C.
was quaestor in B. C. 203, and tribune of the plebs in 197, when he brought forward a rogation for planting five colonies on the western coast of Italy, in order probably to repair the depopulation caused by the war with Hannibal. (Liv. 32.29.) Glabrio acted as interpreter to the Athenian embassy in B. C. 155, when the three philosophers, Carneades, Diogenes, and Critolaus came as envoys to Rome. [Carneades.] (Gel. 7.14; Plut. Cat. Ma. 22; Macr. 1.5.) Glabrio was at this time advanced in years, of senatorian rank; and Plutarch calls him a distinguished senator (l.c.). Works Greek History of Rome
He wrote in Greek a history of Rome from the earliest period to his own times. This work is cited by Dionysius (3.77), by Cicero (de Off. 3.32), by Plutarch (Romul. 21), and by the author de Orig. Gent. Rom. ( 10.2). It was translated into Latin by one Claudius, and his version is cited by Livy, under the titles of Annales Aciliani (25.39) and Libri Aciliani (35.14). We perhaps read a passage borrowed or adapted from the work of Glabrio in Appian (Syriac. 10). Poetic fragment
Atilius Fortunatianus (de Art. Metric. p. 2680, ed. Putsch) ascribes the Saturnian verse Fundit, fugat, prosternit maximas legiones, to an Acilius Glabrio. Further Information
Krause, Vet. Hist. Rom. Fragm. p. 84.
is described by Tacitus (Tac. Ann. 16.18, 19) as the most accomplished voluptuary at the court of Nero. His days were passed in slumber, his nights in visiting and revelry. But he was no vulgar spendthrift, no dull besotted debauchee. An air of refinement pervaded all his extravagancies; with him luxury was a serious study, and he became a proficient in the science. The careless, graceful ease, assuming almost the guise of simplicity, which distinguished all his words and actions, was the delight of the fashionable world; he gained, by polished and ingenious folly, an amount of fame which others often fail to achieve by a long career of laborious virtue. At one time he proved himself capable of better things. Having been appointed governor (proconsul) of Bithynia, and subsequently elevated to the consulship, his official duties were discharged with energy and discretion. Relapsing however, into his ancient habits, he was admitted among the few chosen companions of the prince, and was regarded as director-in-chief of the imperial pleasures, the judge whose decision upon the merits of any proposed scheme of enjoyment was held as final (Neroni assntlus est ELEGANTIAE ARBI'TER, dum nibil amoenum et nmolle affluceetia putat, nisi quod ei Petronius lpprobavisset). The influence thus acquired excited the jealous suspicions of Tigellinus : Petronius was accused of having been privy to the treason of Scaevinus a slave was suborned to lodge an information, and the whole of his household was arrested. Believing that destruction was inevitable, and impatient or delay or suspense, he resolved to die as he had lived, and to excite admiration by the frivolous eccentricity of his end. Having caused his veins to be opened, he from time to time arrested the tlow of blood by the application of bandages. During the intervals he conversed with his friends, not upon the solemn themes which the occasion might have suggested, but upon the news and light gossip of the day; he bestowed rewards upon some of his slaves, and ordered others to be scourged : he lay down to sleep, and even showed himself in the public streets of Curnae, where these events took place; so that at last, when he sunk from exhaustion, his death (A. D. 66) although compulsory, appeared to be the result of natural and gradual decay. He is said to have despatched in his last moments a sealed document to the prince, taunting him with his brutal excesses (flagitia Principis * * * * * * perscripsit utque obsignata misit Neroni,) and to have broken in pieces a murrhine vessel of vast price, in order that it might not fall into the hands of the tyrant. This last anecdote has been recorded by Pliny (H. N.37.2), who, as well as Plutarch (De Adulat. et Amicit. Discrim. p. 60), give to the person in question the name of Titus Petroniius. We filnd it generally assumed that he belonged to the equestrian order, but the words of Tacitus (Tac. Ann. 16.17) would lead to an opposite inference, "Paucos quippe intra dies eodem agmine Alnnaeus Mella, Cerealis Anicius, Rufitus Crispinus ac C. Petronius cecidere. Mella et Crispinus Equites Romani dignitate senatoria." Now, since Petronius, in virtue of having been consul, must have enjoyed the diynitas senatoria, the above sentence seems to imply that Mella and Crispinus alone of the individuals mentioned were Equites Romnisni Works Petronnii Arbitri Satyricon
A very singular production consisting of a prose narrative interspersed with numerous pieces of poetry, and thus resemblilng in form the Varronian Satire, has come down to us in a sadly mutilated state. In the oldest MSS. and the earliest editions it bears the title Petronii Arbitri Satyricon, and, as it now exists, is composed of a series of fragments, the continuity of the piece being frequently interrupted by blanks, and the whole forming but a very small portion of the original, which, when entire, contained at least sixteen books, and probably many nore. It is a sort of comic romance, in which the adventures of a certain Encolpius and his companions in the south of Italy, chiefly in Naples or its environs, are made a vehicle for exposing the false taste which prevailed upon all matters connected with literature and the fine arts, and for holding up to ridicule and detestation the folly, luxury, impurity, and dishonesty of all classes of the community in the age and country in which the scene is laid. A great variety of characters connected for the most part with the lower ranks of life are brought upon the stage, and support their parts with the greatest liveliness and dramatic propriety, while every page overflows with ironical wit and broad humour. Unfortunately the vices of the personages introduced are depicted with such minute fidelity that we are perpetually disgusted by the coarseness and obscenity of the descriptions. Indeed, if we can believe that such a book was ever widely circulated and generally admired, that fact alone would afford the most convincing proof of the pollution of the epoch to which it belongs. without feeling any inclination to pass too severe a sentence on the collector of so much garbage, the most expansive charity will not permit us to join with Burmann in regarding him as a very holy man (uirum sanctissimum) a model of all the austere virtues of the olden time, who filled with pious horror on beholding the monstrous corruption of his contemporaries, was irresistibly impelled to arrest, if possible, the rapid progress of their degradation by holding up the crimes which they practised to view in all the loathsomeness of their native deformity
The longest and most important section is generally known as the Supper of Trimalchio, presenting us with a detailed and very amusing account of a fantastic banquet, such as the most luxurious and extravagant gourmands of the empire were wont to exhibit on their tables. Next in interest is the well-known tale of the Ephesian Matron, which here appears for the first time among the popular fictions of the Western world, although current from a very early period in the remote regions of the East. In the middle ages it was circulated in the "Seven Wise Masters," the oldest collection of Oriental stories, and has been introduced by Jeremy Taylor into his "Holy Dying," in the chapter "On the Contingencies of Death, &c." The longest of the effusions in verse is descriptive poem on the Civil Wars, extending to 295 hexameter lines, affording a good example of that declamatory tone of which the Pharsalia is the type. We have also sixty-five iambic trimeters, depicting the capture of Troy (Troiae Halosis,) and besides these several shorter morsels are interspersed spersed replete with grace and beauty.
A reat number of conflicting opinions have been formed by scholars with regard gard to the author of the Satyricon. Many have confidently maintaid that he must be identified with the Caius (or Titus) Petronius, of whose career we have given a sketch above, and this view of the question, after having been to a certain extent abandoned, has been revived and supported with great earnestness and learning by Studer in the Rheinisches Museum. By Ignarra he is supposed to be the Petronius Turpilianus who was consul A. D. 61. [Turpilianus.] Hadrianus Valesius places him under the Antonines; his brother Henricus Valesius and Sambucus under Gallienus. Niebuhr, led away by ingenious but most fanciful inferences derived from a metrical epitaph, discovered in the vicinity of Naples, imagines that he lived under Alexander Severus; Statilius would bring him down as low as the age of Constantine the Great ; while Burmann holds that he flourished under Tiberius, Caius, and Claudius, and thinks it probable that he may have seen the last days of Augustus. The greater number of these hypotheses are mere flimsy conjectures, unsupported by any thing that deserves to be called evidence, and altogether unworthy of serious examination or discussion; but the first, although too often ignorantly assumed as a self-evident and unquestionable fact, is deserving of some attention, both because it has been more widely adopted than any of the others, and because it appeals with confidence to an array of proofs hoth external and internal, which may be reduced to the following propositions :--
1 . We can trace the origin of the name Arbiter to the expression "elegantiae arbiter" in Tacitus. 2. When the historian states that Petronius in his dying moments despatched a writing to Nero exposing the infamy of the emperor's life, he evidently refers to the work of which we now possess the fragments. 3. Nero and his minions are held up to scorn under the guise of Trimalchio and his retainers. 4. The language bears the stamp of the best age of Latinity, and cannot have proceeded from any writer of the second or third century. Upon these we may observe :--
1. Tacitus certainly does not use Arbiter as a proper name, but merely as the term best suited to express the meaning he wished to convey, while Pliny and Plutarch who speak of the same Petronius, give no hint that he was distinguished by any such designation. On the other hand, it may be urged that although the name of Petronius is by no means uncommon in the annals of the empire, the cognomen of Arbiter is never found attached to it in inscriptions or in documents of any description, which renders it probable that the word may be regarded as a title or epithet introduced by some grammarian or copyist for the purpose of marking out the individual described by Tacitus, and separating the author of the Satyricon from all other Petronii.
2. Tacitus, to whom alone we are indebted for precise information regarding the Petronius put to death by Nero. says not one word of his having possessed any talent for literature; and with respect to the sentence quoted above, upon which so much stress has been laid, no one who reads it with care, and without being wedded to a preconceived opinion, can for a moment believe that the words denote any thing except a short epistle filled with direct reproaches, composed almiost in the agonies of death to satisfy a craving for revenge. Indeed it is difficult to understand how expressions so little ambiguous could have been interpreted by any scholar to signify an elaborate and a voluminous work of fiction.
3. The idea that Nero is shadowed forth under the form of Triimalchio is absolutely preposterous. Trilmalchio is in reality the representative of a class of persons who existed in considerable numbers after the downfal of the republic. He is depicted as a freedman of overgrown wealth, far advanced in years, inflated with vulgar purse-pride and ostentation, coarse in manners and conversation, uneducated and ignorant, but eager to display an imperfect smattering of ill-digested learning, and thus constantly rendering himself ridiculous by innumerable blunders, ruled by a clever bustling wife, who had acquired complete dominion over him by studying his weaknesses, greedy of flattery, inclined to be overbearing and tyrannical, but not devoid of a sort of rough good-nature--a series of characteristics in which it is certainly impossible to discern one trace of Nero. The notion of Burnmann that Claudius was the prototype of Trimalchio, although not so glaringly absurd, is equally untenable.
4. The assertion regarding the language is frequently met by a flat contradiction, and Reinesius has gone so far as to stigmnatise it as a farrago of Grecisms, Gallicisms, Hebraicisms, and barbarous idioms, such as we might expect to find in the worst writers of the worst period. This critic, however, and those who have embraced his sentiments appear to have contemplated the subject from a false point of view. In addition to the corruptions in the text which are so numerous and hopeless as to render whole sentences unintelligible, there are doubtless a multitude of strange words and of phrases not elsewhere to be found; but this circumstance need excite no surprise when we remember the various topics which fall under discussion, and the singular personages grouped together on the scene. The most remarkable and startling peculiarities may be considered as the phraseology appropriate to the characters by whom they are uttered, the language of ordinary conversation, the familiar slang in every-day use among the hybrid population of Campania, closely resembling, in all probability, the dialect of the Atellan farces. On the other hand, wherever the author may be supposed to be speaking in his own person, we are deeply impressed by the extreme felicity of the style, which, far frorm bearing marks of decrepitude or decay, is redolent of spirit, elasticity, and vigorous freshness.
