I! \0 LARENDON ANCIENT HISTORY SERIES C O R N E L I US • N E P OS • A S E L E C T I O N, INCLUDING T HE LIVES OF CATO AND ATTICUS T R A N S L A T ED WITH I N T R O D U C T I O NS AND C O M M E N T A RY BY N I C H O L AS H O R S F A LL CLARENDON ANCIENT HISTORY SERIES General Editors Brian Bosworth Miriam Griffin David Whitehead The aim of the CLARENDON ANCIENT HISTORY SERIES is to provide authoritative translations, introduc tions, and commentaries to a wide range of Greek and Latin texts studied by ancient historians. The books will be of interest to scholars, graduate students, and advanced undergraduates. C O R N E L I US NEPOS A selection, including the lives of CATOand ATTIGUS Translated with Introductions and Commentary by Nicholas Horsfall C L A R E N D ON PRESS • O X F O RD 1989 Oxford University Press, Walton Street, Oxford 0x2 6nr Oxford New York Toronto Delhi Bombay Calcutta Madras Karachi Petaling Jqya Singapore Hong Kong Tokyo Nairobi Dar es Salaam Cape Town Melbourne Auckland and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Oxford is a trade mark of Oxford University Press Published in the United States by Oxford University Press, New York © Nicholas Horsfall 1989 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Nepos, Cornelius Cornelius Nepos: A selection, including the lives of Cato and Alliens.—(Clarendon ancient history series) I. Title II. Horsfall, Nicholas 878'.0108 ISBN 0-19-814903-4 ISBN 0-19-814915-8 (pbk) Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available ISBN 0-19-814903-4 ISBN 0-19-814915-8 (pbk) Typsel by Hope Services, Abingdon, Oxon Printed in Great Britain by Biddies Ltd, Guildford and King's Lynn PREFACE This collection includes Nepos' two Roman lives, the tiny Cato and the Atticus, with a collection of selected fragments of Cato, of Atticus, and of Nepos himself, which have never been gathered together and discussed in English. In addition, I translate and- discuss Nepos' preface to his Lives of the Foreign Generals, central to our view of his cultural position and to his outlook as a biographer, and the 'Letter of Cornelia', transmitted with the works of Nepos, and engrossing in its own right. Elizabeth Rawson, in her book Intellectual Life in the Late Roman Republic, has done a very great deal to illuminate the byways of Roman history, biography, and antiquarian writing in the late republic, and a close look at some of the central texts may now be timely. It is possibly a consequence of a long-held conviction that 'Nepos is a school author' that he has never attracted scholars of distinction; commentaries on him have been of a lamentable standard for the most part, and it is my hope that this translation with commentary will make him more interesting and accessible: the Atticus, above all, is a central text which is only now emerging from millennia of neglect. In recent months, I have occasionally been asked how, after my 'disdainful' remarks about Nepos in CHCL (p. xi quite falsely suggests other authorship of my bibl., 845), I could venture to return to an author I so little respected/ To some elements of that condemnation I still adhere, unconvinced, for example, that Nepos writes elegant or agreeable Latin, and reluctant in my translation to conceal his lumbering periods behind discreet paraphrase. Elsewhere time has brought caution and revision (for example, on the Chronica). The Atticus was skimped in 1982, not least because it is in some ways a complex work which has quite literally never been studied right through in detail. To Nepos, as a biographer who is capable of trying honestly to hold up a mirror steadily to his subject, I shall hasten to pay tribute. Careful enquiry has, however, also revealed follies and vices hitherto un suspected. Since my earlier discussion, a good deal has been vi PREFACE written about Ncpos: progress in research, therefore, has contributed actively to my rethinking, and the introductions will not be found to repeat much of the earlier treatment. For a bibliography of general discussions, though not much recommended, I refer to the first note to the Introduction; for the Latin text, I follow largely Marshall's Tcubner edition; there is a loose English translation, which omits most of the fragments, in the Locb scries (sec p. xv n. i, s.v. Rolfc). This commentary is not the work of a specialist historian, though I have previously ventured to discuss in detail some problems within the period. My original intention was to supply linguistic and literary notes to a commentary on the Latin text, in collaboration with an historian. That plan did not work out, and I am most grateful to the General Editors of this series for concluding that I could probably manage the whole thing on my own. David Miller first aroused