صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

retirement, he assiduously devoted his time to the study of literature, and wrote a treatise on the "Causes of the Corruption of Eloquence." Some time after, he wrote his "Institutiones Oratoriæ," the most perfect and complete system of oratory extant. It is, in truth, one of the most valuable remains of antiquity. It was composed for the use of his son, whose early death he had occasion to deplore, and is an institute for the education of an orator, whom he takes up from the cradle, and conducts through all the periods of instruction to the exercise of the proper art. It accordingly contains many excellent precepts with respect to education in general, especially the early parts of it, which are applicable in all times and countries, as being founded on the nature of the mind. The style of Quintilian is said, by critics, to exhibit tokens of the termination of the Latin tongue; but, on the other hand, it must be observed, that every deviation from the usage of the Augustan age has been too readily regarded as a deprivation. Quintilian was appointed preceptor to the two young princes whom Domitian destined for his successors on the throne; but the celebrity which the rhetorician received from the favours and attention of the emperor, and from the success which his writings met with in the world, were embittered by the loss of his wife and of his two sons, one of whom he describes as a prodigy of early excellence. It is said that Quintilian was poor in his retirement, and that his indigence was relieved by the liberality of his pupil, Pliny the younger. He is supposed to have died about the year 95. His " Institutiones" were discovered in the year 1415, in an old tower of a monastery at St. Gall, by Poggio Bracchiolini. The treatise on the " Causes and Corruption of Eloquence," has not come down to us. The name of Quinti

lian is affixed to certain " Declamations," of which there are fourteen of moderate length; but as the style, method, and manner, are totally different from the rules laid down in the "Institutiones," no good judges attribute them to the name of Quintilian. Of the editions of Quintilian, some of the most valuable are those of Gessner, 4to. Gotting. 1730; of Lug Batavorum, 8vo. cum Notis Variorum, 1665; of Gibson, 4to. Oxon. 1693; and that of Rollin, republished in London in 1792. There is an English translation by Mr. Guthrie.

SECUNDUS CARŘINATES, a poor but ingenious rhetorician, who came from Athens to Rome, where the boldness of his expressions, especially against tyrannical power, exposed him to Caligula's resentment, who banished him.

POMPONIUS MELA, an ancient Latin writer, who was born in Hispania Boetica, and flourished under Claudius. His three books of Cosmography, or De situ orbis, are written in a concise, perspicuous, and elegant manner. Isaac Vossius gavę an edition of them in 1658, 4to. with copious notes.

ONOSANDER, a Greek author and Platonic philosopher, who wrote commentaries on Plato's politics, which are lost; but particularly famous for a treatise, entitled, " Of the Duty and Virtues of a General of an Army," which has been translated into Italian, Spanish, and French. The time when he lived is not precisely known, but is imagined to have been in the reign of Claudius I.

PLINY the ELDER, or CAIUS CÆCILIUS PLINIUS SECUNDUS, one of the most learned men of ancient Rome, was descended from an illustrious family, and born at Verona. He bore arms in a distinguished post; was one of the college of Augurs, became intendant of Spain, and was employed in several important affairs by Vespasian and Titus, who honoured him with their esteem. The eruption of Mount Vesuvius, which happened in the year 79, proved fatal to him. His nephew, Pliny the Younger, relates the circumstances of that dreadful eruption, and the death of his uncle, in a letter to Tacitus. Pliny the Elder wrote a Natural History in thirtyseven books, which is still extant, and has had many editions; the most esteemed of which is that of Father Hardouin, printed at Paris in 1723, in two volumes folio. He also wrote one hundred and sixty volumes of observations on various authors, for which Lartius Lutinius offered him an enormous sum, equal to three thousand two hundred and forty-two pounds sterling, but it was refused.

ISÆUS, a Greek orator, who came to Rome, and who is mentioned with great applause by Pliny the Younger, who observes, that he always spoke extempore, and wrote with elegance, unlaboured ease, and great correctness.

VIBIUS GALLUS GALLUS, a celebrated orator of Gaul, in the age of Augustus, of whose orations Seneca has preserved some fragments.

