Everything about Gaius Valerius Flaccus totally explained
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 probably intended to be in eight books (though intended totals of ten and twelve books, the latter corresponding to Virgil's "Aeneid", an important poetic model, have also been proposed) 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's assumed by most modern scholars that it was never finished. It is a free imitation and in parts a translation of the
Argonautica of
Apollonius of Rhodes, "to whom he's 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's 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's 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, 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) which attempts to amend the faulty text.
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