Dictionary
AEMILIUS PROBUS	100.00%
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DARES OF PHRYGIA	24.78%
Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 In Homer the priest of Hephaestus in Troy, supposed to have been the author of a pre-Homeric Iliad. It is doubtful whether there ever was any Greek work bearing this title, but a Latin piece of the 5th century A.D. (Daretis Phrygii De Excedio Troiae Historia), bearing a supposed dedication by Cornelius Nepos to Sallust, professes to be a translation of one. This absurd production, and the work of Dietys, was the chief source followed by the medipeval poets in their stories of the Trotian war (see DICTYS).
CORNELLUS	24.66%
Cornelius Nepos. A Roman historian, a native of Upper Italy, who lived between 94 and 24 B.C. He was a contemporary of Cicero, Atticus, and Catullus, with whom he lived in friendly intercourse at Rome. The most comprehensive of his many writings was a collection of biographies of celebrated men (De Viris Illustribus) in at least sixteen books. This was dedicated to Atticus, and must therefore have been published before B.C. 32, the year of his death. The biographies were arranged in departments, and in each department the Greek and Roman celebrities were treated separately. Thus the still surviving book upon distinguished foreign generals (De Excellentibus Ducibus Exterarum Gentium) is followed by one on Roman generals, while a book devoted to the Greek historians had one on the Roman historians corresponding to it, from which the lives of the elder Cato and of Atticus are preserved. The lives of celebrated generals were in former times (in consequence of an ancient error in the MSS.) erroneously ascribed to a certain Aemilius Probus of the 4th century A.D. Nepos' manner is easy and pleasant, but suffers from many weaknesses of matter and form. A superficial use of his authorities has led him into many errors, and the style is not seldom careless and incorrect.
CATULLUS	20.60%
Perhaps the greatest of Roman lyric poets. He was born at Verona B.C. 87, and died about 54. He came to Rome while still young, and found himself in very good society there, being admitted to the circle of such men as Cicero, Hortensius, and Cornelius Nepos, and the poets Cinna and Calvus. He had an estate on the Lacus Larius (Lake of Como), and another at Tibur (Tivoli); but, if we may believe what he says about his debts and poverty, his pecuniary affairs must have been in bad order. In consequence of this he attached himself to the propraetor Gaius Memmius, on his going to Bithynia in the year 57. He gained nothing by doing so, and in the following spring returned home alone, visiting on the way the tomb of his brother, who was buried near Troy. Some of his most beautiful poems are inspired by his love for a lady whom he addresses as Lesbia, a passion which seems to have been the ruin of his life. She has been, with great probability, identified with the beautiful and gifted but unprincipled sister of the notorious Clodius, and wife of Metellus Celer. Catullus was, in his eighteenth year, so over mastered by his passion for her, that he was unable even after he had broken off all relations with her, and come to despise her, to disentangle himself. In his intercourse with his numerous friends Catullus was bright and amiable, but unsparing in the ridicule he poured upon his enemies. He held aloof from public life, and from any active participation in politics, but none the less bitterly did he hate those whom he thought responsible for the internal decline of the Republic--themselves and all their creatures. On Caesar, though his own father's guest, and on his dissolute favourite Mamurra, he makes violent attacks. But he is said to have apologized to Caesar, who magnanimously forgave him. Catullus' poems have not all survived. We still possess 116, which, with the exception of three, are included in a collection dedicated to Cornelius Nepos. The first half is taken up with minor pieces of various contents, and written in different lyric metres, especially the iambic. Then follows a series of longer poems, amongst them the wonderful lament of Attis, wonderful in spite of the repulsiveness of its subject; the epic narrative of the marriage of Peleus and Thetis, and a paraphrase of Callimachus' best elegy, "The Lock of Berenice." These are all in the Alexandrian manner. The remaining poems are short, and of different contents, but all written in elegiacs. Catullus takes his place in the history of literature as the earliest classical metrist among the Romans. He is a complete master of all varieties of verse. More than this, he has the art of expressing every phase of feeling in the most natural and beautiful style; love, fortunate and unfortunate, sorrow for a departed brother, wanton sensuality, the tenderest friendship, the bitterest contempt, and the most burning hatred. Even his imitations of the Greek are not without an original stamp of their own.
ATTICUS	16.50%
T. Pomponius. A Roman of an old and wealthy equestrian family, born 109 B.C. He received a good education in boyhood and youth, and went in the year 88 B.C. to Athens, where he lived until 65, devoting himself entirely to study, and much respected by the citizens for his generosity and cultivated refinement. In 65 he returned to Rome, to take possession of the inheritance left him by his uncle and adoptive father, Q. Caecilius. He now became Q. Caecilius Pomponianus. From this time onward he lived on terms of intimacy with men like Cicero, Hortensius, and Cornelius Nepos, who wrote a life of him which we still possess. He avoided public life and the strife of parties. This fact, in addition to his general amiability and good nature, enabled him during the civil wars to keep on the best of terms with the leaders of the conflicting parties, Cicero, Brutus, and Antonius. He died after a painful illness, of voluntary starvation, in the year 32 B.C. Atticus was the author of several works, the most considerable of which was a history (liber annalis) dedicated to Cicero. This gave a short epitome of the bare events of Roman history down to B.C. 54, arranged according to the series of consuls and other magistrates, with contemporaneous notices. But his most important contribution to Latin literature was his edition of the letters which he had received from Cicero. He also did great service by setting his numerous slaves to work at copying the writings of his contemporaries.
