Gaius Valerius Flaccus

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Gaius Valerius Flaccus (died ca AD 90) was a Roman poet who flourished in the "Silver Age" under the emperors Vespasian and Titus and wrote a Latin Argonautica that owes a great deal to Apollonius of Rhodes more famous epic.

He has been identified on insufficient grounds with a poet friend of Martial (1.61.76), a native of Padua, and in needy circumstances; but as he was a member of the College of Fifteen, who had charge of the Sibylline books (1.5), he must have been well off. The subscription of the Vatican manuscript, which adds the name Setinus Balbus, points to his having been a native of Setia in Latium. The only ancient writer who mentions him is Quintilian (10.1.90), who laments his recent death as a great loss; as Quintilian's work was finished about 90 AD, this gives a limit for the death of Flaccus.

His only surviving work, the Argonautica, dedicated to Vespasian on his setting out for Britain, was written during the siege, or shortly after the capture, of Jerusalem by Titus in 70 AD. As the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD is alluded to, its composition must have occupied him a long time. The Argonautica is an epic poem intended to be in eight books, written in traditional dactylic hexameters, which recounts Jason's quest for the Golden Fleece. The poem's text, as it has survived, is in a very corrupt state; it ends so abruptly with the request of Medea to accompany Jason on his homeward voyage, that it is assumed by most modern scholars^[1] it was ever finished. It is a free imitation and in parts a translation of the Argonautica of Apollonius of Rhodes, "to whom he is superior in arrangement, vividness, and description of character" (Loeb Classical Library). The familiar subject had already been treated in Latin verse in the popular version of Varro Atacinus. The object of the work has been described as the glorification of Vespasian's achievements in securing Roman rule in Britain and opening up the ocean to navigation (as the Euxine was opened up by the Argo).

In 1911, the compilers of Encyclopaedia Britannica remarked, "Various estimates have been formed of the genius of Flaccus, and some critics have ranked him above his original, to whom he certainly is superior in liveliness of description and delineation of character. His diction is pure, his style correct, his versification smooth though monotonous. On the other hand, he is wholly without originality, and his poetry, though free from glaring defects, is artificial and elaborately dull. His model in language was Virgil, to whom he is far inferior in taste and lucidity. His tiresome display of learning, rhetorical exaggeration and ornamentations make him difficult to read, which no doubt accounts for his unpopularity in ancient times."

The first printed edition was in 1474. Increased interest in the last decades has resulted in a full-length general introduction,^[2] two new editions, in 1997 (Liberman) and 2003, and commentaries by H.J.W. Wijsman, 1996 (Book V) and 2000 (Book VI), F. Spaltenstein, 2002 (Books I and II), and Adrianus Jan Kleywegt, 2005 (Book I)^[3] which attempts to amend the faulty text.

[edit] Notes

^ J.H.Mozley, in Loeb Classical Library, A.J. Kleywegt (2005) and others.
^ Debra Hershkowitz, Valerius Flaccus' Argonautica: Abbreviated Voyages in Silver Latin Epic (Oxford University Press, 1999)
^ Reviewed by Andrew Zissos, Bryn Mawr Classical Reviews, 2006