Contemporaries of Livy.—1. Pompeius Trogus, whose history is known to us only through the abridgment made by M. Iunianus Iustinus, probably in the time of the Antonines. Trogus was of Gallic descent. His grandfather had received the Roman civitas from Pompey; his father was one of Caesar’s officers, and is possibly to be identified with the Cn. Pompeius of Caes. B.G. v. 36 (Iustin. xliii. 5, 11). His chief work, Historiae Philippicae, in forty-four Books, was concerned chiefly with the history of Macedonia and the Diadochi; but it embraced also the empires of the East and the history of Greece down to the time of Philip, as well as Parthia, Spain, Carthage, and the early history of Rome.
2. Fenestella, who died, according to Jerome, in A.D. 19 at the age of seventy. Nothing is known of his life, or of the poems which Jerome attributes to him; but he certainly wrote Annales (Nonius, p. 154). He is also quoted as an authority on miscellaneous antiquarian and constitutional points.
3. M. Verrius Flaccus, tutor to the grandsons of Augustus (Sueton. Gramm. 17), was the author of Fasti, fragments of which have been discovered near Praeneste, and which were used by Ovid for his poem of that name. Of Verrius’ grammatical works, the greatest was that entitled De verborum significatu (Gell. v. 17, 1), arranged alphabetically. It is lost, but we possess part of an abridgment (nine out of sixteen Books) made by Sex. Pompeius Festus before the third century A.D. The abridgment of Festus was in turn epitomized by Paulus Diaconus in the time of Charlemagne, and his work is extant in a complete form.
4. C. Iulius Hyginus, a freedman of Augustus and librarian of the Palatine library (Sueton. Gramm. 20), wrote De vita rebusque illustrium virorum (Gell. i. 14, 1); Exempla (Gell. x. 18, 7); De situ urbium Italicarum (Serv. ad Verg. Aen. iii. 553); De familiis Troianis (ibid. v. 389); theological works, e.g. De dis Penatibus (Macrob. Saturn. iii. 4, 13); commentaries on Virgil and Helvius Cinna; and De Agricultura, a treatise to which Virgil was indebted (Colum. i. 1, 13). The Hyginus who wrote Fabulae and De Astrologia probably lived in the second century A.D.
VITRUVIUS.
Vitruvius Pollio (the cognomen appears only in the abridgment of his book) served under Caesar in Africa B.C. 46; viii. 3, 25, ‘C. Iulius Masinissae filius ... cum patre Caesari militavit. Is hospitio meo est usus. Ita cottidiano convictu necesse fuerat de philologia disputare ...’
Under Augustus he was an officer of engineers, and was enabled to spend the rest of his life in comfort through the liberality of that prince and his sister Octavia: i. praef. 2, ‘Cum M. Aurelio et P. Minidio et Cn. Cornelio ad apparationem ballistarum et scorpionum reliquorumque tormentorum refectionem fui praesto et cum eis commoda accepi. Quae cum primo mihi tribuisti, recognitionem per sororis commendationem servasti. Cum ergo eo beneficio essem obligatus, ut ad exitum vitae non haberem inopiae timorem ...’
He wrote the treatise De Architectura, in ten Books, when he was no longer young (ii. praef. 4, ‘faciem deformavit aetas’), between the years B.C. 16 and 13. The temple of Quirinus, mentioned iii. 2, 7, was built in the former year; and he speaks of only one stone theatre in Rome (iii. 2, 2), whereas in B.C. 13 there were three.
The arrangement of the subject-matter is as follows: Book i., sciences on which architecture is based, chief divisions of the subject, choice of site, and method of laying out a town; ii., building materials; iii., temples—Ionic order; iv., Doric and Corinthian orders; v., public buildings, e.g., forum, theatre; vi., private houses—construction; vii., decoration; viii., water-supply; ix., methods of measuring time, e.g., sun-dials; x., engines and machines used in war and in the arts.
The work is dedicated to Augustus, who is addressed throughout, and is meant to be of practical use to him in his building operations.