This is certainly not much better than humilis, “tame” in phrase.
[414]. Of Cornelius Severus, a friend of Ovid, who wrote on the Sicilian war, and of whom Quintilian thinks that, had he lived, he might have been second to Virgil, we have some dozen odd lines, and a more solid fragment of twenty-five, enshrining that plagiarism from Sextilius Ena which has been noticed above (p. 235). It has some merit. For Saleius Bassus see above (p. 281). The five scraps which we possess of Rabirius warrant no judgment. But Seneca the Rhetorician in a context noticed above (p. 234), has preserved a block of twenty-three lines of Albinovanus Pedo on the voyage of Germanicus, which have a certain declamatory vigour. See Baehrens, vi. 351-356. (Some elegies have also been attributed to Pedo.)
[415]. At Lyricorum idem Horatius fere solus legi dignus.
[416]. In comœdia maxime claudicamus: licet Varro, Musas (Ælii Stilonis sententia), Plautino dicat sermone locuturas fuisse, si Latine loqui vellent.
[417]. XII. x. 40.
[418]. X. iii. 22-24. It is natural to compare this with the remarks of Aper and Maternus in the Dialogus.
[419]. This remark is, of course, made subject to the uncertainties referred to above (p. 214 sq.).
[420]. Théry, op. cit., i. 207. I venture to think that Mr Nettleship also is not quite just to Quintilian.
CHAPTER IV.
LATER WRITERS.
AULUS GELLIUS: THE ‘NOCTES ATTICÆ’—MACROBIUS: THE ‘SATURNALIA’—SERVIUS ON VIRGIL—OTHER COMMENTATORS—AUSONIUS—THE ‘ANTHOLOGIA LATINA’—THE LATIN RHETORICIANS—RUTILIUS LUPUS, ETC.—CURIUS FORTUNATIANUS, HIS CATECHISM—MARIUS VICTORINUS ON CICERO—OTHERS—MARTIANUS CAPELLA.