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The Origin of Cornelius Gallus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Ronald Syme
Affiliation:
Trinity College, Oxford

Extract

C. Cornelius Gallus requires brief introduction or none at all. A poet in his own right, the friend of Virgil and of Pollio, Gallus is enshrined for ever in literature—and in literary legend, for the inept fictions of Servius and his tribe will survive the most damaging of revelations, remembered even when refuted. Not only that—Gallus is a conspicuous figure in the social and political history of the revolutionary age.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1938

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References

39 note l W. B. Anderson and E. Norden may fairly be held to have demolished at last Servius' allegation that the second half of the Fourth Georgic was originally devoted to the laudation of Gallus, (‘Gallus and the Fourth Georgic’, CQ XXVII (1933), 36 ffGoogle Scholar.; ‘Orpheus u. Eurydice’, Berl. S.B. 1934, 627 ff.), and the present writer cannot dissemble his conviction that the stories about Pollio's son Saloninus and Pollio's capture of the town of Salonae are merely ‘gelehrte Namenfabelei’—and not so ‘gelehrt’ at that (Pollio, Saloninus and Salonae’, CQ XXXI (1937), 39 ffGoogle Scholar.). Norden's observations about the value of the scholia on the Latin poets are timely and trenchant: they will support scepticism about Virgil's estate and Gallus' rô1e in its recovery (below, n. 3).

page 39 note 2 Ad. fam. 10, 32, 5, ‘etiam praetextam, si voles legere, Gallum Cornelium, familiarem meum, poscito’. Gallus is probably referred to in the earlier letter as well (31, 6).

page 39 note 3 He may well have served on Pollio's staff in Gallia Cisalpina in 42–40 B.C.: but the details of his activity as a land-commissioner or the like, and his service in saving the farm of Virgil, explicitly but not always consistently related by the scholiasts and ancient lives of Virgil (Diehl, , Die Vitae Vergilianae, 51 ffGoogle Scholar.; PIR II2, s.v. ‘C. Cornelius Gallus’), may not safely be invoked. For this reason I cannot follow the learned and elegant reconstruction of Bayet, J., ‘Virgile et les “triumviri agris dividundis”’, Rev. ét. lat. VI (1928), 270 ffGoogle Scholar.

page 39 note 4 Dio 53, 23, 5 ff.; ILS 8995 (Philae).

page 39 note 5 Ovid, , Am. I, 15, 29Google Scholar.

page 39 note 6 Chron., 188 ol., p. 164 H.

page 40 note 1 E.g. Scbanz-Hosius, , R. Literaturgesch., II 4 (1935), 170Google Scholar; PIR II2, s.v. ‘C. Cornelius Gallus’; Plessis, F., La poésie latine, 290Google Scholar; Duff, Wight, A Literary History of Rome 2 (1927), 550Google Scholar.

page 40 note 2 Pascal, C., ‘De Cornelii Galli vita’, Riv. di fil. XVI (1887), 399Google Scholar; Stein, A., P-W, s.v. ‘C. Cornelius Gallus’, 1343Google Scholar and Der r. Ritterstand (1927), 384.

page 40 note 3 Histoire de la Gaule VI, 147.

page 40 note 4 NH 3, 130.

page 40 note 5 Agr. 4.

page 40 note 6 Suetonius, , Tib. 5Google Scholar.

page 40 note 7 Jerome dates the death of Gallus to 27 B.C., Dio, however (53, 23, 5 ff.), to 26 B.C. It is sometimes assumed that Dio must be right here (Helm, R., ‘Hieronymus' Zusätze in Eusebius' Chronik und ihr Wert für die Literaturgeschichte’, Philologus, Supp. XXI, II (1929), 60Google Scholar). But, given Dio's methods of composition, that is by no means certain. It is therefore unjustifiable to accept Jerome for the age of Gallus but not for the date of his death and so put his birth in 69 or 68 (as Schanz-Hosius, , R. Literaturgesch, II 4 (1935), 170Google Scholar). That surely misses the point of the alleged synchronism with Virgil. (I would assume that Jerome's original datum, whether right or wrong, was the year 27 B.C. Hence, given the synchronism with Virgil, the age of Gallus could be calculated.) Note also that one, but strangely only one, of the Virgilian scholiasts (Probus, Ecl. praef.) makes Virgil a ‘condiscipulus’ of Gallus—possibly true but not authentic.

page 40 note 8 Histoire de la Gaule IV, 31.

page 40 note 9 Kromayer, J., ‘Die Militärkolonien Octavians und Caesars in Gallia Narbonensis’, Hermes XXXI (1896), 1 ffGoogle Scholar.; Kornemann, E., P-W, s.v. Colonia, 529Google Scholar; Meyer, E., Caesars Monarchie und das Principat des Pompejus 2 (1922), 488Google Scholar; Donnadieu, A., La Pompéi de la Provence: Fréjus (1927), 12 ffGoogle Scholar.

page 41 note 1 Histoire de la Gaule II, 459, ‘je crois Fréjus une station commerciale antérieure à la conquête’.

page 41 note 2 Jacobsthal, P. and Neuffer, E., ‘Gallia Graeca’, Préhistoire II (1933), 1 ffGoogle Scholar.; de Brun, P., Assoc. Guillaume Budé, Congrès de Nimes (1932), 136 ffGoogle Scholar.; Rolland, H., Saint-Remy de Provence (Bergerac, 1934)Google Scholar.

