England’s Stilicho: Claudian’s Political Poetry in Early Modern England

Two recent articles on Payne Fisher, the Latin poet laureate of the Cromwellian Protectorate, have alluded in passing to the range and nuance of Fisher’s engagement with previous Latin poetry.¹ Fisher’s verse, which is markedly unVirgilian in style, draws upon a very wide range of classical and late-antique models, including Lucan, Statius, Silius Italicus, Valerius Flaccus and Prudentius, as well as earlier Neo-Latin poets such as George Buchanan and Mantuan (Baptista Spagnuoli), and even works (by John Milton, Caspar Barlaeus and Charles I) published within the previous decade.² By far the most frequent source, however, and the one which appears to have suggested a distinctive form as well as many specific quotations, is the political poetry of Claudian.

This relationship is significant, firstly, because its political force and point suggests a major role for an author who has been largely excluded from studies of classical reception in the period, but whose cultural importance is borne out, as this article aims to demonstrate, by a full examination of extant sources; secondly, because Fisher’s political verse of the late 1640s and early 1650s, in which he maps out his artistic relationship with Claudian and increasingly refines it to suggest a specific comparison between Cromwell and Stilicho, represents an innovative redirection of the panegyric tradition. Thirdly, Fisher’s work in Latin very shortly precedes the emergence in English of a distinctively Claudianic subgenre of poems of formal political panegyric-epic, and of medium to long length, as exemplified by Andrew Marvell’s poem The First Anniversary of the Government under O. C. (1655) and, a decade later, John Dryden’s Annus Mirabilis (1666).³ Fisher’s work, though now almost completely forgotten, appears to have been a key conduit for the formal appropriation in English of Claudianic poetry.

There has been almost no dedicated scholarship on the reception of Claudian in early modern England.⁴ Therefore in order to explicate both the extent and the political power of Fisher’s engagement with Claudian, and its possible influence, this article begins with a survey of the place of Claudian (especially, but not only, his political verse) in the literary culture of the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, drawing on both print and manuscript sources. The second half of the article is dedicated to the case of Fisher himself, with a particular emphasis on his ground-breaking works of the early 1650s and commenting briefly on the relationship between his work in Latin and the emergence of the form in English from the mid-1650s onwards.

Claudian in English Literary Culture, 1500-1650

Although almost completely absent from the modern classical syllabus, Claudian was a classic of the medieval classroom, both because of the extensive presence of extracts of his work in influential florilegia and also because the De raptu Proserpinae was for several centuries a standard text in the so-called Liber Catonis, a popular school reader.⁵De raptu Proserpinae was still commonly read at school in the sixteenth century, and its influence is perceptible in many works of epic and short epic, such as Jacopo Sannazaro’s De partu Virginis. A passage of Claudian’s De consulatu Stiliconis, dating from 1445, is one of only two surviving translations of classical verse into English dating from before 1500.⁶

Where it has been discussed, the reception history of Claudian has traditionally been divided between the translation and imitation of the non-political verse (primarily De raptu Proserpinae and the shorter poems, including ‘The Phoenix’ [Carmina minora 27] and ‘The Old Man of Verona’ [Carmina minora 20]), on the one hand, and the major political works, both panegyric and satiric, on the other.⁷ Both remained demonstrably important in early modern England. In the final pages of his magisterial monograph on Claudian, Cameron discusses in some detail the evidence for the medieval readership of Claudian, and stresses the particular importance in England of the Panegyricus de quarto consulatu Honorii Augusti, especially Theodosius’s speech on kingship (214-352); but his examples are drawn largely from texts dating from the twelfth to fifteenth centuries, and his brief discussion of the seventeenth century is focused mainly on prose.⁸

Ben Jonson strikingly uses a paraphrase of the same lines from Claudian (De consulatu Stiliconis III.113-15) both in the text for his celebratory pageant for the entry of James I to London (Arches of Triumph, 1604) and in his almost exactly contemporaneous exploration, in the 1603 play Sejanus, of the sinister but still in some sense divinely endorsed power of the wicked emperor Tiberius.⁹ Jonson’s own working copy of Claudian has survived, and the pattern of underlinings accord quite closely with the points made by Cameron: the single most marked-up text is Panegyricus de quarto consulatu Honorii Augusti.. But the volume as a whole is heavily marked: all the political poems as well as the De raptu Proserpinae have many underlinings.¹⁰

Jonson’s interest is far from unique. Surviving manuscripts and archives offer plentiful evidence for the very widespread reading of Claudian in early modern England, dominated not by the shorter Carmina minora, but by the political poetry. Many commonplace books and classical anthologies include substantial selections from Claudian. In the large collection of classical Latin verse extracts prepared by the future Charles I as a gift for his father, for instance, Claudian is the fourth most cited author (after Ovid, Seneca and Horace), with more quotations (44) than Virgil (41) or any other epic poet. Quotations from Claudian are particularly prominent under headings that might be of particular relevance to a future king, including ‘De regno’ (two extracts from Panegyricus de quarto consulatu Honorii Augusti), ‘De principibus’ (again two from Panegyricus de quarto consulatu Honorii Augusti), ‘De praelatione’ (four from Claudian, including a further two from Panegyricus de quarto consulatu Honorii Augusti), ‘De potentia’ (two, one from Panegyricus de tertio consulatu Honorii Augusti and one from De sepulcro speciosae, a poem no longer attributed to Claudian) and ‘De virtute’ (two from the beginning of the Panegyricus dictus Manlio Theodoro consuli, a passage discussed further below, and one from Panegyricus de quarto consulatu Honorii Augusti).¹¹ Claudian’s invective is also represented in this collection, with extracts from In Rufinum under, among others, ‘De peccato’, ‘De proditione’ and ‘De ruina’.

Although Prince Charles’s collection does include some lines from Claudian’s shorter poems (one quotation from De raptu Proserpinae. and one from ‘de sene Veronensi’ [Carmina minora 20] for instance), the great majority of citations are from the works of political panegyric (Panegyricus de tertio consulatu Honorii Augusti; Panegyricus de quarto consulatu Honorii Augusti; De consulatu Stiliconis; Panegyricus dictus Manlio Theodoro consuli) and invective (In Rufinum). By far the largest number of citations from a single work (16) are from Panegyricus de quarto consulatu Honorii Augusti, which accords both with Cameron’s observations (based mostly on an earlier period) on the importance of this text in English culture and also with more general patterns of the citation of Claudian in manuscript material of this period (on which see further below). Moreover, this collection demonstrates that a belief in Claudian’s Christianity, though now contested by scholars (only one explicitly Christian poem is included in modern editions), was central to his reception in early modernity: in this anthology of strictly classical extracts, the whole of Miracula Christi is the only item under the heading ‘De Christo’ (fol. 19^v) and a quotation from In Rufinum is the first entry under ‘De Deo’.¹²

