RUTILIUS CLAUDIUS NAMATIANUS, poet, flourished at the beginning of the 5th century A.D. He was the author of a Latin poem, De Reditu Suo, in elegiac metre, describ ing a coast voyage from Rome to Gaul in A.D. 416. The literary excellence of the work, and the flashes of light which it throws across a momentous but dark epoch of history, combine to give it exceptional importance among the relics of late Roman litera ture. The poem was in two books; the exordium of the first and the greater part of the second have been lost. What remains consists of about seven hundred lines.
The author is a native of S. Gaul (Toulouse or perhaps Poi tiers), and belonged, like Sidonius, to one of the great governing families of the Gaulish provinces. His father was an imperial official with a distinguished career, and Rutilius himself was secre tary of State and praefectus urbi. After reaching manhood, he passed through the tempestuous period between the death of Theodosius (395) and the fall of the usurper Attalus, which occurred near the date when his poem was written. Undoubtedly the sympathies of Rutilius were with those who during this period dissented from and, when they could, opposed the general tend encies of the imperial policy. We know from himself that he was the intimate of those who belonged to the circle of the great orator Symmachus—men who scouted Stilicho's compact with the Goths, and led the Roman senate to support the pretenders Eugenius and Attalus in the vain hope of reinstating the gods whom Julian had failed to save.
Perhaps the most interesting lines in the whole poem are those in which Rutilius assails the memory of "dire Stilicho," as he names him. Stilicho, "fearing to suffer all that had caused himself to be feared," planted the cruel Goths, his "skin-clad" minions in the very sanctuary of the empire. May Nero rest from all the torments of the damned, that they may seize on Stilicho; for Nero smote his own mother, but Stilicho the mother of the world! We shall not err in supposing that we have here (what we find nowhere else) an authentic expression of the feeling entertained by a majority of the Roman senate concerning Stilicho. He had but imitated the policy of Theodosius with regard to the barbarians; but even that great emperor had met with passive opposition from the old Roman families. It is noteworthy that Rutilius speaks of the crime of Stilicho in terms far different from those used by Orosius and the historians of the lower empire. They believed
that Stilicho was plotting to make his son emperor, and that he called in the Goths in order to climb higher. Rutilius holds that he used the barbarians merely to save himself from impending ruin. The Christian historians assert that Stilicho designed to restore paganism. To Rutilius he is the most uncompromising foe of paganism.
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 fairly classical both in vocabulary and construction. The taste of Rutilius, too, is comparatively pure. 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 no reader can fail to feel that he has left the region of Latin poetry for the region of Latin verse.