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.