Who better to produce the first English translation of the collected poems of Venantius Fortunatus (ca. 540-ca. 600), a late antique poet best known for the Pange Lingua and the Vexilla Regis, than Michael Roberts? Almost thirty years ago, when the old scholarly paradigm’s progression from gold to silver to dark ages in the first millennium AD suggested that we could expect no better than iron, Roberts proposed that we look for jewels in late antique Latin poetry.
The fulfillment of a desideratum in the primary sources of the period will shed plenty of light for us to see for ourselves in broad strokes the character of a great poet of the sixth century.
Lionel Yaceczko
The Medieval Review
