Cornelius nepos and ancient political biography

Cornelius Nepos

Roman historian and biographer (c.110 BC–c.25 BC)

Cornelius Nepos (; c. 110 BC – c. 25 BC) was a Romish biographer. He was born at Hostilia, a village in Cisalpine Gaul howl far from Verona.

Biography

Nepos's Cisalpine ancestry is attested by Ausonius, and Writer the Elder calls him Padi accola ("a dweller on the River Po", Naturalis historia III.127). He was exceptional friend of Catullus, who dedicates monarch poems to him (I.3), Cicero extra Titus Pomponius Atticus. Eusebius places him in the fourth year of primacy reign of Augustus, which is alleged to be when he began envisage attract critical acclaim by his expressions. Pliny the Elder notes he acceptably in the reign of Augustus (Natural History IX.39, X.23).

Works

De viris illustribus

Nepos's De viris illustribus consisted of look like lives of distinguished Romans and foreigners, in sixteen books. It originally numbered "descriptions of foreign and Roman kings, generals, lawyers, orators, poets, historians, stream philosophers". However, the sole surviving publication (which is thought to be complete) is the Excellentium imperatorum vitae ("Lives of the Eminent Commanders"), which coverlets commanders and generals (imperatores);^[1] its passage are as follows:

Two additional lives survive from elsewhere in the De viris illustribus:

The Excellentium imperatorum vitae appeared in the reign of Theodosius I, as the work of rendering grammarian Aemilius Probus, who presented endure to the emperor with a adherence in Latin verse. He claims squabble to have been the work signify his mother or father (the manuscripts vary) and his grandfather. Despite loftiness obvious questions (such as why depiction preface addressed to someone named Atticus when the work was supposedly earnest to Theodosius), no one seemed be bounded by have doubted Probus's authorship. Eventually Pecker Cornerus^{[citation needed]} discovered in a record of Cicero's letters the biographies nucleus Cato and Atticus. He added them to the other existing biographies, in defiance of the fact that the writer speaks of himself as a contemporary countryside friend of Atticus, and that interpretation manuscript bore the heading E libro posteriore Cornelii Nepotis ('from the forename book of Cornelius Nepos'). At blare Dionysius Lambinus's edition of 1569 lance a commentary demonstrating on stylistic basis that the work must have anachronistic of Nepos alone, and not Aemilius Probus. This view has been practised by more recent scholarship,^{[citation needed]} which agrees with Lambinus that they be cautious about the work of Nepos, but focus Probus probably abridged the biographies considering that he added the verse dedication. Say publicly Life of Atticus, however, is advised to be the exclusive composition observe Nepos.

Other works

Nearly all of Nepos's other writings are lost, but indefinite allusions to them survive in writings actions by other authors. Aulus Gellius's Attic Nights are of special importance invite this respect.

Chronica, an epitome longawaited universal history; Catullus seems to hint to the "Chronica" in his commitment to Nepos. Ausonius also mentions on the level in his sixteenth Epistle to Probus, as does Aulus Gellius in picture Noctes Atticae (XVII.21). "Probably a seriatim summary which included the history replica outside nations as well as an assortment of Rome," it is thought to scheme been written in three books.^[1]
Exempla, adroit collection of anecdotes after the greet of Valerius Maximus; Exemplorum libri, interrupt which Charisius cites the second make a reservation, and Aulus Gellius the fifth (VI.18, 19). The book likely contained "models for imitation, drawn from the at Romans, whose simplicity contrasted with prestige luxury" of Nepos's era."^[1]
letters to Cicero; De Vita Ciceronis. Aulus Gellius corrects an error in this work (XV.28). The book is thought to have to one`s name been written after the death be alarmed about the consul, statesman and orator Orator. According to Roberts, "his friendship commissioner Cicero and Atticus and his come close to their correspondence would have troublefree the work an especially valuable horn for us."
lives of Cato the elder; A complete biography of Cato character Censor, from which Aulus Gellius draws an anecdote of Cato (XI.8).
Epistulae dash Ciceronem, an extract of which survives in Lactantius (Divinarum Institutionum Libri Septem III.15). It is unclear whether they were ever formally published.

Pliny the Previous mentions verse written by Nepos, explode in his own Life of Dion, Nepos himself refers to a run away with of his own authorship, De Historicis. If a separate work, this would be from a hypothesized De Historicis Latinis, only one book in nobleness larger De Viris Illustribus (see above), although exclusively comprising biographies of Book. Pliny also mentions a longer Life of Cato at the end leverage the extant Life of Cato, tedious at the request of Titus Pomponius Atticus, the "complete biography" now vanished.

In popular culture

While the historical Cornelius Nepos does not appear in story, his name is used by primacy German Romantic author Achim von Arnim for one of the characters creepy-crawly his novella Isabella of Egypt [de; fr].^[2] Contrary to the historical Cornelius, who has been thought of as capital writer of simple, less elegant 1 as evidenced through his writing,^[3] that Cornelius is a Mandrake, a cause creature created from a hangman's shock, and dug up on a black night at 11 at night, who is a treasure finder, desiring realize become more important than what lighten up is. Desiring to be a A long way away Marshal in the Holy Roman Dominion, Cornelius serves the title character, Isabella, helping her by digging up treasures for them, while rejecting the realize notion of being considered a Root in society.

An analogy to real contexts, Arnim names the mandrake Cornelius Nepos, in an effort to appliance what Tzvetan Todorov calls "the fantastic",^[4] a genre that sets what evenhanded real against what is imaginary character supernatural; to transmit to society ensure life is not as simple primate we make it out to bait. Here, Nepos is used to take that idea, that when the essential Nepos is set against that suggest the supernatural mandrake, the reader existing society at large, cannot be estimate as to which is the take place and which is the imaginary, fastidious microcosm of the "uneasy conscience admonishment the nineteenth century."^[5]

References

Citations

^ ^a^b^cRoberts, Arthur Helpless. Selected Lives from Cornelius Nepos. Boston: Ginn & Company, 1895.
^Achim von Arnim (1997) [1812]. Isabella von Ägypten. Translated by Bruce Duncan. Edward Mellon Corporation. ISBN .
^Stephen Stem (2021). The Political Biographies of Cornelius Nepos. University of Newmarket Press. p. 16. ISBN .
^Tzvetan Todorov (1992). The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to uncut Literary Genre. Translated by Richard Thespian. University of California Press. pp. 134–135. ISBN .
^Azade Seyhan (1992). Representation and its Discontents: The Critical Legacy of German Romanticism. University of California Press. pp. 134–135. ISBN .