EUPHORION	13.03%
A Greek poet and writer of the Alexandrian age and in the Alexandrian style. He was born about 276 B.C., at Chalcis in Eubaea, and died holding the post of librarian at the court of Antiochus the Great, king of Syria. Besides works [on mythology and history] in prose, he wrote epics, elegies, and epigrams in obscure and unfamiliar language. His poems were much valued by the Romans. Cornelius Gallus, in particular, thought very highly of them, and took him as his model in his own elegies.
PARTHENIUS	9.59%
A Greek grammarian and poet, of Nicaea in Bithynia, who was brought captive to Rome during the war with Mithridates. After his release, he lived there till the time of Tiberius, esteemed as a scholar and poet, especially as a writer of elegiac poems. He was acquainted with Vergil, whom he taught Greek, and one of his poems is said to have been the model for the Moretum; but he was more closely connected with the elegiac poet, Cornelius Gallus. For Gallus he composed the only work of his which has survived, under the title, Of the Sorrows of Love. This is a collection of thirty-six prose stories of unhappy lovers, compiled from ancient poets, especially from those of the Alexandrine school. Apart from the light it throws on the Alexandrine poets, of whose works it contains fragments, it has a special interest as a precursor of the Greek novel.
SARCOPHAGUS	9.15%
Properly lithos sarcophagos, a kind of stone (alum-slate) found near Assos, in the district of Troas in Asia Minor; so called because it had the peculiar property, that all corpses laid in it were completely consumed in forty days, with the exception of the teeth. [Cp. Pliny, N. H. ii 211.] Usually coffins were only inlaid with it in order to hasten decomposition. Then the name is given generally to any stone-coffin, such as those which were customary among Greeks and Romans, among the latter particularly after the 2nd century A.D. (Cp. SCULPTURE, and for a specimen see MUSES.) The cut represents the sarcophagus of L. Cornelius Scipio Barbatus, consul 298 B.C., great-grandfather of the elder Scipio Africanus, of the 3rd century B.C. It is made of common stone, and is the only example remaining from the old Roman time.
SPOLIA	9.00%
HIRTIUS	8.64%
Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 A friend of Caesar, and one of his companions in arms. He completed Caesar's Commentarii on the Gallic War by adding an eighth book. According to the dedication to Cornelius Balbus prefixed to that book, he contemplated the continuation of Caesar's account of the Civil War to Caesar's death. This intention he never carried out, as he fell in battle at Mutina, 14th April, 43 B.C., when he was consul. Of the three works, the Bellum Alexandrinum, Bellum Africum, and Belum Hispaniense, which have come down to us with Caesar's Commentaries, the first may have been written by him. Of the other two, it has been conjectured that they were composed at his request, in preparation for his intended work on military commanders, and that having been found at his death among his papers, they were added, with his own writings, to the works of Caesar himself. (See CAeSAR.)
CORNELLUS	7.67%
Gaius Cornelius Grallus. A Latin poet, born 69 B.C. in the Gaulish town of Forum Iulii. Though of low birth, he was promoted by Octavian to the ordo equester in the year 30 B.C., and made governor (proefectus of the new province of Egypt, in consideration of his great services in the war against Antonius. Through his cruelty and presumption he drew upon himself the displeasure of his former patron; in consequence of which he committed suicide in 26 B.C. He was one of the oldest friends of Vergil, who dedicated to him his tenth Eclogue, as well as an episode at the end of the fourth Georgic, which he, after Gallus' fall, suppressed at the wish of Augustus. The Romans regarded him as the founder of the Latin elegy. He wrote four books of elegies to his mistress, the actress Cytheris (or Lycoris, as he called her). They are in the obscure and learned style of the Alexandrian poet Euphorion. His poems are lost, but a collection of erotic myths made for his use by the Greek Parthenios has survived. [A few lines in Vergil's tenth Eclogue were borrowed from Gallus.]
ADOPTION	6.03%
At Rome there were two kinds of adoption, both requiring the adopter to be a male and childless: Arrogatio and Adoption proper. The former could only take place where the person to be adopted was independent (sui juris), and his adopter had no prospect of male offspring; at the instance of the pontifex, and after full proof of admissibility, it had to be sanctioned by the comitia curiata. Adoption proper applied to those still under paternal rule (patria potestas), the father selling his son by formal muncipatio (q.v.) to the adopter, who then, the paternal power being thus abolished, claimed the son before the court as his own, and the father allowed him to be adjudged to him. By either transaction the person adopted passed completely over into the family and rank of the adopter, and naturally took his name in full, but with the addition of a second cognomen formed from his own former nomen gentile by the suffix -anus, e.g. Publius Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus (son of Lucius Aemilius Paullus). Women too could be adopted, but not arrogated; neither could they adopt. At the latter end of the Republic we find a testamentary Adoption in existence, which at first likewise produced a change of name, but not of status.
