Cornelius Nepos: Lives of Eminent Commanders (1886).  Preface to the online edition

Life of Cornelius Nepos

Nepos lived in the first century BC.  Pliny the Elder twice refers to him as dying in the principate of Augustus (Natural History, ix.137; x.60), and he seems to have lived from around 99BC to around 24BC.  We know from his own words that he outlived Atticus, who died in 32 BC, and that he lived to an advanced age.

The praenomen of Cornelius Nepos is unknown.  Pliny the Elder speaks of him as Padi accola (NH. iii.127), and we know that he was born in that part of Cisalpine Gaul which took its name from the Insubres (Pliny the Younger, Letters. iv.28.1; cf. Cicero, Letters ad fam. xv.16.1).  It has been inferred from this that he most likely was born in ancient Ticinum, today known as Pavia.

He lived in Rome, but we learn from Pliny the Younger that he was not of senatorial rank (Lett. v.3.6).  He exchanged letters with Cicero (Macrobius, Saturnalia ii.1.14; Suetonius Julius 55; etc).  Catullus dedicated a book of poems to him (Catullus 1).  In his correspondence, Fronto suggests that, like Atticus, Nepos was a publisher as well as a writer (i. p.169, Loeb).

Works

Nepos wrote a considerable amount, but little has come down to us.  The following items are known to us from references in other writers.

• Love Poems.  Mentioned by Pliny the Younger (Lett. v.3.6).
• Chronica.  Referred to by Catullus in his dedication.  In three books.  It gave an outline of world history from earliest times down to about 54 BC.  Like the Atticus' Liber Annalis (Nepos, xxiii.13.1), it was a chronology.
• Exempla.  Mentioned by Aulus Gellius, who refers to its 5th book (Attic Nights, vi.18.11).  An anthology of anecdotes, intended for use by orators.  According to Rolfe, it must have been issued after 43 BC, as Suetonius says Nepos refers to the seige of Mutina in describing Augustus' drinking habits (Suetonius, Augustus 77).  However it seems unclear whether this reference must refer to this particular work.
• Life of Cato.  Mentioned by Nepos himself (xxiv. 3.5)
• Life of Cicero. Mentioned by Aulus Gellius (Attic Nights, xv.28.2), apparently composed after the death of the orator.
• A treatise on Geography.  The title is unknown, but the work is referred to by Pliny the Elder, who speaks of it as uncritical (v.4), and Pomponius Mela.
• De viris illustribus.  This was in at least 16 books, as Charisius cites the 16th book (i.141.13 K).  It contained biographies, in groups of two books.  The first book contained a set of famous men of various nations; the partner book then had Romans distinguished in the same field.  This means at least 8 categories were present.  From Nepos and others (Nepos x.3.2; xxi.1.1; xxiii.13.4; Suetonius vit. Ter. iii, p.457 Loeb) we learn of the categories of generals, historians, kings and poets.  Gellius gives a reference to book 12, with reference to a Roman historian (xi.8.5), which is confusing: either there is an error in Gellius, or else an extra book of introductory matter preceded each pair of books of lives.

Our text is an extract of De viris illustribus.  We have the entire book De excellentibus ducibus exterarum gentium -- on foreign generals -- plus two lives from De Historicis Latinis.  There are also some fragments.

In the past, De excellentibus ducibus was attributed to Aemilius Probus, a grammarian of the period of Theodosius II (AD 408-450), since an epigram of his appears in some of the manuscripts, after the life of Hannibal, and followed in A and P by an explicit "Aemilii Probi de excellentibus ducibus exterarum gentium liber explicit."  However, various passages indicate the author lived at the end of the Republic and start of the Principate (e.g. xviii.8.2; xvii.4.2; viii.2.4), and the resemblances in language and style to the other two lives, which come down to us under the name of Cornelius Nepos, are so substantial as to leave no doubt that they share the same author.  Probus seems to have been the author of a collection of selected lives from Nepos.

The work was published before Atticus died, ca. 35 or 34 BC.  A second edition appeared before 27 BC with additional material in the life of Atticus.  The date is given by the fact that Augustus is everywhere referred to as Caesar, not under the title of Augustus conferred in 27BC.

