CLAUDIUS, RUTILIUS NAMATIANUS:
Roman poet. He held high public offices in Rome, but returned (416) to Gaul, the land of his birth, after the devastation of the latter by the Goths. He depicts his return in his poem "De Reditu Suo." As a polytheist he was antagonistic to Judaism; and his aversion was the more emphatic because he wished thereby to strike covertly at Christianity. He scorned the Jews mainly on account of their dietary laws, their rite of circumcision, and their strict observance of the Sabbath. He ends his diatribes by expressing the wish that Pompey and Titus had never subdued the Jews, for the insidious plague was spreading farther than before, and the vanquished had subdued the victors.
His poems were edited by Lucian Müller, 1870; a German translation was published in 1872 by Itasius Lemniacus (A. von Reumont).