FREEDMEN	5.05%
The emancipation of slaves was tolerably common, both among Greeks and Romans. The Greeks had no special legal form for the process, and consequently no legal differences in the status of freedmen. At Athens they took the position of resident aliens, and lay under certain obligations to their liberators as patrons. They could be called to legal account for any injury done to their patrons, and if condemned could be given back to them as slaves, or sold by the state. In the latter case the price was paid to their liberators. Among the Romans emancipation (manumissio) was a lucrative proceeding for the State, as a tax of 5 per cent. on the value of the slave was paid on his being set free. Emancipation was either formal or informal. (1) Of formal emancipation there were three kinds: (a) the manumissio vindicta, in which the owner appeared with the slave before an official with judicial authority, who in later times would generally be the praetor or governor of the province. A Roman citizen, usually one of the magistrates' lictors, laid a staff (vindicta) on the slave's head and declared him free. The master, who was holding the slave with his hand, thereupon signified his consent, and let him go, as a symbol of liberation (manu misit). This formality was in later times restricted to the simple declaration of the master in the presence of the magistrate. (b) The manumissio censu, in which the master enrolled the slave's name in the list of citizens. (c) The manumissio testamento, or manumission by will. Here the master declared his slave free in his will, or bound his heir to emancipate him. The heir might adopt the formal or informal process. Constantine added a new form, the manumissio in ecclesia, or emancipation in the church in presence of the congregation. (2) Informal emancipation took place in virtue of an oral declaration on the part of the master, in presence of friends (inter amicos), or by letter (per epistulam), or by inviting the slaves to the master's table. The freedmen were called liberti in relation to the liberator (e.g. libertus Coesaris) and libertini in their legal relation to the State. After formal emancipation they at once became Roman citizens, and members of the urban tribes and of the lowest classes in the centurioe, with full right of voting. But, not being free born, they were not eligible to office, and were excluded from military service. The latter was, however, the case only till the 1st century B.C. They obtained the right to be enrolled in the country tribes several times in the republican period, but not permanently till the imperial age. Their descendants, however, were, as being free-born (ingenui), admitted into all the tribes, and in the second, or at least in the third generation, eligible to office. Informal emancipation conferred only practical freedom without civic rights. It was not until 17 A.D., under Tiberius, that freedmen of this kind won the commercium, or the right of acquiring and transferring property. Even then they had no power of testamentary bequest, and their property, at their death, went to their liberators. It was permissible, however, to pronounce a formal emancipation after their death. To obviate abuses, and to check the excessive increase in the number of freedmen, the right of manumission was limited in several directions under Augustus. Among other things, if a slave under thirty years of age was to be manumitted vindicta, a proof of sufficient reason was required; and, in case of testamentary manumission, the number was limited to a certain proportion of the whole number of slaves, and never allowed to exceed 100. A mutual obligation continued to exist between the freedman and his liberator, based on the fact that the freedman belonged to the family of his patron. This is seen in the circumstance that the freedman assumed the nomen and the proenomen of his patron. In and after the 1st century B.C. we generally find a Greek cognomen added. A well-known freedman of Lucius Cornelius Sulla, for instance, was called Lucius Cornelius Epicadus. The patronus was bound on his side to care for his libertus, and in consequence either retained him altogether in his home and service, or supplied him with a farm and capital to start it; buried him in the family tomb after his death, and took charge of his children if not grown up. On the other side the freedman was bound to support his patronus, in case of need, out of his own resources, and if he was reduced to poverty, to maintain him. If he died childless, his patron inherited his property ut the rights of the patron in respect of his freedman did not pass to the patron's heirs. If the freedman neglected his duties, he was liable to severe punishment. In special cases, at least under the Empire, he might be sold for his patron's profit, or given back to him as a slave.
