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Public recital

(1,354 words)

Author(s): Schmidt, Peter L. (Constance)
[German version] I. Origins and development The PR of literature (Latin recitatio), especially of poetry, represented one of the most important media of transient oral literature in the Roman Imperial Period, contributing enormously to a colourful cultural life. PR existed alongside, and in competition with, declamation (Rhetoric, Declamationes) and theatre (Tragedy, Comedy), of which the texts, not always published and sometimes fluid (improvised e.g. in the artful speeches and the dialogues of the mime), attained in performance the type of publication typ…

Praetexta

(372 words)

Author(s): Schmidt, Peter L. (Constance)
[German version] Ancient term (particularly Diom. 3, GL 1,489,14 ff.; on the pattern of the termini cf. [2]) designating the historical drama of the Romans in the Republican Period. Like the historical epic, the genre was introduced in Rome by Naevius [I 1]. A more rarely realized type - cf. Naevius' Lupus (vel Romulus?) - portrayed exemplary figures of early Roman history, while most of the pieces (Naevius' Clastidium, Ennius' Ambracia, Pacuvius' Paulus) were intended to honour patrons posthumously by praising their victories, i.e. they were probably performed at their ludi funebre…

Favorinus

(523 words)

Author(s): Schmidt, Peter L. (Constance)
[German version] Rhetorician with philosophical interests, author of  Buntschriftstellerei, a representative of the  Second Sophistic, born about AD 80-90 in Arelate. His life is recounted in Philostr. VS 1,8 and the Suda (also s.Gell. NA 16,3,1 et passim). He was described as a hermaphrodite (Philostr.: ἀνδρόθηλυς, εὐνοῦχος; andróthēlys, eunoûchos; Polemon in Förster Scriptores physiognomonici 1,160,10: sine testiculis natus, cf. [6]). He was trained in Massalia, heard Dio Chrysostom speak in Rome (?) and became an acclaimed speaker. In Ephesus he wa…

Differentiarum scriptores

(270 words)

Author(s): Schmidt, Peter L. (Constance)
[German version] In antiquity the interest in identifying more closely the specific meaning ( proprietas ac differentia; Quint. Inst. 1 pr. 16) of synonyms that are related in their root or different in form but semantically very close ( polliceri/promittere, nullus/nemo, intus/intro, [1. 47]) extends back to Greek philosophy of language (Plato and the Sophists, the Stoa, later Cicero, Nigidius Figulus). In Rome it finds its place in oratory (Cato), rhetoric (Quint. Inst. 9,3,45ff.), jurisprudence and especially among the grammarians …

Iuvencus, C. Vettius Aquilinus

(264 words)

Author(s): Schmidt, Peter L. (Constance)
[German version] Spanish presbyter of aristocratic origin whose Latin epic Evangeliorum libri was written under Constantinus [1] probably after 325 (cf. the epilogue 4,802-812 and Jer. Chron. 232 H. re AD 329; Vir. ill. 84,2; Epist. 70,5); a second, likewise hexametric work regarding the Ordo sacramentorum (Jer. Vir. ill. 84,1) is lost. - The biblical epic to the New Testament, framed by a prologue and an epilogue, describes the story of Christ's life in 4 bks. of Virgilian scope (i.e. an average of about 800 vv.) in the style of a Gospel …

Quintipor Clodius

(43 words)

Author(s): Schmidt, Peter L. (Constance)
[German version] Author of palliata from the late Republican era, known only from the polemics of Varro (in Non. p. 168,719 L.). Schmidt, Peter L. (Constance) Bibliography Lit.: M. Brožek, De Quintipore Clodio meliori famae restituendo, in: Eos 56, 1966, 115-118.

Gorgoneion

(371 words)

Author(s): Schmidt, Peter L. (Constance)
[German version] According to the myth, the G. is the head of the  Gorgo [1] Medusa killed by Perseus which could still turn people into stone after Medusa's death. Perseus finally handed it to Athena, who attached it to her   aegis . The significance of the G. as an object of representation, however, far exceeds the myth of Perseus and has complex older foundations. It belongs to the group of grotesque masks whose polyvalent functions go far beyond those of causing terror and deterring evil. Even though there are cer…

Porphyrio, Pomponius

(258 words)