Given Charles’s personal enthusiasm for Claudian, he must have been particularly flattered by a clever poem included in MS London, British Library Royal 12 A LVII, a volume of 31 Latin poems presented to Charles by boys at Westminster School on the occasion of his coronation in 1626:

Claudiani umbra querula} Hos ego versiculos feci} De Laud: Stil: 3.} de 6^o cons. Hon:

Agnosco (vates maxime) agnosco tuos

Aegyptiace, verosque versiculos simul

Rerum potito, Musa, Stiliconi, tua

Honorioque saepè blandita est nimis:

Stiliconis ac Honorii nomen, stylo

Poeta rade, pone Stewardum, et sape,

Historia vera sic erit, et encomium.¹³

[I know your work well (great poet) I know well,

Egyptian, the truth of your poems;

But when Stilico was in power, your Muse

Too often flattered him excessively, as she did Honorius:

With your pen, poet, scratch out the names of Stilicho and of Honorius,

Put instead ‘Stewart’, and be wise:

That way you’ll have a true history, and a real encomium.]

The epigram suggests that the last of the poems in praise of Stilicho and Honorius (Book III of De consulatu Stiliconis and Panegyricus de sexto consulatu Honorii Augusti) were a step too far and that the house of Stuart would be more appropriate recipient of such verse.¹⁴ Many other manuscripts attest to familiarity with Claudian, and an assumption of familiarity in those addressed. By and large, the pattern of references accords with that noted above: Panegyricus de quarto consulatu Honorii Augusti, most often Theodosius’s speech to Honorius on true kingship (214-352), is the single most cited text, especially (for obvious reasons) in a royal context. An early example is MS Cambridge, University Library Mm.IV.39, which preserves various poems and speeches composed for the visit of Queen Elizabeth to Cambridge in 1564: the speech on fol. 32^v cites Claudian Panegyricus de quarto consulatu Honorii Augusti. Similar examples can be found from manuscripts dating from throughout the seventeenth century.¹⁵ In general, we find more references to the political poetry (both panegyric and invective) than to the non-political verse, though ‘De sene Veronensi’ (Carmina Minora 20) is not the only one of Claudian’s shorter poems that are popular, especially in the latter part of the seventeenth century.¹⁶

The standing in which Claudian was held as a Latin stylist is demonstrated by contemporary criticism; in a letter dated 1 February 1640, the Dutch Latin poet and critic Caspar Barlaeus writes ‘Virgilium, Lucanum, Claudianum imitandos censeam in Epico carmine’ (fol. 11^v); the letter goes on to include two quotations from Claudian, both (typically enough) from the kingship speech in Panegyricus de quarto consulatu Honorii Augusti (lines 269 and 294).¹⁷ Though Barlaeus cites Virgil and Lucan alongside Claudian, his own hexameter panegyric verse (discussed further below) is strongly indebted to Claudian. Claudian’s invective verse was also being critically appraised: a mid-seventeenth manuscript collection of letters from famous authors includes a letter from Nicolaas Heinsius to Alberto Robieno on Claudian’s In Eutropium, dated 1645.¹⁸

Given this wealth of evidence that Claudian’s political verse was very widely read, quoted and discussed, why do we find this so little reflected in English literature of the period and in the scholarly guides to that literature? There is I believe a clear answer to this: that until the 1650s, and perhaps specifically until Marvell’s First Anniversary, Claudianic panegyric-epic was an almost exclusively Latin genre in England as elsewhere in Europe.¹⁹ Not only that, but many of the Latin poems composed in this tradition, especially in the early period, were prepared and presented in manuscript rather than print. These two features of the genre – often in manuscript, and almost exclusively written in Latin – has meant that a literary form which was, in practice, standard, has become almost invisible to critics and historians. Recent scholarly consensus, for instance, has been that Marvell’s First Anniversary does not belong to a recognizable genre.²⁰

In practice, there are a large number of surviving examples of British Latin short panegyric-epic, dating mostly from the latter sixteenth and first half of the seventeenth centuries, and found in both manuscript and print sources.²¹ Poems of this kind are generally addressed either to the monarch themselves, or to a prominent member of the royal family.²² As is often the case in Neo-Latin genres, these poems typically have more in common with other Latin examples of the form from elsewhere in Europe than they do with contemporary poetry in English.²³ Indeed, poets often addressed Latin panegyric to foreign monarchs: examples on English themes include the collection Triumphalia de victoriis Elizabethae regina Angliae (1588), commemorating the Armada, and several works by Dutch authors, such as Adolph van Dans, Eliza (1619?)), Caspar Barlaeus, Britannia Triumphans (1626) and Hugo Grotius, Inauguratio Regis Britanniarum (on James I), which were certainly read in England.²⁴

Caspar Barlaeus, from 1631 the Professor of Philosophy and Rhetoric at the Amsterdam Athenaeum, was a leading intellectual of the age and his Britannia Triumphans, first published in 1626 but frequently reprinted, is a particularly clear example of self-conscious Claudianic style. A pointed opening passage, in which the poet asks for forbearance for his work on the basis of literary precedent, incorporates references to most of Claudian’s extant political panegyric:

Non abnuit amnes

Calliope, cum docta canunt commenta Serenam,

Et Pelusiacae turgent Stilicone Camoenae,

Et Latii cantatur apex, aut templa futuro

Assurgunt Tiberina Duci: seu Mallius annum

Consul init, Geticisque insignis Honorius armis

Grandiloquo praecone tumet; vel laetior aether

Adspicit Arcadium, vel magni fata Probini,

Et decantati trabeas miratur Olybri.

[2-3]

[Calliope does not reject the rivers

When learned rhetoric sings of Serena,

And the Pelusiacan [i.e. Egyptian] Muses are inspired by Stilico,

And the peak of Latium is the subject of song, or the temples of the Tiber

Rise for a future Lord: if Mallius begins the year

As consul, or Honorius, honoured by the capture of Getic weapons,

Is vaunted by a boastful herald; or heaven looks gladly

Upon Arcadius, or the fate of great Probinus,

And wonders at the consulate of Olybrius, the subject of lengthy song.]²⁵

Not all claims to be heir to the tradition of Claudian are as overt. Alabaster and Fisher share an allegorical opening motif of the poet as an intrepid sailor, potentially overwhelmed by the scale of his subject (Alabaster, Elisaeis, pp. 14-18; Fisher, Marston Moor, pp. 1-3 and Irenodia gratulatoria sig. B3^r). Though the Latin style of these poets, and therefore of the two passages, is markedly different, they are both probably recalling the enigmatic allegorical preface to De raptu Proserpinae, which has traditionally been taken to refer to the poet himself, launching upon a new poetic project.²⁶

