Rutilius Namatianus

Rutilius Claudius Namatianus is a Latin beginning of the 5th century, pagan Poète, author of a poem telling his return of Rome towards Gaulle, the De Reditu suo .

Life

One knows of Rutilius Claudius Namatianus only what he teaches us itself in his poem De Reditu suo .

Belonging to a rich person family of landowners originating Gaulle (certainly of Toulouse) where it passes his childhood, Rutilius Claudius Namatianus follows his/her father appointed Gouverneur of Toscane and Ombrie. Of traditional culture, it is named Préfet of Rome into 414 after having been Comes sacrarum largitionum and Quaestor sacri Palatii . As show it allusions to his friends, in his poem, it belongs to a medium of senior officials well-read men.

With the ridge of its career, towards the end of October 417, it decides to return in Narbonnaise, to take note of wide the devastations perpetrated by the Visigoths in his field, probably towards Toulouse. Rome had been previously ransacked by the Visigoths in 410.

In its poem which starts with the praise of Rome: “Is this too to venerate Rome all the life? ”, he meditates on his irremediable decline and it is with back-plate that he moves away from the City. “You made only one fatherland of different people, your conquest was used for which lived without law: offering to overcome the union in its right making single Urbs divided” he with nostalgia writes.

Rutilius describes each stage and the places which he visits. Its account is an invaluable testimony of the landscape and villages of the coast of the Latium and Tuscany of late Antiquity. “The cities also can die”, writes it while passing in front of the antique Populonia, whose do not remain any more but the ruins of what was the largest port of the Étrurie.

With the autumn, limiting period of the closing of seasonal navigation in the Mediterranean, it embarks with Ostie the November 14th 415, the Via Aurelia seeming to him not very sure by the presence of the Goth S which destroyed the bridges, making the road coastal almost impassable. In the form of poem, Of reditu suo ( My return ), it writes the account of its sea journey which it carries out in eight stages over approximately two weeks, according to the sea route suggested by the Itinerarium Maritimum , kind of guide of navigation in the Mediterranean. Marseilles is the probable destination of this maritime voyage, whose account is stopped in Luni (Carrare) at the first days of December. The remainder is lost.

Work: the De Reditu suo

It acts above all of a poetic work which present a contrast seizing between the splendor of passed and a present of ruins and desolation. One perceives in the poetry of Rutilius the apprehension of a future fraught with uncertainties.

One did not preserve the whole of the Of reditu suo . One does not preserve that book I, as well as the 68 first towards book II, and some extracts.

The text that we preserve presents the part of the voyage which goes from the departure of Ostie (October 31st 417) on arrival to Luni (November 11th 417, i.e. the day of the “closing” of navigation on sea). After a vibrating praise of eternal Rome which it must leave (praise in which it presents Rome like the “more beautiful queen of the world” - Regina tui pulcherrima mundi , I, 47 -, mother of the men and mother of the gods - genitrixque Genitrix hominum deorum , I, 49 -, which made only one fatherland of various people - fecisti patriam diuersis gentibus unam , I, 63), Rutilius Namatianus describes the landscapes which it sees, and especially the reflections melancholic persons that they inspire to him: because we have in Rutilius one of the last representatives of the pagan literature, strongly attached to the size of the Roman past (even if it seems to accept the destiny eternal of Rome, as lets it suggest the praise that it makes some), and representing the political, cultural attitude perfectly and arts person of what P. of Labriolle called the “pagan reaction”.

Thus, the lyricism tested vis-a-vis certain landscapes (for example the description of “the wet dawn of dew which shone in a sky empourpré” - Roscida puniceo fulsere crepuscula caelo , I, 277) leaves sometimes the place to a violent satire of a cultural and political nature (against the Jews - I, 387-390 -, against the monks - I, 439-453, then I, 515-526 -, against Stilicon, presented like a traitor - 2,39-60), who testifies to the sourness of one of the last pagan intellectuals attached to traditional Rome, at the moment when triumph the Christianisme. Because the Anti-semitism of Rutilius, like its hatred of the monks, are as many attacks dissimulated against Christianity, than an intellectual cannot any more, at his time, to tackle face: the insult of radix stultitiae (“stock of stupidity”, I, 389) employed against the Jews seems to refer to the “stupidity” resulting from this stock, i.e. with Christianity; in the same way, the “scandal” that the asocial life of the monks constitutes, is extended by Rutilius to all their “sect” ( secta , I, 525), which seems poisoned by a poison more violent than that of Circé…

Reception, posterity, redécouverte

The text of the Of reditu suo of Rutilius Namatianus crossed one long period of lapse of memory: it is only in 1493 that G. Galbiato, secretary of G. Merula, discovered with Bobbio the single manuscript, forgotten since VIIIe century, which contained the text of Rutilius Namatianus (probably in writing lombarde); thus the Moyen-âge was not informed any of the poem of Rutilius. The manuscripts on which the text of the current editions is founded are only copies of this manuscript of Bobbio, now disappeared.

One discovered in 1973 some other extracts of the poem of Rutilius Namatianus.

Random links: