Claudian’s faults are easy to find. He mistook memory for inspiration and so is often wordy and tedious, as for instance in his three poems on Stilicho’s consulship.[28] Worse than this he is frequently obscure and involved--witness his seven poems on the drop of water contained within the rock crystal.[29] The besetting sin, too, of almost all post-Virgilian Roman poets, I mean a “conceited” frigidity, is one into which he is particularly liable to fall. Examples are almost too numerous to cite but the following are typical: “nusquam totiensque sepultus”[30] of the body of Rufinus, torn limb from limb by the infuriated soldiery; “caudamque in puppe retorquens Ad proram iacet usque leo”[31] of one of the animals brought from Africa for the games at Stilicho’s triumph; “saevusque Damastor, Ad depellendos iaculum cum quaereret hostes, Germani rigidum misit pro rupe cadaver”[32] of the giant Pallas turned to stone by the Gorgon’s head on Minerva’s shield. Consider, too, the remarkable statement that Stilicho, in swimming the Addua, showed greater bravery than Horatius Cocles because, while the latter swam away from Lars Porsenna, the former “dabat … Geticis pectora bellis.”[33] Two of the poems are interesting as touching upon Christianity (Carm. min. corp. xxxii. “De salvatore,” and l. “In Iacobum”). The second of these two poems can scarcely be held to be serious, and although the first is unobjectionable it cannot be said to stamp its author as a sincere Christian. Orosius[34] and S. Augustine[35] both declare him to have been a heathen, but it is probable that, like his master Stilicho, Claudian rendered the new and orthodox religion at least lip-service. * * * * * It seems likely that after the death of Claudian (404) and that of his hero, Stilicho, the political poems (with the exception of the Panegyric on Probinus and Olybrius,[36] which did not concern Stilicho) were collected and published separately. The “Carmina minora” may have been published about the same time. The subsequent conflation of these two portions came to be known as “Claudianus maior,” the “De raptu” being “Claudianus minor.” * * * * * The MSS. of Claudian’s poems fall into two main classes: (1) Those which Birt refers to as the _Codices maiores_ and which contain the bulk of the poems but seldom the “De raptu.” (2) Those which Birt calls the _Codices minores_ and which contain (generally exclusively) the “De raptu.” Class (1) may be again divided into (_a_) MSS. proper; (_b_) excerpts. I give Birt’s abbreviations. (_a_) The most important are: R = Cod. Veronensis 163. 9th century. Contains only the “Carmina minora.” G = Cod. Sangallensis S n. 429. 9th century. Contains only the (Latin) “Gigantomachia.” G (_sic_) = Cod. Reginensis 123. 11th century. Contains only “De Nilo.” V = Cod. Vaticanus 2809. 12th century.