Our author is twice quoted by Terentianus Maurus, once under the name of Arbiter, and once as Petronais ; and if it were certain, as some have insisted, that Terentianus was contemporary with Domitian, one portion of the problem before us might be regarded as solved, but, unfortunately, the age of the grammarian is as much a matter of controversy as that of the novelist. Again, a very close resemnlblance has been detected between certain expressions in Martial and Statius, and three passages in the Satyricon. Two of these, it is true, are not found in the extant copies, but are adduced incidentally by St. Jerome and Fulgentius; but even if we admit that there is no mistake or confusion in regard to these citations, we can form no conclusion from such a fact, for it is impossible to demonstrate whether Petronius copied from Martial and Statius, or Martial and Statius from Petronius, or whether they may not have borrowed from common sources without reference to each other. (Petron. Satyr. 119; Mart. 13.62; Hieron. Ep. 130.100.19; Mart. 2.12; Fulgent. Mythol. v.; Stat. Theb. 3.661.) In like manner the testimonies of Macrobius (Somn. Sup. 1.2), Servius (Ad Virg. Aen. xii.), Lydus (De Magist. 1.41), Priscian, Diomedes, Victorinus, Isidorus, and Sidonius Apollinaris (Carm. 23.155), lead to no result. The latter, indeed, when eniumerating some of the brightest lights of Roman literature, places "Arbiter" immediately before Ovid, the Senecas, and Martial; but it is evident that he does not adopt any sort of chronological order, for Tacitus in his list takes precedence of the above, and at the commencement of his catalogue Cicero, Livy, Virgil, Terence, Plautus, and Varro follow in succession. Upon this passage, which is very obscurely worded, rests the assertion, admitted without comment by many of the historians of Latin literature, that Petronius was a native of Marseilles.
If we sift with impartiality the whole of the evidence produced, and analyse with care the pleadings of the contending parties, we shall feel disposed to decide that, while upon the one hand there are no proofs nor even probabilities which can justify us in pronouncing that the author of the Satyricon is the same person with the Petronius of Tacitus, so on the other hand there is good reason to believe that the miscellany in question belongs to the first century, or that, at all events, it is not later than the reign of Hadrian, although we cannot pretend to fix a narrower limit, nor to hazard a conjecture as to the individual by whom it was composed. In addition to the considerations already indicated, which support this view of the question, it will be observed that the lamentations over the decline of correct taste in eloquence, poetry, and the fine arts, and the invectives against the destructive influence exercised upon the minds of the young by the system of education then in fashion, and especially by the teachers of declamation, could proceed only from one who had witnessed the introduction, or at least the full development of that system, and would have been completely out of place at an epoch when the vices here exposed had become sanctioned by universal practice, and had long ceased to excite animadversion or suspicion. Many attempts have been made to account for the strangely mutilated condition in which the piece has been transmitted to modern times. It has been suggested by some that the blanks were caused by the scruples of pious transcribers, who omitted those parts which were most licentious; while others have not hesitated to declare their conviction that the worst passages were studiously selected. Without meaning to advocate this last hypothesis-and we can scarcely conceive that Burmann was in earnest when he propounded it--it is clear that the first explanation is altogether unsatisfactory, for it appears to be impossible that what was passed over could have been more offensive than much of what was retained. According to another theory, what we now possess must be regarded as striking and favourite extracts, copied out into the common-place book of some scholar in the middle ages; a supposition applicable to the Supper of Trimalchio and the longer poetical essays, but which fails for the numerous short and abrupt fragments breaking off in the middle of a sentence. The most simple solution of the difficulty seems to be the true one. The existing MSS. proceeded, in all likelihood, from two or three archetypes which may have been so much damaged by neglect, that large portions were rendered illegible, while whole leaves and sections may have been torn out or otherwise destroyed. Editions
The Editio Princeps of the fragments of Petronius was printed at Venice, by Bernardinus de Vitalibus, 4to. 1499; and the second at Leipzig, by Jacobus Thanner, in 1500; but these editions, and those which followed for upwards of a hundred and fifty years, exhibited much less than we now possess. For, about the middle of the seventeenth century, an individual who assumed the designation of Martinus Statilius, although his real name was Petrus Petitus, found a MS. at Traun in Dalmatia, containing, nearly entire, the Supper of Triimalchio, which was wanting in all former copies. This was published separately at Padua, in a very incorrect state (8vo. 1664), without the knowledge of the discoverer, again by Petitus himself (8vo. Paris, 1664), and immediately gave rise to a fierce controversy, in which the most learned men of that day took a share, one party receiving it without suspicion as a genuine relic of antiquity, while their opponents with great vehemenllce contended that it was spurious. The strife was not quelled until the year 1669, when the MS. was despatched from the library of the proprietor, Nicolaus Cippius, at Traun, to Rome, where, having been narrowly scrutinised by the most competent judges, it was finally pronounced to be at least three hundred years old, since no forgery of such a nature could have been executed at that epoch, the sceptics were compelled reluctantly to admit that their doubts were ill founded. The title of the Codex, commonly known as the Codex Traquriensis, was Petronii Arbitri Satyri Fragmenta ex litro quinto decimo et sexto decimo, and then follow the words "Num alio genere furiarum," &c. Stimulated, it would appear, by the interest excited during the progress of this discussion, and by the favour with which the new acquisition was now universally regarded, a certain Francis Nodot published at Rotterdam (12mo. 1693) what professed to be the Satyricon of Petronius complete, taken, it was said, from a MS. found at Belgrade when that city was captured in 1688, a MS. which Nodot declared had been presented to him by a Frenchman high in the imperial service. The fate of this volume was soon decided. The imposture was so palpable that few could be found to advocate the pretensions put forth on its behalf, and it was soon given up by all. It is sometimes, however, printed along with the genuine text, but in a different type, so as to prevent the possibility of mistake. Besides this, a pretended fragment, said to have been obtained from the monastery of St. Gall, was printed in 1800, with notes and a French translation by Lallemand, but it seems to have deceived nobody.
The best edition which has yet appeared, which is so comprehensive as entirely to supersede all its predecessors, is that of Petrus Burmannus, 4to. Traj. ad Rhen. 1709; and again much enlarged and improved, 2 vol. 4to. Amst. 1743. It embraces a vast mass of annotations, prolegomena and dissertations, collected from the writings of different critics. Those who may prefer an impression of more moderate size, will find the edition of Antonius, 8vo. Lips. 1781, correct and serviceable. Poems ascribed to Petronius
We find in the Latin Anthology, and subjoined to all the larger editions of the Satyricon, a number of short poems bearing the name of Petronius. These have been collected from a great variety of different sources, and are the work of many different hands, it being very doubtful whether any of them ought to be ascribed to Petronius Arbiter. Further Information
The numerous biographies, dissertations, &c. by Sambucus, Gyraldus, Goldastus, Solichius, Gonsalius de Salas, Valesius, &c., collected in the edition of Burmann. Among more modern authorities, we may specify Cataldo Janelli, Codex Perottin Neapol. 181, vol. ii. p. cxxiii.; Dunlop, History of Fiction, cap. ii.; Niebuhr, Klein. Historisch. Schrift. vol. i. p. 337, and Lectures edited by Schmitz, vol. ii. p. 325; Orelli, Corpus Inscrip. Lut. No. 1175; Weichert, Poetarum Lat. Reliq. p. 440; Meyer, Antholog. Lat. vol. i. p. lxxiii.; Wellauer, in Jahn's Jahrbb. Suppl. Band, x. p. 194; and especially Studer, in Rheinisches Munseum, Neue Folge, vol. 2.1. p. 50, 2.2. p. 202, and Ritter, in the same work, vol. 2.4. p. 561. [W.R]
the celebrated author of the Historia Naturalis, was born A. D. 23, having reached the age of 56 at the time of his death, which took place in A. D. 79. (Plin. Jun. Epist. 3.5.) The question as to the place of his birth has been the subject of a voluminous and rather angry discussion between the champions of Verona and those of Novum Comum (the modern Como). That he was born at one or other of these two towns sees pretty certain; Hardouin's notion, that he was born at Rome, has nothing to support it. The claim of Comum seems to be, on the whole, the better founded of the two. In the life of Pliny ascribed to Suetonius, and by Eusebius, or his translator Jerome, he is styled Novocomensis. Another anonymous life of Pliny (apparently of late origin and of no authority) calls him a native of Verona; and it has been thought that the claim of Verona to be considered as his birth-place is confirmed by the fact that Pliny himself (Praef. init.) calls Catullus, who was a native of Verona, his conterraneus. On the other hand, it has been urged with more discerning criticism, that as the two towns were both situated beyond the Padus in Gallia Cisalpina, and at no very great distance from each other, this somewhat barbarous word is much better adapted to intimate that Catullus was a fellow-countryman of Pliny, than that he was fellow-townsman. In a similar manner the younger Pliny, who was undoubtedly born at Novum Comum, speaks of Veronenses nostri (Epist. vi. ult.). Of two Veronese inscriptions which have been adduced, one appears to be spurious. The other, which is admitted to be genuine, is too mutilated for its tenour to be ascertained. It appears to have been set up by a Plinius Secundus, but whether the author of the Natural History or not, there is nothing to show. Nor would it in any case be decisive as to the birth-place of Pliny. That the family of the Plinii belonged to Novum Comum is clear from the facts that the estates of the elder Pliny were situated there, and that the younger Pliny was born there, and from several inscriptions found in the neighbourhood relating to various members of the family.
Of the particular events in the life of Pliny we know but little; but for the absence of such materials for biography we are in some degree compensated by the valuable account which his nephew has left us of his habits of life. He came to Rome while still young, and being descended from a family of wealth and distinction, he had the means at his disposal for availing himself of the instruction of the best teachers to be found in the imperial city. In one passage of his work (9.58) he speaks of the enormous quantity of jewellery which he had seen worn by Lollia Paulina. That must have been before A. D. 40, in which year Caligula married Cesonia. It does not appear necessary to suppose that at that early age Pliny had already been introduced at the court of Caligula. The strange animals exhibited by the emperors and wealthy Romans in spectacles and combats, seem early to have attracted his attention (comp. H. N. 9.5). He was for some time on the coast of Africa, though in what capacity, or at what period, we are not informed (H. N. 7.3). At the age of about 23 he went to Germany, where he served under L. Pomponius Secundus, of whom he afterwards wrote a memoir (Plin. Jun. Ep. 3.5), and was appointed to the command of a troop of cavalry (praefectus alae) (Plin. Jun. l.c.). It appears from notices of his own that he travelled over most of the frontier of Germany, having visited the Cauci, the sources of the Danube, &c. It was probably in Belgium that he became acquainted with Cornelius Tacitus (not the historian of that name, H. N. 7.16). It was in the intervals snatched from his military duties that he composed his treatise de Jaculatione equestri. (Plin. Jun. l.c.) At the same time he commenced a history of the Germanic wars, being led to do so by a dream in which he fancied himself commissioned to undertake the task by Drusus Nero. This work he afterwards completed in twenty books.
