3. Minor works, now lost (mentioned by Suidas), on Greek games, Roman games, the Roman year, on critical marks, on Cicero’s Republic, on dress, on imprecations (περὶ δυσφήμων λέξεων ἤτοι βλασφημιῶν καὶ πόθεν ἑκάστη), on Roman laws and customs. Some of these were probably only sections of the Prata, a miscellany in ten Books, which also treated of natural science and philology. The books on Greek games and on imprecations were almost certainly composed in Greek.
APPENDIX A
ON SOME OF THE CHIEF ANCIENT AUTHORITIES FOR THE HISTORY OF ROMAN LITERATURE.
1. Jerome[117] (Hieronymus) was born about A.D. 335 at Stridon, on the frontiers of Dalmatia and Pannonia, and died A.D. 420 at the monastery of Bethlehem. His contributions to the history of Roman literature are to be found in his translation of the Chronicle (χρονικοὶ κανόνες) of Eusebius, in which the dates are reckoned from the first year of Abraham (= B.C. 2016 according to his chronology), the point at which Eusebius commenced. On the period between the Trojan War and A.D. 325 Jerome not merely translated the remarks of Eusebius, as he had done in the earlier period, but also added numerous extracts from authorities on Roman history and literature. The source from which he derived nearly all his information on literature is universally admitted to have been the work of Suetonius De Viris Illustribus. With the statements in the surviving sections of that treatise the observations of Jerome agree, and there can be no reasonable doubt that he made a similar use of the parts no longer extant. It is a significant fact that the important authors on whom Jerome is silent, e.g. Tacitus, Juvenal, and the younger Pliny, are precisely those whom Suetonius, as a contemporary, naturally could not discuss.
The statements of Jerome, based as they are on the high authority of Suetonius, may be regarded as in the main trustworthy. Some of them, however, are doubtful, and others manifestly wrong.
(a) Jerome’s plan obliged him to fix every event to a definite year; and this, in many cases, can only be guess-work, for Suetonius, as may be seen from his extant writings, was often vague in his chronology.
(b) Comparison with the remains of Suetonius shows that Jerome’s claim to have made his extracts with care was not always well grounded; e.g. his statement that Ennius was a native of Tarentum (see [p. 27]).
(c) In reckoning, according to his system of dates, events dated by one of the many confusing systems of chronology current in ancient times, many openings for error presented themselves; e.g. he sometimes erred through confusing consuls of the same or similar names, as in the case of Lucilius ([p. 59]); or through confusing similar events, as in the case of Livius Andronicus, although the mistake about the latter was of long standing ([p. 2]). Once at least he seems to have confused the date of an author’s floruit and that of his death, making Plautus die in B.C. 200 instead of B.C. 184 ([p. 8]).
2. Aulus Gellius[118] was born probably about A.D. 123, and studied under the most eminent teachers both at Rome and at Athens. Of his subsequent life nothing is known except that he held some judicial post at Rome. His work, the Noctes Atticae in twenty Books (of Book viii. only the headings of chapters are preserved), is a miscellany of information on philology, philosophy, rhetoric, history, biography, literary criticism, natural science, and antiquities. The title is due to the fact that the book was commenced in the winter evenings during the author’s residence at Athens. The arrangement of the contents simply follows the haphazard order of the notes which Gellius made in the course of his reading of Greek and Roman authors. Those authors, and the conversation of contemporaries, are Gellius’ professed sources, but in some cases the author he names is evidently quoted at second-hand, and many of the conversations are doubtless quite imaginary. Our obligations to Gellius are twofold.
(a) Innumerable extracts from ancient authors are preserved by him alone. (No quotations are given from post-Augustan writers—a fact which accords with the affected archaism of his style.)