Flavius Merobaudes (5th century), Latin rhetorician and
poetA poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
, probably a native of Baetica in
SpainSpain , officially the Kingdom of Spain , is a country located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula.
[The Spanish constitution does not establish any official denomination of the country, even though España , Estado español and Nación española are used interchangeably...]
.
He was the official laureate of
Valentinian IIIFlavius Placidus Valentinianus , known in English as Valentinian III, was among the last Western Roman Emperors .-Family:...
and
AetiusAetius or Aëtius may refer to:* Aetius , 1st-century B.C. peripatetic philosopher* Aëtius of Antioch, 4th-century Anomean theologian, called "Aetius the Atheist" by his Trinitarian enemies* Flavius Aetius, 5th-century Roman general...
. Till the beginning of the 10th century he was known only from the notice of him in the
Chronicle (year 443) of his, contemporary Idacius, 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
RomeRome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated municipality , with over 2.7 million residents in , while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat to be 3.46 million. The metropolitan area of Rome is estimated by OECD to have a population of 3.7 million...
, with a long inscription belonging to the year 435 (CIL vi.
Flavius Merobaudes (5th century), Latin rhetorician and
poetA poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
, probably a native of Baetica in
SpainSpain , officially the Kingdom of Spain , is a country located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula.
[The Spanish constitution does not establish any official denomination of the country, even though España , Estado español and Nación española are used interchangeably...]
.
He was the official laureate of
Valentinian IIIFlavius Placidus Valentinianus , known in English as Valentinian III, was among the last Western Roman Emperors .-Family:...
and
AetiusAetius or Aëtius may refer to:* Aetius , 1st-century B.C. peripatetic philosopher* Aëtius of Antioch, 4th-century Anomean theologian, called "Aetius the Atheist" by his Trinitarian enemies* Flavius Aetius, 5th-century Roman general...
. Till the beginning of the 10th century he was known only from the notice of him in the
Chronicle (year 443) of his, contemporary Idacius, 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
RomeRome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated municipality , with over 2.7 million residents in , while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat to be 3.46 million. The metropolitan area of Rome is estimated by OECD to have a population of 3.7 million...
, 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,
NiebuhrBarthold Georg Niebuhr was a German statesman and historian.-Education and politics:Son of Carsten Niebuhr, he was born in Copenhagen...
discovered some Latin verses on a
palimpsestA palimpsest is a manuscript page from a scroll or book that has been scraped off and used again. The word "palimpsest" comes through Latin from Greek παλιν + ψαω = , and meant "scraped again." Romans wrote on wax-coated tablets that could be smoothed and reused, and a passing use of the rather...
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
hexameterHexameter is a literary and poetic form, a line consisting of six metrical feet, as in the Iliad. It was the standard epic metre in Greek and became standard for Latin too. It was also used in other types of composition -- in Horace's satires, for instance, and Ovid's Metamorphoses...
s)
De Christo, attributed to him by one manuscript, to
ClaudianClaudian was a Roman poet, who worked for Emperor Honorius and the latter's general Stilicho.A Greek-speaking citizen of Alexandria, Claudian arrived in Rome before 395, and made his mark with a eulogy of his two young patrons, Probinus and Olybrius, thereby becoming court poet...
by another; but
EbertFriedrich Adolf Ebert , German bibliographer, was born at Taucha, near Leipzig, the son of a Lutheran pastor....
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 BG Niebuhr (1824); by Immanuel Bekker in the Bonn Corpus scriptorum hist. (1836); the
De Christo in T Birt's
Claudian (1892), where the authorship of Merobaudes is upheld; see also A Ebert,
Geschichte der Literatur des Mittelalters im Abendlande (1889).
External links
Merobaudus Flavius: Carminum Panegirique Relequiae in
Documenta Catholica Omnia