According to his own statement (xvi.1.1) Nepos wrote biography, not history.  The lives were addressed to the general public (praef.1-7; xv.1.1).  There are obvious links of genre to the parallel lives of Plutarch.  

Manuscripts

After late antiquity, knowledge of Nepos disappeared.   However a single manuscript of Nepos seems to have survived the middle ages:

• Dan. or Gif.  (Lost) Formerly at St. Benoît-sur-Loire, it belonged in the 16th century to Pierre Daniel or (more probably) Gifanius.  It is referred to as Dan. or Gif. in the literature, and some of its readings can be recovered from several printed editions in the 16th and 17th century, and also some manuscript notes about it by Paul Petau.

Two direct copies of it were made:

• L. ---- Leiden, B.P.L. 2011.  This was written in the third quarter of the fifteenth century, in the Netherlands/Rhine region.  It does not contain the Life of Cato, or the Cornelia fragments.
• P. ---- The codex Parcensis.  (Lost) This came from the library of le Parc in Belgium.  It was transferred to Louvain, and destroyed in WW1 in the bombardment in August 1914.  Various detailed collations survive, notably one by K.L.Roth preserved in the University Library at Basle.  Manuscript librarians are as a rule obstructive of photography, but a photograph of one page was made and appears in Chatelain, Paleographie de classiques latins, vol. ii, plate CLXXXII.  It is written in a Flemish hand of the second half of the 15th century.  This copy did not contain the life of Atticus or Cornelia fragments.

Further manuscripts:

• A. ---- Wolfenbüttel, Gudianus latinus 166 (= the codex Guelferbytanus Gudianus 166).  This was written at the very end of the 12th centur, perhaps in Northern France.  It is also descended from Dan., but less directly than L or P.  The text is markedly inferior to the agreement of L and P, although its  value for the Lives of Cato, Atticus, and the Cornelia fragments is considerable.  A photograph of a portion of the text is in Chatelain.

A large number of late copies exist, of which these are a few, listed in the Loeb.

• B. ---- San Gallensis.  14th century.
• M. ---- Monacensis.  Written at Ulm in 1482.
• R. ----  Codex Collegii Romani. 13th century.
• H. ---- Codex Haenelianus.  Written in 1469.
• Can. ---- Codex Bodleianus Canonici Lat. 159.  15th century.
• Leid. ---- Another Leiden Ms.
• V. ---- Codex Vindobonensis.  15th century
• Σ. ---- Codex Strozzianus (Florence).
• F. ---- Codex Claromontanus 259.  15th century.
• θ. ---- Codex Parisinus Lat. 5826.  
• μ. ---- Codex Parisinus Lat. 6143.
• λ. ---- Codex Parisinus Lat. 5837
• π. ---- Codex Parisinus (Arsenal library)

The Utrecht edition of 1542 also has independent value.

All the existing codices have the same lacuna at vi.2.3, and a number of obvious errors in common, and so are all descended from a single manuscript.  This is assumed to be a minuscule, not earlier than the eleventh century.  

Note

This translation of Nepos by the Rev. John Selby Watson, MA was found in the same volume as Eutropius and Justin, and has been added to the collection for completeness.  However the Bohn text did not include a translation of the fragments.  I have obtained the Latin text in the Loeb edition, and created a public domain English translation.

Roger PEARSE
2003

Bibliography:

E.S.FORSTER, Lucius Annaeus Florus: Epitome of Roman History, and John C. ROLFE, The Book of Cornelius Nepos on the Great Generals of Foreign Nations, Loeb edition, Harvard University Press (1929).  I have used his introduction extensively for these notes, but have also verified Pliny the Younger and Suetonius.

L.D.REYNOLDS (Ed.), Texts and Transmissions: A survey of the Latin Classics. Oxford University Press (1983).  The Nepos article is by P.K.MARSHALL.

P.K.MARSHALL, The manuscript tradition of Cornelius Nepos, BICS suppl. 37.  London (1977) (Not seen).

P.K.MARSHALL, Cornelii Nepotis Vitae cum Fragmentis, Leipzig (1977). (Not seen).

This text was transcribed by Roger Pearse, 2003.  All material on this page is in the public domain - copy freely.

Greek text is rendered using the Scholars Press SPIonic font, free from here.