Pliny returned to Rome with Pomponius (A. D. 52), and applied himself to the study of jurisprudence. He practised for some time as a pleader, but does not seem to have distinguished himself very greatly in that capacity. The greater part of the reign of Nero he spent in retirement, chiefly, no doubt, at his native place. It may have been with a view to the education of his nephew that he composed the work entitled Studiosus, an extensive treatise in three books, occupying six volumes, in which he marked out the course that should be pursued in the training of a young orator, from the cradle to the completion of his education and his entrance into public life. (Plin. Jun. l.c. ; Quint. Inst. 3.1.21.) Towards the end of the reign of Nero he wrote a grammatical work in eight books, entitled Dubius Sermo, confutations of which were promised by various professed grammarians, Stoics, dialecticians, &c.; though ten years afterwards, when the Historia Naturalis was published, they had not appeared. (Plin. H. N. i. Praef. § 22.) It was towards the close of the reign of Nero that Pliny was appointed procurator in Spain. He was here in A. D. 71. when his brother-in-law died, leaving his son, the younger Pliny, to the guardianship of his uncle, who, on account of his absence, was obliged to entrust the care of him to Virginius Rufus. Pliny returned to Rome in the reign of Vespasian, shortly before A. D. 73, when he adopted his nephew. He had known Vespasian in the Germanic wars, and the emperor received him into the number of his most intimate friends. For the assertion that Pliny served with Titus in Judaea there is no authority. He was, however, on intimate terms with Titus, to whom he dedicated his great work. Nor is there any evidence that he was ever created senator by Vespasian. It was doubtless at this period of his life that he wrote a continuation of the history of Aufidius Bassus, in 31 books, carrying the narrative down to his own times (H. N. praef. § 19). Of his manner of life at this period an interesting account has been preserved by his nephew (Epist. 3.5). It was his practice to begin to spend a portion of the night in studying by candle-light, at the festival of the Vulcanalia (towards the end of August), at first at a late hour of the night, in winter at one or two o'clock in the morning. Before it was light he betook himself to the emperor Vespasian, and after executing such commissions as he might be charged with, returned home and devoted the time which he still had remaining to study. After a slender meal he would, in the summer time, he in the sunshine while some one read to him, he himself making notes and extracts. He never read anything without making extracts in this way, for he used to say that there was no book so bad but that some good might be got out of it. He would then take a cold bath, and, after a slight repast, sleep a very little, and then pursue his studies till the time of the coena. During this meal some book was read to, and commented on by him. At table, as night be supposed, he spent but a short time. Such was his mode of life when in the midst of the bustle and confusion of the city. When in retirement in the country, the time spent in the bath was nearly the only interval not allotted to study, and that he reduced to the narrowest limits; for during all the process of scraping and rubbing he had some book read to him, or himself dictated. When on a journey he had a secretary by his side with a book and tablets, and in the winter season made him wear gloves that his writing might not be impeded by the cold. He once found fault with his nephew for walking, as by so doing he lost a good deal of time that might have been employed in study. By this incessant application, persevered in throughout his lifetime, he amassed an enormous amount of materials, and at his death left to his nephew 160 volumina of notes (electorum comnmentarii), written extremely small on both sides. While procurator in Spain, when the number of them was considerably less, he had been offered 400,000 sesterces for them, by one Largius Licinius. With some reason might his nephew say that, when compared with Pliny, those who had spent their whole lives in literary pursuits seemed as if they had spent them in nothing else than sleep and idleness. When we consider the multiplicity of his engagements, both public and private, the time occupied in military services, in the discharge of the duties of the offices which he held, in his forensic studies and practice, in visits to the emperor, and the performance of the miscellaneous commissions entrusted to him by the latter, the extent of his acquisitions is indeed astonishing. From the materials which he had in this way collected he compiled his celebrated Historia Naturalis, which he dedicated to Titus, and published, as appears from the titles given to Titus in the preface, about A. D. 77.
The circumstances of the death of Pliny were remarkable. The details are given in a letter of the younger Pliny to Tacitus (Ep. 6.16). Pliny had been appointed admiral by Vespasian, and in A. D. 79 was stationed with the fleet at Misenum, when the celebrated eruption of Vesuvius took place, which overwhelmed Herculaneum and Pompeii. On the 24th of August, while he was, as usual, engaged in study, his attention was called by his sister to a cloud of unusual size and shape, rising to a great height, in the form of a pinetree, from Vesuvius (as was afterwards discovered), sometimes white, sometimes blackish and spotted, according as the smoke was more or less mixed with cinders and earth. He immediately went to a spot from which he could get a better view of the phaenomenon; but, desiring to examine it still more closely, he ordered a light vessel to be got ready, in which he embarked. taking his tablets with him. The sailors of the ships at Retina, who had just escaped from the imminent danger, urged him to turn back. He resolved, however, to proceed, and in the hope of rendering assistance to those who were in peril, ordered the ships to be launched, and proceeded to the point of danger, retaining calmness and self-possession enough to observe and have noted down the various forms which the cloud assumed. Hot cinders and pumice stones now fell thickly upon the vessels, and they were in danger of being left aground by a sudden retreat of the sea. He hesitated for an instant whether to proceed or not; but quoting the maxim of Terence, fortes fortuna adjuvat, directed the steersman to conduct him to Pomponianus, who was at Stabiae, and whom he found preparing to set sail. Pliny did his best to restore his courage, and ordered a bath to be prepared for himself. He then, with a cheerful countenance, presented himself at the dinner-table, endeavouring to induce his friend to believe that the flames which burst out with increased violence were only those of some villages which the peasants had abandoned, and afterwards retired to rest, and slept soundly. But, as the court of the house was becoming fast filled with cinders, so that egress would in a short time have become impossible, he was roused, and joined Pomponianus. As the house, from the frequent and violent shocks, was in momentary danger of falling, it appeared the safer plan to betake themselves into the open fields, which they did, tying pillows upon their heads to protect them from the fallling stones and ashes. Though it was already day, the darkness was profound. They went to the shore to see if it were possible to embark, but found the sea too tempestuous to allow them to do so. Pliny then lay down on a sail which was spread for him. Alarmed by the approach of flames, preceded by a smell of sulphur, his companions took to flight. His slaves assisted him to rise, but he almost immediately dropped down again, suffocated, as his nephew conjectures, by the vapours, for he had naturally weak lungs. His body was afterwards found unhurt, even his clothes not being disordered, and his attitude that of one asleep rather than that of a corpse.
It may easily be supposed that Pliny, with his inordinate appetite for accumulating knowledge out of books, was not the man to produce a scientific work of any value. He had no genius, as indeed might have been inferred from the bent of his mind. He was not even an original observer. The materials which he worked up into his huge encyclopaedic compilation were almost all derived at second-hand, though doubtless he has incorporated the results of his own observation in a larger number of instances than those in which he indicates such to be the case. Nor did he, as a compiler, show either judgment or discrimination in the selection of his materials, so that in his accounts the true and the false are found intermixed in nearly equal proportion,--the latter, if any thing, predominating, even with regard to subjects on which more accurate information might have been obtained; for, as he wrote on a multiplicity of subjects with which he had no scientific acquaintance, he was entirely at the mercy of those from whose writings he borrowed his information, being incapable of correcting their errors, or, as may be seen even from what he has borrowed from Aristotle, of determining the relative importance of the facts which he selects and those which he passes over. His love of the marvellous, and his contempt for human nature. lead him constantly to introduce what is strange or wonderful, or adapted to illustrate the wickedness of man, and the unsatisfactory arrangements of Providence. He was, as Cuvier remarks, (Biograph. Univ. art. Pline, vol. xxxv.), "an author without critical judgment, who, after having spent a great deal of time in making extracts, has ranged them under certain chapters, to which he has added reflections which have no relation to science properly so called, but display alternately either the most superstitious credulity, or the declamations of a discontented philosophy, which finds fault continually with mankind, with nature, and with the gods themselves." His work is of course valuable to us from the vast number of subjects treated of, with regard to many of which we have no other sources of information. But what he tells us is often unintelligible, from his retailing accounts of things with which he was himself personally unacquainted, and of which he in consequence gives no satisfactory idea to the reader. Though a writer on zoology, botany, and mineralogy, he has no pretensions to be called a naturalist. His compilations exhibit scarcely a trace of scientific arrangement; and frequently it can be shown that he does not give the true sense of the authors whom he quotes and translates, giving not uncommonly wrong Latin names to the objects spoken of by his Greek authorities. That repeated contradictions should occur in such a work is not to be wondered at. It would not, of course, be fair to try him by the standard of modern times; yet we need but place him for an instant by the side of a mans like Aristotle, whose learning was even more varied, while it was incomparably more profound, to see how great was his inferiority as a man of science and reflection. Still it is but just to him to add, that he occasionally displays a vigour of thought and expression which shows that he might have attained a much higher rank as an author, if his mental energies had not been weighed down beneath the mass of unorganized materials with which his memory and his note-tablets were overloaded. In private life his character seems to have been estimable in a high degree, and his work abounds with grave and noble sentiments, exhibiting a love of virtue and honour, and the most unmitigated contempt for the luxury, profligacy, and meanness which by his time had so deeply stained the Roman people. To philosophical speculation on religious, moral, or metaphysical subjects he does not seem to have been much addicted. All that is very distinctive of his views on such matters is that he was a decided pantheist. Works Historia Naturalis
With the exception of some minute quotations from his grammatical treatise (Lersch, Sprachphilosophie der Alten, vol. i. p. 179, &c.), the only work of Pliny which has been preserved to us, (for it does not appear that any reliance can be placed on the statement that the twenty books on the Germanic wars were seen by Conrad Gesner in Augsburg,) is his Historia Naturalis. By Natural History the ancients understood more than modern writers would usually include in the subject. It embraced astronomy, meteorology, geography, mineralogy, zoology, botany, -- in short, every thing that does not relate to the results of human skill or the products of human faculties. Pliny, however, has not kept within even these extensive limits. He has broken in upon the plan implied by the title of the work, by considerable digressions on human inventions and institutions (book vii.), and on the history of the fine arts (xxxv. -- xxxvii.). Minor digressions on similar topics are also interspersed in various parts of the work, the arrangement of which in other respects exhibits but little scientific discrimination. The younger Pliny fairly enough describes it as opus diffusum, eruditum, nec minus varium quam ipsa Natura (Epist. 3.5). It comprises, as Pliny says in the preface (§ 17), within the compass of thirty-six books, 20,000 matters of importance, drawn from about 2000 volumes, the works of one hundred authors of authority, the greater part of which were not read even by those of professedly literary habits, together with a large number of additional matters not known by the authorities from which he drew. Hardouin has drawn up a catalogue of the authors quoted by Pliny in the first book, or in the body of the work itself, amounting to between 400 and 500. When it is remembered that this work was not the result of the undistracted labour of a life, but written in the hours of leisure secured from active pursuits, interrupted occasionally by ill health (Praef. § 18), and that too by the author of other extensive works, it is, to say the least, a wonderful monument of human industry. Some idea of its nature may be formed from a brief outhine of its contents.
The Historia Naturalis is divided into 37 books, the first of which consists of a dedicatory epistle to Titus. followed by a table of contents of the other books. It is curious that ancient writers should not more generally have adopted this usage. No Roman writer before Pliny had drawn out such a table, except Valerius Soranus, whose priority in the idea Pliny frankly confesses. (Praef. § 26.) Pliny has also adopted a plan in every way worthy of imitation. After the table of the subject-matter of each book he has appended a list of the authors from whom his materials were derived; an act of honesty rare enough in ancient as well as modern times, and for which in his prefatory epistle (§§ 16, 17) he deservedly takes credit. It may be noticed too, as indicating the pleasure which he took in the quantity of the materials which he accumulated, that he very commonly adds the exact number of facts, accounts, and observations which the book contains.
The second book treats of the mundane system, the sun, moon, planets, fixed stars, comets, meteoric prodigies, the rainbow, clouds, rain, &c., eclipses, the seasons, winds, thunder and lightning, the shape of the earth, changes in its surface, earth-quakes, the seas, rivers, fountains, &c. He makes no attempt to distinguish between astronomy and meteorology, but jumbles both together in utter confusion. The book opens with a profession of the pantheistic creed of the author, who assails the popular mythology with considerable force on the ground of the degrading views of the divine nature which it gives (2.5, or 7). The consideration of the debasing, idle and conflicting superstitious of man-kind draws from him the reflection : Quae singula improvidam mortalitatem involvunt, solum ut inter ista certum sit nihil esse certi, nec miserius quidquam homine, aut superbius. Similar half gloomy, half contemptuous views of human nature, and complaints against the arrangements of Providence, are of frequent occurrence with Pliny. His own appetite for the marvellous however frequently leads him into an excess of credulity scarcely distinguishable from the superstition which he condemns ; though we must at the same time remember that with Pliny Nature is an active and omnipotent deity; and that his love for the marvellous is not mere gaping wonder, but admiration of the astonishing operations of that deity. It is a distinctly recognised maxim with him : Mihi existimare de ea. (H. N. 11.3.) The mundus is in his view divine in its nature, eternal, infinite, though resembling the finite, globular in form, the sun being the animus or mens of the whole, and itself a deity (2.4). He of course supposed this mundus to revolve round an axis in 24 hours. The earth he looked upon as globular, being fashioned into that shape by the perpetual revolution of the mundus round it, and inhabited on all sides. The fact that such is its shape he demonstrates by a variety of pertinent arguments (2.64-71). His ideas with regard to the universe, the nature of the stars, &c., their important relation to us as the origin of human souls (2.26), are in the main very much the same as those which through the influence of the Stoic school became generally prevalent among the Roman philosophers, though on various subordinate points Pliny had some singular notions, whether his own, or copied from authors with whom we are unacquainted, many of them ingenious, still more puerile. The notion which he adopted from the earlier propounders of it, that the germs of the innumerable forms of animals, &c., with which the stars and the universe abound, find their way to the earth, and there frequently become intermingled, producing all kinds of monstrous forms (100.3), accounts for the readiness with which he admits the most fabulous and impossible monsters into his zoology.