Author(s): Schmidt, Peter L. (Constance)
[German version] Early 3rd-cent. author of a commentary on Horace for use in schools (in the form of marginal glosses), perhaps from Africa (before Iulius [IV 19] Romanus, cf. Charisius p. 285,10 ff. Barwick); a short biography precedes the text. The function of the work forced P. to dispense with textual variants; the source citations may have been mediated by Helenius Acron's scholarly commentary. P. himself was not very interested in archaisms; instead he emphasized the contemporary distance fr…

Iuvenalis, D. Iunius

(929 words)

Author(s): Schmidt, Peter L. (Constance)
[German version] Juvenal, the last outstanding satirical poet of Rome, probably from Campanian Aquinum (cf. Juv. Sat. 3,318ff. and ILS 2926 = CIL 10,5382), contemporary of Tacitus; from Sat. 13,16f. and 15,27f., [1] deduces that he was born in AD 67. The silence of his poems concerning autobiographical detail - in contrast to  Horatius - and the fictitious nature of the vitae (no. 1 Jahn), which were not compiled until late antiquity, make any reconstruction of the details of his life circumstances impossible. The statement that I. was active as a reciter…

Excerpta Valesiana

(140 words)

Author(s): Schmidt, Peter L. (Constance)
[German version] Two different historiographic texts dating from late antiquity, which H. Valesius first edited in 1636 from what is today called the Cod. Berol. Phill. 1885 (9th cent.). The first excerpt (a), entitled Origo Constantini imperatoris, comes from a collection of biographies of emperors (mid 4th cent.) and outlines the life of emperor Constantine [1] I from the year 305. The second (b), an excerpt ex libris chronicorum (6th cent.), covers the era from 474 to 526, in particular the rule of Theoderic; the tradition of the text is contributed to by t…

Declamationes

(311 words)

Author(s): Schmidt, Peter L. (Constance)
[German version] Practice speeches, representing the ultimate stage of education in rhetoric. They treated (mostly fictitious) model cases (Suet. Gram. 25,9) with the aim of preparing pupils for the pugna forensis (Quint. Inst. 5,12,17), and were practised in schools of rhetoric modelled after the Greek pattern; the name is of later date (Cic. Tusc. 1,7; Sen. Controv. 1, pr. 12). Despite criticisms of excesses, Quintilian gives a more positive assessment of their pedagogical utility than, say, Messalla (Tac. Dial. 35), who t…

Ianuarius Nepotianus

(134 words)

Author(s): Schmidt, Peter L. (Constance)
[German version] Revisor of the collection of exempla by  Valerius Maximus for rhetoric instruction, probably from the 4th cent. AD (based on linguistic arguments [1]). While the original organization was maintained, there were stylistic revisions and additions - partially from Cicero (cf. 7,3; 9,24 etc.). A more complete copy of the excerpt, which has survived in the Codex unicus ( Vaticanus Latinus 1321, s. XIV) only up to Val. Max. 3,2,7, was used still by Landolfus Sagax ( c.1000). Schmidt, Peter L. (Constance) Bibliography 1 F. Buecheler, Kleine Schriften 3, 1930, 331-335 (11906…

Lector

(191 words)

Author(s): Schmidt, Peter L. (Constance)
[German version] (‘reader’). Especially the letters of Pliny the Younger illustrate the custom of culturally enriching the mealtimes with - next to comoedi and lyristae (Plin. Ep. 1,15,2; 9,17,3; 36,4) - lectores (Nep. Att. 14,1; Gell. NA 3,19,1: servus assistens mensae eius - sc. Favorini - legere inceptabat ‘a slave, who stood by his - Favorinus' - table, began to read’), and its exceptional use as preparation for excerption, as in the case of Pliny the Older in Plin. Ep. 3,5,11f. ( super hanc - sc. cenam - liber legebatur, adnotabatur ‘a book was read at the table, Pliny took note…

Culex

(245 words)

Author(s): Schmidt, Peter L. (Constance)
[German version] ‘The Mosquito’, Lat. short epic poem ( Epic), dedicated to Octavian as a Virgilian pseudepigraphon (v.1) and received as an early work by Virgil since Lucan [1. 157ff.; 6] Suetonius' Life of Virgil; it is, however, more likely to come from the Tiberian period [1. 57ff.; 7]: a mosquito stings a sleeping shepherd and thus saves him from a snake but is killed by him; it recounts the tale to him in a dream from the underworld and receives a proper burial in appreciation. Bucolic setting and epic p…

Lavinius

(30 words)

