England’s Stilicho: Claudian’s Political Poetry in Early Modern England

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Marston Moor (1650) includes a quotation borrowed from Milton, In Quintum Novembris, published in the Poems (1645); Irenodia gratulatoria (1652) applies to Cromwell an image famously used of Charles I in the Eikon Basilike (a work purportedly by Charles I himself, published in 1649); Inauguratio Olivariana (1654) alludes at least twice to the work of Caspar Barlaeus, in one instance to a poem (Panegyris de laudibus . . . Richelii Ducis) published only in 1641. Moul, 'Revising the Siege of York' (n. 1 above), discusses the range of allusive sources combined in Marston Moor.

Claudian in English Literary Culture, 1500-1650
Although almost completely absent from the modern classical syllabus, Claudian was a classic of the medieval classroom, both because of the extensive presence of extracts of his work in influential florilegia and also because the De raptu Proserpinae was for several centuries a standard text in the so-called Liber Catonis, a popular school reader. 5 De raptu Proserpinae was still commonly read at school in the sixteenth century, and its influence is perceptible in many works of epic and short epic, such as Jacopo Sannazaro's De partu Virginis. A passage of Claudian's De consulatu Stiliconis, dating from 1445, is one of only two surviving translations of classical verse into English dating from before 1500. 6 Where it has been discussed, the reception history of Claudian has traditionally been divided between the translation and imitation of the non-political verse (primarily De raptu Proserpinae and the shorter poems, including 'The Phoenix' [Carmina minora 27] and 'The Old Man of Verona' [Carmina minora 20]), on the one hand, and the major political works, both panegyric and satiric, on the other. 7 Both remained demonstrably important in early modern England. In the final pages of his magisterial monograph on Claudian, Cameron discusses in some detail the evidence for the medieval readership of Claudian, and stresses the particular importance in England of the Panegyricus de quarto consulatu Honorii Augusti, especially Theodosius's speech on kingship (214-352); but his examples are drawn largely from texts dating from the twelfth to fifteenth centuries, and his brief discussion of the seventeenth century is focused mainly on prose. 8 Ben Jonson strikingly uses a paraphrase of the same lines from Claudian (De consulatu Stiliconis III.113-15) both in the text for his celebratory pageant for the entry of James I to London (Arches of Triumph, 1604) and in his almost exactly contemporaneous exploration, in the 1603 play Sejanus, of the sinister but still in some sense divinely endorsed power of the wicked emperor Tiberius. 9 Jonson's own working copy of Claudian has survived, and the pattern of underlinings accord quite closely with the points made by Cameron: the single most marked-up text is Panegyricus de 5 R. Copeland, 'The Curricular Classics in the Middle Ages', in The Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature, I: 800-1558, ed. R. Copeland, Oxford, 2016 MS London, British Library [hereafter BL], Add. 11814, printed edition in E. Flügel, 'Eine Mittelenglische Claudian-Übersetzung (1445) ', Anglia, 28, 1905, pp. 255-99, and discussion in A. S. G. Edwards, 'The Middle English Translation of Claudian's De consulatu Stiliconis', in Middle English Poetry: Texts and Traditions: Essays in Honour of Derek Pearsall, ed. A. Minnis, York, 2001, pp. 267-78. The translation explicitly compares the addressee of the English translation, Richard Duke of York, to Stilicho. 7 As for instance in Felgentreu, 'Claudian' (n. 4 above). 8 Cameron, Claudian, pp. 419-33 (n. 4 above). He also discusses briefly the cluster of seventeenth century translations of Claudian's 'De sene Veronensi' (Carmina minora 20). The abbreviations used to refer to Claudian's works in this article are those used by Cameron and listed on pp. xi-xii.  Peterson, Imitation and Praise, rev. ed., Farnham, 2011, pp. 44-5, 68-9, 88, also discusses links to Claudian in relation to Jonson Epigrams 14 and 76. quarto consulatu Honorii Augusti.. But the volume as a whole is heavily marked: all the political poems as well as the De raptu Proserpinae have many underlinings. 10 Jonson's interest is far from unique. Surviving manuscripts and archives offer plentiful evidence for the very widespread reading of Claudian in early modern England, dominated not by the shorter Carmina minora, but by the political poetry. Many commonplace books and classical anthologies include substantial selections from Claudian. In the large collection of classical Latin verse extracts prepared by the future Charles I as a gift for his father, for instance, Claudian is the fourth most cited author (after Ovid, Seneca and Horace), with more quotations (44) than Virgil (41) or any other epic poet. Quotations from Claudian are particularly prominent under headings that might be of particular relevance to a future king, including 'De regno' (two extracts from Panegyricus de quarto consulatu Honorii Augusti), 'De principibus' (again two from Panegyricus de quarto consulatu Honorii Augusti), 'De praelatione' (four from Claudian, including a further two from Panegyricus de quarto consulatu Honorii Augusti), 'De potentia' (two, one from Panegyricus de tertio consulatu Honorii Augusti and one from De sepulcro speciosae, a poem no longer attributed to Claudian) and 'De virtute' (two from the beginning of the Panegyricus dictus Manlio Theodoro consuli, a passage discussed further below, and one from Panegyricus de quarto consulatu Honorii Augusti). 11 Claudian's invective is also represented in this collection, with extracts from In Rufinum under, among others, 'De peccato', 'De proditione' and 'De ruina'.