The historical and chronological notices with respect to the progress of astronomy which he intersperses are very valuable. Of the beneficial effects of the spread of such knowledge he speaks with generous enthusiasm (2.12). With respect to the changes in the surface of the earth, produced by the depositions of rivers, and the appearance of volcanic islands, he has some valuable and interesting statements (2.83, &c.). These changes, and the other starthing natural phaenomena which present themselves in considerable number and variety in the volcanic region of Italy and Sicily, are to Pliny so many proofs of the manifold divine activity of nature (100.93). Some of the wonders he adduces are however more than apocryphal. On the tides (of the influence of the sun and moon upon which he was well aware), currents and marine springs, he has some remarks which show that his official duties in Spain did not keep him from a careful observation of natural phaenomena (100.97). The wonderful qualities and phaenomena of various waters and fountains (nam nec aquarum natura a miraculis cessat, 100.103), supply him with details, many of them curious and probably true, others requiring the credulity of Pliny for their belief. From the wonders of water he passes to those of fire (100.104, &c.), and then, by a rather curious arrangement, closes the book with some statements regarding the size of the earth and the distance between various points of it.
The four following books (iii.--vi.) are devoted to geography, and this somewhat small space Pliny has still further narrowed by digressions and declamations, so that his notices are confined chiefly to the divisions of the countries and the mere names of the places in them. Of these he has preserved a very large number which would otherwise have been utterly lost, though the lists are considerably swelled by the unconscious repetition of the same names, sometimes several times over, in slightly varied forms. Pliny was himself but a poor geographer, and his erroneous conception of the forms of different countries often materially affected the way in which he made use of the information which he obtained. This part of his work contains a curious medley of the geographical knowledge of different ages, not distinguished and corrected, but pieced together into one whole in the best way that the discordant statements allowed. This discrepancy Pliny sometimes points out, but frequently he omits to do this, and strives to blend the ancient and modern accounts together, so that he often makes the earlier writers speak as though they had used and been familiar with names not in vogue till some time later. (Comp. 4.27, 37.11.) He does not altogether discredit the stories of early times, and speaks of the Rhipaean mountains and the Hyperboreans with at least as much confidence as of some other better authenticated races. His geography of Italy, Greece, and Asia Minor is that of the times of Strabo. For the N. E. portion of Asia we have that of the time of Eratosthenes. For the southern Asiatic coast up to India we have ancient and recent accounts intermingled; for the North of Europe we have the knowledge of his own times, at least as it appears through the somewhat distorted medium of his imperfect notions. With regard to India and Ceylon he has some very recent and trustworthy accounts.
Pliny, like Posidonius, makes the habitable earth to extend much farther from east to west than from north to south. By the western coast of Europe he understands simply Spain and Gaul ; after them begins the northern ocean, the greater part of which he thought had been sailed over, a Roman fleet having reached the Cimbrian peninsula, and ascertained that a vast sea stretches thence to Scythia. He seems to have imagined that the northern coast of Europe ran pretty evenly east and west, with the exception of the break occasioned by the Cimbrian Chersonesus (4.13, &c.). Beyond Germany, he says, immense islands had been discovered, Scandinavia, Eningia, &c. He also believed the northern coast of the earth to have been explored from the east as far as the Caspian sea (which he regarded as an inlet of the northern ocean) in the time of Seleucus and Antiochus. More than one voyage had also been made between Spain and Arabia (2.67, 68). He evidently considered India the most eastern country of the world (6.17). The third and fourth books are devoted to Europe, the countries of which he takes up in a somewhat curious order. He begins with Spain, specifying its provinces and conventus, and giving lists of the towns, the position of some of which he defines, while the greater number are merely enumerated in alphabetical order; mentioning the principal rivers, and noting the towns upon them. He gives a few notices of the inhabitants of the different provinces, but no clear or comprehensive account of the population of the country generally, or any intelligible views even of its physical characteristics. After a similar account of Gallia Narbonensis, Pliny proceeds to Italy. His account of this country is, on the whole, the best of the kind that he has given. Following the division of Augustus, he enumerates the different provinces, going round the coast. The extent of coast line was of course favourable for defining the positions of places situated on or near it. Where the coast or river does not give him a convenient method of defining the position of places, he simply enumerates them, usually in alphabetical order. He has been at considerable pains to specify a number of distances between mouths of rivers, headlands, and other salient or important points, but his numbers can scarcely ever be relied on. Many are egregiously wrong. This may be partly the fault of copyists, but there can be little doubt that it is mainly the fault of Pliny himself, from his misunderstanding the data of the authors from whom he copied. In connection with the more important sections of Italy he enumerates in order the races which successively inhabited them, and where the occasion presents itself mentions not only the towns which existed in his own time, but those which had been destroyed. The Tiberis and Padus, especially the latter, he describes with considerable care. After the provinces on the western coast of Italy, he takes the islands between Spain and Italy, and then returns to the mainland.
Leaving Italy he proceeds to the provinces on the north and east of the Adriatic sea, and those south of the Danube--Liburnia, Dalmatia, Noricum, Pannonia, Moesia; and in the fourth book takes up the Grecian peninsula. His account of this is a good example of his carelessness, indistinctness, and confusion as a geographer. After the provinces on the western side of northern Greece (Epeirus, Acarnania, &c.), he takes the Peloponnesus, and then comes back to Attica, Boeotia, and Thessaly. His account excludes the Peloponnesus from Hellas or Graecia, which begins from the isthmus, the first country in it being Attica, in which he includes Megaris (4.7). His notices are of the most meagre description possible, consisting of hardly anything but lists of names. All that he says of Attica does not occupy twenty lines. After Thessaly come Macedonia, Thrace, the islands round Greece, the Pontus, Scythia, and the northern parts of Europe. Of the existence of the Hyperboreans he thinks it impossible to doubt, as so many authors affirmed that they used to send offerings to Apollo at Delos (4.12). Nor does he express any distrust when recounting the stories of races who fed upon horses' hoofs, or of tribes whose ears were large enough to serve as a covering for their bodies. His account of Britain, which he makes he over against Germany, Gaul, and Spain, is very meagre. From Britain he proceeds to Gallia, in his account of which he mixes up Caesar's division according to races with the division according to provinces (Ukert, Geographie der Griechen und Römer, 2.2. p. 238), and so, not unnaturally, is indistinct and contradictory. After Gallia he comes back to the northern and western parts of Spain and Lusitania.
This sketch will give the reader an idea of the clumsy manner in which Pliny treats geography. It is unnecessary to follow him in detail through the rest of this part of his work. It is carried on in much the same style. When treating of Africa he mentions (apparently without disbelief) the monstrous races in the south, some without articulate language, others with no heads, having mouths and eyes in their breasts. He accedes to the opinion of king Juba, that the Nile rises in a mountain of Mauritania, and that its inundations are due to the Etesian winds, which either force the current back upon the land, or carry vast quantities of clouds to Aethiopia, the rain from which swells the river. Of the races to the north and east of the Pontus and on the Tanais he has preserved a very large number of names. With regard to India he has some accounts which show that amid the conflicting, and what even Pliny calls incredible statements of different writers, a good deal of accurate information had reached the Romans. It is to be regretted that Pliny was deterred by the nature of these accounts from giving us more of them. It would have been interesting to know what Greeks who had resided at the courts of Indian kings (6.17) told their countrymen. We could have spared for that purpose most of the rough and inaccurate statements of distances which he has taken the trouble to put in. Some intercourse which had taken place with the king of Taprobane in the reign of the emperor Claudius enables Pliny to give a somewhat circumstantial account of the island and people. Though of very small value as a systematic work, the books on geography are still valuable on account of the extensive collection of ancient names which they contain, as well as a variety of incidental facts which have been preserved out of the valuable sources to which Pliny had access.
The five following books (vii.--xi.) are devoted to zoology. The seventh book treats of man, and opens with a preface, in which Pliny indulges his querulous dissatisfaction with the lot of man, his helpless and unhappy condition when brought into the world, and the pains and vices to which he is subject. After bespeaking some measure of belief for the marvellous accounts that he will have to give, and suggesting that what appears incredible should be regarded in its connection with a great whole (naturae vero rerum vis alque majestas in omnibus momentis fide caret, siquis modo partes ejus ac non totam complectatur animo), he enumerates a number of the most astonishing and curious races reported to exist upon the earth :--cannibals, men with their feet turned backwards; the Psylli, whose bodies produce a secretion which is deadly to serpents; tribes of Androgyni; races of enchanters ; the Sciapodae, whose feet are so large, that when the sun's heat is very strong they he on their backs and turn their feet upwards to shade themselves; the Astomi, who live entirely upon the scents of fruits and flowers; and various others almost equally singular. Haec, he remarks, atque talia ex hominum genere ludibria sibi, nobis miracula, ingeniosa fecit natura. He then proceeds to a variety of curious accounts respecting the generation and birth of children, or of monsters in their place. An instance of a change of sex he affirms to have come within his own knowledge (7.4). The dentition, size, and growth of children, examples of an extraordinary precocity, and remarkable bodily strength, swiftness, and keenness of sight and hearing, furnish him with some singular details. He then brings forward a variety of examples (chiefly of Romans) of persons distinguished for remarkable mental powers, moral greatness, courage, wisdom, &c., preserving some interesting anecdotes respecting the persons adduced. Then follow some notices of those most distinguished in the sciences and arts, and of persons remarkable for their honours or good fortune, in connection with which he does not forget to point out how the most prosperous condition is frequently marred by adverse circumstances. He then mentions a number of instances of great longevity. Men's liability to disease draws from him some pettish remarks, and even some instances which he mentions of resuscitation from apparent death only lead to the observation : haec est conditio mortalium; ad has et ejusmodi occasiones fortunae gignimur, uti de homine ne morti quidem debeat cerdi (7.52). Sudden death he looks upon as an especially remarkable phaenomenon, and at the same time the happiest thing that can happen to a man. The idea of a future existence of the soul he treats as ridiculous, and as spoiling the greatest blessing of nature--death (100.55 or 56). It must have been in some peculiar sense, then, that he believed in apparitions after death (100.52 or 53). The remainder of the book is occupied with a digression on the most remarkable inventions of men, and the authors of them. He remarks that the first thing in which men agreed by tacit consent was the use of the alphabet of the Ionians; the second the employment of barbers; the third marking the hours.
The eighth book is occupied with an account of terrestrial animals. They are not enumerated in any systematic manner. There is, indeed, some approximation to an arrangement according to size, the elephant being the first in the list and the dormouse the last, but mammalia and reptiles, quadrupeds, serpents, and snails, are jumbled up together. For trustworthy information regarding the habits and organisation of animals the reader will commonly look in vain : a good part of almost every article is erroneous, false, or fabulous. Pliny's account is, of course, filled with all the most extraordinary stories that he had met with, illustrating the habits or instinct of the different animals. The elephant he even believes to be a moral and religious animal, and to worship the sun and moon (8.1). His entertaining account of the elephant and the lion will give somewhat favourable samples of the style in which he discusses natural history (8.1-11, 16). The reader of the seventh book will be prepared to find in the eighth the most extraordinary and impossible creatures figuring by the side of the lion and the horse. Thus we have the achlis, without joints in its legs (100.16); winged horses armed with horns (100.30); the mantichora, with a triple row of teeth, the face and ears of a man, the body of a lion, and a tail which pierces like that of a scorpion (ib.); the monoceros, with the body of a horse, the head of a stag, the feet of an elephant, the tail of a boar, and a black horn on its forehead two cubits long (100.31); the catoblepas, whose eves are instantly fatal to any man who meets their glance (100.32); and the basilisk, possessed of powers equally remarkable (100.33). Pliny certainly was not the man to throw out the taunt : mirum est quo procedat Graeca credulitas (8.22 or 34). He cites Ctesias with as much confidence as Aristotle; and it is not unlikely that in some instances he has transformed the symbolical animals sculptured at Persepolis into real natural productions. With his usual proneness to ramble off into digressions, his account of the sheep furnishes him with an opportunity for giving a variety of details regarding different kinds of clothing, and the novelties or improvements introduced in it (8.48 or 73).
