SOURCE: “From Panegyrist to Propagandist,” in Claudian: Poetry and Propaganda at the Court of Honorius, Oxford University Press, 1970, pp. 30-45.

In the following excerpt, Cameron examines Claudian's motivation for trumpeting Stilicho's policies in his poems.

Rome in the late fourth century was not a city which welcomed foreigners. Ammianus Marcellinus, a Greek ex-soldier from Antioch, has left us a vivid record of the reception he met with when he retired to Rome. The parasitic urban plebs resented the extra mouths that ate their bread, and were always clamouring for foreigners to be expelled from the city, especially in times of scarcity. And the highly exclusive aristocrats only condescended to speak to foreigners when it suited them. They would be all over you one day, grumbles Ammian, and cut you dead the next. And if they did invite a foreigner to dinner, it would certainly not be a literary...