my interest in the years 44-31 BC in 1961-2; many others, notably Erik Wistrand and Elizabeth Rawson, have-encouraged me to keep looking at texts and problems which fall between specialists in history and literature. I have tried not to persecute my friends with too many enquiries while writing this book, but am most gratefully aware of having written it with the learned and tolerant encouragement of Mariatercsa Scotti and within the generously supporting environment of the Ashmolean Library, Oxford. At a late stage Elizabeth Rawson, Susan Treggiari, and Miriam Griffin exerted kindly vigilance. Above all, I have tried to recall what I learned from teaching Roman history to largely Latinless students at Macquarie University, New South Wales, in 1980.1 shall be delighted if this book satisfies readers as demanding as they were, and even more so, if it meets the standards in friendship and scholarship of my colleague there Margaret Beattie, to whom I can only repeat what Catullus said to Nepos, Square habe tibi quidquid hoc libelli, qualecumque*. 7July J9^7 NICHOLAS HORSFALL CONTENTS Bibliography and Abbreviations viii General Introduction xv TRANSLATIONS Life of Cato Introduction 3 Translation 5 Life of Atticus Introduction 7 Translation 15 Prologue to the Lives of the Foreign Generals Translation 29 NEPOS: Selected Fragments 31 CATO: Selected Fragments 35 ATTICUS: Selected Fragments 39 Letter of Cornelia Introduction 41 Translation 43 COMMENTARY Index 127 BIBLIOGRAPHY AND ABBREVIATIONS Standard abbreviations for authors, collections, and periodicals are in general not included here. For some works very frequently cited I have in the interests of concision used my own abbreviations, also listed below. For others, author and year alone are given in the text and full details may be found here. Neither all books cited only once or twice, nor any articles, with one or two exceptions, are listed here. I have tried to restrict the number of works not in English, wherever possible. ANRW H. Temporini and W. Haase (cds.), Aufs- tieg undNiedergang der rbmischen Well, (Berlin 1972- )• Arnold (1914) W. T. Arnold, The Roman System of Provincial Administration (Oxford 1914). As tin (1967) A. E. Astin, Scipio Aemilianus (Oxford 1967)- Astin (1978) A. E. Astin, Cato the Censor (Oxford 1978). Badian (1958) E. Badian, Foreign Clientelae 264-yo BC (Oxford 1958) Badian (1966) E. Badian, 'The Early Historians* in T. A. Dorey (cd.), The Latin Historians (London 1966). Badian (1972) E. Badian, Publicans and Sinners (Oxford, Blackwell 1972). Baldry (1965) H. C. Baldry, The Unity of Mankind in Greek Thought (Cambridge 1965). Balsdon (1962) J. P. V. D. Balsdon, Roman Women: Their History and Habits (London 1962). Balsdon (1969) J. P. V. D. Balsdon, Life and Leisure in Ancient Rome (London 1969). Balsdon (1979) J. P. V. D. Balsdon, Romans and Aliens (London 1979). Bernstein (1978) A. H. Bernstein, Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus: Tradition and Apostasy (Ithaca I97«). Bickcrman (1968) m E. J. Bickcrman, Chronology of the Ancient World (London 1968). BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ABBREVIATIONS ix Bonner (1977) S. F. Bonner, Education in Ancient Rome (London 1977). Bremmer and J.N. Bremmer and N. M. Horsfall, Roman Horsfall (1987) Myth and Mythoqraphy, BICS Suppl. 51 (1987). Brunt (1965) P. A. Brunt, 'Amicitia in the Late Roman Republic', PCPhSu (1965), 1 ff. = Seager (1969), *99ff- Brunt (1971) P. A. Brunt, Social Conflicts in the Roman Republic (London 1971). Byrne (1920) A. H. Byrne, Titus Pomponius Atticus: Chapters of a Biography (Lancaster, Pa. 1920). CHCL Cambridge History of Classical Literature, vol. CIL ii: Latin Literature (Cambridge 1982). Corpus Inscriptionum Ixitinarum. Crook (1967) J. A. Crook, Law and Life of Rome (London 1967)- D'Alton (1917) J. F. D'Alton, Horace and his Age (London 1917)- D'Arms (1970) J. H. D'Arms, Romans on the Bay of Naples (Cambridge, Mass. 1970). D'Arms (1981) J. H. D'Arms, Commerce and Social Standing in Ancient Rome (Cambridge, Mass. 1981). Davics (1971) J. K. Davies, Athenian Propertied Families (Oxford 1971). Douglas (1966) A. E. Douglas (ed.), Cicero: Brutus (Oxford 1966). Dover (1980) K. J. Dover, Greek Homosexuality (New York 1980). Drumann W. Drumann, Geschichte Roms, 2nd edn., rev. P. Groebe (Berlin-Leipzig 1899- ). ESAR T. Frank (ed.), Economic Survey of Ancient Rome (Baltimore 1933- ). Finley (1973) M. I. Finley, The Ancient Economy (London *973)- Friedlaendcr L. Friedlaender, Roman Life and Manners tr. L. A. Magnus, J. H. Freese, 4 vols. Garnscy (1976) (London 1908-13). P. D. A. Garnsey, 'Urban Property Invest ment', in M. I. Finley (ed.), Studies in Geiger (1985) Roman Property, (Cambridge 1976). J. Geiger, Cornelius Nepos and Ancient