Blog

Life

There is almost no biographical information on Gaius Valerius Flaccus. A manuscript from the Vatican adds the additional names Balbus Setinus. There’s one reference from Quintilian (Inst. Orat. 10.1.190) that implies his death was shortly before 92 CE.

Works

His sole surviving work is the Argonautica, an epic poem on the myth of Jason and the Argonauts and dedicated to Vespasian. The work is largely an expanded reworking of the Argonautica by Apollonius of Rhodes, which is narrated in four books. Whereas the focal point of Apollonius’ epic is on Jason and Medea’s relationship, Flaccus’ devotes four books to Jason’s escapades before arriving in Colchis, with the other four narrating his actions in Colchis. It ends right before Jason is able to escape with the Golden Fleece.

The poem’s abrupt ending has led some scholars to think it unfinished, a hypothesis further supported by book 8’s shorter length (467 lines v. 731 average for the rest of the books). It was once argued that there were perhaps planned 10 or 12 books, a hypothesis largely abandoned after Schetter’s 1959 analysis of its structure. Nevertheless, Hershkowitz (1998) finds it difficult to imagine the remainder providing a suitable ending with a few hundred more lines.

Aside from Apollonius, Flaccus also draws closely on the epic language of Vergil, Ovid, and Lucan. For this reason, he is largely seen as derivative, and while he has a good grasp of poetical language, he suffers as a storyteller. Nevertheless, Stover (2023) has argued for Valerius Flaccus’ influence on the epics of Silius Italicus, Statius, and Claudian.

Valerius Flaccus Online

Latin: PHI Latin Texts
English: Loeb volume hosted at Theoi

Further Reading

• Heerink, Mark & Gesine Manuwald edd. 2014. Brill’s Companion to Valerius Flaccus. Leiden: Brill.
• Hershkowitz, Debra 1998. Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica: Abbreviated Voyages in Silver Latin Epic. Oxford: Clarendon.
• Schetter, W. 1959. “Die Buchzahl der Argonautica des Valerius Flaccus,” Philologus 103: 297–308.