A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology. By various writers. Ed. by William Smith. Illustrated by numerous engravings on wood.

NEPOS. NEPOS. 1157
iii. 15; comp. Cic. ad Att. xvi. 5), but we cannot critical scholar must feel the weight of this obsertell whether -they were ever formally collected into vation.
a volume. The EZpistolae Ciceronis ad Corneiium,2. The person addressed in the preface or introN'epotem are adverted to under CICERO, p. 743. duction must be Pomponius-Atticus, the friend of
6. Perhaps poems also, at least he is named in Cicero. This is fully proved by a passage in the
the same category with Virgil, Ennius, and Accius life of Cato (sub fin.) where we read, " Hujus de
by the younger Pliny (Ep. v. 3). vita et moribus plura in eo libro persecuti sumus
7. De listoricis. In the life of Dion (c. 3), which quem separatim de eo fecimus rogatu Psompo2ii
now bears the name of Cornelius Nepos, there is Attici," words which are unquestionably perfectly
the following sentence, "Sed de hoc in eo meo decisive in so far as the memoir in which they
libro plura sunt exposita qui De Historicis con- occur is concerned, but this, as we have seen, was
scriptus est." not included in the original edition, is wanting in
In the year 1471 a quarto volume issued from some MSS., and, along with the Atticus,is separated,
the press of Jenson at Venice, entitled Aemilii as it were, from the rest in all.
Probi de Vita excellentium, containing biographies of 3. The lofty tone in which the grandeur and
twenty distinguished commanders, nineteen Greeks power of the Roman people are celebrated, the
and one Persian, in the following order, which, it boldness of the comments on free institutions and
has been subsequently ascertained, obtains in all tyrants, would have been totally out of place at an
MSS.:-1. Miltiades. 2. Themistocles. 3. Aris- epoch of degradation and slavery. Allusions, also,
tides. 4. Pausanias. 5. Cimon. 6. Lysander. it is affirmed, may be detected to the civil war
7. Alcibiades. 8. Thrasybulus. 9. Conon. between Caesar and Pompey. Upon a careful
10. Dion. 11. Iphicrates. 12. Chabrias. 13. Ti- examination of all the quotations adduced it will
motheus. 14. Datames. 15. Epaminondas. 16. Pe- be seen that no weight ought to be attached to
lopidas. 17. Agesilaus. 18. Eumenes. 19. Pho- this portion of the proof.
cion. 20. Timoleon. Next came three chapters 4. Lambinus was informed, upon what he conheaded De Regibus, presenting very brief no- sidered good authority, that one MS. ended in this
tices of certain famous kings of Persia and Mace- manner, "Completum est opus Aemilii Probi, Cordonia, of the elder Sicilian Dionysins, and of some nelii Nepotis." But even if we admit the accuof the more remarkable among the successors of racy of a statement vouched for so imperfectly, it
Alexander. The volume concluded with a bio- leads to no result, for the first clause might be ingraphy of Hamilcar, and a biography of Hannibal. tended to assign the 20 biographies, the De RepiA preface, or introduction to the lives, commenced bus, the Hamilcar and the Hannibal, to Probus;
with the words, " Non dubito fore plerosque, the concluding phrase to mark Nepos as the author
Attice, qui hoc genus scripturae, leve, et non satis of the Cato and the Atticus.
dignum suminorum virorum judicent," and prefixed The question thus started has given rise to into the whole was a dedication, in verse, to the em- terminable discussions; but the leading hypotheses
peror Theodosius, in which we find the couplet may be reduced to three.
Si rogat Auctorem, paulatim detege nostrum I. Many of the contemporaries of Lambinus,
Tunc Domino nomen, me sciat esse Probum. unable or unwilling to abandon the belief in which
they had been reared, and clinging to the verses
A second edition, in quarto, of the same book, addressed to Theodosius, doggedly maintained that
without date, was printed at Venice by Bernardinus the old opinion was after all true, and that all the
Venetus. In this a biography of Cato is added. lives, except perhaps those of Cato and Atticus,
The title in one part of the volume is Aemilii which stood upon somewhat different ground, were
Probi Historic excellentiunm Inmperatorum Vitae, in the property of Probus, and of no one else. This
another Aemilii Probi de Virorum Illustrium Vita. position is now very generally abandoned.
A third edition, in quarto, without date and with- II. Lambinus, as we have seen, pronounced the
out name of place or printer, but known to belong lives to belong entirely to Cornelius Nepos. Those
to Milan, and to be not later than 1496, was pub- who support this hypothesis, which has been more
lished as Aemilius Probus de Viris Illustribus; and widely received than any other, hold, that what
here we have not only the biography of Cato, but we now possess may be regarded, either as a pora life of Atticus also. Numerous impressions tion of the voluminous collection, De Viris Illustriappeared during the next half century, varying bus, or as an independent work, which, having
from the above and from each other in no import- fallen into oblivion, was brought to light by
ant particular, except that in the Strasburg one of Aemilius Probus, who fraudulently endeavoured to
1506, the life of Atticus is ascribed to Cornelius palm it off as his own; or, perhaps, meant to do
Nepos, a point in which it is supported by many nothing more than claim the credit of having disMSS. But in 1569 a great sensation was pro- covered and described it; or, that the verses in
duced among the learned by the edition of the question, which are absent from several MSS., recelebrated Dionysius Lalnbinus (4to. Paris, 1569), fer to some totally different production, and have
who not only revised the text with much care, but by mere accident found their way into their prestrenuously maintained that the whole work was sent position.
the production of that Cornelius Nepos who flou- III. Barthius, steering a middle course, threw
rished towards the close of the Roman republic, out that the biographies, as they now exist, are in
and not of an unknown Aemilius Probus, living at reality epitomes of lives actually written by Nepos,
the end of the fourth century. The arguments and that we ought to look upon Probus as the abupon which he chiefly insisted were,- breviator; others, adopting the general idea, think
1. The extreme purity of the Latinity, and the it more likely that the abridgments were executed
chaste simplicity of the style, which exhibit a at an earlier period.
striking contrast to the semi-barbarian jargon and W'ithout attempting to enter at large into the
meretricious finery of the later empire. Every merits of these conflicting systems, and of the
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