Rutilius Claudius Namatianus - Style

Style

With regard to the form of the poem, Rutilius handles the elegiac couplet with great metrical purity and freedom, and betrays many signs of long study in the elegiac poetry of the Augustan era. The Latin is unusually clean for the times, and is generally classical, both in vocabulary and construction. Rutilius may lack the genius of Claudian, but also lacks his overloaded gaudiness and his large exaggeration; and the directness of Rutilius shines in comparison with the labored complexity of Ausonius. It is common to call Claudian "the last of the Roman poets". That title might fairly be claimed for Rutilius, unless it be reserved for Merobaudes. At any rate, in passing from Rutilius to Sidonius, one might feel as if he has left the realm of Latin poetry, for the realm of Latin verse.

Of the many interesting details of the poem, a few may be mentioned here. At the outset, there is an almost dithyrambic address to the goddess Roma, "whose glory has ever shone the brighter for disaster, and who will rise once more in her might and confound her barbarian foes". The poet shows as deep a realization as any modern historian that the greatest achievement of Rome was the spread of law. Next, we get incidental but not unimportant references to the destruction of roads and property wrought by the Goths, to the state of the havens at the mouths of the 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 Cosa in Etruria, whose walls have scarcely changed since his time. The port that served Pisa, 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 hearts with holy merriment in celebration of the festival of Osiris.