Author(s): Schmidt, Peter L. (Constance)
[German version] Roman grammarian, probably of the 2nd cent. AD, whose De verbis sordidis (‘On Vulgar Expressions’) is cited appreciatively by Gell. NA 20,11. Schmidt, Peter L. (Constance)

Phlegon

(445 words)

Author(s): Schmidt, Peter L. (Constance)
[German version] (Φλέγων; Phlégōn). P. Aelius, of Tralleis [2] in Asia Minor, a writer of miscellanies. A freedman of the emperor Hadrianus [II], P. belonged to the latter's court and possibly administered his itinerare [II.] (cf. [7]); d. after AD 137, the terminus post quem of work (6), below. According to the list in the Suda (FGrH 257 T 1) P.’s œuvre included i.a. topographical-heortological writings: (1) Perì Olympioníkōn/'On Olympic Victors' (2 bks.); (2) Ékphrasis Sikelías/'Description of Sicily' (3 bks.); (3) 'On Roman Festivals' (3 bks.) and a topography of Ro…

Saloninus

(73 words)

Author(s): Schmidt, Peter L. (Constance)
[German version] [1] Died after AD 90, known from a funerary epigram by Martialis [1] Known from a funerary epigram by Martialis [1] (6,18), who calls him a friend of his friend Terentius Priscus; therefore, the death of S. must have occurred around AD 90, the date of origin of the 6th book of epigrams by Martialis. Schmidt, Peter L. (Constance) [German version] [2] see Licinius [II 6] see Licinius [II 6]

Liber glossarum

(354 words)

Author(s): Schmidt, Peter L. (Constance)
[German version] Modern term for an alphabetical Latin encyclopaedia from the late 8th cent. covering Linguistic notes to explanations of terms, the most comprehensive and most important educational aid of the Carolingian epoch; prototypes are the MSS Parisinus Lat. 11529/30 and Cambrai 693 (both late 8th cent.; cf. [4]). Concerning the origin of the glossary ( Glossography) in the surroundings of Corby, in Tours, and in the Carolingian court library, and concerning Alcuin as terminus post quem, …

Largus

(58 words)

Author(s): Schmidt, Peter L. (Constance)
[German version] Epic poet of the Augustan period, mentioned by Ov. Pont. 4,16,17f. who praises him: as a counterpart of the Aeneis, his epic dealt with the settlement of the Trojan Antenor [1] in northern Italy. The identification with Valerius Largus, the prosecutor of the elegist Gallus, cannot be attested. Schmidt, Peter L. (Constance) Bibliography Bardon, 2,66f.

Caesellius Vindex

(143 words)

Author(s): Schmidt, Peter L. (Constance)
[German version] Probably somewhat older than  Terentius Scaurus and  Sulpicius Apollinaris; with his alphabetical lexicalization of linguistic-antiquarian material under linguistic aspects, he produced a work, which in his archaizing tendency was characteristic of the Hadrianic era ( Stromateis sive Commentaria lectionum antiquarum, probably 20 bks.). The material was taken from republican authors up to Virgil and was likely substantially based on  Probus. As famous as it was disputed, it also exposed -- according to Gell. NA 2,16,5ff…

Nigidius Figulus, P.

(631 words)

Author(s): Schmidt, Peter L. (Constance)
[German version] A. Life Roman naturalist and grammarian of the Late Republic. Remarks by his friend and contemporary Cicero and references in a biography of Suetonius ([9]; testimonials in [1. 158-161; 5. 9-36]) illuminate the last 20 years of his life in particular. Born around 100 BC from a plebeian family, he is first encountered in 63 as a senator and supporter of Cicero's against the Catilinarians (Catilina; Cic. Sull. 41f.; Fam. 4,13,2); praetor in 58 (Cic. Ad Q. Fr. 1,2,16). In July 51 he me…

Murredius

(57 words)

Author(s): Schmidt, Peter L. (Constance)
[German version] Roman rhetor of the Augustan-Tiberian period. His contemporary, Seneca the Elder, characterizes him whenever the opportunity arises with negative epithets: obscenitas, ‘vulgarity’ (Sen. Contr. 1,2,21); stultitia, ‘stupidity’ (1,4,12); ‘fatuity’ (7,5,10); ‘buffoonery’ (7,2,14); ‘empty magniloquence’ (9,2,27); insania, ‘madness’ (Sen. Suas. 2,16). Schmidt, Peter L. (Constance) Bibliography J. Fairweather, Seneca the Elder, 1981, passim (Index 399).

