Short answers, pulled from the story.
Claudian, born Claudius Claudianus around 370 in Alexandria, was a Latin poet who served the imperial court of Emperor Honorius at Mediolanum (Milan) and was closely associated with the general Stilicho. Though a native Greek speaker, he became one of the most accomplished Latin stylists of late antiquity, writing primarily in hexameters and elegiac couplets.
Claudian's most celebrated non-political work is De raptu Proserpinae (The Abduction of Proserpina), an unfinished mythological epic in three books believed to have been written in 395 and 397. The epic influenced painters and poets for centuries and has attracted English translations dating as far back as 1714.
Claudian was a pagan. Augustine of Hippo described him as "foreign to the name of Christ" in Civitas Dei (V, 26), and Paul Orosius called him a paganus pervicacissimus, meaning an obstinate pagan, in his Adversus paganos historiarum libri septem (VII, 55).
Scholars estimate Claudian died around 404. The date is inferred rather than documented: none of his poems record the achievements of Stilicho after that year, suggesting his death coincided with or preceded Stilicho's later career.
Claudian was granted the rank of vir illustris and in the year 400 the Roman Senate honored him with a statue in the Roman Forum. Stilicho's wife Serena also arranged a wealthy marriage for him.
Claudian's work falls into three main categories: panegyrics and poems written for the emperor Honorius, praise poems and celebratory works for the general Stilicho, and mythological epic. He also wrote invectives targeting Stilicho's rivals at the eastern court of Arcadius, including works titled In Rufinum and In Eutropium.