Similarly, the conventional scene, derived principally from In Rufinum I, in which the forces of darkness – led in Claudian by Allecto – gather and decide upon a wicked scheme, sometimes after extensive discussion (the ‘Council in Hell’), has been associated in existing scholarship specifically with English ‘Gunpowder Plot’ poems (as well as Milton’s Paradise Lost), though it is more properly a standard feature of the characterization of the enemy in Latin poems in the Claudianic tradition.²⁷ English examples of this motif dating, for clarity, from before 1605, include Alabaster’s Elisaeis (c. 1591), lines 132-52 and George Carleton’s Ad serenissimam Elizabetham Angliae Franciae et Hiberniae Reginam. Carmen panegyricum (1592).²⁸ As has been pointed out, it is also a feature of several influential Latin poems by earlier Italian poets, including Jacopo Sannazaro (De partu Virginis) and Marco Girolamo Vida (Christias).²⁹ Later examples include, as well as the many Latin Gunpowder Plot poems, the fifth book of Venceslaus Clemens, Gustavis (Leiden, 1632) and Fisher’s Marston Moor (1650, pp. 3-7), discussed further below.³⁰

In the main existing critical discussion of Clemens’s Gustavis, Hans Helander relates the poem only very generally to Claudian.³¹ The scene in the Gustavis where Relligio, accompanied by Piety and Faith, appear in a bedraggled and desperate state to plead with Jupiter for the salvation of Germany is, however, a version of the memorable scene in De bello Gildonico in which personified Rome, and then Africa, plead (successfully) with the Olympian gods for mercy.

The specifically royal associations of Claudianic panegyric in early modern culture were sharpened for writers in the context of the English civil war: this is clear from Henry Birkhead’s choice of a pointed epigraph from Claudian for his anonymously published Poematia of 1645.³² The epigraph, ‘Carmen amat, quisquis, carmina digna gerit’ (‘whoever achieves deeds worthy of a poem, loves poetry’) is a quotation from the preface to De consulatu Stiliconis III (line 6). The verse collection is strongly royalist, with an opening poem addressed to James, Duke of York, epigrams on themes such as ‘De proditoribus’ (‘On Traitors’) and with a final dithyrambic ode commemorating Archbishop Laud. In this context, praise of Stilicho is meant to suggest the glory and honour of fighting on behalf of the king. Indeed, William Alabaster had used the same line as the epigraph to the first (and, it turned out, only) book of his poem in praise of Elizabeth I, the Elisaeis.³³

Fisher and Claudian

Claudian and the Demonization of Cromwell

This is the cultural setting in which Fisher began to write Latin verse in imitation of Claudian in the mid-late 1640s: a milieu in which the specifically Claudianic Latin verse genres of panegyric, political invective and formal epithalamia were well established and frequently composed by authors both in England and elsewhere in Europe. It was a form with strong traditional associations with royalty, though the Czech poet John Sictor’s experiments with verse in this form for the Mayor of London, combined of course with the precedents offered by Claudian himself, provided at least a hint of broader possibilities which became particularly important in the context of the Commonwealth.³⁴

The earliest examples of Fisher’s experiments with Claudianic hexameter verse are found in two copies of (almost) the same verse collection, both manuscript presentation volumes now in the British Library dating from 1647/8.³⁵ These collections, which contain both Latin and English verse in a variety of forms, and were no doubt designed to show off the range of his poetic skills, both include two items indebted to Claudian in particular: an hexameter poem on the Gunpowder Plot (On the Gunpowder-Treason) and the first version of the poem (here entitled De obsidione Praelioque Eborocensi vulgo Marstonmoore [sic] appellato, ‘On the Siege and Battle at York, called in the Common Language Marstonmoore’), which would later be greatly expanded as Marston Moor.³⁶ There is an English version of the Siege of York poem (An Abstract of Yorke: Seige and Fight, interestingly in blank verse), though not of the Gunpowder Plot poem. As discussed above, the Gunpowder Plot poem is an intrinsically Claudianic genre, and this is especially true of Fisher’s fragment, which is almost entirely taken up the evocation of the underworld. More original is his use of Claudian also in De obsidione: this is a straightforwardly royalist poem, which turns to Claudian in order to demonize Cromwell.

When Cromwell first appears in De obsidione, he is linked allusively not with the traditions of straightforward panegyric, but with Claudian’s In Rufinum:

Vix iam somniferis elata cubilibus alto

Impulerat coelo gelidas Aurora tenebras,

Rorantes excussa comas; rutilantibus armis

Agmina quam Adversis campo fulsere Maniplis.

Stat cuneis defixa Acies; et fulgida ferro                          5

Ingeminat splendore solum, coelumque corusco

Primus honoratis Ductor Mancest’re cateruis

Anteuolas aciem: validoque hortamine pulsans

Pectora moliris primae fundamina pugnae.

Tum formidando Coromell cui fulgur in ore                   10

Et Bellum Ciuile sedet sub fronte minaci

Proximus ingreditur; Thorace et Casside tectus:

Ferrea Compago laterum; totosque per artus

Ferrea clauigeris surgebat lamina nodis.

Nec minus horribiles ferro micuere cohortes:                   15

Dissiluisse nouo penitus Telluris hiatu

Cyclopum Portenta putes; simulachra mouere

Credideres, viuoque viros spirare Metallo.

Hinc ferro stipata acies, longo ordine Belli

Constitit, Aduersis et se ostentauerat armis.³⁷                   20

[Scarcely had Aurora, just now arisen from her chambers of sleep, driven the cold shades from the height of the heaven, and shaken out her dewy locks, than the ranks began to shine on the plain, their weaponry glowing red, visible to the enemy companies.

The battle-rank stands arranged in wedge-formations; the shine from the armour makes the ground and the heaven seem double with the glistening splendour of iron.

You, Earl of Manchester, with your honoured companies, were the first to fly before the battle line: and stirring their hearts with powerful encouragement, you set in motion the first beginning of the battle. Then Cromwell, the lightning bolt on his dreadful face, and Civil War sitting on his menacing forehead, came next; covered by a breast-plate and a helmet; his sides covered in a network of iron; and iron plates joined by bolts were rising over all his limbs. No less did the cohorts flash with iron, a horrible sight: you would think that strange horrors of the Cyclopes had leapt forth from a sudden gaping of the Earth; you would believe that images were moving, and that men were breathing in living metal. So in dense ranks of iron did the battle-line draw up, in the long ranks of war, and displayed itself to the opposing army.]