Querolus sive Aulularia

(284 words)

Author(s): Schmidt, Peter L. (Constance)
[German version] Latin comedy by an author of the early 5th cent. AD who came from Gaul, if the addressee Rutilius is identical with Rutilius Namatianus, which is also in keeping with the latent anti-Christian tendency of the play. Intended for recitation at a banquet, the Querolus , which is written in rhythmic prose, implies an understanding of Plautus and Terentius as prose authors. The Plautine comedy Aulularia, to which the prologue alludes, is the basis of the Querolus down to the same characters and names. The episode of the hidden treasure, however, is modelled qu…

Fabullus

(151 words)

Author(s): Schmidt, Peter L. (Constance)
[German version] Friend of  Catullus, recipient of the poem of invitation of Catull. 13, mostly mentioned together with Veranius: from Hispania Citerior they send Catullus a serviette (Catull. 12,14ff., cf. Catull. 9); about the time of his journey to Bithynia (57/6 BC) they are part of the cohors of a governor Piso (probably L. Calpurnius [I 19] Piso Caesoninus) and are disappointed, just as Catullus, in their financial expectations (Catull. 28 and 47). So this probably concerns two different jou…

Marcomannus

(141 words)

Author(s): Schmidt, Peter L. (Constance)
[German version] Author of a commentary - based, among others, on Hermagoras [1] (of Temnus) - on Cicero's rhetorical works, from which Marius [II 21] Victorinus quotes, in part polemically [1. 173, l. 25ff.; 299, l.13ff.]. It is also used in the rhetoric of Consultus Fortunatianus [1. p. 98,26f.] and Sulpicius Victor [1. p. 339,2ff.; 340,14-341,28], as well as (according to title and subscription) of Iulius [IV 24] Victor, works which in part still belong to the 4th cent. Since Victorinus seems t…

Gargonius

(76 words)

Author(s): Schmidt, Peter L. (Constance)
[German version] Rhetoric teacher of the Augustan period, student of Buteo [1. 156f.], then his successor, who is perhaps identical with the example of lacking hygiene cited in Hor. Sat. 1,2,27 (= 1,4,92). His voice was rough and aggressive (Sen. Controv. 1,7,18). The older Seneca always connects the quotes form G. that illustrate his Colores with harsh reproach ( stultitia contr. 10,5,25; cacozelia 9,1,15, insaniens Suas. 2,16). Schmidt, Peter L. (Constance) Bibliography 1 H. Bornecque, Les Déclamations, 1902, 168.

Phocas (Focas)

(324 words)

Author(s): Schmidt, Peter L. (Constance)
[German version] Roman grammarian probably of the early 5th cent. AD. His Ars de nomine et verbo (Regula) represents the type of rule-based grammar that came increasingly into use in the later 4th cent., and that makes the learning of correct Latin easier by means of numerous paradigms of declensions and conjugations. The text grew out of language teaching experience; the author intends to replace the grammars of his predecessors that were in part too short and in part too detailed (the greater danger) with a b…

Arusianus Messius

(108 words)

Author(s): Schmidt, Peter L. (Constance)
[German version] Teacher of rhetoric in late antiquity, author of an alphabetical phraseology of model idiomatic expressions published in 395 ( Exempla elocutionum). The excerpts from  Vergilius and  Sallustius,  Terentius and  Cicero form a quartet -- as a classicist stretto of the canon -- which from time to time in late antiquity was considered to be the quintessence of pagan culture ( quadriga Messii). There is evidence of only two Carolingian codices; a Bobiensis text discovered in 1493 and copied by G. Galbiati (today in Naples IV.A.11) was preserved. Schmidt, Peter L. (Const…

Neoteric poets

(295 words)

Author(s): Schmidt, Peter L. (Constance)
[German version] Modern term (from νεώτεροι/neṓteroi /‘the youngsters’ or poetae novi/ ‘new poets’ found in Cicero) for the poets’ community around the grammarian P. Valerius Cato (too sceptical: [6]), with Catullus [1], Licinius [I 31] Calvus, Helvius [I 3] Cinna, Furius [I 9] Bibaculus and Ticidas as its most prominent members ( c. mid-1st cent. BC). Their poetry focuses on mythological epyllia ( Epyllion) and collections of short poems dealing prevalently with personal and social relationships (friendship, love, political polemics). Traditio…

Saleius Bassus

(56 words)

Author(s): Schmidt, Peter L. (Constance)
[German version] Renowned Latin epic poet (Quint. Inst. 10,1,90) of the late 1st cent. AD (Tac. Dial. 9,2-5; 10,2; Juv. 7,80 f.), friend of Iulius [IV 21] Secundus ( ibid. 5,2 f.). Works do not survive; the attribution of the Laus Pisonis to him is not justified. Schmidt, Peter L. (Constance) Bibliography Schanz/Hosius, vol. 2, 545.