Although Prince Charles's collection does include some lines from Claudian's shorter poems (one quotation from De raptu Proserpinae. and one from 'de sene Veronensi' [Carmina minora 20] for instance), the great majority of citations are from the works of political panegyric (Panegyricus de tertio consulatu Honorii Augusti; Panegyricus de quarto consulatu Honorii Augusti; De consulatu Stiliconis; Panegyricus dictus Manlio Theodoro consuli) and invective (In Rufinum). By far the largest number of citations from a single work (16) are from Panegyricus de quarto consulatu Honorii Augusti, which accords both with Cameron's observations (based mostly on an earlier period) on the importance of this text in English culture and also with more general patterns of the citation of Claudian in manuscript material of this period (on which see further below). Moreover, this collection demonstrates that a belief in Claudian's Christianity, though now contested by scholars (only one explicitly Christian poem is included in modern editions), was central to his reception in early modernity: in this anthology of strictly classical extracts, the whole of 10 By contrast, the various marriage poems, the poem on Serena, Stilicho's wife, and most of the Carmina minora are only lightly marked, if at all; the exceptions are 'De sene Veronensi' (Carmina minora 20) and three epigrams (on a man with gout, and two on a poor lover, Carmina minora 13, 14 and 15 [I know your work well (great poet) I know well, Egyptian, the truth of your poems; But when Stilico was in power, your Muse Too often flattered him excessively, as she did Honorius: With your pen, poet, scratch out the names of Stilicho and of Honorius, Put instead 'Stewart', and be wise: That way you'll have a true history, and a real encomium.] The epigram suggests that the last of the poems in praise of Stilicho and Honorius (Book III of De consulatu Stiliconis and Panegyricus de sexto consulatu Honorii Augusti) were a step too far and that the house of Stuart would be more appropriate recipient of such verse. 14 Many other manuscripts attest to familiarity with Claudian, and an assumption of familiarity in those addressed. By and large, the pattern of references accords with that noted above: Panegyricus de quarto consulatu Honorii Augusti, most often Theodosius's speech to Honorius on true kingship (214-352), is the single most cited text, especially (for obvious reasons) in a royal context. An early example is MS Cambridge, University Library Mm.IV.39, which preserves various poems and speeches composed for the visit of Queen Elizabeth to Cambridge in 1564: the speech on fol. 32 v cites Claudian Panegyricus de quarto consulatu Honorii Augusti. Similar examples can be found from manuscripts dating V. Moul 1 3 from throughout the seventeenth century. 15 In general, we find more references to the political poetry (both panegyric and invective) than to the non-political verse, though 'De sene Veronensi' (Carmina Minora 20) is not the only one of Claudian's shorter poems that are popular, especially in the latter part of the seventeenth century. 16 The standing in which Claudian was held as a Latin stylist is demonstrated by contemporary criticism; in a letter dated 1 February 1640, the Dutch Latin poet and critic Caspar Barlaeus writes 'Virgilium, Lucanum, Claudianum imitandos censeam in Epico carmine' (fol. 11 v ); the letter goes on to include two quotations from Claudian, both (typically enough) from the kingship speech in Panegyricus de quarto consulatu Honorii Augusti (lines 269 and 294). 17 Though Barlaeus cites Virgil and Lucan alongside Claudian, his own hexameter panegyric verse (discussed further below) is strongly indebted to Claudian. Claudian's invective verse was also being critically appraised: a mid-seventeenth manuscript collection of letters from famous authors includes a letter from Nicolaas Heinsius to Alberto Robieno on Claudian 's In Eutropium, dated 1645. 18 Given this wealth of evidence that Claudian's political verse was very widely read, quoted and discussed, why do we find this so little reflected in English literature of the period and in the scholarly guides to that literature? There is I believe a clear answer to this: that until the 1650s, and perhaps specifically until Marvell's First Anniversary, Claudianic panegyric-epic was an almost exclusively Latin genre in England as elsewhere in Europe. 19 Not only that, but many of the Latin poems 15 MS Cambridge, Trinity College, Cambridge R.3.60 (c. 1600) quotes IV Cons. 222-5 on fol. 12 r ; MS Leeds, Brotherton Library BC Lt 13 (1680) quotes both Panegyricus de quarto consulatu Honorii Augusti and N Rufinum 1 (fols 23 r and 57 r , both extracts appear twice). MS Leeds, Brotherton Library BC Lt q 18 (mid-17 th century) includes eight extracts attributed to Claudian in a section titled 'Epigrammes or sentences epigrammelike' (fols 6 v -8 v ). Of these, three are, in fact, not by Claudian (quotations from Juvenal, Propertius and Lucan), and the remaining five comprise two from Panegyricus de quarto consulatu Honorii Augusti., one from De consulatu Stiliconis, one from Panegyricus dictus Manlio Theodoro consuli and one from In Rufinum. This balance between panegyric and satiric poems is roughly typical. The confusion between Juvenal's Satires and Claudian's political invective, though surprising to a modern classicist, is also quite common, suggesting that Claudian's invective was strongly associated in early modernity with the tradition of verse satire more generally. English translations in manuscript include MSS Bod., Rawl. poet. 114,fol. 114 19 Though see Garrison, Dryden and the Tradition of Panegyric (n. 3 above), pp. 84-99, on the experiments with formal English panegyric by Samuel Daniel and Ben Jonson, both composed for the coronation of James I in 1603. Throughout his career, Jonson systematically attempted to 'Anglicize' already popular Neo-Latin forms (e.g., epigrams, 'silva' collection of mixed verse, Pindaric odes). Despite these composed in this tradition, especially in the early period, were prepared and presented in manuscript rather than print. These two features of the genre -often in manuscript, and almost exclusively written in Latin -has meant that a literary form which was, in practice, standard, has become almost invisible to critics and historians. Recent scholarly consensus, for instance, has been that Marvell's First Anniversary does not belong to a recognizable genre. 20 In practice, there are a large number of surviving examples of British Latin short panegyric-epic, dating mostly from the latter sixteenth and first half of the seventeenth centuries, and found in both manuscript and print sources. 21 Poems of this kind are generally addressed either to the monarch themselves, or to a prominent member of experiments, both formal panegyric and Pindaric odes remained largely Neo-Latin genres until mid-century.