There is a complex series of allusions at work in this passage: the italicized Bellum Ciuile resting upon Cromwell’s forehead suggests Lucan, but much of the rest is structured by borrowings from Statius’s Thebaid. Lines 1-3 are indebted to Thebaid II.134-6; line 16 is borrowed in its entirety from Thebaid VIII.19, the scene in which Amphiaraus arrives in the underworld; the phrase ‘totosque per artus’ may recall the description of Tydeus at Thebaid I.416 (‘totosque infusa per artus / Major in exiguo regnabat corpore virtus’). Cromwell’s notorious ‘ironsides’ armour – a soubriquet supposedly coined by Prince Rupert in the immediate aftermath of the Battle of Marston Moor – is sketched in a vivid pair of lines (13-14) which combine an allusion to Statius’s description of the House of Mars (Thebaid VII.43) with a passage in Claudian (In Rufinum 357-62) on the awe inspired by troops in full armour:

hic steriles delubra notat Mavortia silvas

horrescit tuens, ubi mille Furoribus illi

cingitur averso domus immansueta sub Haemo.

ferrea compago laterum, ferro apta teruntur

limina, ferratis incumbunt tecta columnis

(Statius, Thebaid VII.40-4)

[Here he marks barren woods, Mars’s shrine, and shudders as he looks. There under distant Haemus is the god’s ungentle house, girt with a thousand Rages. The sides are of iron structure, the trodden thresholds are fitted with iron, the roof rests on iron-bound pillars.]³⁸

conjuncta per artem

Flexilis inductis animatur lamina membris,

Horribilis visu. Credas simulacra moveri

Ferrea, cognatoque viros spirare metallo.

Par vestitus equis. Ferrata fronte minantur,

Ferratosque levant securi vulneris armos

(Claudian, In Rufinum II.357-362)

[ … the limbs within give life to the armour’s pliant scales so artfully conjoined, and strike terror into the beholder. ’Tis as though iron statues moved and men lived cast from that same metal. The horses are armed in the same way; their heads are encased in threatening iron, their forequarters move beneath steel plates protecting them from wounds.]³⁹

The vignette of Cromwell’s appearance, which verges on allegory, carries ominous allusive associations: he is a version of the House of Mars (that is, the physical manifestation of personified War, in Thebaid VII.40-4, cited above) and the scene reminds the poet of Amphiaraus in the underworld (Thebaid VIII.19), as well as a moment of particular menace in Claudian. The description of the beauty of the imperial army drawn up outside Constantinople in In Rufinum 2 immediately precedes the moment when Rufinus is torn apart by those same soldiers. Even in this plainly royalist poem, Fisher does not paint Cromwell straightforwardly as Rufinus – the network of allusions suggests rather Cromwell’s great, and somewhat sinister, military power. The allusive atmosphere conveys, above all, the overwhelming sensory experience of a great war, by turns beautiful and horrific.

From Manuscript into Print: Marston Moor (1650)

The printed version of Marston Moor which appeared in 1650, published by Benlowes, was massively expanded, now extending to 1,367 lines in five metra (short ‘books’).⁴⁰ Though Fisher removed almost nothing (apart from the description of Cromwell discussed above) from his first attempts, and effectively preserved a core of royalist lament which runs through the poem, his depiction of the Parliamentarians’ victory was such a success that it secured Fisher a paid career as the official poet of the Council of State and then of the Protectorate for the rest of the 1650s.

Marston Moor makes extensive allusive use of Claudian, whose works are drawn upon more than any other poet.⁴¹ Fisher began by adding an extended set-piece of the ‘Council in Hell’ (pp. 4-7) an element which (as noted above) had by this point become a standard feature of patriotic panegyric-epic, not an element confined to the ‘Gunpowder Plot’ poems with which it has mostly been associated by recent critics.⁴² Fisher’s lavish version of the scene is particularly dependent upon Claudian, from which it borrows both structural elements and specific lines. Mars summons personifications of evil (p. 4) just as Allecto does in Claudian (In Rufinum I.28-44); Mars is compared to Jupiter unleashing the winds (p. 7), as Rufinus is compared to Aeolus (In Rufinum II.22-6).⁴³ The opening of the scene is a particularly vivid example of Fisher’s allusive technique and the extent of the borrowing from Claudian:

His ubi Conventis Stipata est Curia Monstris,

Extemplo ominuit rapido Diademate Mavors

Imbutam quatiens Titanum Caedibus Hastam.

Torva quidem Facies, et non adeunda Senectus:

Terribiles Horrore Jubae; conoque Corusco                          5

Scintillare Faces; fremuitque adamantinus Ordo

Dentis, ut Armorum Fragor, ictáque cuspide cuspis.

Postquam jussa quies, suasítque silentia terror,

IPSE (Catervatim Comitum Cingente Coronâ)

Horrendas quatiens galeato in vertice Cristas                   10

Talibus excussam patescit vocibus Iram:

‘Surgite Concordes Socii, coeptísque favete:

Ulterius pigeat, pigeat latuisse pudendo

Pulvere, et Ignotis animas traxisse tenebris.

Siccine securos semper spectabimus Anglos?’                   15

…

(Marston Moor 1650: pp. 4-5)

[When the Council was packed with the gathered monsters,

At once Mars towered over them with a swift Diadem

Shaking a Spear dyed with Titan gore.

His grim face, and his Old age made him fearful to approach:

His crests were terrible with horror, and the torches

Glittered on the Flashing peak of his helmet; and the adamantine Row

Of his teeth clashed, like the Crash of Armour, like spear struck upon spear.

After he had ordered calm, and terror had persuaded them to silence,

HE HIMSELF (with a crown of companions wreathing him in their companies)

Shaking dreadful crests on his helmeted peak

He laid bare his Anger, shaken out with these words:

‘Rise up Allies of the same heart, and bless what we have undertaken:

It would be more shameful, more shameful to have lain low in shaming

Dust, and to have dragged our souls amidst the shades of the unknown.

Are we always to look upon the English, safe as they now are and free from care?’]

In this fifteen-line extract, lines 1, 13-14 and 15 are all direct borrowings from Claudian, taken from corresponding points in the Council in Hell scene in In Rufinum I (I.40, 58-9 and 45). These borrowings range from almost direct quotation (‘His ubi conventis stipata est Curia Monstris’ (Marston Moor, p. 4); ‘torvaque collectis stipatur curia monstris’ (In Rufinum I.40)), to a comparable construction with only the opening word in common (‘Siccine securos semper spectabimus Anglos?’ [Marston Moor, p. 5], ‘Siccine tranquillo produci saecula cursu, / sic fortunatas patiemur vivere gentes?’ [In Rufinum I.45-6]), to a parallel with no specific echoes, but making the same rhetorical point (‘Ulterius pigeat, pigeat latuisse pudendo / Pulvere’ [Marston Moor, p. 5]; ‘at nos indecores longo torpebimus aevo / omnibus eiectae regnis!’ [In Rufinum I.58-9]).

