Brill’s New Pauly Supplements I - Volume 5 : The Reception of Classical Literature

A. Life and works Gaius Iulius Caesar, born a member of the noble gens Iulii on 13 July 100 BC, was a Roman politician, general and author. His leading role in the metamorphosis of the Roman Republic into the Principate gave rise even during antiquity to a personal cult that continues to fascinate not only politicians, generals, philologists and writers, but also the general public in equal measure. As a nephew of C. Marius and through his marriage (84 BC) to Cornelia, daughter of L. Cornelius Cinna, C. was associated with the populares faction. He was elected pontifex maximus in 63 BC with …

A. Life and work Callimachus of Cyrene (b. after 320 BC, d. after 245) lived most of his life at Alexandria, where he worked as poet and scholar at the Mouseion and Library founded by Ptolemy I. In addition to the main poetical works that survive intact or in part ( Hymns, Epigrams, Aetia, Iambi, Hecale), there are many fragments and titles of other works. Besides his prolific poetical works, C. also wrote scholarly prose treatises on subjects reflecting his interests (including paradoxography and onomastics), and he assembled the first bibliographic directory of literature ( Pínakes). Fo…

Priapea

A. Life and work Gaius Valerius Catullus was born in Verona between 82 and 87 BC, and died c. 50 BC at Rome (cf. Fig. 1). His surviving works consist of 116 individual poems, which were probably originally published in three scrolls. Catullus was probably quite young when he first came to Rome, perhaps to pursue a political career, but he seems to have turned to poetry soon. He subsequently joined a group of young poets whom modern scholars call ‘neoterics’, a term Cicero seems to have meant to be d…