In the ninth book he proceeds to the different races inhabiting the water, in which element he believes that even more extraordinary animals are produced than on the earth, the seeds and germs of living creatures being more intermingled by the agency of the winds and waves, so that he assents to the common opinion that there is nothing produced in any other part of nature which is not found in the sea, while the latter has many things peculiar to itself. Thus he finds no difficulty in believing that a live Triton, of the commonly received form, and a Nereid, had been seen and heard on the coast of Spain in the reign of Tiberius, and that a great number of dead Nereids had been found on the beach in the reign of Augustus, to say nothing of sea-elephants and sea-goats. The story of Arion and the dolphin he thinks amply confirmed by numerous undoubted instances of the attachment shown by dolphins for men, and especially boys. It seems that these creatures are remarkably apt at answering to the name Simon, which they prefer to any other (100.8). Pliny, however, rightly terms whales and dolphins beluae, not pisces, though the only classification of marine animals is one according to their integuments (9.12 or 14, 13 or 15). His account of the ordinary habits of the whale is tolerably accurate; and indeed, generally speaking, the ninth book exhibits much less of the marvellous and exaggerated than some of the others. He recognises seventy-four different kinds of fishes, with thirty of Crustacea (14 or 16). The eagerness with which pearls, purple dye, and shell-fish are sought for excites Pliny to vehement objurgation of the luxury and rapacity of the age (100.34). On the supposed origin of pearls, and the mode of extracting the purple dye, he enters at considerable length (100.34-41). Indeed, as he sarcastically remarks : abunde tractate est ratio qua se virorum juxta feminarumque forma credit amplissimam fieri.
The tenth book is devoted to an account of birds, beginning with the largest--the ostrich. As to the phoenix even Pliny is sceptical; but he has some curious statements about eagles, and several other birds. The leading distinction which he recognises among birds is that depending on the form of the feet (10.11 or 13). Those, also, which have not talons but toes, are subdivided into oscines and alites, the former being distinguished by their note, the latter by their different sizes (100.19 or 22). He notices that those with crooked talons are usually carnivorous; that those which are heavy feed on grain or fruits; those that fly high, on flesh (100.47). The validity of augury he does not seem to question. Though he had found no difficulty in winged horses (8.21), he regards as fabulous winged Pegasi with horses' heads. The substance of the bird when hatched he states to be derived from the white of the egg, the yolk serving as its food (100.53). From his account of eggs he digresses into a general discussion of the phaenomena of generation in animals of all kinds (100.62, &c.), in connection with which he has several most extraordinary statements, as, e. gr., that the spinal marrow of a man may turn into a serpent (100.66), and that mice can generate by licking each other. The generation and fecundity of these little creatures he regards as especially astonishing; and what becomes of them all he cannot think, as they are never picked up dead, or dug up in winter in the fields (100.65). He then proceeds to some statements as to the relative acuteness of the senses in different animals, and other miscellaneous matters. The reciprocal enmities and attachments of different animals are frequently touched upon by him.
The first part of the eleventh book is occupied with an account of insects. The phenomena of the insect kingdom Pliny regards as exhibiting the wonderful operations of nature in even a more surprising manner than the others. He, however, only notices a few of the most common insects. On bees he treats at considerable length. He finds space, however, to mention the pyralis, an insect which is produced and lives in the fire of furnaces, but dies speedily if too long away from the flame (100.36). The remainder of the book (100.37 or 44, &c.) is devoted to the subject of comparative anatomy, or at least something of an approximation to that science. Considerable ingenuity has been shown by those from whom Pliny copies in bringing together a large number of coincidences and differences, though, as might have been expected, there are many errors both in the generalisations and in the particular facts.
Botany, the next division of natural history taken up by Pliny, occupies by far the largest portion of the work. Including the books on medical botany, it occupies sixteen books, eight on general botany (xii.-xix.), and eight more on medicines derived from plants. Pliny's botany is altogether devoid of scientific classification. The twelfth book treats of exotics, especially the spice and scent bearing trees of India, Arabia, and Syria. Of the trees themselves Pliny's account is extremely unsatisfactory : frequently he merely names them. The book is chiefly occupied with an account of their products, the modes of collecting and preparing them, &c. The first part of the thirteenth book is occupied with a general account of unguents, the history of their use, the modes of compounding them, and the plants from which they are chiefly derived. Palms and other exotics, chiefly those of Syria, Arabia, and Egypt, taken up without any principle of arrangement, are noticed or described in the remainder of the book. His account of the papyrus (100.11 or 21-13 or 27) goes considerably into detail. The fourteenth book is occupied with an account of the vine, and different notices respecting the various sorts of wines, closing with a somewhat spirited review of the effects of drunkenness. The fifteenth book treats of the more common sorts of fruit, the olive, apple, fig, &c. The sixteenth passes first to the most common kinds of forest trees, and then contains a great variety of remarks on general botany, and other miscellaneous notices, especially on the uses of wood and timber, into the midst of which there is awkwardly thrust some account of reeds, willows, and other plants of that kind. The seventeenth book treats of the cultivation and arrangement of trees and plants, the modes of propagating and grafting them, the diseases to which they are subject, with the modes of curing them, &c. The eighteenth book opens with an apology, in Pliny's peculiar style, on behalf of the earth, the benign parent of all, whom men have unjustly blamed for the mischievous use which they themselves have made of some of her products. The rest of the book is occupied with an account of the different sorts of grain and pulse, and a general account of agriculture. This and the preceding are by far the most valuable of the botanical books of the Historia Naturalis, and exhibit a great amount of reading, as well as considerable observation.
The next eight books (xx.--xxvii.) are devoted, generally speaking, to medical botany, though the reader must not expect a writer like Pliny to adhere very strictly to his subject. Thus, a great part of the twenty-first book treats of flowers, scents, and the use of chaplets; and some of the observations about bees and bee-hives are a little foreign to the subject. Indeed, the 20th and part of the 21st book are rather a general account of the medical, floral and other productions of gardens (see 100.49, end). Then, after giving an account of various wild plants, and some general botanical remarks respecting them, Pliny returns to the subject of medicines. The classification of these is chiefly according to the sources front which they are derived, whether garden or other cultivated plants (xx.--xxii.), cultivated trees (xxiii.), forest trees (xxiv.), or wild plants (xxv.); partly according to the diseases for which they are adapted (xxvi.). Cuvier (l.c.) remarks that almost all that the ancients have told us of the virtues of their plants is lost to us, on account of our not knowing what plants they are speaking of. If we might believe Pliny, there is hardly a single human malady for which nature has not provided a score of remedies.
In the twenty-eighth book Pliny proceeds to notice the medicines derived from the human body, and from other land animals, commencing with what is tantamount to an apology for introducing the subject in that part of the work. Three books are devoted to this branch, diversified by some notices respecting the history of medicine (29.1-8), and magic, in which he does not believe, and which he considers an offshoot front the art of medicine, combined with religion and astrology (30.1, &c). The thirty-first book treats of the medical properties of various waters; the thirty-second of those of fishes and other aquatic creatures.
The remaining section of the Historia Naturalis would doubtless have been headed by Pliny "Mineralogy," though this title would give but a small idea of the nature of the contents. In the 33d book the subject of metals is taken up. It begins with various denunciations of the wickedness and cupidity of men, who could not be content with what nature had provided for them on the surface of the earth, but must needs desecrate even the abode of the Manes to find materials for the gratification of their desires. Pliny's account of gold and silver consists chiefly of historical disquisitions about rings, money, crowns, plate, statues, and the other various objects in the making of which the precious metals have been used, in which he has presented us with a number of curious and interesting notices. He also specifies when and how metallic products are used as remedies. The mention of bronze (book xxxiv.) leads him to a digression about statues and statuaries, again chiefly of an historical kind, and preserving several interesting and valuable facts (100.9-19). In the 19th chapter he enumerates the chief works of the most celebrated statuaries, but the barren inventory is enlivened by very few remarks which can satisfy the curiosity of the artist or the lover of art. The introduction of this digression, and the mention of some mineral pigments, leads Pliny to take up the subject of painting in the 35th book. His account, however, is chiefly that of the historian and anecdote collector, not that of a man who understood or appreciated the art. The early stages of it he discusses very summarily; but on its progress after it had reached some maturity, and the various steps by which it rose in estimation among the Romans, he has many valuable and interesting records. In his account of the pigments employed by the ancient painters, he mixes up the medical properties of some of them in a way peculiarly his own, though not very conducive to regularity of arrangement. His chronological notices of the eras of the art and of the most distinguished painters are extremely valuable, and he notices, usually with tolerable clearness, the great improvers of the art, and the advances which they respectively made. The reader will find in this part of the work many interesting anecdotes of the great painters of Greece; but will often wish that instead of a great variety of unimportant details, and accounts of trivial processes and mechanical excellences, Pliny had given a more full and satisfactory account of many of the masterpieces of antiquity, which he only barely mentions. The excellent materials which he had before him in the writings of several of the ancient artists, and others which he might have consulted, might have been worked up, in better hands, into a far more interesting account. After a short notice of the plastic art, a few chapters at the end of the book are devoted to the medical and other properties of various mineral products, the use of bricks, &c.
For the 36th book "lapidum natural restat," as Pliny says, "hoc est praecipua morum insania." Marble and the other kinds of stone and kindred materials used in buildings, or rather the admirable and curious works in which they have been employed (including a notice of sculpture and sculptors), occupy the greater portion of the book, the remainder of which treats of other minerals, and the medicinal and other uses to which they were applied. The 37th book treats, in a similar manner, of gems and precious stones, and the fine arts as connected with the department of engraving, the whole concluding with an energetic commendation of Italy, as the land of all others the most distinguished by the natural endowments and the glory of its inhabitants, by the beauty of its situation, and its fertility in everything that can minister to the wants of man.
The style of Pliny is characterised by a good deal of masculine vigour and elevation of tone, though its force is frequently rather the studied vehemence of the rhetorician than the spontaneous outburst of impassioned feeling. In his fondness for point and antithesis, he is frequently betrayed into harshness, and his pregnant brevity not uncommonly degenerates into abruptness and obscurity, though much of this latter characteristic which is found in his writings is probably due to the corrupt state of the text. Editions
The editions of Pliny's Natural History are very numerous. The first was published at Venice 1469, and was rapidly followed by many others; but the first edition of any great merit was that by Hardouin (Paris, 1685, in 5 vols. 4to.; 2nd edition 1723, 3 vols. fol.), which exhibits great industry and learning. The edition published by Panckoucke (Paris, 1829-1833, in 20 vols.) with a French translation by Ajasson de Grandsagne is enriched by many valuable notes by Cuvier and other eminent scientific and literary men of France. These notes are also appended, in a Latin form, in another edition in six volumes (Paris, 1836-38, Panckoucke). The most valuable critical edition of the text of Pliny is that by Sillig (Leipzig, 1831-36, 5 vols. 12mo.). The last volume of this edition contains a collation of a MS. at Bamberg of great value (containing, however, only the last six books), which supplies words and clauses in many passages not suspected before of being corrupt, from which it may be inferred that the text of the earlier books is still in a mutilated state, and that much of the obscurity of Pliny may be traced to this cause. A considerable passage at the end of the last book has been supplied by Sillig from this manuscript. It appears from his preface that Sillig is engaged upon a more extensive edition of Pliny. Translations
The Natural History of Pliny has been translated into almost all languages : into Engish by Holland (London, 1601); into German by Denso (1764-65), and Grosse (1781-88, 12 vols.); besides translations of parts by Fritsch and Külb; into Italian by Landino (Ven. 1476), Bruccioli (Ven. 1548), and Domenichi (Ven. 1561); into Spanish by Huerta (Madrid, 1624-29); into French by Dupinet (1562), Poinsinet de Sivry (1771-82), and Ajasson de Grandsagne; into Dutch (Arnheim, 1617); into Arabic by Honain Ibn Ishak (Joannitius). Bibliography.
