Hello and welcome to Literature and History, Episode 95, Rotelius Namaadionus.

This episode will cover the work of the late Latin poet, Rotelius Namaadionus, whose

famous poem, Deriditu Suo, or on his return home, chronicles the author's journey from

the city of Rome back to his homeland of Gaul. Written in about 417 CE, what makes

Rotelius' poem famous is perhaps the history surrounding its composition. During the

first two decades of the 400s, the Western Roman Empire suffered multiple

invasions of the Italian peninsula and a sack of the city of Rome. Between 400 and 410,

the Western Empire lost the provinces of Britannia and also lost much of

Rotelius' own homeland of Gaul. While the long poem that will read together in this

program is called On His Return Home, as a result of various barbarian groups

converging in Gaul between 405 and 415, Rotelius Namaadionus scarcely knew

whether or not he had anything to return home to. But barbarian invasions were

only one of two major forces, threatening the well-being and the culture of

conservative aristocratic Romans of Rotelius' generation. Christianity, by the

time the 300s gave way to the 400s, was ascendant in the late Empire, both in the

powerful bishoprix of Rome's urban centers and in the scattered monasteries and

hermitages of the countryside. Not everyone, however, was on board with the new

religion and its ambitious clergy. For conservative Romans like Rotelius invested

in Roman civilizations ancient past, the proliferation of Christianity was

occurring at the expense of Rome's long established cultural traditions and

the Empire's spirit was decaying from within just as barbarians from without

seized its territories for themselves. Rotelius lived in a place and time we

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