Today | News | Books | Recipes Adventure | Science Fiction | Ghost stories | Poetry | Children | History BookJugurtha; who were also serving under Africanus, and learning, as Velleius says, "that art of war, which they were afterward to employ against each other." In the following year Numantia was taken and razed to the ground, and Lucilius returned with his patron to Rome, shortly after the sedition and death of Tiberius Gracchus; and lived on terms of the most familiar friendship with him and C. Lælius, until the death of Scipio, B.C. 129; and even at that early age had already acquired the reputation of a distinguished Satirist. According to Pighius (in Tabulis), he held the office of quæstor, B.C. 127, two years after Scipio's death, and the prætorship, B.C. 117. Van Heusde is also of opinion that he acted as publicanus; and from a passage in Cicero (de Orat., ii., 70), some suppose he kept large flocks of sheep on the Ager publicus. Besides Africanus and Lælius (with whose father-in-law Crassus, however, he was not on very good terms, vid. Cic., de Or., i., 16) he is said to have enjoyed the friendship of the following distinguished men, Sp. Albinus, L. Ælius Stilo, Q. Vectius, Archelaus, P. Philocomus, Lælius Decimus, and Q. Granius Præco. He had a violent quarrel with C. Cælius, for acquitting a man who had libeled him. He is said to have lived under Velia, where the temple of Victory afterward stood, in a house built at the public expense for the son of king Antiochus when hostage at Rome. (Asc. Pedian. in Ciceron., Orat. c. L. Pisonem, p. 13.) He made a voyage to Sicily, but for what cause, or at what period of his life, is not stated. His closing years were spent at Naples, whither he retired to avoid, as some think, the effects of the hatred of those whom his Satire had offended; and here he died, B.C. 103, in his forty-sixth year, and was honored, according to Eusebius, with a public funeral. He had a faithful slave named Metrophanes, whose honesty and fidelity he rewarded by writing an epitaph for his tomb, quoted by Martial as an instance of antique and rugged style of writing, xi. Ep., 90. "Carmina nulla probas molli quæ limite currunt, Sed quæ per salebras altaque saxa cadunt: Et tibi Mæonio res carmine major habetur Luceili Columella heic situ' Metrophanes." The name of his mistress is said to have been Collyra, to whom the sixteenth book of his Satires was inscribed. He wrote thirty books of Satires, of which the first twenty and the last are in Heroic metre. The other nine in Iambics or Trochaics. He is not to be confounded with a comic poet of the same name, mentioned by the Scholiast on Horace and by Fulgentius. Such is the traditional, and for a long time currently-believed, story of Lucilius' life. The greater accuracy, or greater skepticism, of modern scholars has called into question nearly every one of these meagre facts. Even the method of spelling his name has been a subject of fierce controversy. In the best manuscripts, especially those of Horace, Cicero, and Nonius Marcellus, the name of Lucilius is invariably spelt with one l. Yet in spite of this testimony, in order to square with some preconceived notions of orthography, the l was doubled by Hadrian Turnebe, Claude de Saumaise, Joseph Scaliger, Lambinus, Jos. Mercer, and Cortius. The propriety, however, of omitting the second l has been fully established by an appeal to MSS. and inscriptions; and to Varges and Ellendt the credit is due of successfully restoring the correct mode of spelling. (Cf. Rhenish Philolog. Museum for 1835, and Ellendt on Cicero, de Orat, iii., 43.) Again, his prænomen is by some stated to be Lucius; whereas, not to mention others, Cicero and Quintilian always speak of him as Caius. But far more serious doubts, and with great probability, have been cast upon the dates assigned by S. Hieronymus for his birth and death. Bayle, in his Dictionary, was the first to suggest them; and they were taken up and urged with great zeal and learning by Van Heusde (in his Studia Critica in C. Lucilium Poetam, 1842), who accused Jerome of negligence and incorrectness in the dates he assigns to many other events: e. g., the overthrow of Numantia, the deaths of Plautus, Horace, Catullus, Lucretius, and Livius the tragedian, and the birth of Messala Corvinus. The charge against the chronographer has been repeated, and with some show of truth, by Ritschel in the Rhenish Museum, 1843. Van Heusde's line of argument is simply this, that the dates of Hieron. are inconsistent with what Horace and Velleius say of Lucilius, and with what the poet says of himself--that it is absurd to suppose that a lad of fifteen could have served as an eques; or that so young a person would have been admitted to such intimate familiarity with men like Scipio Africanus and Lælius; and that at the time of Scipio's death, when, as it is said, Lucilius had already gained a great reputation as a Satirist, he could have been barely over nineteen years old; that if he had died at the age of forty-six, Horace would not have applied to him the epithet "Senex"--that the year of his birth must be therefore carried back at least six years, and his death assigned to a much later period, as he mentions the Leges Liciniæ and Calpurnia, passed some years after the time fixed by Hieron. for his death at Naples. In this view Milman coincides: "Notwithstanding the distinctness of this statement of S. Hieronymus, and the ingenuity with which many writers have attempted to explain it, it appears to me utterly irreconcilable with facts." (Personæ Horatianæ, p. 178.) Clinton also says[1594] (F. H., ann. B.C. 103), "The expression of Horace, Sat., II., i., 34, by whom Lucilius is called 'Senex,' implies that he lived to a later period." Such are the principal objections to the common accounts. Of those who hold their accuracy, and endeavor to explain away the difficulties attaching to them, the chief are Varges and Gerlach. The principal points will be taken in the order in which they occur. With regard to the first, Varges shows, in opposition to Bayle, that it was the custom for young Romans to serve long before the legal age, either voluntarily, that they might apply themselves sooner to civil matters, by getting over their period of military service; or compulsorily, to supply the waste of soldiers caused by the incessant wars in which Rome was engaged. Hence the necessity for the law of C. Gracchus to prevent enlistment under the age of seventeen (νεώτερον ἐτῶν ἑπτακαίδεκα μὴ καταλέγεσθαι στρατιώτην). Cf. Liv., xxv., 5. Duk. ad Liv., xxvi., 25. As the equestrian service was the more honorable, it was probably conceded to Lucilius on account of his gentle birth and early promise. Gerlach thinks that Tibullus[1595] was only thirteen when he accompanied M. Valerius Messala Corvinus in his Aquitanian campaign. Now Tibullus was only of _equestrian_ family. There is no difficulty, therefore, in supposing that Lucilius, who was of _senatorian_ family, might h |