A great deal of useful erudition will be found in the Exercitationes Plinianae on the Polyhistor of Solinus, by Salmasius. Another valuable work in illustration of Pliny is the Disquisitiones Plinianae, by A. Jos. a Tnrre Rezzonico. Parma, 1763-67, 2 vols. fol. (Ajasson de Grandsagne, Notice sur la Vie ct les Onvrages de Pline l'ancien ; Bäihr, Geschichte der Römischen Literatur, p. 471, &c.) [C.P.M]
was the son of C. Caecilius, and of Plinia, the sister of C. Plinius, the author of the Naturalis Historia. His native place was probably Comum, now Como, on the Lake Larius, Lake of Como, on the banks of which he had several villae (Ep. 9.7). The year of his birth was A. D. 61 or 62, for, in a letter addressed to Cornelius Tacitus (Ep. 6.20), in which he describes the great eruption of Vesuvius, which happened A. D. 79, he says that he was then in his eighteenth year. His father died young, and after his death Plinia and her son lived with her brother, who adopted his nephew, Caecilius. Under the republic his name after adoption would have been C. Plinius Caecilianus Secundus.
The education of Plinius was conducted under the care of his uncle, his mother, and his tutor, Verginis Rufus (Ep. 2.1). From his youth he was devoted to letters. In his fourteenth year he wrote a Greek tragedy (Ep. 7.4); but he adds, "what kind of a thing it was, I know not : it was called a tragedy." He studied eloquence under Quintilianus and Nicetes Sacerdos (ep. 6.6). His acquirements finally gained him the reputation of being one of the most learned men of the age ; and his friend Tacitus, the historian, had the same honourable distinction. He was also an orator. In his nineteenth year he began to speak in the forum (Ep. 5.8), and he was frequently employed as an advocate before the court of the Centumviri (Ep. 1.18--9.23), and before the Roman senate, both on the side of the prosecution, as in the cases of Baebius Massa and Marius Priscus, and for the defence, as in the cases of Julius Bassus and Rufus Varenus (Ep. 6.29).
He filled numerous offices in succession. While a young man he served in Syria, as tribunus militum, and was there a hearer of the stoic Euphrates (Ep. 1.10), and of Artemidorus. He was subsequently quaestor Caesaris, praetor in or about A. D. 93 (Ep. 3.11), and consul A. D. 100, in which year he wrote his laneqyricus, which is addressed to Trajanus (Ep. 3.13). In A. D. 103 he was appointed propraetor of the province Pontica (Ep. 10.77), where he did not stay quite two years. Among his other functions he also discharged that of curator of the channel and the banks of the Tiber (Ep. 5.15, and an inscription in Gruter, p. 454. 3).
Plinius was twice married. His second wife was Calpurnia, the granddaughter of Calpurnius Fabatus, and an accomplished woman : she was considerably younger than her husband, who has recorded her kind attentions to him, and her affection in a letter to her aunt Hispulla (Ep. 4.19). He had no children by either wife, born alive.
The life of Plinius is chiefly known from his letters. So far as this evidence shows, he was a kind and benevolent man, fond of literary pursuits, and of building on and improving his estates. He was rich, and he spent liberally. He built a temple at Tifernum, at his own cost, and an aedes to Ceres, on his own property. He contributed, or offered to contribute a third of the cost of establishing a school in his patria (probably Comum), for the education of the youth there, and he asked his friend Tacitus to look out for teachers (Ep. 4.13). The dedication of a library at the same place, and the establishment of a fund for the benefit of youths (annuos sumptus in alimenta ingenuorum, Ep. 1.8), are among the instances of his generosity recorded in his letters. He was a kind master to his slaves. His body was feeble, and his health not good. Nothing is known as to the time of his death. Works
The extant works of Plinius are his Panegyricus and the ten books of his Epistulae. Panegyricus
The Panegyricus is a fulsome eulogium on Trajanus, in the exordium of which he addresses the patres conscripti, but in the course of the Panegyricus the emperor himself is addressed in the second person. It is of some small value for the information which it contains about the author himself and his times. Epistulae
The letters of Plinius, contained in ten books, furnish the chief materials for his life, and also considerable information about his contemporaries. The tenth book consists entirely of letters from Plinius to Trajanus, and from Trajanus to Plinius. The index to Schaefer's edition of Plinius indicates the names of all the persons to whom his extant letters are addressed.
Plinius collected his own letters, as appears from the first letter of the first book, which looks something like a preface to the whole collection. He speaks of collecting others of his letters. It is not a improbable conjecture that Plinius may have written many of his letters with a view to publication, or that when he was writing some of them, the idea of future publication was in his mind. However they form a very agreeable collection, and make us acquainted with many interesting facts in the life of Piinius and that of his contemporaries.
The letters from Plinius to Trajanus and the emperor's replies are the most valuable part of the collection. The first letter in the tenth book is a letter of congratulation to Trajanus on his accession to the imperial dignity. Other letters contain requests for favours to himself or his friends; and many of them are on public affairs, on which he consulted the emperor during his government in Asia Minor. The replies of Trajanus are short, and always to the purpose in hand; for instance, in the matter of the aqueduct of Nicomedia (10.46, 47), and the aqueduct of Sinope (10.91, 92); as to covering over a dirty drain in Amastris, which sent forth a pestilent stench (10.99); on the plan for uniting the lake of Niconmedia to the sea by a canal (10.50, 51, 69, 70); and on the proposal to compel the decuriones to accept loans of the public money, in order that the interest might not be lost : the emperor's notions of justice would not allow him to accede to such a proposal.
The letter on the punishment of the Christians (10.97), and the emperor's answer (10.98), have furnished matter for much remark. The fact of a person admitting himself to be a Christian was sufficient for his condemnation; and the punishment appears to have been death (supplicium minatus : perseverantes duci jussi). The Christians, on their examination, admitted nothing further than their practice of meeting on a fixed day before it was light, and singing a hymn to Christ, as God (quasi Deo); their oath (whatever Plinius may mean by sacramentum) was not to bind them to any crime, but to avoid theft, robbery, adultery, breach of faith, and denial of a deposit. Two female slaves, who were said to be deaconesses (ministrae), were put to the torture by Plinius, but nothing unfavourable to the Christians could be got out of them : the governor could detect nothing except a perverse and extravagant superstition (superstitionem pravam et immodicam). Hereupon he asked the emperor's advice, for the contagion of the superstition was spreading; yet he thought that it might be stopped. The Romans had a horror of secret meetings, especially for religious celebrations, and they had experience of their mischief, as in the case of the Bacchanalia (Liv. 39.8). They made no distinction between the Christians and others who congregated contrary to law : nor did they concern themselves about the particular character of any of these unions : the Roman policy was generally opposed to all meetings at irregular times or places (Ep. 10.43). "It is not true," says Dr. Taylor (Elements of Civil Law, p. 579), "that the primitive Christians held their assemblies in the night to avoid the interruptions of the civil power : but the converse of that proposition is true in the utmost latitude; viz. that they met with molestations from that quarter, because their assemblies were nocturnal." It remains a question if they would have been permitted to hold their assemblies in the day time; and it is not clear that they would. This being premised, the emperor's answer is mild and merciful; more mild than the practice of his governor had been, more merciful and just than the proceedings of the Inquisition, and of many religious persecutions among Christians themselves : he approves of the governor's conduct, as explained in his letter, and observes that no general rule can be laid down. Persons supposed to be Christians are not to be sought for : if they are accused and the charge is proved, they are to be punished; but if a man denied the charge, and could prove its falsity by offering his prayers to the heathen gods (diis nostris), however suspected he may have been, he shall be excused in respect of his repentance. Charges of accusation (libelli) without the name of the informant or accuser, were not to be received, as they had been : it was a thing of the worst example, and unsuited to the age. Editions
The first edition of the Epistolae and Panegyricus of Plinius is that of Venice, 1485, 4to. One of the latest and best editions is that of J. M. Gesner, by G. H. Schaefer, Leipzig, 1805, 8vo. The best edition of the Epistolae alone is said to be by Cortius and Longolius, Amsterdam, 1734, 4to. Schaefer's edition contains the life of Plinius by Cellarius, who has given references to the several passages in the letters, which are evidence of the facts. There is a much more elaborate life by Masson, Amsterdam, 1709, 8vo. There are German translations of the Epistolae, by E. Thierfeld, 1823-1829; by E. A. Schmid, 1782, &c.; and by J. B. Schaefer, 1801, &c. There is an English version of the Epistolae by Lord Orrery, and another by W. Melmoth. [G.L]
or Salu'stius, belonged to a plebeian family, and was born B. C. 86, the year in which C. Marius died, at Amiternum, in the country of the Sabini. About the age of twenty-seven, as some say, though the time is uncertain, he obtained the quaestorship, and in B. C. 52 he was elected tribunus plebis, in the year in which Clodius was killed by Milo in a brawl. In B. C. 50 the censors Appius Claudius Pulcher and L. Calpurnius Piso ejected Sallustius from the senate (D. C. 40.63, and the note of Reimarus), on the ground, as some say, of his having been caught in the act of adultery with Fausta, the daughter of the dictator Sulla, and the wife of T. Annius Milo. It is said that the husband soundly whipped Sallustius, and only let him off on payment of a sum of money (Varro, quoted by Gellius, 17.18). Sallustius belonged to the faction of Caesar, and party spirit may have had some effect with the censors, for the imputation of an adulterous commerce, even if true, would hardly have been a sufficient ground at that time for a Nota Censoria. Sallustius, in his tribunate, made a violent attack upon Milo as to the affair of Clodius, but there may have been other grounds for his enmity, besides the supposed thrashing that he had received from Milo. The adulterous act, of course, was committed before B. C. 52; and Sallustius was elected a tribune after the affair. However this may be, upon his ejection from the senate, we hear no more of him for some time. The unknown author of the Declamatio in Sallustium (100.5, 6) merely hints that he may have gone to Caesar, who was then in Gallia; but such a hint from an unknown person is worth nothing.
In B. C. 47 Sallustius was praetor elect, and was thus restored to his rank. (Dion. Cass. 42.52.) He nearly lost his life in a mutiny of some of Caesar's troops in Campania, who had been led thither to pass over into Africa. (Appian, App. BC 2.92.) Sallustius carried the news of the uproar to Caesar at Rome, and was followed thither by the mutinous soldiers, whom Caesar pacified. Sallustius accompanied Caesar in his African war, B. C. 46 (Bell. Afric. 100.8, 34), and he was sent to the island Cercina (the Karkenna islands, on the coast of Tunis), to get supplies for Caesar, which he accomplished. Caesar left him in Africa as the governor of Numidia, in which capacity he is charged with having oppressed the people, and enriched himself by unjust means. (D. C. 43.9, and the note of Reimarus.) He was accused of maladministration before Caesar, but it does not appear that he was brought to trial. The charge is somewhat confirmed by the fact of his becoming immensely rich, as was shown by the expensive gardens which he formed (horti Sallustiani) on the Quirinalis. It is conjectured that the abusive attack of Lenaeus. a freedman of Pompeius Magnus, is the autithority for the scandalous tales against Sallustius (Sueton. De Illust. Grammat. 15); but it is not the only authority. Sallustius retired into privacy after he returned from Africa, and he passed quietly through the troublesome period after Caesar's death. He died B. C. 34, about four years before the battle of Actium. The story of his marrying Cicero's wife, Terentia, is improbable. (Drumann, Geschichte Roms, vol. vi. p. 693.)
