La caccia di Diana nel De consulatu Stilichonis di Claudiano: encomio, spettacolo, estetizzazione della realtà

The final episode of Claudian’s De consulatu Stilichonis (carm. 24, 237-369) describes the hunt of animals to be brought to Rome for the hunting spectacles (uenationes) which the consul Stilicho generously aimed to offer to the city. The hunt covers an extraordinarily wide geographical area (Europe, Africa, India); the goddess Diana is the protagonist of the scene and directs the action; her companions, the Nymphs, collaborate with her. The passage offers many insights for analysis, from different perspectives: in this paper, I focus mainly on the encomiastic motifs that emerge, on several levels, from the staging of the hunt, and on the aesthetics of its representation, with its distinctly ecphrastic, visual, and spectacular character. Both aspects, ideological and poetic one, are related to literary references (in particular, Ovid and the poets of the Flavian period, Statius and Martial) and iconographic material culture (the great African mosaics of Late Antiquity, above all the ‘Great Hunt’ of the Roman Villa of Piazza Armerina).