Typically for Fisher, the Claudianic structure of the scene is spliced with a further borrowing, this time from the early Christian poet Prudentius, whose allegorical Psychomachia was a popular poem in the early modern period, and one to which Fisher alludes on several occasions. Line 10, describing Mars, is derived from Prudentius’s description of ‘Ira’ (personified Rage).

hanc procul Ira tumens, spumanti fervida rictu,

sanguinea intorquens subfuso lumina felle,

ut belli exsortem teloque et voce lacessit,

impatiensque morae conto petit, increpat ore,

hirsutas quatiens galeato in vertice cristas.

(Prudentius, Psychomachia, 113-17, ‘Ira’)

[On her from a distance swelling Wrath, showing her teeth with rage and foaming at the mouth, darts her eyes, all shot with blood and gall, and challenges her with weapon and with speech for taking no part in the fight; irked by her holding back, she hurls a pike at her and assails her with abuse, tossing the shaggy crests on her helmeted head.]

Finally, the passage pays tribute to one of the most recent versions of the genre by incorporating an allusion to Milton’s In Quintum Novembris. Lines 6-7 are taken, without alteration, from Milton’s poem, where they describe Satan himself: ‘adamantinus ordo / Dentis, ut armorum fragor, ictaque cuspide cuspis’ (In Quintum Novembris 38-9).⁴⁴

There is an intrinsic and unexpected ambiguity to this scene. Both in Claudian and in the many previous Neo-Latin examples, scenes of this type are politically unambiguous: the forces of evil plot trouble (military attack, or terrorism) to be launched by a minion of Hell (typically, in Protestant versions, the pope or an agent of the pope; in Claudian, Rufinus) against the virtuous nation. But the poem introduced here is in fact strikingly even-handed: though successful in its praise of Cromwell – and increasingly focused on Cromwell in the later 1656 revision – it has its roots in an entirely royalist earlier poem which, as we have seen, was unhesitating in linking Mars, here an agent of evil, with Cromwell himself.⁴⁵

Moreover, the pattern of Fisher’s use of Claudian in the poem reveals its underlying royalism: one facet of the complex allusive politics of the poem that helps to make it such a startling read. Much more than in his later poems, Fisher in Marston Moor draws predominantly upon Claudian’s negative rather than positive portrayals: near the end of the poem, the confusion of the royalist army in defeat is like a whale without a pilot-fish (Marston Moor 64), alluding to In Eutropium II.423-31; mid-battle, Alexander Lesley, Earl of Leven and Lord General of the Scottish Covenanting Army, as he vainly attempts to rally his troops and bring them to order, is compared to a shepherd trying to recall bees with a gong (Marston Moor 51-2) in an image used of Alaric (the enemy of Stilicho) in Panegyricus de sexto consulatu Honorii Augusti 259-64. The suggested equation of the Scots and Alaric is a clever one: in 1644, at the time of the battle, the Scots were allies of Parliament – and indeed their contribution was key to that major Parliamentarian victory – whereas by the time of the publication of Marston Moor, in 1650, they were enemies of Cromwell. Stilicho had fought in alliance with Alaric earlier in his career, before Alaric changed sides and became his enemy. In this way, the simile borrowed from Claudian to describe Alaric alludes to the changing relationship of the Scots to Cromwell: both allies (at the time of the action of the poem) and enemies (at the time of the poem’s composition).

Indeed, the only extended straightforwardly panegyric or celebratory adaptation of Claudian in Marston Moor describes not the eventual Parliamentarian victory but rather a moment of (although short-lived) hope and celebration for the Royalists.⁴⁶ When Prince Rupert raises the siege and relieves York, the city’s celebration are described in a memorable personifying simile adapted from Claudian, Panegyricus de quarto consulatu Honorii Augusti 523-29, in which Rome, adorning itself to welcome Honorius like a girl being dressed for the arrival of her suitor, has become the city of York welcoming Rupert:

Ac velut officiis trepidantibus ora Puellae

Adveniente Proco, mater sollertior ornans;

Prima Comas sparsosque studet componere Crines,

Incessos docet inde novos, fandique Pudorem:

Mox sua dilectâ Cervice monilia transfert,

Atque onerat nitidas gemmis fulgentibus aures.

Sic oculis placitura Tuis, dignissime Princeps

Vrbs micat, & laetos sumunt sibi Moenia vultus.

Heu quantum variata Tuo fortuna regressu,

Dum color atque calor vivus redit arcibus aegris,

Laetáque semirutis assurgunt Tecta Columnis!

(Marston Moor, p. 37)

[And just as a shrewd mother decorates a girl’s face

With nervous care at the approach of her suitor;

And is careful above all to do her hair and spread the locks carefully,

Then teaches her a new way of walking, and modesty of speech:

Soon she transfers her own necklaces to her daughter’s beloved neck,

And weighs down her ears with shining gems.

Thus in order to be pleasing to Your eyes, most worthy Prince

The city [of York] glitters, and the Walls take upon themselves a happy expression.

Oh how her fortune was transformed by your return!

As colour and living warmth returns to the sickened citadels,

And the happy roofs rise up with their half-destroyed Columns!]

Ac velut officiis trepidantibus ora puellae

Spe propiore tori mater sollertior ornat

Adveniente proco vestesque et cingula comit

Saepe manu viridique angustat iaspide pectus

Substringitque comam gemmis et colla monili

Circuit et bacis onerat candentibus aures:

Sic oculis placitura tuis insignior auctis

Collibus et nota maior se Roma videndam

Obtulit.

(Panegyricus de quarto consulatu Honorii Augusti 523-31)

[As a solicitous mother at the approach of her daughter’s suitor

Does all she can, with nervous activity, to adorn

Her child’s appearance: repeatedly she adjusts her clothes and sash,

Wraps her daughter’s breast with green jasper,

Ties up her hair with jewels, and sets a necklace

On her neck, and loads her ears with shining pearls;

So Rome, in hope of pleasing your eyes, offers herself

To your gaze in a more glorious fashion, her hills built up

And herself seeming larger than you have yet known her.]

All the same, there is something troubling about this personification: insofar as the arrival of Prince Rupert suggests a marriage, it is a doomed one for the royalists. York was relieved on 1 July 1644, and the battle, ending in disaster for the king’s armies, took place just outside the city the following day.

In short, even in the published version of Marston Moor (1650), which was so successful with Cromwell, the almost exclusively negative use of Claudian preserves the core of lament inherited from the original royalist poem. Although Fisher removes the near demonization of Cromwell found in the earliest version of the poem, there is no outright celebration of him either, and the only celebratory passage of Claudian is reserved for the royalists. In other words, though Fisher has adapted his poem to reflect and honour the victorious Cromwell, its allusive patterns are conservative: preserving the traditional association between formal Latin panegyric and a royal addressee.

