when his life stands to a certain extent detached, than when it has to be woven into a continuous account, the parts of which must be respectably consistent. From the classical jurists we should have expected fuller and more trustworthy records of ancient legislation than we actually find. They, however, wrote mainly for present practice; and, as the old law had been to a great extent superseded by what we may roughly call equitable modifications, the references to the former are occasional and slight. Moreover the theory of a law of nature, which entered so largely into their conception of a ius gentium, was not perhaps entirely without influence upon their treatment of the ius ciuile; it being probably found more agreeable and easy to connect even their old national law with supposed original principles of morality than with actual ancient customs or records. Still we owe a great deal of valuable information upon the present subject to Gaius and the Digest, though more perhaps to other sources.
It is on the antiquarians that our principal reliance must be placed: a class of men with whom form is of greater importance than matter, who quote rather than paraphrase, who are more interested to preserve an ancient relic intact, than to make a picturesque story, to develop a moral theory, or to glorify a noble family. In the note of this section a brief account is given our principle authorities of this kind, as of the too little known Dionysius[1]. Since the works of these authors, though extremely interesting, do not seem to come much in the way of ordinary readers, the necessary quotations from them will generally be given, in the notes, somewhat fully.
- ↑ Dionysius of Halicarnassus. Wrote his Ρωμαϊκὴ Ἀρχαιολογία during the 22 years following his arrival in Italy, which seems to have been shortly after the battle of Actium. See Antiqq. (Antiquitates Romanse, the Latin style of his work under which it will be hereafter referred to) 1. 7. καταπλϵύσας ϵἰς Ἰτάλίαν ἄμα του̑ καταλυΦη̑ναι τὸν ϵ̓μφύλιον πόλεμον ὑπὸ του̑ Σεβαστου̑ Καίσαρος, κ.τ.λ.
Zumpt (Criminal-recht der Römischen Republik, Einleitung, p. 9) allows this author much more credit than is usually given him. Dionysius had, no doubt, as he tells us, read all of the histories extant in his time, as well as accumulated much information from private family records. Being a faithful reporter of legends, many of which have some literary, though little historical, value, he is not, except in the article of speeches, quite such dreary reading as has been represented by Lord Macaulay and others. He does not impress one as often guilty of direct invention; but his small critical power and consequent inability to sift his materials according to their value, and his inveterate tendency to moralize, render him undoubtedly an untrustworthy authority. It is in the regal and first republican period that this tendency appears the most: so much so that at times we might almost suppose ourselves to be reading a Télémaque of less inventive power than Fenelon's but about the same historical value. It was perhaps a similar despair of a decayed society felt by pureminded and conscientious men which disposed both authors to attribute so much to the heroic worthies of half-fabulous times.
Of Livy of course I need say nothing but that he wrote after the triumph of Augustus, A.V.C. 725 (as appears from 1. 19. of his history), and died according to Eusebius A.V.C. 770.
Festus (Sextus Pompeius), the epitomizer, writing in the 2nd or 3rd century after Christ, of a lost work 'on the signification of words' by M. Verrius Flaccus, an author of Augustus' time. Flaccus is mentioned by Varro (see below), quoted in Macrobius' Saturnalia, 1. 15. 21, as iuris pontifici peritissimum. This Epitome is only known to us by the still briefer one of Paulus made in the 9th century, which appears to have supplanted the original, and by a fragmentary copy of the latter, now in the library at Naples. There seems, however, no reason to think either of the editors of Flaccus' work disposed (or perhaps qualified) to tamper with the fragments of old Latin, which may therefore be regarded as genuine antiques, or at least so considered in the time of Augustus. Of our two sources, the Naples fragment is evidently the more valuable as far as it goes: Paulus occasionally substituting the views of Festus for those of Flaccus without remark. Thus, we read in the fragment, Sas Verrius putat significare eas...cum suas magis uideatur significare. Paulus, who quotes the same authority for the meaning (a passage of Ennius), writes at once sas suas. on the next word, sam, he retains the error 'philosophiam,' though he omits the words 'sapientia quae perhibetur,' which point to the right reading:—
- nec quisquam sophiam sapientia quae perhibetur
- in somnis uidit prius quam sam discere coepit.
