Around 400 AD, Claudian wrote De raptu Proserpinae, a work comprising three books that has come down to us incompletely. It is a multiple imitation of both the Proserpina episode in Ovid's Metamorphoses and that in the Fasti. Not only the background to the composition, but also the interpretation of Claudian's De raptu Proserpinae are highly controversial among scholars. Studies on this work focus on its composition and narrative technique.

There are already numerous philological works on Ovid's works. However, the reception of Ovid in late antiquity has so far received little attention. This dissertation aims to close this research gap by examining Claudian's mythological epic De raptu Proserpinae and the respective Proserpina episode in Ovid's Metamorphoses (Ov. met. 5, 341-571) and Fasti (Ov. fast. 4, 417-620).

The argument of this dissertation is that Claudian, on the one hand, consciously became dependent on his predecessor Ovid and thus adopted his features in terms of content and form. On the other hand, it can be shown that Claudian consciously set himself apart from Ovid.

The aim of the doctorate is to work out the similarities and differences between Claudian's De raptu Proserpinae and Ovid's reference texts.

My project aims to clarify the way in which Claudian places himself in heteronomous contexts. On the other hand, this project also deals with the question of the extent to which Claudian's work develops its own autonomy.    

Claudian's De raptu Proserpinae can be placed in many respects in the context of the autonomy of heteronomous texts. There is a particular dependence in the Proserpina episodes on Ovid's Metamorphoses and Fasti. By expanding and updating these episodes, Claudian interprets and explains them. It is therefore a Commentarius as well as a Renarratio of the Proserpina myth told by Ovid. This raises a number of questions: What proemial technique does Claudian use in comparison to his pretexts? What literary techniques do he and Ovid use to shape the characters in their works? How do they treat the topography of the underworld? By answering these questions, it can be shown that Claudian imitates his pretexts in terms of material and form, but also detaches himself from them.