Cromwell becomes Stilicho

In Fisher’s poems for Cromwell in the following years, however, and especially with the start of the personal Protectorate in 1653, he increasingly turned to Claudian for positive rather than negative images – celebration rather than satire or lament, as he works out a mode of Claudianic panegyric suitable for a non-royal addressee. In particular, he develops in these years a sophisticated literary equivalence between Cromwell and Stilicho, with obvious political utility: like Cromwell, Stilicho was a de facto ruler who was explicitly not a monarch.⁴⁷

This equivalence is worked out both allusively, and explicitly. In his Anniversarium, extant only in the Piscatoris poemata (1656), but presumably written for the anniversary of the Protectorate in December 1654, Fisher makes the relationship between Cromwell and Stilicho (and himself and Claudian) quite plain:

Tunc faciles in coepta novem fluxere sorores,

Et Musis patuere adytus, cum Carmine Praeco

Grandilo quus, Stylico vestras super aethera laudes

Tollebat. Geticis cum Consul Honorius armis,

Mallius aut Reducem Pompis solennibus annum

Induerant; quis Vate prior fulgentia Rostra

Clarius intravit? paribusve furoribus actus

Annua sceptriferi cantavit Festa Probini,

Bisque triumphati trabeas celebravit Olybri?

Haec veteres cecinere Patres: sed nostra Thalia

Majus opus meliusque movet; de Cardine Mundi

Nempe alio, mihi Consul adest; mihi Mallius alter;

Alter adest Stylico.

(Fisher, Anniversarium, in Piscatoris Poemata, sigs B1^v-B2^r)

[Then the nine sisters flowed readily into new topics,

And the shrines were laid open to the Muses, when a herald, boastful in song,

Was raising your praises, Stilicho, above the heavens.

When Consul Honorius, with captured Getic weapons,

Or when Mallius were adorning the year on its return with solemn processions;

Who entered the gleaming stage with more renown

Than a Poet? or, driven by equal furies of inspiration,

Sang the annual rites of sceptre-breaing Probinus,

And celebrated the consulship of Olybrius, who had twice triumphed?

These things were the subjects of song for the ancestors. But our Thalia [Muse]

Is embarking upon a greater and a better work: she is singing

About another man who is the hinge of the World [i.e. of crucial importance], for I have another Consul;

A different Mallius; a second Stilicho.]

The passage is both generally and specifically reminiscent of the example of the same motif in Barlaeus’s Britannia Triumphans, quoted above: the phrase ‘Praeco Grandiloquus’ and the term ‘trabeas’ (used here as in Barlaeus in a sense specific to Claudian, indicating a consulship) are both apparently borrowed directly from Barlaeus’s poem.⁴⁸ Although the passage cites a range of Claudian’s panegyric – for Honorius, Mallius, Probinus and Olybrius – it starts and ends with Stilicho, emphasising the particular appropriateness of this comparison.

By the opening passage of Apobaterion, a poem written to mark the arrival of Marquès de Lede, Ambassador Extraordinary of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria, governor of the Spanish Netherlands, in the spring of 1655, the equivalence is well enough established that Fisher can declare: ‘Cedite maiores. Priscae silescite chartae; / Non mihi iam Stylico tanti’ (‘Ancestors give way. Be silent, ancient works; / Stilicho means less to me now’ [that is, because Cromwell has outdone him], sig. b1^r). The most striking instance of this equivalence is the engraving printed in the Irenodia gratulatoria of 1652 (Fig. 1). Alongside the portrait of Cromwell on the battlefield is a quotation, ‘Similem Quae protulit Aetas / Consilio vel Marte VIRUM’ (‘What age has produced his equal either in wisdom or in war?’), with a pointer indicating the source: ‘Claud: lib. de laud. Stil.’⁴⁹ In his 1656 collected works (Piscatoris poemata), Fisher even revised Marston Moor to include the link between Cromwell and Stilicho, adding a description of Cromwell as ‘a man even greater than Mars’, echoing the description of Stilicho in these terms (e.g., De consulatu Stiliconis II.367-70; De bello Getico 468), as well as the imagery of the 1652 engraving.

Fig. 1

Engraving in Inrenodia Gratulatoria (1652).

Alongside direct references of this kind, Fisher increasingly attributes to Cromwell features associated particularly with Stilicho in Claudian: at the end of Irenodia gratulatoria, for instance, Cromwell is ‘vigilantior Ipse’ (sig. H3^v) even more watchful, although at this point withdrawn from active combat, just as Claudian describes Stilicho as a kind of divine guardian, ever alert: ‘sed fortior obstat / cura ducis. quis enim divinum fallere pectus / possit et excubiis vigilantia lumina regni?’ (‘But [Stilicho’s] more enduring vigilance put a stop to [Alaric’s attempts to attack again]. For who could possibly deceive his godlike heart / and his eyes, always vigilant for safety of the kingdom, even in the watches of the night?’, Panegyricus de quarto consulatu Honorii Augusti 232-4).⁵⁰

In the Inauguratio Olivariana of 1654, Fisher compares Cromwell to Titan and Hercules, and describes him as holding up the people single-handed: ‘Ille Pater Patriae, Libertatisque reductor, / Ceu novus Alcides, ruituram à Culmine gentem / Supposita cervice tulit’ (‘That Father of the Fatherland, the restorer of Liberty / Like a new Hercules, bears upon his neck the weight of a people on the verge of collapse’, sig. A2^r), with an echo of De consulatu Stiliconis I.142-3 (‘ancipites rerum ruituro culmine lapsus / aequali cervice subis: sic Hercule quondam / sustentate polum melius librata pependit / machina’, ‘With a strength equal to his you bear up the tottering structure of the empire, which is threatening to collapse: so once did the frame of the world hang better balanced, when Hercules had held it up’).⁵¹

As Christiansen has shown, Claudian frequently attributes similes of support and strength to Stilicho (and sometimes Theodosius), though not to Honorius.⁵² Similarly, the Clemency and Piety attributed to Stilicho (e.g., Panegyricus dictus Manlio Theodoro consuli 166-71) are made a recurring feature of the praise of Cromwell (e.g., Inauguratio Olivariana 1654, sig. B1^v), and a passage on Stilicho’s ingenuity (De bello Gildonico I.318-20) stands behind the praise of Cromwell’s virtus in Fisher’s Anniversarium (1656, sig. F2^r). Claudian’s descriptions of Stilicho as a star to sailors (e.g., In Eutropium II.507-8; In Rufinum I.275-7) and a steersman (e.g., De consulatu Stiliconis I.286-90) find multiple parallels in Fisher.⁵³ Claudian’s comparison of Stilicho to a cautious surgeon (De bello Getico 120-3; De consulatu Stiliconis II.204-5) is echoed by Fisher’s depiction of Cromwell in similar terms in an image added to the revised version of Irenodia gratulatoria published in Piscatoris poemata (1656, sig. Ee2^v): a good example of Fisher revising the imagery of his earlier work in line with that of the Protectorate verse.

