Traditions of Antiquity in the Post-Classical World: Religious, Ethnographic, and Political Representation in the Poetic Works of Paulinus of Nola, Claudian, and George of Pisidia

George of Pisidia was a prominent Greek poet at the court of emperor Heraclius (AD 610-641) in Constantinople in the seventh century. Although often neglected by modern scholars, George of Pisidia’s poetic achievement was recognized in medieval centuries and Psellos even considered George superior to Euripides. The secular part of George of Pisidia’s poetic oeuvre consists of several lengthy poems that eulogize the political and military achievements of emperor Heraclius.

It has become a commonplace that the period of Late Antiquity, here understood to refer primarily to the fourth through seventh centuries, witnessed a negotiation of political and ethnic identities in the western empire that may only be paralleled with the Romanization of these provinces that began in earnest in the first century B.C. (Ladner, 1976; Heather, 1999; Pohl, 2013). This paper considers the epic poem Bellum Geticum of Claudian, written ca. A.D. 402, in light of its appropriation of epic panegyric and ethnographic discourse.

Paulinus of Nola (354-431) was one of the leading Christian poets of the late fourth century literary revival in the Roman Empire. Several of the carmina he wrote in his first period of literary activity were small Biblical epics, including his carmen 6 on John the Baptist. In order to make this epyllion a success, Paulinus had to anchor it both in the classical and Christian tradition of epic poetry. His use of classical quotations shows how he found a way to do so.