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[German version] A. Types of letter In addition to the few texts on letter theory and letter writers ( Epistolography), the ancient genre of ‘letters’ comprises the following: 1. official letters (edicts) comparable to laws, 2. everyday official correspondence, 3. ‘open’ letters akin to oratory a) with one or several senders and multiple addressees (e.g. letters to the Christian community) or b) letters sent to a specific addressee that had a potentially broad public, and finally 4. letters of a priva…

Name of a plebeian gens (probably derived from Caeculus, older form is Caicilios, Greek Καικίλιος, Κεκίλιος [ Kaikílios, Kekílios]; ThlL, Onom. 12-14), whose existence is documented since the 5th cent. (since C. [I 1]), but who only gained importance in the 2nd cent.; their most famous branch were the C. Metelli (I 10-32). A later explanation related the name back to Caeculus, the legendary founder of Praeneste, or Caecas, a companion of Aeneas (Fest. p. 38). I. Republican period [German version] [I 1] C., Q. Supposedly people's tribune in 439 BC Supposedly people's tribune in 439 BC …

Roman cognomen (‘wide-browed’), first attested in the Imperial period. Elvers, Karl-Ludwig (Bochum) [German version] [1] Rich patron of Martial A rich patron of Martial (1,55,2). He could be identical with Ti. Catius Caesius F., cos. suff. in AD 96. Eck, Werner (Cologne) [German version] [2] Praetorian governor of Galatia under Tiberius Praetorian governor of Galatia under Tiberius, perhaps AD 27-31. Eck, Werner (Cologne) Bibliography S. Mitchell, in: Chiron 16, 1986, 23ff. PIR2 F 485). [German version] [3] [...]us F. Cos. suff. AD 165 Cos. suff. in AD 165, (Vidman, FO2 52; there a…

Roman nomen gentile of Etruscan origin ( pumple). King Numa Pompilius was considered as the first ancestor of the family. The known bearers of the name are historically insignificant. Elvers, Karl-Ludwig (Bochum) [German version] [1] P. Andronicus, M. Grammarian, 1st cent. BC According to Suet. Gram. 8, a 1st century BC grammarian and freedman from Syria; because of his Epicurean philosophical focus, he failed to establish himself in Rome and so moved to Cumae (Cyme [2]). His main work, a criticism of the Annales of Ennius [1] ( Annalium Enni Elenchi in 16 books), was published by …

Oscan praenomen, shortened to No., attested for N. Calavius [2], the maker of the Ficoronian cista Novios Plautios (ILS 8562), and in other inscriptions. Probably a particularly frequent gentilicium from the 3rd cent. BC onwards in Campania and spreading from there into the eastern Mediterranean. Elvers, Karl-Ludwig (Bochum) I. Republican Period [German version] [I 1] Representative of the literary Atellana, early 1st cent. BC As a representative of the literary atellana, N. appears to have been at work ahead of Pomponius (leading representative of the genr…

[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 …

[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 …

[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…

(Ἐκλογή; eklogḗ, ‘excerpt’, ‘selection’). [German version] Ecloga [1] Varro (in Charisius, gramm. p. 154 B.) uses the foreign term in its literal meaning (‘selection’). It is unclear how the meaning has developed into the usage we encounter from the end of the 1st cent. AD on: Ecloga may refer to individual lyrical poems (Stat. Silv. 3, pr. 23 = 3,5; 4, pr. 21 = 4,8, later in a similar way Auson. 8 Peiper) and in the plural form Eclogae to the entire collection (Plin. Ep. 4,14,9). The term is used in particular for  Horatius (Suet. Vita: Epist. 2,1; Sid. Apoll. Epist. 9,1…

[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…

[German version] I. Life and Work a) A philologist and polymath of the Augustan era from Spain or Alexandria; a freedman of Augustus who served as the prefect of the Palatine library after 28 BC while simultaneously engaging in extensive teaching activities (for biography, cf. Suet. Gram. 20). Nevertheless, he had to be supported his whole life by Clodius [II 6] Licinus and died in poverty. Ov. Tr. 3,14 is addressed to him. His substantial œuvre includes works of philology (comm. to the Propempticon Pollionis of  Helvius [I 3] Cinna; discussion of selected passages of  Vergili…

[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 …

[German version] [1] Roman orator, Augustan period One of the leading orators of the Augustan period (Sen. Controv. 2,5,17), died in 9 BC (Jer. Chron. p. 167 H.), a friend of the Elder Seneca (Sen. Controv. 3, pref. 10). Nothing survives of his speeches, but Seneca quotes highlights from his declamations, whose aridity apparently detracted from their success (Sen. Controv. 3, pref. 10f.; 10, pref. 11). Schmidt, Peter L. (Constance) Bibliography J. Fairweather, Seneca the Elder, 1981 (Index 400). [German version] [2] L. P. Rufus Son of the orator P. [1]. He entered the Senate as a homo nov…

[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…

I. Republican period [German version] [I 1] Poet and critic of Virgil, Augustean period Supposedly a poet (Porph. in Hor. Sat. 2,3,239) of the Augustean period, brother of Bavius, with whom he allegedly quarreled over a woman (Domitius Marsus fr. 1 M.). M was a critic of Virgil (Serv. Georg. 1,210), which made the poets of the circle around Maecenas count him among their opponents (Verg. Ecl. 3,90; Hor. Epod. 10; Domitius Marsus fr. 5 M.). Some notes may have been obtained from Suet. De poetis via the life of Domitius [III 2] Marsus. The possibility of guild banter can not be excluded. Schmidt, P…

[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. …

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 (…

[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…

[German version] [1] Writer of the Justinian period (6th cent. AD) Writer of the Justinian period (6th cent. AD), a German, probably of Gothic descent, grandson of Paria (secretary to the Prince of the Alani Candac), son of Alanoviamuth. Probably born in the late 5th cent. AD, I. also served as secretary to Cantac's nephew Gunthigis (Iord. Get. 265). Following his conversio (from Arianism to Orthodoxy?, from a secular to a clerical position?), in Constantinople in 551 (Iord. Rom. 4. 363; cf. Iord. Get. 104) he was asked by a friend named Vigilius (unlik…

[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…