NAMES	4.83%
The Romans, in the republican times, bad their names in the following order: prcenamen (= our "Christian name"), nomen (name of race, gentile name), cognomen (surname, denoting the family). The gentile name, which originally (always in patrician names) had for derivative suffix -ius (e.g. Iunius, Cornelius, Tullius), was common to all those connected with the gens, men, women, clients, and freedmen. The prcenomen was given to sons on the third day after birth, the dies lustricus, and was officially confirmed when the toga virilis was assumed and the name was inscribed on the roll of citizens. The original meaning of the prcenomen, in which there was sometimes a reference to peculiar circumstances at birth (e.g. Lacius=born by day, Manius=born in the morning; Quintus, the fifth, Decimus, the tenth), came to be disregarded in the course of time, when the name was given. As a rule, the eldest son received the prcenomen of his father. Of these there was a comparatively limited number in the noble families; some were employed only by certain gentes, even by certain families, as for instance Appius exclusively by the Claudii, and Tiberius especially by the Nerones who belonged to this race; while others were actually prohibited in certain families, e.g. Marcus in that of the Manlii.[1] The prcenomen was usually written in an abbreviated form; thus, A. stands for Aulus, C. for Gaius, Gn. for Gnceus, D. for Decimus, L. for Lacius, M'. for Manius, M. for Marcus, P. for Publius , Q. for Quintus, Ser. for Servius, S. or Sex. for Sextus, Ti. for Tiberius, T. for Titus. The surname (cognomen), the use of which was, in early times, not customary among the plebeians, served to denote and distinguish the different families of the same race, which often included several, patrician and plebeian. Thus the gens Cornelia comprised the patrician families of the Scipiones, Sullce, etc., and the plebeian families of the Dolabellce, Lentuli, etc. [It is true that some patrician families had fixed cognomina (e.g. Nero), but it was quite common for plebeians to take cognomina or to have them given; e.g. Cn. Pompeius Magnus, C. Asinius Pollio, and his son Asinius Gallus. Some plebeians never took a cognomen, e.g. the Antonii. But the Tullii are Cicerones in the last century of the Republic. Cognomina, whether fixed or otherwise, are generally of the nature of nicknames, or, at any rate, add a description of some personal characteristic; e.g. Naso, Strabo, Gallus, Scrofa, Asina, Rufus.] To the surname there was sometimes added a second and even a third, in later times called the agnomen, to indicate a lateral branch of the family, for instance the Scipiones, Nasicoe; or, in memory of some remarkable exploit in war (e.g. Scipio Africanus, Asiaticus, etc.), or in consequence of a popular designation (e.g. Scipio Nasica Serapio) or of an adoption. It was the original custom for the adopted son, on passing from one gens to another, to add to the prcenomen, nomen, and cognomen of his adoptive father the name of his own former gens with the termination -anus. Thus the full name of the destroyer of Carthage, the son of L. Aemilius Paulus adopted by one of the Scipios, was P(ublius) Cornelius Scipio Africanus Emilianus. After about 70 A.D. there were many irregularities in the way these names were given,the tendency being to give very many. Women originally had only one name, the feminine form of the gentile name of their father, e.g. Cornelia. In later times they sometimes had prcenomen also, which they received on marriage. It was the feminine form of the husband's prcenomen, e.g. Gaia. Sometimes they had both names, e.g. Aula Cornelia. The prcenomen went out of use for a time during the later Republic, and it was afterwards placed after the nomen like a cognomen (e.g. Iunia Tertia). Under the Empire, they regularly had two names, either the nomen and cognomen of the father (e.g. Caecilia Metella) or the nomina of father and mother (e.g. Valeria Attia, daughter of Attius and Valeria). Slaves were originally designated by the praenomen of their master, e.g. Marcipor = Marci puer (slave of Marcus). Later, when the number of slaves had been greatly multiplied, it became necessary to give them names chosen at random. Freedmen regularly took the nomen, afterwards the prcenomen also, of the man who freed them (or of the father of the woman who freed them), while they retained their previous name as a cognomen; thus the name of the well-known freedman of Cicero was M. Tullius Tiro, and of a freedman of Livia (the wife of Augustus), M. Livius Ismarus.