The character of Sallustius has been the subject of much discussion among scholars, some of whom attempt to clear him of the scandalous imputations upon his memory. That a partizan, like Sallustius, and a rich man too, must have had many enemies, is agreeable to all experience; and of course he may have had detractors. But to attempt to decide on the real merits of his character, or the degree of his demerits, with such evidence as we have, is puerile industry. It is enough to remark that Dio Cassius always makes a man as bad as he can. That he devoted himself so busily to literature in his retirement is an argument in favour of the latter part of his life at least. Works
It was probably not till after his return from Africa that Sallustius wrote his historical works. Catilina
The Catilina, or Bellum Catilinarium, is a history of the conspiracy of Catilina during the consulship of Cicero, B. C. 63. The introduction to this history, which some critics admire, is only a feeble and rhetorical attempt to act the philosopher and moralist. The history, however, is valuable; and the charge that the historian has underrated the services of Cicero, is not maintainable. He would have damaged Cicero more in the opinion of the admirers of Cicero, at least, by not writing the history at all. Sallustius was a living spectator of the events which he describes, and considering that he was not a friend of Cicero, and was a partizan of Caesar, he wrote with fairness. The speeches which he has inserted in his history are certainly his own composition; but we may assume that Caesar's speech was extant, and that he gave the substance of it. If be wrote the history after Caesar's death, which is probable, that may explain why he had the bad taste to put his own composition in the place of Caesar's genuine oration. Cato's speech on the same occasion was taken down by short-hand writers (Plut. Cato Minor, 100.23); and Sallustius of course had it in his hands; but still he wrote one himself (Drumann, Geschichte Roms, vol. iii. p. 174). He showed his ignorance of the true value of history, and his vanity too in not recording a speech of Cato. Constantius Felicius Durantinus, in his Historia Conjurationis Catilinariae, has stated the facts which Sallustius either purposely or carelessly omitted in his history. Jugurtha
The Jugurtha, or Bellum Jugurthinum, contains the history of the war of the Romans against Jugurtha, king of Numidia, which began B. C. 111, and continued until B. C. 106. It is likely enough that Sallustius was led to write this work from having resided in Africa, and that he collected some materials there. He cites the Punic Books of King Hiempsal, as authority for his general geographical description (Jug. 100.17). The Jugurthine war has a philosophical introduction of the same stamp as that to the Catilina. As a history of the campaign, the Jugurthine war is of no value: there is a total neglect of geographical precision, and apparently not a very strict regard to chronology. There is an oration in the Jugurthine war (100.30) of C. Memmius, tribunus plebis, against L. Calpurnius Bestia, which Sallustius declares to be the genuine speech of Memmius ; and it is, in fact, very different from those which he composed himself. xml:lang="la">Historiarum Libri Quinque
Sallustius, also, is said to have written Historiarum Libri Quinque, which were dedicated to Lucullus, a son of L. Licinius Lucullus. The work is supposed to have comprised the period from the consulship of M. Aemilius Lepidus and Q. Lutatius Catulus, B. C. 78, the year of Sulla's death, to the consulship of L. Vulcatius Tullus and M. Aemilius Lepidus, B. C. 66, the year in which Cicero was praetor. If this is so, Sallust began his history where that of Sisenna on the Civil Wars of Sulla ended. This work is lost, with the exception of fragments which have been collected and arranged. The fragments contain, among other things, several orations and letters. Some fragments belonging to the third book, and relating to the war with Spartacus, have been published from a Vatican MS. in the present century. (C. Sallustii Cr. Histor. lib. iii. Fragmenta e Cod. Vat. ed. ab Angelo Maio; edit. actior et emendatior, curante J. Th. Kreysig, Misen. 1830, 8vo.)
The ground for stating that the history of Sallustius began with B. C. 78, is the authority of the fragment in Donatus. (Res Populi Romani, &c). But Ausonius (Id. iv. ad Nepotem), seems to speak of some historical work which, as Le Clerc supposes, comprised a period of twelve years before the Tumultus Lepidi in B. C. 78. The commencement of such a work would coincide with B. C. 90, or the outbreak of the Social War, but the twelve years may be referred with equal probability to the period from B. C. 78 to B. C. 66. However, Sallust seems to have treated of the period of Sulla (Plutarch, Comparison of Sulla and Lysander, 100.3); though it is possible that this was done only by way of introduction to his historical work. The opusculum of Julius Exsuperantius may, with great probability, be assumed to be an epitome from the works of Sallustius. It commences with speaking of Metellus, the proconsul, taking C. Marius with him to the Jugurthine war; and it terminates with the capture of Calagurris in Spain (Calahorra) by Pompeius, the erection of his trophies on the Pyrenees, and his return to Rome from Spain, B. C. 72. It does not, therefore, comprise the whole of the period comprehended in the historical works of Sallustius; but Exsuperantius certainly followed some work which treated of the wars of Marius and Sulla.
It is, then, a probable conjecture that Sallustius treated the following subjects in their chronological order, which may not have been the order in which they were written: -- the war of Jugurtha ; the period from the commencement of the Marsic war, B. C. 90, to the death of Sulla, B. C. 78; the tumults caused by the consul M. Aemilius Lepidus upon the death of Sulla; the war of Sertorius, which ended B. C. 72; the Mithridatic war, which ended B. C. 63; and the conspiracy of Catiline. It was the fashion of Sallust to choose striking periods and events, and to write in piecemeal. Some grammarian probably arranged into the form of a history the works which comprised the period from B. C. 90 to B. C. 16, and this arrangement may have been made at a very early period. Plutarch (Lucullus, 10, 33) twice refers to Sallustius in his history of the campaigns of Lucullus in Asia. A passage in the Pompeius of Plutarch (100.2) is apparently founded on a fragment, which is arranged in the third book. The fragments themselves are too meagre to allow the plan of the supposed history of Sallust to be reconstructed, though this has been attempted several times. But the more probable conclusion is that he did not write one history, but wrote several histories, all of which, except 'the Catilina and Jugurtha, were arranged either by himself or others, under the title of Histories. Gellius frequently quotes the Histories of Sallustius. Duae Epistolae de Re Publica ordinanda
Duae Epistolae de Re Publica ordinanda, which appear to be addressed to Caesar at the time when he was engaged in his Spanish campaign (B. C. 49) against Petreius and Afranius, and are attributed to Sallustius; but the opinions of critics on their authenticity are divided. The rhetorical character of them is in itself no ground for supposing that they are not by Sallustius. >The Declamatio in Sallustium, and Declamatio in Ciceronem
The Declamatio in Sallustium, which is attributed to Cicero, is generally admitted to be the work of some rhetorician, the matter of which is the well-known hostility between the orator and the historian. The same opinion is generally maintained as to the Declamatio in Ciceronem, which is attributed to Sallustius; but Quintilianus (Inst. Or. 4.1. 68) quotes the very words of the commencement of this declamatio; and (9.3, 89) the words "O Romule Arpinas." (Declam. in Cic. 100.4.) Assessment
Some of the Roman writers considered that Sallustius imitated the style of Thucydides. (Vell. 2.36.) His language is generally concise and perspicuous: perhaps his love of brevity may have caused the ambiguity that is sometimes found in his sentences. He also affected archaic words. Though he has considerable merit as a writer, his art is always apparent. The terms in which some critics speak of him as a writer seem to be very extravagant. Sallustius had no pretensions to great research or precision about facts; and probably the grammarian Atteius Philologus (Sueton. de Illust. Gram. 10) may have helped his indolence by collecting materials for him. His reflections have often something of the same artificial and constrained character as his expressions. One may judge that his object was to obtain distinction as a writer; that style was what he thought of more than matter. We have no means of fudging how far Sallustius was superior as a writer to Sulla, L. Lucullus, and Sisenna; but he has probably the merit of being the first Roman who wrote what is usually called history. He was not above his contemporaries as a politician: he was a party man, and there are no indications of any comprehensive views, which had a whole nation for their object. He hated the nobility, as a man may do, without loving the people. Editions
The editions of Sallustius are very numerous. The Editio Princeps was that of Rome, 1470, fol. The edition of G. Corte, Leipzig, 1724, 4to; of Haverkamp, Haag, 1742, 4to, and of F. D. Gerlach, Basel, 1823-1831, 3 vols. 4to.; and of Kritz, Leipzig, 1828-1834, 2 vols. 8vo., are the principal. An edition of the text was published by Orelli, Zürich, 1840. Translations
The translations are very numerous. The Italian version of Alfieri is as close and compact as the original. There are many English versions. The oldest is Barclay's translation of the Jugurtha. The latest are by H. Stewart, London, 1806, 2 vols. 4to. and by Arthur Murphy, London, 1807. The Index Editionum Sallustii and Index Versionum, prefixed to Frotscher's edition, show the prodigious labour that has been expended on the works of Sallustius. [G.L]
the most voluminous among the Roman writers of heroic verse, was born about A. D. 25. From his early years he devoted himself to oratory and poetry, taking Cicero as his model in the former, and Virgil in the latter. He acquired great reputation as a pleader at the bar, and acted for some time as a member of that body of judicial umpires who were known as the Centumvirs. His life, in so far as we can trace it, presents a course of unbroken prosperity. He was elevated to the consulship in A. D. 68, the year in which Nero perished; he was admitted to familiar intercourse with Vitellius, and subsequently discharged the duties of proconsul of Asia with high renown. After enjoying for a lengthened period the dignities of political and literary fame without incurring the envy which is for the most part the lot of distinguished statesmen and authors, he determined to retire from the busy world, and to pass his old age among his numerous villas, which were abundantly furnished with books and works of art. His two favourite residences were a mansion near Puteoli, formerly the Academy of Cicero. and the house in the vicinity of Naples once occupied by Virgil; and so enamoutred did he become of seclusion, that upon the accession of Trajan he refused to repair to Rome, and pay homage to the new prince. In these happy retreats he passed his time in tranquillity until he had completed his 75th year, when, in consequence of the pain caused by an incurable tubercle (insanabilis clavus) of some kind, he starved himself to death; and it was remarked that as he was the last consul nominated by Nero, so he survived all those who had held that office in the same reign. The only stain upon his character arises from the imputation that lie pandered to the cruelties of the tyrant, by acting as a voluntary accuser; but if this charge was true, his guilt was in a great measure expiated by the blamelessness of his subsequent career. He had two sons, one of whom died when young; the other attained to the consulship before his father's death.
Much discussion has taken place with regard to the import of the word Italicus, which no one has as yet explained in a satisfactory manner. According to the opinion most generally adopted, it was derived from the place of his birth which is imagined to have been either Italica near Hispalis in Baetica, or Corfinium, in the country of the Peligni. Neither of these suppositions will Bear investigation. It is extremely improbable that he was a Spaniard, for Martial, who repeatedly celebrates his praises, nowhere claims him as a countryman, although he frequently alludes with pride to the men of genius whom his native province had produced. On the other hand, although there is no doubt that the allies in the Social War gave the name of Italica to Cortinium, because they intended to make it the metropolis of their league, there is no reason to believe that it retained this title after the conclusion of the struggle. There is also a grammatical objection of some weight; for according both to analogy and to the authority of inscriptions, the local adjective derived from Italica near Hispalis would not be Italicus, but Italicensis. (See also Gel. 16.13.) This however in itself would not be conclusive. (Hispanus, Hispanensis.)