Pollius Felix

(158 words)

Author(s): Schmidt, Peter L. (Constance)
[German version] From Puteoli (modern Pozzuoli), magistrate and patron of Puteoli and Neapolis [2], landowner in Tibur (modern Tivoli), Puteoli (cf. ILS 5798) and Tarentum (Taras). His wife was called Polla; their daughter was the wife of Iulius Menecrates; he is congratulated on the birth of his third grandchild by Statius (Silv. 4,8; for a son of P. cf. Stat. Silv. 4,8,12). P., himself a poet, was en Campanie, le protecteur attitré ([1. 3235]) of the poet Statius, who described his villa at Surrentum (Silv. 2,2) and a statue of Hercules dedicated on its shores (S…

Kaisergeschichte

(239 words)

Author(s): Schmidt, Peter L. (Constance)
[German version] A portrayal of the Roman Imperial period in short biographies, to be dated between AD 337 and 361, the date of the first user (Aurelius Victor), and extending to the death of Constantinus. The establishment of its date by A. Enmann [1], who explains the relationship (linguistic and structural properties, factual errors) of Victor, Eutropius, the Historia Augusta and the Epitome de Caesaribus (Aurelius Victor) has, in contrast to the Epitome of Livy, withstood the test of time. The literary standard appears to have been higher than that of t…

Opillus, D. (?) Aurelius

(188 words)

Author(s): Schmidt, Peter L. (Constance)
[German version] Scholar from the Republican period, Italic, freedman of an Epicurean and hence a teacher of philosophy at first, and later of rhetoric and grammar. In 92/91 BC he followed the exile Rutilius Rufus to Smyrna where he lived to a ripe old age; for his life as a whole, see Suet. Gram. 6 (cf. in this respect [5]), who calls him an antiquarian Buntschriftsteller. Of his works ( Musae/'Muses'; Pinax/'Tablet'), only grammatical fragments (explanations of words, etymologies) have attained a position in the glossographic tradition via the filter of Varro. O.…

Marullus

(237 words)

Author(s): Schmidt, Peter L. (Constance)
[German version] [1] Roman teacher of rhetoric from Cordoba, 1st cent. BC 1st-century BC Roman teacher of rhetoric from Cordoba, teacher of Seneca the Elder (Sen. Controv. 1, praef. 22-24) and his friend M. Porcius Latro (ibid., praef. 24; 2,2,7; 7,2,11). His method of instruction consisted of isolated practice in individual areas of inventio and elocutio (see ibid. praef. 23; partes orationis ). While Latro esteemed M.'s sententiae (ibid. 1,2,17), Seneca, citing a range of sententiae and colores, characterises him as a ‘dry fellow, who offers little that is attractive b…

Dirae

(220 words)

Author(s): Schmidt, Peter L. (Constance)
[German version] Bucolic poem of the early Imperial period, in which the poet puts a curse on his expropriated land. The link with Verg. Ecl. 1 and 9 resulted even before the Vergil biographies of Donatus (based on Suetonius) (§ 17) to its attribution to  Vergilius (but cf.[3]). Maintaining the topic, v. 104 begins a new poem without a topical break (cf. v. 41. 89. 95 with 107), known as Lydia, but without ancient evidence regarding that title, probably written by the same author (cf. [5]). It is an elegiac lament of a lover separated from his Lydia. Both piece…

Laus Pisonis

(168 words)

Author(s): Schmidt, Peter L. (Constance)
[German version] Panegyricus ( Panegyrics) by an unknown author probably around AD 39/40 [3], to C. Calpurnius [II 13] Piso (Caesoninus) who then in 65 became a figurehead in the conspiracy against the emperor Nero. Therefore an attribution to Calpurnius [III 3] Siculus (last [2. 71-76]) or Lucanus (most recently [1. 139ff.]) cannot be taken into consideration. In 261 carefully constructed hexameters the author engagingly expresses his intention to be received into the circle of the addressee. …

Ravenna Annals

(297 words)