VERGIL	4.47%
Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 The famous Roman poet, born 15th October, 70 B.C. at Andes, a village near Mantua, on the Mincius, where his father possessed a small estate. After receiving his early education at Cremona and (after assuming in 55 B.C. the toga of manhood) at Milan, he proceeded in 53 to Rome, where he devoted himself to rhetorical, philosophical, and physical studies. Prevented by weakness of health and bashfulness of manner from looking forward to any success as a pleader or in the service of the State, he returned home, and in the quiet of the country devoted himself to the study of the Greek poets. His meeting with the refined and poetically gifted Asinius Pollio, who in 43 took command of Transpadane Gaul as lieutenant of Antony, appears to have given him his first impetus to poetic composition. His earliest publication, his ten Eclogues, which were written in the years 43-37, were afterwards collected under the title of Bucolica ("Pastoral Poems"). These are imitations of the idyls of Theocritus ; they are, however, less natural, the pictures of country and shepherd life being interspersed throughout with references to contemporary events, to his own fortunes, and to important persons such as Octavianus, Pollio, and Cornelius Gallus, to whom the poet wished either to commend himself or to show his gratitude by his complimentary allusions. He had on several occasions been compelled by the force of circumstances to appeal to the protection and help of influential men. For instance, at the distribution of land to the veterans in 41 B.C. his own estate was appropriated, and it was only the advocacy of Pollio and of Cornelius Gallus which enabled him to recover it. In the following year, when Pollio was obliged to give place to Alfenus Varus, his property was again threatened; but by the influence of Maecenas, to whom Pollio had recommended him, amends were made him by the presentation of another estate. His fame as a poet was established by the Eclogues. Henceforward, by the liberality of noble friends, especially Octavianus and Maecenas, whom he won not merely by his art, but, like all with whom he came into contact, by his modesty and good nature, he was enabled to devote himself to his studies without fear of interruption. He lived in turns in Rome (where he possessed a house), or on his estate at Nola, or in Naples, where he mainly resided, owing to his weak health. Here, in 30 B.C. he completed the didactic poem in four books begun seven years previously, entitled the Georgics (Georgica, on agriculture), which he dedicated to Maecenas. In this, the first Latin poem of this kind, we have a masterpiece of Latin poetry. The author treats of Roman husbandry under its four chief branches, tillage (book i), horticulture (ii), the breeding of cattle (iii), the keeping of bees (iv); and handles a prosaic theme with thorough knowledge and consummate art, together with a loving enthusiasm and a fine sympathy for nature. [The work was founded mainly on the poems of Hesiod and Aratus, but also gives evidence of familiarity with writers on agriculture, as well as of independent agricultural knowledge.] Immediately after finishing the Georgics he began the epic poem of the Aeneid, which he had already promised to Octavianus. Its appearance was looked forward to by all educated Rome with extraordinary anticipation. After eleven years of unremitting labour (for to him composition in general was a laborious task) he was ready with a rough draft of the whole, and determined on a journey to Greece and Asia, intending to spend three years there in polishing his work and afterwards to devote himself entirely to philosophy. At Athens he met Octavianus (who had received in B.C. 27 the title of Augustus). The latter induced him to return home with him. Vergil consented, but fell ill, apparently from a sunstroke, at Megara. On the sea voyage his condition grew worse, and soon after landing he died at Brundisium, 21st September, 19 B.C. His remains were buried at Naples. It was the poet's original intention that, in the event of his dying before his work was completed, the twelve books of the Aeneid should be consigned to the flames. In the end, however, he bequeathed it to his friends and companions in art Varius Rufus and Plotius Tucca, on condition that they should not publish any part of it. But, by the command of Augustus, they gave it to the world, after submitting the work to a careful revision, and only removing what was superfluous, while refraining from all additions of their own. In spite of its incomplete form, the work was enthusiastically welcomed on its first appearance, which had excited the highest anticipations, as a national epic of equal worth with the poems of Homer. This approval was due to its national purpose, the poetic glorification of the origin of the Roman people in the adventures of Aeneas, the founder of the Romans through his descendant Romulus, and in particular the ancestor of the imperial house of the Julii through his son Ascanius, or Iulus. In view of its purpose, little notice was taken of the weak points in the poem, which can only in part be excused by the fact that it lacks the author's finishing touches. We may, indeed, admire the art which the poet has shown in moulding together the vast mass of material collected with so much effort from the poetic and prose writings of Greeks and Romans, the excellences of the language and of the metrical form, and the beauty of many individual portions; but it cannot be denied that in artistic completeness and originality the Aeneid falls far below the Georgics. In particular, the endeavour to pourtray a real hero was beyond the capacity of the gentle, almost womanly, character of the poet; Aeneas is a true hero neither in endurance nor in action. Further, the endeavour to rival Homer is mainly limited to imitation. This is apparent not only in countless single instances, but also in the plot of the whole poem. Vergil obviously wished to unite the excellences of the Odyssey and Iliad in one work by describing in the first six books the wanderings of Aeneas, and in the last six his conflicts for the throne of Latium. In spite of many faults, which were noticed even in ancient times, Vergil has remained the most widely read, the most admired, and the most popular poet of his nation, and no other writer has exercised such an influence on the subsequent development of the Roman literature and language. This remark applies to prose as well as poetry. As was the case with the poems of Homer among the Greeks, Vergil's works, and especially the Aeneid as a national epic, were used down to the latest times for school teaching and as a basis of school grammar. They were imitated by authors, particularly by epic and didactic poets. In later times single verses and parts of verses (see CENTO) were used to compose new poems of the most varying contents; and finally the most famous scholars made them the object of their studies both in verbal and in general interpretation. Some relics of their labours are preserved in the different collections of scholia, especially in that comprehensive commentary on his collected poems which bears the name of Servius Honoratus. Of smaller value are the commentaries of the pseudo-Probus on the Bucolics and Georgics, and of Tiberius Donatus on the Aeneid. The name of Vergil was also borne in ancient times by a number of poems, which passed as the works of his youth, but can hardly any of them have been his compositions: (1) the Catalecta [or more correctly Catalepton], fourteen small poems in ambic and elegiac metre. (2) Culex ("the midge"), supposed to have been written by Vergil in his sixteenth year, a most insipid poem. (3) The Ciris, the story of the transformation of Scylla, the daughter of the Megarian king, into the bird Ciris (see NISUS), obviously composed by an imitator of Vergil and Catullus. (4) The Diroe, two bucolic poems; (a) the Diroe properly so called, imprecations on account of the loss of an estate consequent on the proscription of A.D. 41; and (b) the Lydia, lament for a lost love, both of which have as little claim to be the writings of Vergil as of the grammarian Valerius Cato, to whom also they have been ascribed. (5) The Moretum, so called from the salad which the peasant Simylus prepares in the early morning for the day's repast, a character sketch as diverting and lifelike as (6) a poem deriving its title from the Copa, or hostess, who dances and sings before her inn, inviting the passers by to enter. This last poem is in elegiac metre. [Vergil's life was written by Suetonius from earlier memoirs and memoranda. See Prof. Nettleship's Ancient Lives of Vergil, Clarendon Press, 1879.]