From time to time, Fisher makes use of other examples in Claudian of non-royal addressees. One passage in Inauguratio Olivariana (1654, sig. B4^v), for instance, compares Cromwell to the bright peak of Olympus, never obscured by cloud, in a passage borrowed in large part from Panegyricus dictus Manlio Theodoro consuli 205-13 (a poem on the consulship of Fl. Manlius Theodorus in 399). In a particularly sophisticated passage from the same poem, Fisher uses a combination of Claudian and (again) the contemporary Dutch poet Caspar Barlaeus to tackle the sensitive question of Cromwell’s refusal to accept the crown. After a series of panegyric comparisons, to the stars and to the Phoenix (cf. Claudian Carmina Minora 27), the section concludes:

moderatior at Tu [Cromwell]

Aerios plausus, vacui crepitacula vulgi,

Despicis, & dignos Tibi quos concessit Honores

Anglia, concelas, dum vis Privatus haberi

Qui cunctos praestans, meritis virtutibus anteis,

Solis ad exemplum, qui fusis lumina Terris

Dividit, oblitúsq; sui, communia curat

Commoda, nec sibi sed mundo splendescere gestit.

(Fisher, Inauguratio Olivariana, sig. A3^v)

[But with greater moderation you [Cromwell]

Look down upon airy applause, the rattle of the vacuous crowd,

And you conceal the Honours England has granted you, deserved as they are,

As you, who excel all others, who exceed everyone in virtue,

Prefer to be considered a Private citizen,

In the manner of the Sun who spreads and shares its light

Upon the earth, and forgetful of itself, cares only

For the common good, and seeks to make resplendent, not himself, but the world.]

This is a careful blending of two passages. The first two lines have several points in common with the much-quoted opening passage of Panegyricus dictus Manlio Theodoro consuli on Virtue as its own reward:

Ipsa quidem Virtus pretium sibi, solaque late

Fortunae secura nitet nec fascibus ullis

erigitur plausuve petit clarescere vulgi.

nil opis externae cupiens, nil indiga laudis,

divitiis animosa suis inmotaque cunctis

casibus ex alta mortalia despicit arce.

attamen invitam blande vestigat et ultro

ambit honor:

(Claudian, Panegyricus dictus Manlio Theodoro consuli 1-8)

[Virtue is its own reward; alone with its far-flung splendour it mocks Fortune; no honours raise it higher nor does it seek glory from the applause of the mob. External wealth cannot arouse its desires, it asks no praise but makes its boast of self-contained riches, and unmoved by all changes in fortune it looks down upon the world from a lofty citadel. Yet importunate honours pursue it, and offer themselves unsought … ]

This is combined with a larger and more readily recognizable number of borrowings from a recent poem of Barlaeus, in praise – significantly – not of the king, but of his second-in-command, Cardinal Richelieu, and published only in 1645:

quos demat honores

Regia, dissimulas. tibi vis privatus haberi,

Dum cunctis, Armande, praes. …

Solis ad exemplum, cunctis qui lumina terris

Dividit, oblitusque sui communia curat

Commoda, nec sibi, sed nobis mortalibus ardet.⁵⁴

The words with which Fisher describes Cromwell as remaining a private citizen are borrowed from Barlaeus; but Barlaeus himself is here building upon Claudian, who praises Manlius Theodorus on the grounds that ‘frons privata manet nec se meruisse fatetur, / quae crevisse putat’ (‘Your look appearance remains that of a private citizen, and does not acknowledge that it has in fact earnt, / What it thinks has simply grown [naturally or spontaneously]’, Panegyricus dictus Manlio Theodoro consuli 245-6).

Fisher as Claudian

If Stilicho is Cromwell, then Fisher is Claudian, and this is particularly evident in the shaping of the 1656 collection, Piscatoris poemata, which reprints all Fisher’s previous major works (Marston Moor, Irenodia gratulatoria and Inauguratio Olivariana), as well as several of the more minor ones. Just as Claudian reworked particularly useful images more than once, so Fisher too reused images, specific similes, or even entire lines, for a new addressee. At In Eutropium I.163-6 Claudian compares Eutropius’s ruthless treatment of those who had brought him to power to Phalaris, the Sicilian tyrant who had Perillos, the designer of his brazen bull, put to death in the device he had designed; Fisher uses versions of these lines to describe two consecutive enemies: first the Scots (Irenodia gratulatoria 1652, sig. B3^v) and then the Dutch (Inauguratio Olivariana 1654, sig. Dd4^r). This kind of repeated deployment of the same allusion is clearest in Piscatoris poemata, which prints both poems.

The overall impression of Piscatoris poemata is that of a ‘Claudianic’ career: Fisher even includes in the volume an early exercise in Claudianic epithalamium, a poem on the marriage of Col. Thomas Tomkins and Lucy Neale, which took place in 1643 and, though not included in the manuscript presentation volumes now in the British Library, was presumably first written in that year.⁵⁵ In this striking passage, Fisher reworks Claudian’s Epitathalamium de Nuptiis Honorii Augusti for Honorius and Maria:

Et Venerem Vegetiva colunt⁵⁶, omnisque vicissim

Felix arbor amat, dum mutua brachia pandunt

Nexibus implicitis, coeunt in chara Cupressi

Foedera, Populeae succumbit Populus umbrae.

Vitibus & Vites, Alnoque assibilat Alnus.

(Fisher, Piscatoris poemata, sig. C2^v)

[Even the plants revere Venus, and every happy

Tree loves in its turn, as they spread out their branches together

In closely-woven embrace; the Cypresses enter together

The dear pledges [of marriage]; the Poplar succumbs to the Poplar’s shade,

Vine to vine, and Alder whispers to Alder.]

vivunt in Venerem frondes omnisque vicissim

felix arbor amat; nutant ad mutua palmae

foedera, populeo suspirat populus ictu

et platani platanis alnoque adsibilat alnus.

(Claudian, Epitathalamium de Nuptiis Honorii Augusti 65-8)

[The very leaves live for love and in his season every happy tree experiences love’s power: palm bends down to mate with palm, poplar sighs its passion for poplar, plane whispers to plane, alder to alder.]

In this way Fisher demonstrates his mastery of the full range of Claudianic genres. He also revised his earlier work for the 1656 volume, adding, as we have seen, elements to both Marston Moor and Irenodia gratulatoria, his two earliest major works, designed to reinforce the association between Cromwell and Stilicho.