Author(s): Schmidt, Peter L. (Constance)
[German version] ( Chronica Italica in [1], better Chronicon Constantinopolitanum (cf. [7; 8. 41-43]). Originally simply an informative chronicle in Latin, based on the calendar structure of the Consularia Constantinopolitana [1. 197-245], written or expanded in Constantinople in the 4th century AD for a ruling class, eager for knowledge, on the periphery of the court  (for the images contained cf. [2; 3; 4]). An early phase extending as far as AD 387 is transmitted in the Fasti Vindobonenses posteriores (Cod. Vindobonensis no. 3416, 15th century) and Fasti Vindobonenses priores

Rhetorica ad Herennium

(224 words)

Author(s): Schmidt, Peter L. (Constance)
[German version] Latin textbook of rhetoric from the late Republican Period (dating to c. 50 BC compellingly argued in [5. 65 ff.]). It deals in 4 books with the canon of the officia oratoris ( officium [7]). Its source was a Latin textbook also used by Cicero for his De inventione ([4; 6];  [7. 271 ff.] newly adopted the old idea that Cicero used the Rhetorica ad Herennium). Attributed to Cicero from Late Antiquity on, the work is today - although with insufficient proof - often attributed to an author by the name of Cornificius named by Quint. Inst. 3,1,21 …

Asmonius

(185 words)

Author(s): Schmidt, Peter L. (Constance)
[German version] ( Apthonius the communis opinio, but see Prisc. gramm. 3,420,1-7 and GL 6,80,30-81,3; [3. 62-68]). Aelius Festus Asmonius, Latin grammarian of the 4th cent. AD; author of a lost grammar dedicated to Constantius II (Prisc. gramm. 2,516,15-16) and of a comprehensive metrics in 4 books, which was already mutilated at the start as early as late antiquity and was combined with the beginning of the grammar of  Marius Victorinus (but cf. GL 6,173,32); furthermore A. may be the author of supp…

Priscianus

(740 words)

Author(s): Schmidt, Peter L. (Constance)
[German version] The last important Latin grammarian, b. in Mauretanian Caesarea [1], pupil of Theoctistus, worked as professor of grammar at Constantinople into the first decades of the 6th cent. AD. On his circle, cf. [5]-[8]. His main work, the (1) Institutio de arte grammatica ('Textbook of Grammar'), consists (after an introductory epistle) of 18 books (1-7: De nomine; 8-10: De verbo; 11: De participio; 12-13 De pronomine; 14: De praepositione; 15: De adverbio et interiectione; 16: De coniunctione; 17-18: De constructione = 'syntax') and seems to have been written in se…

Dicta Catonis

(378 words)

Author(s): Schmidt, Peter L. (Constance)
[German version] Versified handbook of popular ethics from the 3rd cent. (cf. Carm. epigr. 1988, 51; [1. LXXIII]); widely known by the end of the 4th cent. at the latest. The text, of which the Dutch philologist M. Boas made a lifelong study [1. LXXXff.], exists in version Y (or V) with 306 vv. and in a more extensive version F, with 331 vv. but altered by interpolations and recasting, aside from the Barberini recension [1. XXXVIff.]. The title of Y runs Marci Catonis ad filium libri, where F (Codex Verona cap. 163) has Dicta M. Catonis ad filium suum [1. LXVff.; 2. 30ff.], since Erasmus …

Helenius Acron

(176 words)

Author(s): Schmidt, Peter L. (Constance)
[German version] Roman grammarian, especially commentator. His partial commentary on Terence ( Adelphoe and Eunuchus) is taken into account in grammatical tradition; traces of his more famous commentary on Horace ([3. 1,3] puts him above Porphyry and Modestus) are to be found in the various reviews of the scholia, in particular in  Porphyry. As Gellius appears not to know H., yet H. is used by Porphyry (on Hor. Sat. 1,8,25) and Iulius Romanus (Charisius, Gramm. p. 250,11ff. Barwick) dating to the later 2nd ce…

Ciris

(245 words)

Author(s): Schmidt, Peter L. (Constance)
[German version] Latin epic in 541 hexameters about  Scylla betraying her native city Megara to the Cretan king Minos and being transformed into a bird. The plot assumes knowledge of the mythical tradition and neglects narrative continuity and logic for the sake of individual scenes and profiling the heroine's emotions. This is characteristic of the epyllium in the elegiac tradition. Contrary to an ascription from late antiquity, Virgil (cf. Donat. Vita Verg. 17) has been ruled out as the author. …

