CORNELIUS NEPOS.
(1) LIFE.
The praenomen of Cornelius Nepos is unknown. In Pliny, N.H. iii. 127, he is called ‘Padi adcola,’ and in Pliny, Ep. iv. 28, 1 (to Vibius Severus), he is mentioned as a townsman of T. Catius, ‘Imagines municipum tuorum, Cornelii Nepotis et T. Cati.’ Now T. Catius was an Insubrian (Cic. ad Fam. xv. 16, 1), and as the only Insubrian town on the Padus was Ticinum, Nepos was probably born there.
There is no direct evidence as to the date of his birth but we may infer from the following facts that he was born not long before B.C. 100.
1. Jerome puts his literary activity under B.C. 40 = yr. Abr. 1977, ‘Cornelius Nepos scriptor historicus clarus habetur.’
2. A son of his died B.C. 44 while a boy, and unknown to Cicero.
Cic. ad Att. xvi. 14, 4, ‘Male narras de Nepotis filio: valde mehercule moveor et moleste fero; nescieram omnino esse istum puerum.’
3. The respect with which he looks up to Atticus, who was born B.C. 109.
4. A fragment of his Exempla quoted by Pliny, N.H. ix. 136, regarding the changes of fashion in purple robes: ‘Nepos Cornelius, qui divi Augusti principatu obiit, “Me,” inquit, “iuvene violacea purpura vigebat, ... nec multo post rubra Tarentina. Huic successit dibapha Tyria... Hac P. Lentulus Spinther aedilis curulis (B.C. 63) primus in praetexta usus improbabatur. Qua purpura quis non iam,” inquit, “triclinaria facit?”’
Nepos held no public office, but confined himself to literature, in which he was associated with Atticus. Their intimacy must have begun after B.C. 65, when Atticus returned to Rome from Athens, where he had lived more than twenty years.