NIGIDIUS FIGULUS
was a man much resembling Varro, and next to him was accounted the most learned of the Romans[98]. He was the contemporary of Cicero, and one of his chief advisers and associates in suppressing the conspiracy of Catiline[99]. Shortly afterwards he arrived at the dignity of Prætor, but having espoused the part of Pompey in the civil wars, he was driven into banishment on the accession of Cæsar to the supreme power, and died in 709, before Cicero could obtain his recall from exile[100]. He was much addicted to judicial astrology; and ancient writers relate a vast number of his predictions, particularly that of the empire of the world to Augustus, which he presaged immediately after the birth of that prince[101].
Nigidius vied with Varro in multifarious erudition, and the number of his works—grammar, criticism, natural history, and the origin of man, having successively employed his pen. His writings are praised by Cicero, Pliny, Aulus Gellius, and Macrobius; but they were rendered almost entirely unfit for popular use by their subtlety, mysteriousness, and obscurity[102]—defects to which his cultivation of judicial astrology, and adoption of the Pythagorean philosophy, may have materially contributed. Aulus Gellius gives many examples of the obscurity, or rather unintelligibility, of his grammatical writings[103]. His chief work was his Grammatical Commentaries, in thirty books, in which he attempted to show, that names and words were fixed not by accidental application, but by a certain power and order of nature. One of his examples, of terms being rather natural than arbitrary, was taken from the word Vos, in pronouncing which, he observed, that we use a certain motion of the mouth, agreeing with what the word itself expresses: We protrude, by degrees, the tips of our lips, and thrust forward our breath and mind towards those with whom we are engaged in conversation. On the other hand, when we say nos, we do not pronounce it with a broad and expan[pg 55]ded blast of the voice, nor with projecting lips, but we restrain our breath and lips, as it were, within ourselves. The like natural signs accompany the utterance of the words tu and ego—tibi and mihi[104]. Nigidius also wrote works, entitled De Animalibus, De Ventis, De Extis, and a great many treatises on the nature of the gods. All these have long since perished, except a very few fragments, which have been collected and explained by Janus Rutgersius, in the third book of his Variæ Lectiones, published at Leyden in 1618; 4to. In this collection he has also inserted a Greek translation of another lost work of Nigidius, on the presages to be drawn from thunder. The original Latin is said to have been taken from books which bore the name of the Etruscan Tages, the supposed founder of the science of divination. The Greek version was executed by Laurentius, a philosopher of the age of Justinian, and his translation was discovered by Meursius, about the beginning of the seventeenth century, in the Palatine library. It is a sort of Almanack, containing presages of thunder for each particular day of the year, and beginning with June. If it thunder on the 13th of June, the life or fortunes of some great person are menaced—if on the 19th of July, war is announced—if on the 5th of August, it is indicated that those women, with whom we have any concern, will become somewhat more reasonable than they have hitherto proved[105].
With Varro and Nigidius Figulus, may be classed Tiro, the celebrated freedman of Cicero, and constant assistant in all his literary pursuits. He wrote many books on the use and formation of the Latin language, and others on miscellaneous subjects, which he denominated Pandectas[106], as comprehending every sort of literary topic.
Quintus Cornificius, the elder, was also a very general scholar. He composed a curious treatise on the etymology of the names of things in heaven and earth, in which he discovered great knowledge, both of Roman antiquities, and the most recondite Grecian literature. It was here he introduced an explication of Homer’s dark fable, where Jupiter and all the gods proceed to feast for twelve days in Ethiopia. The work was written in 709, during the time of Cæsar’s last expedition to Spain, and was probably intended as a supplement to Varro’s treatise on a similar topic.