De Raptu Prosperpinae

A simplified text of the poem, with a facing-page translation to make the work accessible to non-specialists. The book aims to set Claudian in place as a distinctive creative writer of late antiquity with the roots of the whole classical tradition before him.

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Claudian was one of the last great Latin poets of the classical tradition, writing in the fourth century AD. J. B. Hall has already produced two editions of his poem De Raptu Proserpinae which deal exhaustively with the complicated manuscript traditions of the work. But he self-confessedly leaves aside literary questions which are the subject of this commentary. With the current upsurge of research into late antiquity, Claudian is of great interest as one of the foremost poets of the age who has been undeservedly neglected as a creative artist with an immense knowledge of classical literature and a distinctive literary style. His works have been mined for what they can tell us about the history of the late fourth-early fifth century AD, as he largely wrote political propaganda for members of the court circle, but the De Raptu Proserpinae is fascinating for the longest glimpse of him working with subject matter of more personal choice. In addition to the commentary, the book includes a text designed to simplify Hall's apparatus, and a translation to make the work more accessible to non-specialists.