek and Latin a "foot" is not an accent, but describes various combinations of syllables). It w ...

s) ''De Christo'', attributed to him by one manuscript, to Claudian by another; but Ebert is inclined to dispute the claim of Merobaudes to be considered either the author of the ''De Christo'' or a Christian. The Panegyric and minor poems have been edited by Niebuhr (1824); by

Immanuel Bekker August Immanuel Bekker (21 May 17857 June 1871) was a German philologist and critic. Biography Born in Berlin, Bekker completed his classical education at the University of Halle under Friedrich August Wolf, who considered him as his most promis ...

in the Bonn Corpus scriptorum hist. (1836); the ''De Christo'' in T. Birt's ''Claudian'' (1892), where the authorship of Merobaudes is upheld; most recently F. Bücheler and A. Riese, ''Anthologia latina sive poesis latinae supplementum'' (2nd ed. of vol. 1, Leipzig, 1894–1926) 1, 2: pp. 327–328, no. 878. See also A. Ebert, ''Geschichte der Literatur des Mittelalters im Abendlande'' (1889). English translation by F.M. Clover
"Flavius Merobaudes: A Translation and Historical Commentary", ''Transactions of the American Philosophical Society''
New Series, Vol. 61, No. 1 (January, 1971), pp. 1–78

References

External links

in
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' {{Authority control 5th-century births 5th-century Frankish people 5th-century Latin writers 5th-century Roman poets Late-Roman-era pagans Romans from Hispania Year of death missing