Footnote 19 (continued) 20 See, e.g., The Poems of Andrew Marvell, ed. N. Smith, rev. ed., London, 2007, p. 285. Miller, Roman Triumphs, p. 177 (n. 4 above), however, correctly identifies the genre of the poem: 'The generic models of Marvell's First Anniversary are the consular panegyrics of Claudian.' Garrison, Dryden and the Tradition of Panegyric, p. 134 (n. 3 above), implicitly makes the same point when he stresses the 'traditional' features of the poem. Oddly, some recent criticism has emphasized the poem's Pindaric features (that is, points in common with panegyric lyric) without relating this insight to the tradition of panegyric verse in hexameter, a much closer formal analogue for the poem; see especially S. P. Revard, Politics, Poetics, and the Pindaric Ode: 1450-1700, Tempe AZ, 2009. The difficulty in identifying Claudianic poems in an English literary context has been exacerbated by the fact that most Anglophone classicists do not read Claudian or other late antique Latin poets. As a result, even many readers with a classical training do not recognize either Claudianic style or (more generally) the form he made his own. Examples of short Claudianic panegyric poems included within mixed collections of verse are found, e.g., in the Oxford University collection Academiae Oxoniensis pietas (Oxford, 1603), pp. 63-8 and 184-7. The anonymous single-sheet, In illustrissimi comitis Leicestrensis Oxoniensis Academiae cancellarij … carmen gratulatorium (Oxford, 1585), on the Earl of Leicester, is only 36 lines long but draws upon stock scenes of panegyric (compare the opening with Panegyricus de tertio consulatu Honorii Augusti 126-30); similarly the poem at fol. 14 r-v of the Cambridge collection Irenodia Cantabrigiensis (Cambridge, 1641) is a concise version of several conventional motifs. Formal epithalamia are also frequently indebted to Claudian in particular (e.g., Sir Thomas Craig, Henrici illustrissimi … epithalamium (an epithalamium for Henry and Mary Queen of Scots) (Edinburgh, 1565) and Hadrianus Junius, Philippeis (1554, on the marriage of Philip II of Spain and Queen Mary I); a brief account of the Claudianic elements of the latter poem can be found in Felgentreu, 'Claudian', pp. 123-7 (n. 4 above). For manuscript examples, the BL Royal collection includes a particularly large number, mostly in presentation volumes: Royal 12 A LXI (1604, anonymous, to James I); Royal 12 A VII (Nicolas Denisot, c. 1547, on the accession of Edward VI; largely lifted from earlier Neo-Latin authors, on which see H. Vredeveld, 'The Fairytale of Nicolas Denisot and the Seymour Sisters', Humanistica Lovaniensia, 67.1, 2018, https ://doi. org/10.30986 /2018.143); Royal 12 A XXXVI and XXXVII (Thomas Bastard, 1603, for James I); Royal the royal family. 22 As is often the case in Neo-Latin genres, these poems typically have more in common with other Latin examples of the form from elsewhere in Europe than they do with contemporary poetry in English. 23 Indeed, poets often addressed Latin panegyric to foreign monarchs: examples on English themes include the collection Triumphalia de victoriis Elizabethae regina Angliae (1588), commemorating the Armada, and several works by Dutch authors, such as Adolph van Dans, Eliza (1619?)), Caspar Barlaeus, Britannia Triumphans (1626) and Hugo Grotius, Inauguratio Regis Britanniarum (on James I), which were certainly read in England. 24 Caspar Barlaeus, from 1631 the Professor of Philosophy and Rhetoric at the Amsterdam Athenaeum, was a leading intellectual of the age and his Britannia Triumphans, first published in 1626 but frequently reprinted, is a particularly clear example of self-conscious Claudianic style. A pointed opening passage, in which the poet asks for forbearance for his work on the basis of literary precedent, incorporates references to most of Claudian's extant political panegyric:  23 Allusion of this type could reach back in time as well as between countries. Fisher's simile of a hunter scattering crows (Irenodia gratulatoria, 1652, sig. C2 r ), e.g., is borrowed from a formal panegyric of Baptista Mantuanus (1447-1516), Carmen panegyricum in Robertum Sanseverinatem. 24 The Triumphalia volume is attributed to 'N. Eleutherius', presumably a pseudonym. It is a mixed collection of verse, but includes two long poems in the Claudianic panegyric tradition at pp. 3-22 (anonymous), and 32-41 (by Julius Riparius, unknown). It is discussed in Miller, Roman Triumphs (n. 4 above), pp. 72-6. Grotius's Inauguratio was printed in his Poemata collecta (Leiden, 1637), pp. 72-98. Fisher's poetry of the 1650s borrows from both Grotius and Barlaeus, as demonstrated below. Not all claims to be heir to the tradition of Claudian are as overt. Alabaster and Fisher share an allegorical opening motif of the poet as an intrepid sailor, potentially overwhelmed by the scale of his subject (Alabaster, Elisaeis, pp. 14-18; Fisher, Marston Moor, pp. 1-3 and Irenodia gratulatoria sig. B3 r ). Though the Latin style of these poets, and therefore of the two passages, is markedly different, they are both probably recalling the enigmatic allegorical preface to De raptu Proserpinae, which has traditionally been taken to refer to the poet himself, launching upon a new poetic project. 26 Similarly, the conventional scene, derived principally from In Rufinum I, in which the forces of darkness -led in Claudian by Allecto -gather and decide upon a wicked scheme, sometimes after extensive discussion (the 'Council in Hell'), has been associated in existing scholarship specifically with English 'Gunpowder Plot' poems (as well as Milton's Paradise Lost), though it is more properly a standard feature of the characterization of the enemy in Latin poems in the Claudianic tradition. 27  Marco Girolamo Vida (Christias). 29 Later examples include, as well as the many Latin Gunpowder Plot poems, the fifth book of Venceslaus Clemens, Gustavis (Leiden, 1632) and Fisher's Marston Moor (1650, pp. 3-7), discussed further below. 30 In the main existing critical discussion of Clemens's Gustavis, Hans Helander relates the poem only very generally to Claudian. 31 The scene in the Gustavis where Relligio, accompanied by Piety and Faith, appear in a bedraggled and desperate state to plead with Jupiter for the salvation of Germany is, however, a version of the memorable scene in De bello Gildonico in which personified Rome, and then Africa, plead (successfully) with the Olympian gods for mercy.