JUDEX	3.50%
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CICERO	2.97%
Marcus Tullius Cicero. The celebrated Roman orator, born at Arpinum, January 3rd, 106 B.C. He was son of Marcus Tullius Cicero and Helvia, his family being of equestrian rank, but not yet ennobled by office. With his brother Quintus he received his education in Rome, where he soon had an opportunity of hearing and admiring the two most celebrated orators of the day, Crassus and Antonius. He took the toga virilis in 90 B.C., and, while practising rhetorical exercises, devoted himself with ardour to the study of law. In 89 he served on his first campaign in the Marsian War. After this he began his studies in philosophy, mainly under the guidance of the Academic philosopher, Philo of Larissa. The presence of the Rhodian rhetorician Molo in Rome, and afterwards the instruction in dialectic given him by the Stoic Dioduus, gave him the opportunity he desired for furthering his training as an orator. Having thus carefully prepared himself for his future vocation during the period of the civil disturbances, he started on his career as an orator under Sulla's dictatorship. He began with civil or private cases. One of his earliest speeches, the Pro Quinctio, still survives. This oration [in which he defends his client on the question of his conduct in a partnership] he delivered in 81 B.C., in his 26th year. In the following year he first appeared in a causa publica, and not on the side of the prosecution, the usual course for beginners, but on that of the defence. His client was Sextus Roscius of Ameria, accused of murdering his own father. This speech laid the foundation of Cicero's fame, and not only because it was successful. People admired the intrepidity with which Cicero stood up against Chrysogonus, the favourite, of the omnipotent dictator. In the following year, for the sake of his delicate health, Cicero started on a two years, tour in Greece and Asia, taking every opportunity of finishing his education as a philosopher and orator. For philosophy he had recourse to the most celebrated professors at Athens: for rhetoric he went to Rhodes, to his former instructor, Molo. In B.C. 77 he returned to Rome, his health restored, and his intellect matured. In this year he married Terentia. Hie career as an advocate he pursued with such success that he was unanimously elected quaestor in 76 B.C.. He was stationed at Lilybaeum, in Sicily, and administered his office unimpeachably. After his return he entered the senate, and developed an extraordinary activity as a speaker. In consequence he was elected to the curule aedileship in 70 B.C. It was in this year that the Sicilians, remembering the conscientiousness and unselfishness he had displayed in his quaestorship, begged him to lead the prosecution against Verres. For three years this man had, in the most infamous manner, ill-treated and plundered the province. Cicero had to contend with all kinds of hindrances thrown in his way by the aristocratic friends of Verres. By the Divinatio in Caecilium he had to make good his claims to prosecute against those of Caecilius Niger. The defence was led by the most famous orator of the day, Hertensins. But Cicero managed to collect such a mass of evidence, and to marshal it with such ability, that after the actio prima, or first hearing, Verres found it advisable to retire into voluntary exile. The unused material Cicero worked up into an actio secunda in five speeches. The whole proceeding made him so popular that, spoiled as the multitude was, no one complained of his economical expenditure on the games during his aedilesbip. He was unanimously elected praetor in 67 B.C. In this office he made his first political speech in 66, successfully defending the proposal of the tribune Manilius to give Pompeius the command in the Mithridatic war, with unprecedented and almost absolute power. In 64 B.C. he came forward as candidate for the consulship, and was successful, in spite of the efforts of his enemies. He owed his success to the support of the nobility, who had hitherto regarded him, as a homonovus, with disfavour, but had come to recognise him as a champion of the party of order. He obtained the office, as he had the rest, suo anno, that is in the first year in which his candidature was legally possible. The danger with which Catiline's agitation was threatening the State, determined Cicero to offer a vigorous opposition to everything likely to disturb public order. With this view he delivered three speeches, in which he frustrated the agrarian proposals of the tribune Servilius Rullus. He also led the defence of the aged Rabirius, whom the leaders of the democratic party, to excite the people against the senate, had prosecute for the murder of Saturninus thirty-six years before. To avoid the danger and excitement of a fresh consular election for 62, he undertook the defence of the consul designatus L. Murena, on the charge of bribery; and this, although the accusers of Murena numbered among them Cicero's best friends, and, indeed, rested their case upon the very law by which Cicero had himself proposed to increase the penalties for bribery. The conspiracy of Catiline gave Cicero an opportunity of displaying in the most brilliant light his acuteness, his energy, his patriotism, and even his power as an orator. He discovered the conspiracy, and helped largely to suppress it by the execution of the chief conspirators, who had remained behind in Rome. Cicero's consulship marks the climax of his career. He received, it is true, the honourable title of pater patriae; but, a few weeks later, he