re the intensity of photogenic rays; and in
1849 he brought out the focimeter, for securing a perfect focus in
photographic portraiture. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society
in 1853, and in 1858 he produced the stereomonoscope, in reply to a
challenge from Sir David Brewster. He died in London on the 27th of
December 1867.

CLAUDIANUS, CLAUDIUS, Latin epic poet and panegyrist, flourished during
the reign of Arcadius and Honorius. He was an Egyptian by birth,
probably an Alexandrian, but it may be conjectured from his name and his
mastery of Latin that he was of Roman extraction. His own authority has
been assumed for the assertion that his first poetical compositions were
in Greek, and that he had written nothing in Latin before A.D. 395; but
this seems improbable, and the passage (_Carm. Min._ xli. 13) which is
taken to prove it does not necessarily bear this meaning. In that year
he appears to have come to Rome, and made his debut as a Latin poet by a
panegyric on the consulship of Olybrius and Probinus, the first brothers
not belonging to the imperial family who had ever simultaneously filled
the office of consul. This piece proved the precursor of the series of
panegyrical poems which compose the bulk of his writings. In Birt's
edition a complete chronological list of Claudian's poems is given, and
also in J.B. Bury's edition of Gibbon (iii. app. i. p. 485), where the
dates given differ slightly from those in the present article.

In 396 appeared the encomium on the third consulship of the emperor
Honorius, and the epic on the downfall of Rufinus, the unworthy
minister of Arcadius at Constantinople. This revolution was principally
effected by the contrivance of Stilicho, the great general and minister
of Honorius. Claudian's poem appears to have obtained his patronage, or
rather perhaps that of his wife Serena, by whose interposition the poet
was within a year or two enabled to contract a wealthy marriage in
Africa (_Epist._ 2). Previously to this event he had produced (398) his
panegyric on the fourth consulship of Honorius, his epithalamium on the
marriage of Honorius to Stilicho's daughter, Maria, and his poem on the
Gildonic war, celebrating the repression of a revolt in Africa. To these
succeeded his piece on the consulship of Manlius Theodorus (399), the
unfinished or mutilated invective against the Byzantine prime minister
Eutropius in the same year, the epics on Stilicho's first consulship and