The specifically royal associations of Claudianic panegyric in early modern culture were sharpened for writers in the context of the English civil war: this is clear from Henry Birkhead's choice of a pointed epigraph from Claudian for his anonymously published Poematia of 1645. 32 The epigraph, 'Carmen amat, quisquis, carmina digna gerit' ('whoever achieves deeds worthy of a poem, loves poetry') is a quotation from the preface to De consulatu Stiliconis III (line 6). The verse collection is strongly royalist, with an opening poem addressed to James, Duke of York, epigrams on themes such as 'De proditoribus' ('On Traitors') and with a final dithyrambic ode commemorating Archbishop Laud. In this context, praise of Stilicho is meant to suggest the glory and honour of fighting on behalf of the king. Indeed William Alabaster had used the same line as the epigraph to the first (and, it turned out, only) book of his poem in praise of Elizabeth I, the Elisaeis. 33

Claudian and the Demonization of Cromwell
This is the cultural setting in which Fisher began to write Latin verse in imitation of Claudian in the mid-late 1640s: a milieu in which the specifically Claudianic Latin verse genres of panegyric, political invective and formal epithalamia were well established and frequently composed by authors both in England and elsewhere in Europe. It was a form with strong traditional associations with royalty, though the Czech poet John Sictor's experiments with verse in this form for the Mayor of London, combined of course with the precedents offered by Claudian himself, provided at least a hint of broader possibilities which became particularly important in the context of the Commonwealth. 34 The earliest examples of Fisher's experiments with Claudianic hexameter verse are found in two copies of (almost) the same verse collection, both manuscript presentation volumes now in the British Library dating from 1647/8. 35 These collections, which contain both Latin and English verse in a variety of forms, and were no doubt designed to show off the range of his poetic skills, both include two items indebted to Claudian in particular: an hexameter poem on the Gunpowder Plot (On the Gunpowder-Treason) and the first version of the poem (here entitled De obsidione Praelioque Eborocensi vulgo Marstonmoore [sic] appellato, 'On the Siege and Battle at York, called in the Common Language Marstonmoore'), which would later be greatly expanded as Marston Moor. 36 There is an English version of the Siege of York poem (An Abstract of Yorke: Seige and Fight, interestingly in blank verse), though not of the Gunpowder Plot poem. As discussed above, the Gunpowder Plot poem is an intrinsically Claudianic genre, and this is especially true of Fisher's fragment, which is almost entirely taken up the evocation of the underworld. More original is his use of Claudian also in De obsidione: this is a straightforwardly royalist poem, which turns to Claudian in order to demonize Cromwell.
When Cromwell first appears in De obsidione, he is linked allusively not with the traditions of straightforward panegyric, but with Claudian's In Rufinum: [Scarcely had Aurora, just now arisen from her chambers of sleep, driven the cold shades from the height of the heaven, and shaken out her dewy locks, than the ranks began to shine on the plain, their weaponry glowing red, visible to the enemy companies. The battle-rank stands arranged in wedge-formations; the shine from the armour makes the ground and the heaven seem double with the glistening splendour of iron. You, Earl of Manchester, with your honoured companies, were the first to fly before the battle line: and stirring their hearts with powerful encouragement, you set in motion the first beginning of the battle. Then Cromwell, the lightning bolt on his dreadful face, and Civil War sitting on his menacing forehead, came next; covered by a breast-plate and a helmet; his sides covered in a network of iron; and iron plates joined by bolts were rising over all his limbs. No less did the cohorts flash with iron, a horrible sight: you would think that strange horrors of the Cyclopes had leapt forth from a sudden gaping of the Earth; you would believe that images were moving, and that men were breathing in living metal. So in dense ranks of iron did the battle-line draw up, in the long ranks of war, and displayed itself to the opposing army.] There is a complex series of allusions at work in this passage: the italicized Bellum Ciuile resting upon Cromwell's forehead suggests Lucan, but much of the rest is 1 3 [ … the limbs within give life to the armour's pliant scales so artfully conjoined, and strike terror into the beholder. 'Tis as though iron statues moved and men lived cast from that same metal. The horses are armed in the same way; their heads are encased in threatening iron, their forequarters move beneath steel plates protecting them from wounds.] 39 The vignette of Cromwell's appearance, which verges on allegory, carries ominous allusive associations: he is a version of the House of Mars (that is, the physical manifestation of personified War, in Thebaid VII.40-4, cited above) and the scene reminds the poet of Amphiaraus in the underworld (Thebaid VIII.19), as well as a moment of particular menace in Claudian. The description of the beauty of the imperial army drawn up outside Constantinople in In Rufinum 2 immediately precedes the moment when Rufinus is torn apart by those same soldiers. Even in this plainly royalist poem, Fisher does not paint Cromwell straightforwardly as Rufinus -the network of allusions suggests rather Cromwell's great, and somewhat sinister, military power. The allusive atmosphere conveys, above all, the overwhelming sensory experience of a great war, by turns beautiful and horrific.