From these and similar instances one would conclude that Paulus represents Festus pretty faithfully, and when he misrepresents him does so only by way of omission. As to Festus himself, and frequent 'Verrius putat' of the fragment certainly shews a conscientious reproduction of the original even when the epitomizer does not agree with it. I have used the edition of Müller.
Varro (M. Terentius) a Pompeian, after the battle of Pharsalus taken into favour by Caesar, and devoting his life thenceforth to laborious study. See Cicero, Ep. ad fam. 9. 6. ad Atticum, 13. 12. His proscription and escape from it, under the second triumvirate, as well as the voluminousness of his works, appear from a quotation by Aulus Gellius, Noctes, Atticae, 3. 10. in which Varro mentions his having a attained a hebdomad of years and written seventy hebdomads of books, many of which had disappeared on the pillage of his library after he was proscribed. It is the extent part of his treatise de lingua Latina, which is most cited in the present work. Whether this treatise was sent (dedicated) to Cicero, and therefore completed before 711 V.C., is not certain, though Müller apparently thinks it probable. See Praefatio ed. 1833. I have used his edition.
Aulus Gellius, the author of the well-know Attic Nights, was when young a pupil of Fronto (who was Consul Suffectus A.V.C. 896 in the reign of Antoninus Pius) N. A. 19. 8. He is supposed to have died before 917 V. C. Many valuable records of legal antiquity are to be found in his work, particularly in the last (20th) book.
Servius Maurus Honoratus, the Commentator on Virgil, is introduced by Macrobius (Sat. 1. 2. 15) as an interlocutor with Symmachus, Consul under Theodosius and Valentinian, A.V. 1144, and the well-known champion of the old religion against Ambrose. In the gathering of Savens which forms the subject of the Saturnalia, Vettius Praetextatus is the first host, who would appear from an inscription to have died A.V.C. 1140. Servius is represented in the above-cited passage of Macrobius to have recently come forth as a critic, when the supposed social gathering took place: which statement, coupled with the 'charming modesty' which is there attributed to him as well as 'wonderful learning,' will perhaps justify us in considering him to have been a man of middle age about the end of the 4th century of our era. Many interpolations are supposed to have been made in his commentary, but there is no mistaking the tone of the principal writer in it, by which one may tell with some confidence whether a particular note has the Servian ring or not: I mean the extraordinary talent for finding obscure and mystical meanings in the plainest passages, to which a perfect modern parallel is furnished by Landino's commentary on Dante. A speciment occuring early in the Eclogues is so exquisitely amusing that I may perhaps be pardoned for adding it below. However, the desire of Servius to make every incident and epithet in Virgil emblematic of some old Roman custom or belief has preserved to us a most valuable and interesting body of antiquities.
On Ecl. 3. 96. 97 he writes:—Tityre pascentes a flumine reice capellas, id est, O Mantua, noli modo uelle aliquid agere de repetendis agris, nam cum apportunum fuerit ego omnes lauabo id est purgabo apud Caesarem cum de Actiaco proelio reursus fuerit, et bene in fonte, ipse enimper amicos Caesaris agrum meruerat recipere tanquam per rinolos quosdam, nunc autem Mantuanis beneficium dicit se ab ipso Imperatore meriturum.
Of Macrobius Ambrosius Theodosius, if that was his name, the author of the most interesting ancient work on antiquities extant, we know little but that he must have lived at least not before Praetextatus and Symmachus, whom he introduces in his Saturnalia. He seems to have been Consularis, a title which in late times did not necessarily imply the bearer to have been Consul, as indeed Macrobius' name does not appear in the Fasti. This honour, however, conferred upon a man who can scarcely have embraced the new faith, is well urged by L. Iahn (Prolegg. v.) as a reason for not placing Macrobius much later than the interlocutors in his supposed dialogue.
