114: At the nuptials of Orpheus (a modest comparison!) all the
parts of animated nature contributed their various gifts; and the gods
themselves enriched their favorite. Claudian had neither flocks, nor
herds, nor vines, nor olives. His wealthy bride was heiress to them all.
But he carried to Africa a recommendatory letter from Serena, his Juno,
and was made happy, (Epist. ii. ad Serenam.)]

[Footnote 115: Claudian feels the honor like a man who deserved it, (in
praefat Bell. Get.) The original inscription, on marble, was found at
Rome, in the fifteenth century, in the house of Pomponius Laetus. The
statue of a poet, far superior to Claudian, should have been erected,
during his lifetime, by the men of letters, his countrymen and
contemporaries. It was a noble design.]

[Footnote 116: See Epigram xxx.

Mallius indulget somno noctesque diesque:
Insomnis Pharius sacra, profana, rapit.
Omnibus, hoc, Italae gentes, exposcite votis;
Mallius ut vigilet, dormiat ut Pharius.

Hadrian was a Pharian, (of Alexandrian.) See his public life in
Godefroy, Cod. Theodos. tom. vi. p. 364. Mallius did not always sleep.
He composed some elegant dialogues on the Greek systems of natural
philosophy, (Claud, in Mall. Theodor. Cons. 61-112.)]

[Footnote 117: See Claudian's first Epistle. Yet, in some places, an
air of irony and indignation betrays his secret reluctance. * Note:
M. Beugnot has pointed out one remarkable characteristic of Claudian's
poetry, and of the times--his extraordinary religious indifference. Here
is a poet writing at the actual crisis of the complete triumph of the
new religion, the visible extinction of the old: if we may so speak, a
strictly historical poet, whose works, excepting his Mythological poem
on the rape of Proserpine, are confined to temporary subjects, and to
the politics of his own eventful day; yet, excepting in one or two
small and indifferent pieces, manifestly written by a Christian, and
interpolated among his poems, there is no allusion whatever to the great
religious strife. No one would know the existence of Christianity
at that period of the world, by reading the works of Claudian. His
panegyric and his satire preserve the same religious impartiality; award
their most lavish praise or their bitterest invective on Christian or
Pagan; he insults the fall of Eugenius, and glories in the victories
of Theodosius. Under the child,--and Honorius never became more than a
child,--C