This paper focuses on representation of roman tradition in two poems published approximately during the same period, A.D. 403-404. Claudian's pagan vision of the Roman past is an idealisation of Roman tradition, which he proposes that Honorius should imitate. Honorius is to become a new Trajan, and renew for fourth-century Rome the tradition of the optimus and pius princeps. Prudentius, on the contrary, complies a list of past Roman vices and failures, and emphasises the moral, cultural and philosophical improvement that is brought by the Christian faith. Honorius becomes one of the models of christianissimus princeps. By analysing these opposing propositions, I intend to demonstrate what was an increasingly large gulf between Roman pagan identities, of which Claudian is particularly aware, and the Christian empire, of which Prudentius is the self-proclaimed champion. In fact, the first concern of both poems is how to speak of roman identity in the context of an Empire becoming ever less Roman, where traditional Roman civilization is more and more criticised and put in question by new ways of building identities