Pacuvius

(912 words)

Author(s): Schmidt, Peter L. (Constance)
Roman writer of tragedies in the Republican period, of Oscan-Messapian origin, nephew of Ennius (Plin. HN 35,19). [German version] A. Biography Born in 220 BC (cf. Cic. Brut. 229) in Brundisium (Jer. Chron. p. 142 H.), died shortly before 130 BC in Tarentum. Apart from this chronology, which comes from Accius' Didascalica and Varro’s De poetis [18. 48f., 53, 62] and has been preserved in works from Sueton’s De poetis [17. 36] to Jerome, there are traces of another tradition, which was perhaps shaped by Cornelius Nepos’ [2] Chronica. [2. 8, 5], which P.took up a generation later (…

Obsequens, Iulius

(381 words)

Author(s): Schmidt, Peter L. (Constance)
[German version] Author of a liber prodigiorum, which for the years 190-11 BC, i.e. at the end of Livy's [III 2] Roman history, arranges accounts of portents ( Prodigium ) of salient historical events by and alongside their dates. The title of the edition princeps of the work [4] shows that it was begun in 249 BC (for the significance of the starting date cf. [5. 76f.; 10. 158ff.], and that therefore the portents for 249-191 have been lost. O. evidently relates Rome's success to its observance of divine signs, whose expiation averts thre…

Aemilius Asper

(169 words)

Author(s): Schmidt, Peter L. (Constance)
[German version] The grammarian A., most likely from the late 2nd cent. AD, sums up the tension between archaistic and classical tendencies of the school canon in the 2nd cent. with his explanations of  Terentius,  Vergilius and  Sallustius. In his exegesis, the interest in historical-linguistic detailed phenomena takes second place to textual criticism, stylistics and the comparison with Greek classics. In late antiquity, he together with  Probus and  Terentius Scaurus constitutes a triad of gram…

Pervigilium Veneris

(315 words)

Author(s): Schmidt, Peter L. (Constance)
[German version] Anonymous Latin poem in 93 trochaic tetrameters, purporting to be a processional song sung on the eve of a Venus festival in Hybla, Sicily. A refrain appearing at the beginning and end of the poem and at irregular intervals within it isolates a series of short sections, which add up to three major parts: 1. praise of spring and announcement of the festival (vv. 2-26); 2. vizualisation of the festival, place of the action (28-56); 3. praise of the power of Venus (59-79); the final part (81-92) culminates in a melancholy reflection by the poet. The poem, which raises a numbe…

Carmina triumphalia

(181 words)

Author(s): Schmidt, Peter L. (Constance)
[German version] Song of the soldiers, whose parade concluded a triumphal procession. There is evidence to show that in the carmina triumphalia, the triumphant general received both praise (Liv. 4,20,2) and mockery. The reported antiphony may particularly refer to the latter (Liv. 4,53,11). Obscene ridicule and satire in this context were generally compared with the satirical poetry at weddings (Fescennine verses); they were seen as apotropaic, or rather seen as a further admonishment along with the hominem te esse memento of the bearer of the corona triumphalis. The evidence is …

Excerpta Barbari

(198 words)

Author(s): Schmidt, Peter L. (Constance)
[German version] A medieval Latin MS. (Parisinus Latinus 4884) contains the translation ( c. AD 700) of the Alexandrian version of a Christian world chronicle, which, because of its Vulgar Latin language, has been known as the ‘E.B.’ since J. J. Scaliger; it is based on a Greek version from the 5th cent. AD. The extant text, which ends in 387, is divided into three sections: a world chronicle from Adam to Cleopatra (p. 184-280 Frick); a list of rulers from the Assyrians to the Roman emperors (until Anastasiu…

Collegium

(1,076 words)

Author(s): Herz, Peter (Regensburg) | Schmidt, Peter L. (Constance)
[German version] [1] Society A collegium is a group of people coming together for religious, professional and social reasons. The legal basis for the collegia is set out in the Law of Twelve Tables (8,27 = Gaius Dig. 47,22,4): his (sodalibus) potestatem facit lex, pactionem quam velint sibi ferre, dum ne quid ex publica lege corrumpant; sed haec lex videtur ex lege Solonis translata esse. In terms of their internal organization, the collegium followed the model of the civic municipalities with magistrates, a council and plebs. The financial assets of the collegium included the income …
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