The historical epics which Claudian produced in rapid succession during the last five years of the fourth and the first five of the fifth century are now little read, except by historians who refer to them for details of the wars or court intrigues of the period. A hundred years ago, when Statius and Silius Italicus formed part of the regular course of classical study, he naturally and properly stood alongside of them. His Latin is as pure as that of the best poets of the Silver Age; in wealth of language and in fertility of imagination he is excelled, if at all, by Statius alone. Alone in his age he inherits the scholarly tradition which still lingered among the libraries of Alexandria. Nonnus, the last and not one of the least learned and graceful of the later Greek epicists, who probably lived not long after Claudian, was also of Egyptian birth and training, and he and Claudian are really the last representatives of that Alexandrian school which had from the first had so large and deep an influence over the literature of Rome. The immense range of time covered by Greek literature is brought more vividly to our imagination when we consider that this single Alexandrian school, which began late in the history of Greek writing and came to an end centuries before its extinction, thus completely overlaps at both ends the whole life of the literature of Rome, reaching as it does from before Ennius till after Claudian. These historical epics of Claudian's--_On the Consulate of Stilicho, On the Gildonic War, On the Pollentine War, On the Third, Fourth, and Sixth Consulates of Honorius_--are accompanied by other pieces, written in the same stately and harmonious hexameter, of a more personal interest: invectives against Rufinus and Eutropius, the rivals of his patron; a panegyric on Stilicho's wife, Serena, the niece of Theodosius; a fine epithalamium on the marriage of Honorius with Maria, the daughter of Stilicho and Serena; and also by a number of poems in elegiac metre, in which he wrote with equal grace and skill, though not with so singular a mastery. Among the shorter elegiac pieces, which are collected under the title of _Epigrams,_ one, a poem on an old man of Verona who had never travelled beyond his own little suburban property, is among the jewels of Latin poetry. The lines in which he describes this quiet garden life-- _Frugibus alternis, non consule computat annum; Auctumnum pomis, ver sibi flore notat; Idem condit ager soles idemque reducit, Metiturque suo rusticus orbe diem, Ingentem meminit parvo qui germine quercum Aequaevumque videt consenuisse nemus--_ are in grace and feeling like the very finest work of Tibullus; and the concluding couplet-- _Erret, et extremos alter scrutetur Hiberos, Plus habet hic vitae, plus habet ille viae--_