PLINY the YOUNGER, nephew and adopted son of Pliny the Elder, was born in the ninth year of Nero, and the sixty-second of Christ, at Novocomum, now Como, upon the Lake Larius, near which he had several beautiful villas. Lucius Cæcilius was the name of his father. He showed very early talents. He wrote a Greek tragedy at fourteen years of age. He lost his father when he was young; and had the famous Virginius for his tutor, whom he has set in a glorious light. He frequented the schools of the rhetoricians, and heard Quintilian, for whom he ever after entertained so high an esteem, that he bestowed a considerable portion upon his daughter at her marriage. He was in his eighteenth year when his uncle died; and he then began to plead in the forum, which was the usual road to dignities. About a year after, he assumed the military character, and went into Syria as tribune; but this did ..VOL. II. H

98

UNIVERSAL BIOGRAPHY,

not suit his taste, and he returned after a campaign or two. In his passage home he was detained by contrary winds at the island of Icaria, where he wrote poetry. Upon his return from Syria, he married, and settled at Rome, in the reign of Domitían. During this most perilous time, he continued to plead in the forum, where he was distinguished no less by his uncommon abilities and eloquence, than by his great resolution and courage, which enabled him to speak boldly, when scarcely any one else could speak at all. He was therefore often appointed by the senate to defend the plundered provinces against their oppressive governors, and to manage other causes of a like important and dangerous nature. One of these was for the province of Boetica, in their prosecution of Bæbius Massa, in which he acquired such general applause, that the emperor Nerva, then a private man, and in banishment at Tarentum, wrote to him a letter, in which he congratulated not only Pliny, but the age which had produced an example so much in the spirit of the ancients. Pliny relates this affair in a letter to Tacitus, whom he entreats to record it in his history, but with much more modesty than Tully had entreated Lucceius upon a similar occasion. He obtained the offices of quæstor and tribune, and fortunately escaped the tyranny of Domitian. But he tells us himself, that his name was afterwards found in Domitian's tablets, in the list of those who were destined to destruction. He lost his wife in the beginning of Nerva's reign, and soon after married his beloved Calphurnia, of whom we read so much in his epistles. He had, however, no children by either of his wives; and hence we find him thanking Trajan for the jus trium liberorum, which he had granted to his friend Suetonius Tranquillus. He was promoted to the consulate by Trajan in the year 100, when he was thirty-eight years of age; and in this office pronounced that famous panegyric, which has ever since been admired, as well for the copiousness of the topics as the elegance of the address. Then he was elected augur, and afterwards made proconsul of Bithynia; whence he wrote to Trajan that curious letter concerning the primitive Christians, which, with Trajan's rescript, is happily extant among his epistles. Pliny's letter, as Mr. Melmoth observes in a note upon passage, is esteemed one of the few genuine monuments of ecclesiastical antiquity relating to the times immedi ately succeeding the apostles, it being written at most not above forty years after the death of St. Paul. It was preserved by the Christians, as a clear and unsuspicious evidence of the purity of their doctrines, and is often appealed to by the early writers of the church against the calumnies of their adversaries. It is not known what became of Pliny after his return from Bithynia. Antiquity is also silent as to the time of his death; but it is supposed that he died either a little before or soon after Tra

the

jan; that is, about A. D. 116. Pliny was one of the greatest wits, and one of the worthiest men, among the ancients. He had fine parts, which he cultivated to the utmost; and he accomplished himself with all the knowledge of the age. He wrote and published a great number of books, but nothing has escaped the wreck of time except his letters, and his panegyric upon Trajan. This has ever been considered as a masterpiece; and if he has almost exhausted all the ideas of perfection upon that prince, yet no panegyrist ever possessed a subject, on which he might better indulge in all the flow of eloquence, without incurring the suspicion of flattery and falsehood. In his letters he may be considered as writing his own memoirs. Every epistle is a kind of historical sketch, wherein we have a view of him in some striking attitude. In them are also preserved anecdotes of many eminent persons, whose works are come down to us, as Suetonius, Silius Italicus, Martial, Tacitus, and Quintilian; and of curious things, which throw great light upon the history of those times. In a word, his writings breathe a spirit of transcendant goodness and humanity, There are two elegant English translations of his epistles; the one by Mr. Melmoth, and the other by Lord Orrery.