It has been erroneously inferred from a line in Martial (8.66), Felix purpura tertiusque consul, that Silius had been thrice consul, but the words imply merely that there had been three consuls in the family - Silius himself, his son, to celebrate whose accession to office the epigram was written, and a third person, perhaps that C. Silius who was consul A. D. 13 (Sueton. Octav. 101), and who may have been the father of the poet : but this is a mere conjecture. Our authorities for this biography are sundry epigrams in Martial (especially 7.62, 8.66, 11.51), and an epistle of the younger Pliny (3.7, or 3.5, ed. Titze). See also Tac. Hist. 3.65. Works Punica
The great work of Silius Italicus was an heroic poem in seventeen books, entitled Punica, which has descended to us entire. It contains a narrative of the events of the second Punic War, from the capture of Saguntum to the triumph of Scipio Africanus, together with various episodes relating to the more remarkable achievements in the first contest with Carthage, and to the exploits of champions in still earlier ages, such as Scaevola, Camillus. and the three hundred Fabii. Just as Virgil did not think that he degraded the majesty of the epic by making it a vehicle for flattering the Julian line, so his imitator has interwoven with his verses a panegyric upon the Flavian dynasty. The materials are derived almost entirely from Livy and Polybius. With regard to the merits of the piece, those few persons who have perused it from beginning to end will scarcely think the criticism too severe which pronounces it to be the least attractive poem within the range of classical antiquity; and this judgment is by no means incompatible with the praises awarded by Cellarius. We may freely admit that many passages may be adduced which throw light upon the historical events of that remarkable epoch, upon the origin, fortunes, and geographical position of different nations in Italy, Sicily, Spain, and Africa, and upon various points connected with mythology and ancient usages. But these are not the commendations we bestow on a great poet; the information which, after all, might be compressed within a very limited compass is certainly not destitute of value, but it is conveyed through the medium of the coldest. heaviest, and most lifeless composition that ever was misnamed an heroic poem. Notwithstanding the eulogistic apostrophe of Martial (Sili, Castalidum decus sororum), dictated perhaps by personal friendship, or more probably by the desire of fawning upon one who possessed so much power at court, the merits of Silius seem to have been fairly appreciated by his contemporaries, as we perceive from the words of Pliny " Scribebat carmina, majori cura quam industria ;" and soon after death he appears to have fallen into complete oblivion, for he is neither quoted nor named by any writer, not even by the grammarians, until the time of Apollinaris. (Excusator. ad Felic. 260.) Editions
The work of Silius Italicus was first brought to light after the revival of letters by Poggio the Florentine, having been discovered by him while attending the council of Constance.
The Editio Princeps was printed at Rome by Sweynheym and Pannartz under the inspection of Andrew, bishop of Aleria, fol. 1471, and again at the same place, fol. 1471, 1474, 1480. The best editions are those of Cellarius, 8vo. Lips. 1695, and Drakenborch, 4to. Traj. ad Rhen. 1717, especially the latter. That by Ruperti, 2 vols. 8vo. Goetting. 1795, contains a considerable quantity of useful matter, but displays little scholarship or judgment. Translations
There is a complete translation into English verse, bearing the title The Second Punik War between Hannibal and the Romanes : the whole xvii. books Englished from the Latine of Silius Italicus, with a continuation from the triumphe of Scipio to the death of Hannibal, by Tho. Ross. Fol. London, 1661; and reprinted fol. Lond. 1672.
The commencement was translated into French verse by Mich. de Marolles, and was appended to his " Considérations sur une Critique de l'Eneide," 4to. Paris (no date), and to his translation of the Achilleis of Statius, 4to. Paris, 1678. Select passages have been rendered into German by K. P. Kretschmann, to be found in the collection called " Meissner's Apollo," 1797, Heft. 5. There is also a version into Italian by Buzio, which is contained in the Raccolta di tutti gli antichi poeti Latini, 4to. Milan 1765, vol. 34-35. [W.R]
The little that is known of Suetonius is derived from his lives of the Caesars and the letters of his friend, the younger Plinius.
He states that he was a young man (adolescens) twenty years after the death of Nero (Nero, 100.57.), and Nero died A. D. 68. Accordingly he may have been born a few years after Nero's death. In his life of Domitian (100.12) he speaks of being present at a certain affair, as adolescentulus. It appears from various passages in his work that he might have received oral information about the emperors who lived before he was born, at least Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero. His father Suetonius Lenis (Otho, 100.10), a tribune of the thirteenth legion, was in the battle of Bebriacum or Bedriacum, in which Otho was defeated by Vitellius. The words Lenis and Tranquillus have the same meaning; but there may be some doubt about the reading Lenis, in the passage in the life of Otho. In the collection of the letters of the younger Plinius there are several to Suetonius Tranquillus, from one of which (1.18) it appears that Suetonius was then a young man and entering on the career of an advocate. In another letter (1.24) he speaks of his friend Tranquillus wishing to buy a small estate, such as suited a man of studious habits, enough to amuse him, without occupying him too much. Suetonius does not appear to have been desirous of public employment, for he requested Plinius to transfer to a relation, Caesennius Silvanus, a tribuneship, which Plinius had obtained for Suetonius (3.8). In a letter of uncertain date (5.11) Plinius urges Suetonius to publish his works (scripta), but without giving any intimation what the works were; Plinius says that he had already recommended the works of Suetonius in some hendecasyllabic verses, and jocularly expresses his danger of being called on to produce them by legal process (ne cogantur ad exhibendum formulam accipere). In a letter to Trajanus (10.95) Plinius commends to the emperor the integrity and learning of Suetonius, who had become his intimate friend, and he says that he liked him the better, the more he knew him : he requested the emperor to grant Suetonius the jus trium liberorum, for though Suetonius was married he had no children, or at least had not the number of three, which was necessary to relieve hint from various legal disabilities. The emperor granted the privilege to Suetonius.
Suetonius became Magister Epistolarum to Hadrianus, a situation which would give him the opportunity of seeing many important documents relating to the emperors. In a passage in the life of Augustus (100.7). Suetonius makes mention of his having given to the Princeps a bronze bust which represented Augustus when a boy. The critics generally assume that the Princeps was Hadrianus ; but it is immaterial whether it was Hadrianus or Trajanus, so far as concerns the biography of Suetonius. Hadrianus. who was apparently of a jealous disposition, deprived of their offices at the same time, Septicius Clarus, who was Praefectas Praetorio, Suetonius Tranquillus, and many others, on the ground of associating with Sabina the emperor's wife, without his permission, and apparently during the emperor's absence in Britain, on terms of more familiarity than was consistent with respect to the imperial household. (Spartian. Hadrian. 100.11). Works
Suetonius wrote many works, a list of which is given in Suidas (s. v. Τράγκυλλος), De Ludis Graecorum, lib. i.; De Spectaculis et Certaminibus Romanorum, libri ii.; De Anno Romano, lib. i. ; De Notis, on the notae or marks used in writing, which may have been a treatise on the Roman short hand; De Ciceronis Republica; De Nominibus propriis et de Generibus Vestium; De Vocibus mali ominis; De Roma ejusque Institutis et Moribus, libri ii.; Historiae Caesarum, libri Octo; Stemma illustrium Romanorum. He also wrote some other works of which fragments have been discovered : De Regibus, libri iii.; De Institutione Officiorum; De Rebus Variis; and others. There are still extant, and attributed to Suetonius, Vitae Duodecim Caesarum, or the twelve Imperators, of whom the first is C. Julius Caesar and the last is Domitian; Liber de illustribus Grammaticis; and Liber de claris Rhetoribus; neither of which is contained in the list of Suidas; Vita Terentii, Horatii, Persii, Lucani, Juvenalis, Plinii Majoris, which also are not included in the catalogue of Suidas. Lives of the Caesars
The chief work of Suetonius is his lives of the Caesars which, as it appears, were sometimes distributed in eight books, as they are in some manuscripts. The authorities which he followed for the several lives have beer diligently examined by Augustus Krause (De Suetonii Tranquilli Fontibus et Auctoritate, Berlin, 1841). Krause gives some reasons for supposing that Suetonius consulted the historical writings of Tacitus, and he argues, that as Tacitus did not write his annals before A. D. 117, in which year Hadrian succeeded Trajan, Suetonius did not write the lives of the Caesars before A. D. 120. This is not very satisfactory, though it must be admitted that there are many expressions in Suetonius, which closely resemble the expressions in Tacitus ; and Suetonius, a grammarian (grammaticus), was likely enough to copy particular phrases. Indeed Suetonius often quotes Senatusconsulta and other documentary evidence in the very words, which Tacitus as a general rule did not. These lives of Suetonius are not and do not affect to be historical : they are rather anecdotical. and in the nature of Mémoires pour servir. His authorities are the writings of the Roman emperors themselves and those of their freedmen, Epistolae. Orationes, Testaments, and other documents of that kind; public documents, as Senatusconsulta, Fasti, inscriptions, and the Acta of the Senate and the people; also the Greek and Roman writers on Roman history. He also learned much from conversation with those who were older than himself, and he would know something of Titus and Domitian at least, as he was a young man during their reign. Suetonius does not follow the chronological order in his Lives, but he groups together many things of the same kind, as he says himself (Augustus, 100.9). His language is very brief and precise, sometimes obscure, without any affectation of ornament. He certainly tells a prodigious number of scandalous anecdotes about the Caesars, but there was plenty to tell about them; and if he did not choose to suppress those anecdotes which he believed to be true, that is no imputation on his veracity. As a great collection of facts of all kinds, the work on the Caesars is invaluable for the historian of this period. His judgment and his honesty have both been attacked by some modern critics; but we are of the same opinion as Krause that on both grounds a careful study of his work will justify him. The friendship of the younger Plinius is evidence in favour of the integrity of Suetonius, and Vopiscus, no great authority, it is true, calls him a most accurate and impartial writer (Flav. Vopisc. Firmus, 100.1; compare the Life of Probus, 100.2). Those who attack the credit of Suetonius must conduct the assault with more ability and judgment than H. Heisen in his absurd essay, entitled " Dissertatio de Imperatoria majestate a primis Historiae Augustae conditoribus indignissime habita." (Symbol. Litt. Bremen. tom. i. iii.) De Grammaticis et Rhetoricis
The treatise De Illustribus Grammaticis and that De Claris Rhetoribus are probably only parts of a larger work, for Hieronymus says in a letter to Desiderius, " I have written a treatise on illustrious men from the time of the Apostles to our own age, imitating therein Tranquillus and the Greek Apollonius." (Casaubon's note on the title of the work De Illustribus Grammaticis.) These two treatises contain a few biographical and other notices, that are occasionally useful. De Poetis
It has been conjectured that the few scanty lives of the Latin poets, already enumerated, belonged to a larger work De Poetis. If this conjecture be true, the short notice of the elder Plinius may not be by Suetonius, and Casaubon will not allow it to be his. But the opinion as to the book De Poetis is merely a conjecture. De Viris Illustribus
A work entitled De Viris Illustribus, which has been attributed both to Suetonius and the younger Plinius, is now unanimously assigned to Aurelius Victor. περὶ βλασφημιῶν (About Slander, περὶ παιδιῶνAbout Games of Suetonius
Fragments of Greek works. Editions
The editions of Suetonius are very numerous. Before A. D. 1500, fifteen editions had appeared, a proof that the Lives of the Caesars were favourite reading. The oldest edition with a date is that of Rome, 1470, folio. The best of the early editions is that of I. Casaubon, Geneva, 1595, and Paris, 1610. A small edition by J. Schild, Leiden, 1647, contains a selection of useful notes. One of the most useful editions is that by P. Burmann, Amsterdam, 1736, 2 vols. 4to., with a selection of notes from the principal commentators, the fragments of Suetonius, inscriptions relating to the Caesars, tables of the coins of the Caesars, and a copious index. One of the latest editions is that of Baumgarten-Crusius, Leipzig, 1816, 3 vols. 8vo., which was again edited by C. B. Hase, Paris, 1828, 2 vols. 8vo. Translations
There is an English translation of the Twelve Caesars by the industrious translator, Philemon Holland, London, 1606, folio. Besides these there are four other English translations, the last of which is by A. Thomson, London, 1796, 8vo., " with annotations and a review of the government and literature of the different periods." There are translations in Italian, French, Spanish, Dutch, German, and Danish. Further Information
Bähr's Geschichte der Römischen Literatur contains the chief references for the literature of Suetonius. [G.L]