From Manuscript into Print: Marston Moor (1650)
The printed version of Marston Moor which appeared in 1650, published by Benlowes, was massively expanded, now extending to 1,367 lines in five metra (short 'books'). 40 Though Fisher removed almost nothing (apart from the description of Cromwell discussed above) from his first attempts, and effectively preserved a core of royalist lament which runs through the poem, his depiction of the Parliamentarians' victory was such a success that it secured Fisher a paid career as the official poet of the Council of State and then of the Protectorate for the rest of the 1650s. Marston Moor makes extensive allusive use of Claudian, whose works are drawn upon more than any other poet. 41 Fisher began by adding an extended set-piece of the 'Council in Hell' (pp. 4-7) an element which (as noted above) had by this point become a standard feature of patriotic panegyric-epic, not an element confined to the 'Gunpowder Plot' poems with which it has mostly been associated by recent critics. 42 Fisher's lavish version of the scene is particularly dependent upon Claudian, from which it borrows both structural elements and specific lines. Mars summons personifications of evil (p. 4) just as Allecto does in Claudian (In Rufinum I.28-44); Mars is compared to Jupiter unleashing the winds (p. 7), as Rufinus is compared to Aeolus (In Rufinum II.22-6). 43 The opening of the scene is a particularly vivid example of Fisher's allusive technique and the extent of the borrowing from Claudian: His ubi Conventis Stipata est Curia Monstris, Extemplo ominuit rapido Diademate Mavors Imbutam quatiens Titanum Caedibus Hastam. 40 The term was, ironically, probably borrowed from Peter Du Moulin's vociferously royalist lament, Ecclesiae Gemitus, which is also divided into multiple metra. 41 At least 16 unambiguous allusions to or borrowings from Claudian, balanced in this work, more than in later ones, by a significant dependence also on Statius's Thebaid (12 identified allusions). The full range of reference is very wide: I have identified allusions in the poem also to Lucan (3), Silius Italicus (4), Valerius Flaccus (1) and Prudentius (2), and this is certainly not a complete list. Modern sources include the Latin poetry of Milton (discussed below) and George Buchanan. Fisher noticeably avoids direct allusion to Virgil, though many of the passages he borrows from later authors are themselves indebted to Virgil. 42 Dana Sutton's introduction to Milton's In Quintum Novembris, the most studied of the 'Gunpowder Plot' poems, for instance, sets out clearly how Milton's hell fits into a broader tradition of what he calls 'historical epic', but does not mention Claudian at all: http://philo logic al.bham.ac.uk/milto n/intro .html. See also Haan, 'Milton's In Quintum Novembris' and Hale, 'Milton and the Gunpowder Plot' (both n. 28 above). 43 As there is no modern edition of the poem, and neither the 1650 nor 1656 editions are lineated, I have given the page numbers, and lineated longer quoted passages. Page numbers refer to the 1650 edition unless otherwise noted. [When the Council was packed with the gathered monsters, At once Mars towered over them with a swift Diadem Shaking a Spear dyed with Titan gore. His grim face, and his Old age made him fearful to approach: His crests were terrible with horror, and the torches Glittered on the Flashing peak of his helmet; and the adamantine Row Of his teeth clashed, like the Crash of Armour, like spear struck upon spear. After he had ordered calm, and terror had persuaded them to silence, HE HIMSELF (with a crown of companions wreathing him in their companies) Shaking dreadful crests on his helmeted peak He laid bare his Anger, shaken out with these words: 'Rise up Allies of the same heart, and bless what we have undertaken: It would be more shameful, more shameful to have lain low in shaming Dust, and to have dragged our souls amidst the shades of the unknown. Are we always to look upon the English, safe as they now are and free from care?'] In this fifteen-line extract, lines 1, 13-14 and 15 are all direct borrowings from Claudian, taken from corresponding points in the Council in Hell scene in In Rufinum I (I.40, 58-9 and 45). These borrowings range from almost direct quotation ('His ubi conventis stipata est Curia Monstris' (Marston Moor, p. 4); 'torvaque collectis stipatur curia monstris' (In Rufinum I.40)), to a comparable construction with only the opening word in common ('Siccine securos semper spectabimus Anglos?' [Marston Moor,p. 5], 'Siccine tranquillo produci saecula cursu, / sic fortunatas patiemur vivere gentes? ), to a parallel with no specific echoes, but making the same rhetorical point ('Ulterius pigeat, pigeat latuisse pudendo / Pulvere' [Marston Moor,p. 5]; 'at nos indecores longo torpebimus aevo / omnibus eiectae regnis!' [In Rufinum I. ).