Claudianic Verse in English

By the mid-1650s Fisher had succeeded in adapting Claudianic panegyric, traditionally addressed to monarchs, to the praise of Cromwell, a man who refused to be king, and whose power derived principally from his military achievements. Edmund Waller’s Panegyric, entered on the Stationers’ Register in May 1655 alongside Marvell’s ‘First Anniversary’, was published, like most of Fisher’s official poetry of the period, by Thomas Newcomb. Waller’s poem prints as an epigraph on its title page the two lines from the preface to Book III of De consulatu Stiliconis, used for the same purpose by Alabaster in the early 1590s and by Birkhead in 1645: ‘Gaudet enim virtus testes sibi jungere Musas, / Carmen amat quisquis Carmine digna gerit’ (5-6). Those same lines which, given the long history of royal panegyric, could function as a byword for ardent royalism for Birkhead, are now straightforwardly applicable to Cromwell, and here make explicit the genre to which Waller’s poem belongs.⁵⁷

Marvell’s First Anniversary is one of the most impressive, as well as one of the earliest, attempts to transfer Claudianic panegyric into English. The two most extended (and implicitly related) similes for Cromwell in the poem compare him to a star or the sun (101-4 and 325-46) and, most famously, to the steersman of the ship (265-78):

So have I seen at sea, when whirling winds,

Hurry the bark, but more the seamen’s minds,

Who with mistaken course salute the sand,

And threat’ning rocks misapprehend for land;

While baleful Tritons to the shipwrack guide,

And corposants along the tacklings slide.

The passengers all wearied out before,

Giddy, and wishing for the fatal shore;

Some lusty mate, who with more careful eye

Counted the hours, and every star did spy,

The helm does from the artless steersman strain,

And doubles back into the safer main.

(265-76)

Both of these images are used repeatedly by Claudian, as for instance the comparison of Stilicho to a brave sailor who takes responsibility in a storm when no-one else will do so:

… ceu flamine molli

tranquillisque fretis clavum sibi quisque regendum

vindicat; incumbat si turbidus Auster et unda

pulset utrumque latus, posito certamine nautae

contenti meliore manu seseque pavere

confessi (finem studiis fecere procellae):

haud aliter Stilicho, fremuit cum Thracia belli

tempestas, cunctis pariter cedentibus unus

eligitur ductor

(Laus Serenae, Carmina minora 30.201-9)

[As when on a calm sea

Every sailor claims his right to take the tiller,

But if the blustering south wind bears down upon them, and

They are buffeted by the waves on either side, then the vying for control ceases and the sailors

Admitting their fear accept a more skilful hand (for the storm sets a limit on their enthusiasm);

Just so did Stilicho, when the storm of war raged in Thrace,

Was selected as commander, with all rivals ceding to him.]

Similarly, Stilicho is like a steersman (arbiter alni) in a storm, steering the entire empire away from disaster, at De consulatu Stiliconis I.286-90; a star for sailors in a storm (In Rufinum I.275-7); and his hair shines like a star heralding salvation for besieged Rome (De bello Getico 457-60); Manlius Theodorus is also like a skilled steersman (Panegyricus dictus Manlio Theodoro consuli 42-50); Honorius is compared to a star at the top of the sky (Panegyricus de sexto consulatu Honorii Augusti 18-24). Cromwell’s recovery from his coaching accident is compared to impact of the returning sun upon primitive men, experiencing night and return of the day for the first time (325-46); Honorius is compared at length to the outburst of light amid an unnatural darkness at Panegyricus de quarto consulatu Honorii Augusti 172-91.

In previous work, I have demonstrated the extent to which Marvell’s use of these stock images from Claudian is repeatedly mediated by his reading of Fisher: the steersman image, for instance, appears multiple times in Fisher’s work of the early 1650s, most insistently in the Irenodia gratulatoria of 1652, with nine instances of the motif in that poem alone.⁵⁸ But it is Marvell’s achievement to bring Claudianic panegyric so successfully into English. Fisher perhaps recognized the significance of this transition. The final item in Piscatoris poemata of 1656 is a poem of lavish praise for Waller’s ‘Panegyric’ (sigs A1^r-A4^r), pointing out, in particular, its achievement in the vernacular.

Whereas the experiments in English formal verse panegyric composed by Ben Jonson and Samuel Daniel for the coronation of James I in 1603 did not mark the emergence of a true English genre to stand alongside the Latin, from the mid-1650s onwards we do find an increasingly mature English form: Waller’s Panegyric and Marvell’s First Anniversary were followed by, among others, Dryden’s Heroic Stanzas (on the death of Cromwell in 1658) as well as Marvell’s poem on the same occasion (A Poem upon the Death of his Late Highness the Lord Protector) and Waller’s Of a War with Spain, and Fight at Sea (1658). At the Restoration, we find a wealth of formal verse panegyric in both Latin and English.⁵⁹ The return of the king permits, of course, a concomitant return to a more traditional royalist mode, but the English form is now securely established alongside the Latin: Dryden’s Astraea Redux and To His Sacred Majesty are both indebted to Claudian at many points.⁶⁰ Dryden’s Annus Mirabilis is, in its form, closer to Claudian than to either Lucan or Virgil, and in its attempt to reinforce a patriotic identification with the city of London itself – to which the poem is, unusually, dedicated – it is also indebted to Claudian’s insistent concern for, and frequent personification of, Rome herself.⁶¹

Fisher’s appropriation of Claudianic panegyric-epic in his poems for Cromwell in the 1650s is of fascinating complexity and political sophistication. His work offers a rare instance in which we have fairly complete evidence for the development of a poetic style, including revision and republication of existing works, in direct response to changes in political events. His resilient creativity in the face of a rapidly evolving political context is comparable to similar shifts during this period in the work and orientation of Marvell, Cowley and Dryden. But we cannot begin to assess the originality of what Fisher is doing without understanding the generic context in which he was working, and the framework offered by the lively and, by the time of his writing, already long tradition of Renaissance and early modern Latin panegyric-epic in the style and tradition of Claudian.

This article has aimed to fill in at least the key features of that tradition, as well as offer an analysis of Fisher’s particular contribution to it, demonstrating not only the sophistication with which Fisher uses Claudian, but also the extent to which his verse draws upon contemporary poets – such as Milton and Barlaeus – whose work he recognized as belonging to the same Claudianic tradition as his own. An understanding of the early modern imitation of Claudian is essential to any appreciation of what Fisher is doing, but not only for that: the Claudianic context helps us to read the great wealth of British Neo-Latin panegyric verse dating from both before and after Fisher (including, for instance, the ‘Gunpowder plot’ poems which have typically been studied in isolation); it helps immeasurably in the reading of so-called Renaissance ‘short epic’ or ‘epyllion’ as a whole, especially though not only in Latin; it also demonstrates the international currency of this form, in which poets routinely learnt from and imitated one another across national boundaries, and frequently both expected and intended to be read by addressees of other nations. Finally it illuminates the style and sources, and demarcates the originality, of a wide range of English verse, especially of the later seventeenth century, which most readers now find hard to access or appreciate. Claudian was not so much a possible, as the obvious model for formal panegyric verse in early modern Europe, and any reading of such poetry, whether in Latin or the vernacular, must take that as a starting point.