Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Cn. Pompeius Trogus

TROGUS, Cn. Pompeius, a Roman historian, nearly contemporary with Livy. Although the epitome of his historical writings by Justin, and a few fragments, are all that have come down to us, there is abundant reason to believe that he deserves a place in the history of Roman literature by the side of Sallust, Livy, and Tacitus. Of his life little is known. He was almost certainly of Greek descent. His grandfather served with Pompey in the war against Sertorius, and received through the influence of that general the Roman citizenship; hence the name Pompeius, which was adopted as a token of gratitude to the benefactor. The father of Trogus was an officer of Caesar. Trogus himself seems to have been a man of encyclopaedic knowledge. He wrote, after Aristotle and Theophrastus, books on the natural history of animals and plants, used by the elder Pliny, who calls Trogus "one of the most precise among authorities" (auctor ipse e severissimis). But the principal work of Trogus consisted of forty-four Libri Historiarum Philippicarum. This was a great history of the world, or rather of those portions of it which came under the sway of Alexander and his successors. The tale began with Ninus, the founder of Nineveh, and ceased at about the same point as Livy's great work, viz., 9 A.D. The last event recorded by the epitomator JUSTIN (q.v.} is the recovery of the Roman standards captured by the Parthians (20 B.C.). The history of Rome was treated as merely subsidiary to that of Greece and the East. The work was based upon the writings of Greek historians, such as Theopompus, Ephorus, Timseus, Polybius. It has been contended that Trogus did not gather together the information from the leading Greek historians for himself, but that it was already combined into a single book by some Greek, whom Trogus followed closely with some superficial errors. But the assumption appears improbable in itself, merely on a review of the remains of the historical writings, and is moreover inconsistent with what we know of the works in natural history, for which Trogus certainly went back to what were regarded in his time as first-hand authorities. It is generally admitted that Trogus had genuine qualifications for writing history, though he could not rid himself entirely of the faults of his authorities. His idea of history was more severe and less rhetorical than that followed by Sallust and Livy, whom he blamed for putting elaborate speeches in the mouths of the characters of whom they wrote. Yet his own Latin style had a vivid force which is still to be recognized in the extracts made by Justin. For the ancient history of the East, Trogus, even in the present mutilated state of his historical work, often proves to be an authority of great importance.

The chief modern editions are those of Gronovius (Leyden, 1719 and 1760); Frotscher(Leipsic, 1827-30); and Jeep (Leipsic, 1859 and 1862). In Engelmann's Bibliotheca Scriptorum Classicorum, ii., under Justin and Trogus, will be found a large number of references to scattered modern articles. Perhaps the most important is that of A. v. Gutschmid on the sources of the history of Trogus, in the second supplementary vol. of the Jahrlb. f. class. Philol. (Leipsic, 1857).