Typically for Fisher, the Claudianic structure of the scene is spliced with a further borrowing, this time from the early Christian poet Prudentius, whose allegorical Psychomachia was a popular poem in the early modern period, and one to which Fisher alludes on several occasions. Line 10, describing Mars, is derived from Prudentius's description of 'Ira' (personified Rage). hanc procul Ira tumens, spumanti fervida rictu, sanguinea intorquens subfuso lumina felle, ut belli exsortem teloque et voce lacessit, impatiensque morae conto petit, increpat ore, hirsutas quatiens galeato in vertice cristas. (Prudentius,Psychomachia,'Ira') [On her from a distance swelling Wrath, showing her teeth with rage and foaming at the mouth, darts her eyes, all shot with blood and gall, and challenges her with weapon and with speech for taking no part in the fight; irked by her holding back, she hurls a pike at her and assails her with abuse, tossing the shaggy crests on her helmeted head.] Finally, the passage pays tribute to one of the most recent versions of the genre by incorporating an allusion to Milton's In Quintum Novembris. Lines 6-7 are taken, without alteration, from Milton's poem, where they describe Satan himself: 'adamantinus ordo / Dentis, ut armorum fragor, ictaque cuspide cuspis' (In Quintum Novembris 38-9). 44 There is an intrinsic and unexpected ambiguity to this scene. Both in Claudian and in the many previous Neo-Latin examples, scenes of this type are politically unambiguous: the forces of evil plot trouble (military attack, or terrorism) to be launched by a minion of Hell (typically, in Protestant versions, the pope or an agent of the pope; in Claudian, Rufinus) against the virtuous nation. But the poem introduced here is in fact strikingly even-handed: though successful in its praise of Cromwell -and increasingly focused on Cromwell in the later 1656 revision -it has its roots in an entirely royalist earlier poem which, as we have seen, was unhesitating in linking Mars, here an agent of evil, with Cromwell himself. 45 Moreover, the pattern of Fisher's use of Claudian in the poem reveals its underlying royalism: one facet of the complex allusive politics of the poem that helps to make it such a startling read. Much more than in his later poems, Fisher in Marston 44 Milton's lines themselves include phrases from Lucan (1.569) and Statius (the memorable 'cuspide cuspis' is from Thebaid 8.399). Cowley has a similar description at Davideis I.129-30. This is not the only borrowing from In Quintum Novembris in Marston Moor. The lines 'Persequitur trepidam nemorosa per Avia Praedam / Nocte per Illuni, et somno Nictantibus astris' (p. 21) are only slightly adapted from In Quintum Novembris 21-2. Fisher makes it clear that his Claudianic poem and Milton's belong to the same genre. As this passage is one that dates back to the early manuscripts, Fisher must have read Milton's 1645 Poems very soon after publication, and been particularly impressed by Milton's Latin verse. Fisher's lively and inventive scene deserves to be set aside the various Gunpowder poems as a possible intermediate source for Milton's further development of the idea in Paradise Lost. 45 Fisher was perhaps exploiting here the irony of the general Protestant appropriation of Claudianic panegyric: whereas in Claudian it is Rome that is threatened, in many Protestant versions of the form, Rome becomes the source of the threat. The most famous version of this type of scene in English, in Books I and II of Paradise Lost, must have had a markedly political connotation to its early readers.

3
England's Stilicho: Claudian's Political Poetry in Early… Moor draws predominantly upon Claudian's negative rather than positive portrayals: near the end of the poem, the confusion of the royalist army in defeat is like a whale without a pilot-fish (Marston Moor 64), alluding to In Eutropium II.423-31; mid-battle, Alexander Lesley, Earl of Leven and Lord General of the Scottish Covenanting Army, as he vainly attempts to rally his troops and bring them to order, is compared to a shepherd trying to recall bees with a gong (Marston Moor 51-2) in an image used of Alaric (the enemy of Stilicho) in Panegyricus de sexto consulatu Honorii Augusti 259-64. The suggested equation of the Scots and Alaric is a clever one: in 1644, at the time of the battle, the Scots were allies of Parliament -and indeed their contribution was key to that major Parliamentarian victory -whereas by the time of the publication of Marston Moor, in 1650, they were enemies of Cromwell. Stilicho had fought in alliance with Alaric earlier in his career, before Alaric changed sides and became his enemy. In this way, the simile borrowed from Claudian to describe Alaric alludes to the changing relationship of the Scots to Cromwell: both allies (at the time of the action of the poem) and enemies (at the time of the poem's composition).
Indeed, the only extended straightforwardly panegyric or celebratory adaptation of Claudian in Marston Moor describes not the eventual Parliamentarian victory but rather a moment of (although short-lived) hope and celebration for the Royalists. 46 When Prince Rupert raises the siege and relieves York, the city's celebration are described in a memorable personifying simile adapted from Claudian, Panegyricus de quarto consulatu Honorii Augusti 523-29, in which Rome, adorning itself to welcome Honorius like a girl being dressed for the arrival of her suitor, has become the city of York welcoming Rupert: [And just as a shrewd mother decorates a girl's face With nervous care at the approach of her suitor; And is careful above all to do her hair and spread the locks carefully, Then teaches her a new way of walking, and modesty of speech: Soon she transfers her own necklaces to her daughter's beloved neck, And weighs down her ears with shining gems. Thus in order to be pleasing to Your eyes, most worthy Prince The city [of York] glitters, and the Walls take upon themselves a happy expression. Oh how her fortune was transformed by your return! As colour and living warmth returns to the sickened citadels, And the happy roofs rise up with their half-destroyed Columns!] Ac velut officiis trepidantibus ora puellae Spe propiore tori mater sollertior ornat Adveniente proco vestesque et cingula comit Saepe manu viridique angustat iaspide pectus Substringitque comam gemmis et colla monili Circuit et bacis onerat candentibus aures: Sic oculis placitura tuis insignior auctis Collibus et nota maior se Roma videndam Obtulit. (Panegyricus de quarto consulatu Honorii Augusti 523-31) [As a solicitous mother at the approach of her daughter's suitor Does all she can, with nervous activity, to adorn Her child's appearance: repeatedly she adjusts her clothes and sash, Wraps her daughter's breast with green jasper, Ties up her hair with jewels, and sets a necklace On her neck, and loads her ears with shining pearls; So Rome, in hope of pleasing your eyes, offers herself To your gaze in a more glorious fashion, her hills built up And herself seeming larger than you have yet known her.] All the same, there is something troubling about this personification: insofar as the arrival of Prince Rupert suggests a marriage, it is a doomed one for the royalists. York was relieved on 1 July 1644, and the battle, ending in disaster for the king's armies, took place just outside the city the following day.
In short, even in the published version of Marston Moor (1650), which was so successful with Cromwell, the almost exclusively negative use of Claudian preserves the core of lament inherited from the original royalist poem. Although Fisher removes the near demonization of Cromwell found in the earliest version of the poem, there is no outright celebration of him either, and the only celebratory passage of Claudian is reserved for the royalists. In other words, though Fisher has adapted his poem to reflect and honour the victorious Cromwell, its allusive patterns are conservative: preserving the traditional association between formal Latin panegyric and a royal addressee.

