Dictionary
PAEONIUS	100.00%
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EUTROPIUS	100.00%
A Roman historian who took part in the expedition of Julian against the Parthians in 363 A.D. In 378, under Valentinian, he wrote and dedicated to this emperor a sketch of Roman history (Breviarium ab Urbe Condita) in ten books, from the earliest times to the death of Jovian in 364. The language is simple, and the narrative intelligent and impartial. The work was useful and concise, and became very popular. Succeeding writers down to the Middle Ages, and especially Hieronymus and Orosius, used it a great deal. It was several times turned into Greek, indeed as early as 380 by Paeanios, whose translation has been preserved almost entire. The work of Eutropius was enlarged and continued by Paulus Diaconus, who, in the last part of the 8th century A.D., added six books to it. It was also used in the Historia Miscella, or Collective History, and has continued to be a favourite school book down to our own day.
FESTUS	30.12%
A Roman historian, who about 369 A.D. wrote an abridgment of Roman history (Breviarium Rerum Gestarum Populi Romani) founded partly on Eutropius, partly on Florus, and dedicated to the emperor Valens.
CLAUDIANUS	8.58%
A Latin poet, born at Alexandria in the second half of the 4th century A.D. In 395 A.D. he came to Rome. Here he won the favour of the powerful Vandal Stilicho, and on the proposal of the senate was honoured with a statue by the emperors Arcadius and Honorius. The inscription on this statue is still in existence (Mommsen, Inscriptiones Regni Neapolitani, No. 6794). His patron Stilicho fell in 408, and Claudian, apparently, did not survive him. We have express evidence that the poet was not a Christian. He was familiar with Greek and Latin literature, and had considerable poetical gifts, including a mastery both of language and metre. These gifts raise him far above the crowd of the later Latin poets, although the effect of his writing is marred by tasteless rhetorical ornament and exaggerated flattery of great men. His political poems, in spite of their lau-datory colouring, have considerable historical value. Most of them are written in praise of Honorius and of Stilicho, for whom he had a veneration as sincere as was his hatred of Ruftnus and Eutropius. Against the latter he launched a number of invectives. Besides the Raptus Proserpiae, or Rape of Proserpine, an unfinished epic in which his descriptive power is most brilliantly displayed, his most important poems are (1) De III, IV, VI, Consulatu Honorii; (2) De Nuptiis Honorii Fescennina; (3) Epithalamium de Nuptiis Honorii et Mariae; (4) De Bello Gildonico; (5) De Consulatu Stilichonis; (6) De Bello Pollentino; (7) Laus Serenae, Serena being Stilicho's wife. He also wrote epistles in verse, a series of minor pieces, narrative and descriptive, and a Gigantomachia, of which a fragment has been preserved.