page 41 note 3 Pro Fonteio II, 13, 15, etc.

page 41 note 4 Caesar, , BG 1, 19, 47 and 53Google Scholar; 7, 65. On the name, Procillus or Troucillus, cf. Holmes', Rice discussion, Caesar's Conquest of Gaul 2, 652Google Scholar.

page 41 note 5 Justin 43, 5, 11 f. Caesar's secretary is perhaps, but not necessarily, the interpreter Cn. Pompeius, (BG 5, 36)Google Scholar.

page 41 note 6 Tacitus, , Ann. II, 24Google Scholar, ‘cum specie deductarum per orbem terrae legionum additis provincialium validissimis fesso imperio subventum est ’.

page 41 note 7 Pliny, (NH 33, 143)Google Scholar describes him as ‘paterna gente pellitus’. If correct, and Pliny should have known, for he had served under Paullinus in Germania Superior (he uses the word ‘scimus’ when describing the legate's silver plate), this means that Pompeius Paullinus of Arelate was of native extraction: an ancestor will have got the franchise from Pompeius.

page 41 note 8 ILS 8995.

page 41 note 9 Asconius, , in Cornelianam 67 (Clark, p. 75)Google Scholar.

page 41 note 10 Not to be believed is the speaker in Tacitus, (Ann. 13, 27)Google Scholar, ‘et plurimis equitum, plerisque senatoribus non aliunde originem trahi’.

apge 42 note 1 Plessis, F., La poésie latine, 290Google Scholar, ‘c'est sans doute comme fils d'affranchi qu'il portait le nom de la gens Cornelia’.

apge 42 note 2 Suetonius, , Divus Aug. 66Google Scholar, ‘Salvidienum Rufum quem ad consulatum usque, et Cornelium Gallum, quem ad praefecturam Aegypti, ex infima utrumque fortuna, provexerat’.

page 42 note 3 Plessis, F., o.c, 290Google Scholar, ‘d'une très humble origine’; P-W, s.v. ‘C. Cornelius Gallus’, 1343, ‘aus ganz ärmlichen Verhalänissen’; cf. Bickel, E., Gesch. der r. Lit. (1937), 533Google Scholar. Skutsch, who nowhere mentions Gallus' Narbonensian origin, actually bases an argument upon his ‘niedrige Herkunft’ (Gallus u. Vergil (1906), 126).

page 42 note 4 Cf. above all Gelzer, M., Die Nobilität der r. Republik, 11 ffGoogle Scholar.

apge 42 note 5 Cicero, , In Verrem II, 5, 181Google Scholar.

page 42 note 6 Cicero, , Ad fam. 13, 36Google Scholar.

page 42 note 7 Cicero, , In Verrem II, 3, 69Google Scholar.

page 42 note 8 Cicero, Pro Balbo, passim.

page 42 note 9 Cicero, , Ad Atticum 8, 15a, 2Google Scholar; 9, 7b, 2; Velleius 2, 51, 2.

page 43 note 1 Grueber, H. A., BMC, R. Rep. 11, 491 fGoogle Scholar. For Pompeius' legates in the Pirate War, cf. Appian, , Mithr. 95Google Scholar. The history of his relations with the Cornelii Lentuli deserves investigation (cf. above for L. Cornelius Lentulus Crus).

page 43 note 2 Cf. esp. Pro Fonteio 14, ‘ex Cn. Pompei decreto’. Similarly, C. Valerius Flaccus was active in both regions and triumphed ‘ex Celtiberia et Gallia’ (Granius Licinianus 39, Bonn).

page 43 note 3 Tacitus, , Ann. 11, 24Google Scholar, ‘num paenitet Balbos ex Hispania nee minus insignis viros e Gallia Narbonensi transivisse’. On the social status and origin of Caesar's provincial senators, cf. Syme, R., ‘Who was Decidius Saxa?JRS XXVII 1937), 127 ffGoogle Scholar. Saxa was probably of colonial Roman stock: not so the younger Balbus, the only other provincial recorded by name.

page 43 note 4 E.g., Horace, , Sat. 1, 10, 46Google Scholar; Quintilian 10, 1, 87.

page 43 note 5 Jerome, , Chron., under 82 B.C. (p. 151 H.)Google Scholar, ‘vico Atace in provincia Narbonensi’.

page 43 note 6 Mela 2, 75.

page 43 note 7 As Mela's description of Narbo suggests—‘Atacinorum Decimanorumque colonia’. Jullian's view that Atax was a town-ward of Narbo, (Histoire de la Gaule VI, 145)Google Scholar is not very helpful.

For doubts about the existence of a place called Atax, see Lenz, F., P-W, s.v. ‘P. Terentius Varro’, 692Google Scholar; on the name ‘Atacinus’, Hey, O., Archiv für lat. Lexikographie XIV (1906), 269Google Scholar, and J. Wackernagel, ib., 10 ‘abweichend Atacinus: Atax als Ethnikon des bekannten Dichters; ich kann es nicht erklären’.

page 44 note 1 Cf. Gordon, M. L., ‘The Patria of Tacitus’, JRS XXVI (1936), 145 ffGoogle Scholar.

page 44 note 2 Pliny, , NH 3, 31Google Scholar.