Cromwell becomes Stilicho
In Fisher's poems for Cromwell in the following years, however, and especially with the start of the personal Protectorate in 1653, he increasingly turned to Claudian for positive rather than negative images -celebration rather than satire or lament, as he works out a mode of Claudianic panegyric suitable for a non-royal addressee. In particular, he develops in these years a sophisticated literary equivalence between Cromwell and Stilicho, with obvious political utility: like Cromwell, Stilicho was a de facto ruler who was explicitly not a monarch. 47 This equivalence is worked out both allusively, and explicitly. In his Anniversarium, extant only in the Piscatoris poemata (1656) The passage is both generally and specifically reminiscent of the example of the same motif in Barlaeus's Britannia Triumphans, quoted above: the phrase 'Praeco Grandiloquus' and the term 'trabeas' (used here as in Barlaeus in a sense specific to Claudian, indicating a consulship) are both apparently borrowed directly from Barlaeus's poem. 48 Although the passage cites a range of Claudian's panegyric -for Honorius, Mallius, Probinus and Olybrius -it starts and ends with Stilicho, emphasising the particular appropriateness of this comparison.
By the opening passage of Apobaterion, a poem written to mark the arrival of Marquès de Lede, Ambassador Extraordinary of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria, governor of the Spanish Netherlands, in the spring of 1655, the equivalence is well enough established that Fisher can declare: 'Cedite maiores. Priscae silescite chartae; / Non mihi iam Stylico tanti' ('Ancestors give way. Be silent, ancient works; / Stilicho means less to me now' [that is, because Cromwell has outdone him], sig. b1 r ). The most striking instance of this equivalence is the engraving printed in the Irenodia gratulatoria of 1652 (Fig. 1). Alongside the portrait of Cromwell on the battlefield is a quotation, 'Similem Quae protulit Aetas / Consilio vel Marte VIRUM' ('What age has produced his equal either in wisdom or in war?'), with a pointer indicating the source: 'Claud: lib. de laud. Stil.' 49 In his 1656 collected works (Piscatoris poemata), Fisher even revised Marston Moor to include the link between Cromwell and Stilicho, adding a description of Cromwell as 'a man even greater than Mars', echoing the description of Stilicho in these terms (e.g., De consulatu Stiliconis II.367-70; De bello Getico 468), as well as the imagery of the 1652 engraving.
Alongside direct references of this kind, Fisher increasingly attributes to Cromwell features associated particularly with Stilicho in Claudian: at the end of Irenodia gratulatoria, for instance, Cromwell is 'vigilantior Ipse' (sig. H3 v ) even more watchful, although at this point withdrawn from active combat, just as Claudian describes Stilicho as a kind of divine guardian, ever alert: 'sed fortior obstat / cura ducis. quis enim divinum fallere pectus / possit et excubiis vigilantia lumina regni?' ('But [Stilicho's] more enduring vigilance put a stop to [Alaric's attempts to attack again]. For who could possibly deceive his godlike heart / and his eyes, always vigilant for safety of the kingdom, even in the watches of the night?', Panegyricus de quarto consulatu Honorii Augusti 232-4). 50 In the  [But with greater moderation you [Cromwell] Look down upon airy applause, the rattle of the vacuous crowd, And you conceal the Honours England has granted you, deserved as they are, As you, who excel all others, who exceed everyone in virtue, Prefer to be considered a Private citizen, In the manner of the Sun who spreads and shares its light Upon the earth, and forgetful of itself, cares only For the common good, and seeks to make resplendent, not himself, but the world.] This is a careful blending of two passages. The first two lines have several points in common with the much-quoted opening passage of Panegyricus dictus Manlio Theodoro consuli on Virtue as its own reward: Ipsa quidem Virtus pretium sibi, solaque late Fortunae secura nitet nec fascibus ullis erigitur plausuve petit clarescere vulgi. nil opis externae cupiens, nil indiga laudis, divitiis animosa suis inmotaque cunctis casibus ex alta mortalia despicit arce. attamen invitam blande vestigat et ultro ambit honor: (Claudian, Panegyricus dictus Manlio Theodoro consuli 1-8) [Virtue is its own reward; alone with its far-flung splendour it mocks Fortune; no honours raise it higher nor does it seek glory from the applause of the mob. External wealth cannot arouse its desires, it asks no praise but makes its boast of self-contained riches, and unmoved by all changes in fortune it looks down upon the world from a lofty citadel. Yet importunate honours pursue it, and offer themselves unsought … ] This is combined with a larger and more readily recognizable number of borrowings from a recent poem of Barlaeus, in praise -significantly -not of the king, but of his second-in-command, Cardinal Richelieu, and published only in 1645: quos demat honores Regia, dissimulas. tibi vis privatus haberi, Dum cunctis, Armande, praes. … Solis ad exemplum, cunctis qui lumina terris 1 3 England's Stilicho: Claudian's Political Poetry in Early… Dividit, oblitusque sui communia curat Commoda, nec sibi, sed nobis mortalibus ardet. 54 The words with which Fisher describes Cromwell as remaining a private citizen are borrowed from Barlaeus; but Barlaeus himself is here building upon Claudian, who praises Manlius Theodorus on the grounds that 'frons privata manet nec se meruisse fatetur, / quae crevisse putat' ('Your look appearance remains that of a private citizen, and does not acknowledge that it has in fact earnt, / What it thinks has simply grown [naturally or spontaneously]', Panegyricus dictus Manlio Theodoro consuli 245-6).