PHILO of Byblos, a grammarian, who translated into Greek the Phoenician history of Sanchoniathon, fragments of which remain.

TITUS ARISTO, a Roman lawyer, perfect master of the public and civil law, of history and antiquity. The pandects mention some books of his, as does Aulus Gellius. He was contemporary with Pliny the younger, who gives him a noble character, and had a most tender friendship for him.

LUCIAN, or LUCIANUS, a celebrated Greek author, born at Samosata, in the reign of Trajan. He studied law, and practised some time as an advocate, but afterwards commenced rhetorician. He lived to the time of Marcus Aurelius, who made him ægister of Alexandria in Egypt; and, according to Suidas he was at last worried by dogs, in his 90th year, A. D. 180. Lucian was one of the finest wits in all antiquity. His Dialogues and other books, are written in pure Greek. In these he has joined the useful to the agreeable, instruction to satire, and erudition to elegance. They abound in that fine and delicate raillery which characterise the Attic taste. Lucian has been cencensured as an impious scoffer at religion; but surely religion consists neither in the theology of the pagan poets, nor in the extravagant opinions of philosophers, which he justly ridicules; but he no where writes against an over-ruling Providence, though he sometimes pollutes his wit with obscenity. The best editions of Lucian are that of Florence, 1496, folio; and of Hemsterhuis, at Amsterdam, in 4 vols. 4to. 1743. Lucian has been translated into English, by Carr, Franklin, and Tooke.

CAIUS FANNIUS, a Latin author, who lived in Trajan's time, and had a great share in the esteem and friendship of Pliny the Younger. Though he was busied in pleading causes, yet he found time to make a collection of Nero's cruelties; that is, he composed the last dying words of those whom that wicked prince had either put to death or banished. He had published three very exact and polite books upon that subject; and he bestowed the more pains upon the sequel, because he saw that the first parts were read with applause; but death prevented the finishing of that work. It is said he had himself a foresight, occasioned by a certain dream, that he should die before the publishing of the fourth book.

JULIUS SECUNDUS, a Roman orator, who flourished under Titus Vespasian, and published orations, &c.

FAVORINUS, an ancient orator and philosopher of Gaul, who flourished under Adrian, and taught with high reputation both at Athens and Rome, Many works are attributed to him; amongst the rest, a Greek miscellaneous history, often quoted by Diogenes Laertius.

AGRIPPA, surnamed CASTOR, flourished under the emperor Adrian, about the year 132. Eusebius represents him as an excellent writer, who had ably confuted the errors of Basilides; but his works are lost, and no considerable fragment of them remains.

PHLEGON, surnamed TRALLIANUS, was born in Trallis, a city of Lydia. He was the emperor Adrian's freed man, and lived to the eighteenth year of Antoninus Pius. He wrote several works of great erudition, of which we have nothing left but fragments. Among these was a history of the Olympiads, a Treatise of Long-lived Persons, and another of Wonderful Things. The titles of part of the rest of Phlegon's writings are preserved by Suidas. It has been supposed that the history of Adrian, published under Phlegon's name, was written by Adrian himself. A passage, quoted by Eusebius from one of his works, respecting an extraordinary eclipse of the sun, attended by an earthquake, has been supposed to allude to the darkness and earthquake that happened at our Saviour's passion. But this has been disputed among the learned; Whiston and others taking the affirmative, and Sykes the negative.

EROTIANUS, the author of a glossary, containing an explanation of all the words used in the writings of Hippocrates, lived in the first century of the Christian era, in the reign of Nero, and dedicated his work to Andromachus of Crete, who was physician to that emperor.

DIO, surnamed CHRYSOSTOM, or Golden Mouth, a celebrated orator and philosopher of Greece, in the first century, born at Prusa in Bithynia. He attempted to persuade Vespasian to quit the empire; was hated by Domitian; but acquired

« السابقةمتابعة »