bad a clear warning of what he had to expect from the opposite party in the way of reward for his services. When laying down his office he was about to make a speech, giving an account of his administration. The tribune Metellus Nepos interrupted him, and insisted on his confining himself to the oath usual on the occasion. In the following year he had opportunities for displaying his eloquence in the defence of P. Cornelius Sulla and the poet Archias. But he was often attacked, and had, in particular, to meet a new danger in the hostility of Clodius Pulcher, whose mortal hatred only too soon hit upon a chance of sating itself. Cicero would not accede to the plans of Caesar, Pompey and Crassus, but offered them a strenuous resistance. He deceived himself as to his own political importance, and refused to quit the city except under compulsion. The triumvirs accordingly abandoned him to the vengeance of Clodius. Clodius was elected tribune of the plebs in 58 B.C. , and at once proposed that any person should be made an outlaw, who should have put Roman citizens to death without trial. Cicero met the charge by retiring into voluntary exile early in April, 58. He went to Thessalonica, and Macedonia, where he found a safe retreat at the house of the quaestor Plancius. The sentence was, however, pronounced against him; his house on the Palatine was burnt down, his country houses plundered and destroyed, and even his family maltreated. It is true that, as early as the next year, he was recalled with every mark of distinction, and welcomed in triumph by the people on his entrance into Rome at the beginning of September. But his political activity was crippled by the power of the triumvirs. His fear of Clodius forced him to comply with their commands as a means of keeping in their good graces. But all this only stimulated him to show greater energy as an orator. His chief efforts were put forth in defending his friends, when prosecuted by political antagonists, as, for instance, Publius Sestius in 56 B.C., Gnaeus Plancius in 54, Titus Annius Milo in 52. His defence of the latter, accused of the murder of Clodius, was unsuccessful. It was at this period that he began to apply himself to literature. In 53 B.C. he was elected augur; from July, 51, to July, 50, he administered the province of Cilicia as proconsul. In this capacity, his clemency, uprightness and unselfishness won for him the greatest respect. For his conduct in a campaign against the robber tribes of Mount Amanus he was honoured by the title of Imperator, a public thanksgiving, and the prospect of a triumph. He landed in Italy towards the end of November, B.C. 50, and found that a breach between Pompey and Caesar was inevitable. The civil war broke out in the next year, and, after long hesitation, Cicero finally decided for Pompey, and followed him to Greece. But after the battle of Pharsalus, in which ill-health prevented him from taking a part, he deserted his friends, and crossed to Brundisium. Here he had to wait a whole year before Caesar pardoned him, and gave him leave to return to Rome. Caesar treated him with distinction and kindness, but Cicero kept aloof from public life. Nothing short of the calls of friendship could induce him to appear in the courts, as he did for Marcellus, Ligarius and Deiotarus. The calamities of his country; his separation from his wife Terentia, in 46 B.C. , after a married life of thirty-three years; his hasty union with the young and wealthy Publilia, so soon to be dissolved; the unhappy marriage and death of his favourite daughter Tullia; all this was a heavy affliction for him. He found some consolation in studying philosophy, and applying himself with energy to literary work. The murder of Caesar on March 15th, 44 B.C., roused him from his retirement, though he had taken no actual part in the deed. His patriotism excited him once more to take an active part in public life, and his first aimwas to effect a reconciliation of parties. He succeeded so far as to secure the passing of a general amnesty. But it was not long before the intrigues and the hostility of the Caesarian party forced him again to leave Rome. He was on his way to Greece, when, at the end of August, he was recalled, by false rumours, to the Capitol. In a moment of deep irritation against Antonius, he delivered, on the 2nd of September, the first of his fourteen Philippic orations, so called after those of Demosthenes. The second Philippic was never spoken, but published as a pamphlet; the last was delivered on the 21st April, B.C. 43. On the retirement of Antonius from Rome, Cicero found himself again playing a prominent part in politics. All the efforts of his party to bring about a restoration of the ancient republican freedom centred in him. But,when Octavianus disappointed the hopes which he had excited, and attached himself to Antonius and Lepidus in the second triumvirate, Cicero, now the chief man in the senate, was declared an outlaw. Intending to fly to Macedonia, as he had done fifteen years before, he was overtaken by his pursuers near Caieta, and put to death on September 7th, 43 B.C. , shortly before he had completed his sixty-fourth year. His head and right hand were exposed on the rostra by Antonius. The literary labours of Cicero signalize an important advance in the development of Latin literature. It is not only that he is to be regarded as the creator of classical Latin prose. He was also the first writer who broke ground, to any great extent, in fields of literature which, before him, had remained almost untouched. He had insight enough to perceive that his vocation lay