Fisher as Claudian
If Stilicho is Cromwell, then Fisher is Claudian, and this is particularly evident in the shaping of the 1656 collection, Piscatoris poemata, which reprints all Fisher's previous major works (Marston Moor, Irenodia gratulatoria and Inauguratio Olivariana), as well as several of the more minor ones. Just as Claudian reworked particularly useful images more than once, so Fisher too reused images, specific similes, or even entire lines, for a new addressee. At In Eutropium I.163-6 Claudian compares Eutropius's ruthless treatment of those who had brought him to power to Phalaris, the Sicilian tyrant who had Perillos, the designer of his brazen bull, put to death in the device he had designed; Fisher uses versions of these lines to describe two consecutive enemies: first the Scots (Irenodia gratulatoria 1652, sig. B3 v ) and then the Dutch (Inauguratio Olivariana 1654, sig. Dd4 r ). This kind of repeated deployment of the same allusion is clearest in Piscatoris poemata, which prints both poems.
The overall impression of Piscatoris poemata is that of a 'Claudianic' career: Fisher even includes in the volume an early exercise in Claudianic epithalamium, a poem on the marriage of Col. Thomas Tomkins and Lucy Neale, which took place in 1643 and, though not included in the manuscript presentation volumes now in the British Library, was presumably first written in that year. 55  In this way Fisher demonstrates his mastery of the full range of Claudianic genres. He also revised his earlier work for the 1656 volume, adding, as we have seen, elements to both Marston Moor and Irenodia gratulatoria, his two earliest major works, designed to reinforce the association between Cromwell and Stilicho.

Claudianic Verse in English
By the mid-1650s Fisher had succeeded in adapting Claudianic panegyric, traditionally addressed to monarchs, to the praise of Cromwell, a man who refused to be king, and whose power derived principally from his military achievements. Edmund Waller's Panegyric, entered on the Stationers' Register in May 1655 alongside Marvell's 'First Anniversary', was published, like most of Fisher's official poetry of the period, by Thomas Newcomb. Waller's poem prints as an epigraph on its title page the two lines from the preface to Book III of De consulatu Stiliconis, used for the same purpose by Alabaster in the early 1590s and by Birkhead in 1645: 'Gaudet enim virtus testes sibi jungere Musas, / Carmen amat quisquis Carmine digna gerit' (5-6). Those same lines which, given the long history of royal panegyric, could function as a byword for ardent royalism for Birkhead, are now straightforwardly applicable to Cromwell, and here make explicit the genre to which Waller's poem belongs. 57 Marvell's First Anniversary is one of the most impressive, as well as one of the earliest, attempts to transfer Claudianic panegyric into English. The two most extended (and implicitly related) similes for Cromwell in the poem compare him to a star or the sun (101-4 and 325-46) and, most famously, to the steersman of the ship (265-78): So have I seen at sea, when whirling winds, Hurry the bark, but more the seamen's minds, Who with mistaken course salute the sand, And threat'ning rocks misapprehend for land; While baleful Tritons to the shipwrack guide, And corposants along the tacklings slide. The passengers all wearied out before, Giddy, and wishing for the fatal shore; Some lusty mate, who with more careful eye Counted the hours, and every star did spy, The helm does from the artless steersman strain, And doubles back into the safer main.  Both of these images are used repeatedly by Claudian, as for instance the comparison of Stilicho to a brave sailor who takes responsibility in a storm when noone else will do so: … ceu flamine molli tranquillisque fretis clavum sibi quisque regendum vindicat; incumbat si turbidus Auster et unda pulset utrumque latus, posito certamine nautae contenti meliore manu seseque pavere confessi (finem studiis fecere procellae): haud aliter Stilicho, fremuit cum Thracia belli tempestas, cunctis pariter cedentibus unus eligitur ductor (Laus Serenae, [As when on a calm sea Every sailor claims his right to take the tiller, But if the blustering south wind bears down upon them, and They are buffeted by the waves on either side, then the vying for control ceases and the sailors Admitting their fear accept a more skilful hand (for the storm sets a limit on their enthusiasm); Just so did Stilicho, when the storm of war raged in Thrace, Was selected as commander, with all rivals ceding to him.] Similarly, Stilicho is like a steersman (arbiter alni) in a storm, steering the entire empire away from disaster, at De consulatu Stiliconis I.286-90; a star for sailors in a storm (In Rufinum I.275-7); and his hair shines like a star heralding salvation for besieged Rome (De bello Getico 457-60); Manlius Theodorus is also like a skilled steersman (Panegyricus dictus Manlio Theodoro consuli 42-50); Honorius evolving political context is comparable to similar shifts during this period in the work and orientation of Marvell, Cowley and Dryden. But we cannot begin to assess the originality of what Fisher is doing without understanding the generic context in which he was working, and the framework offered by the lively and, by the time of his writing, already long tradition of Renaissance and early modern Latin panegyricepic in the style and tradition of Claudian.
This article has aimed to fill in at least the key features of that tradition, as well as offer an analysis of Fisher's particular contribution to it, demonstrating not only the sophistication with which Fisher uses Claudian, but also the extent to which his verse draws upon contemporary poets -such as Milton and Barlaeus -whose work he recognized as belonging to the same Claudianic tradition as his own. An understanding of the early modern imitation of Claudian is essential to any appreciation of what Fisher is doing, but not only for that: the Claudianic context helps us to read the great wealth of British Neo-Latin panegyric verse dating from both before and after Fisher (including, for instance, the 'Gunpowder plot' poems which have typically been studied in isolation); it helps immeasurably in the reading of so-called Renaissance 'short epic' or 'epyllion' as a whole, especially though not only in Latin; it also demonstrates the international currency of this form, in which poets routinely learnt from and imitated one another across national boundaries, and frequently both expected and intended to be read by addressees of other nations. Finally it illuminates the style and sources, and demarcates the originality, of a wide range of English verse, especially of the later seventeenth century, which most readers now find hard to access or appreciate. Claudian was not so much a possible, as the obvious model for formal panegyric verse in early modern Europe, and any reading of such poetry, whether in Latin or the vernacular, must take that as a starting point.