RATIONES RERUM 24: Articolo Étienne Wolff

Descrizione

Rationes Rerum 24

ÉTIENNE WOLFF
Un oracle trompeur chez Claudien (De bello Getico 544-557): l’annonce à Alaric de sa victoire sur Rome

Despite Plutarch’s view, oracles did not disappear in Late Antiquity, and some of them are still in the tradition of deceptive oracles. Such is the case, in Claudian’s De bello Getico (a historical epic celebrating the victory of the Romans at Pollentia over Alaric’s Goths in 402 CE), of the oracle announcing to King Alaric that he will invade Italy usque ad Urbem. This oracle is misleading in that Urbs does not refer to the city of Rome, as Alaric believes, but to a river of the same name (now called Orba), near which he would be defeated by the Roman general Stilicho. This article analyzes this oracular response by asking whether it is an invention of Claudian and examines the way it is presented and the meaning it might have.