in the career of an orator. His industry, throughout his whole life, was untiring; he was never blinded by success; to educate himself, and perfect himself in his art, was the object which he never lost sight of. His speeches, accordingly, give brilliant testimony to his combination of genius with industry. Besides the fifty-sevon speeches which survive in a more or less complete shape, and the most important of which have been mentioned above, we have about twenty fragments of others, and the titles of thirty-five more. Cicero was justified in boasting that no orator had written so many speeches, and in such different styles, as himself [Orator, c. 29, 30]. These orations were partly political, partly forensic; the latter being mostly on the side of the defenee. Cicero was also the author of panegyrics, as that, for instance, upon Cato. With few exceptions, as the second actio against Verres, the Pro Milone, and the panegyrics, they were actually delivered, and published afterwards. Extending over thirty-eight years, they give an excellent idea of Cicero's steady progress in the mastery of his art. They are of unequal merit, but everywhere one feels the touch of the born and cultivated orator. A wealth of ideas and of wit, ready acuteness, the power of making an obscure subject clear and a dry subject interesting, mastery of pathos, a tendency to luxuriance of language, generally tempered by good taste to the right measure, an unsurpassed tact in the use of Latin idiom and expression, a wonderful feeling for the rhythm and structure of prose writing: these are Cicero's characteristics. With all the faults which his contemporaries and later critics had to find with his speeches, Cicero never lost his position as the most classical representative of Latin oratory, and he was judged the equal, or nearly the equal, of Demosthenes. The knowledge which he had acquired in his practice as a speaker he turned to account in his writings on Rhetoric. In these he set forth the technical rules of the Greek writers, applying to them the results of his own experience, and his sense of the requirements of Latin oratory. Besides the two books entitled Rhetorica or De Inventione, a boyish essay devoid of all originality, the most important of his works on this subject are: (1) The De Oratore, a treatise in three books, written 55 B.C. This work, the form and contents of which are alike striking, is written in the style of a dialogae. Its subject is the training necessary for an orator, the proper handling of his theme, the right style, and manner of delivery. (2) The Brutus, or De Claris Oratoribus, written in B.C. 46; a history of Latin oratory from the earliest period down to Cicero's own time. (3) The Orator, a sketch of the ideal orator, written in the same year as the Brutus. Cicero also devoted a large number of books to Greek philosophy, a subject which he was concerned to render accessible to his countrymen. His writings in this line lack depth and thoroughness; but it must be said at the same time that he has the great merit of being the first Latin writer who treated these questions with taste and in an intelligible form, and who created a philosophical language in Latin. The framework which he adopts is usually that of the Aristotelian dialogue, though he does not always consistently adhere to it. It was not until after his fiftieth year that he began to write on philosophy, and in the years B.C. 45 and 44, when almost entirely excluded from politics, he developed an extraordinary activity in this direction. The following philosophical works survive, either in whole or in part: (1) Fragments, amounting to about one-third of the work, of the six books, De Re Publica, written B.C. 54-51. (2) Three books of an unfinished treatise, De Legibus, written about 52. (3) Paradoxa Stoicorum, a short treatment of six Stoical texts, B.C. 46. (4) Five books on the greatest good and the greatest evil (De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum), B.C. 45. This is the best of his philosophical works. (5) The second book of the first edition, and the first book of the second edition, of the Academica,B.C.45. (6) The five books of the Tusculan Disputations, B.C. 44. In the same year appeared (7) the De Natura Deorum, in three, and (8) the De Divinatione, in two books. (9) A fragment on the Stoical doctrine of Fate. (10) The Cato Maior, or De Senectute. (11) Laellus, or De Amicitia . (12) De Officiis, or On Ethics, in three books. Besides these, a whole series of philosophical and other prose writings by Cicero are known to us only in fragments, or by their titles. The multifarious nature of Cicero's occupation as a statesman and an orator did not hinder him from keeping up a voluminous correspondence, from which 864 letters (including 90 addressed to Cicero, are preserved in four collections. These letters form an inexhaustible store of information, bearing upon Cicero's own life as well as upon contemporary history in all its aspects. We have (1) The Epistulae ad Familiares, in sixteen books, B.C. 63-43; (2) The Epistulce ad Atticum, in sixteen books, B.C. 68-43; (3) Three books of letters to his brother Quintus; (4) Two books of correspondence between Cicero and Brutus after the death of Caesar, the genuineness of which is [rightly] disputed. Cicero also made some attempts to write poetry, in his youth for practice, in his later life mainly from vanity. His youthful effort was a translation of Aratus, of which some fragments remain. After 63 B.C. he celebrated his own consulship in three books of verses. [He is a considerable metrist, but not a real poet.]