Wherever, as in the case of his treatise on agriculture, he had access to sound information and good authority, his habits of arrangement, the clearness with which he classified, and the careful judgment with which he adduced his facts, render his works valuable. Few men have possessed greater powers of combining and systematizing: his mind was, as it were, full of compartments, in which each species of knowledge had its proper place, but it was nothing more. Whenever he left the beaten track of other men’s discoveries, and indulged in free conjecture or original thought, as in his grammatical works, his learning seems to desert him; and etymology, which has tempted so many mere conjecturers to go astray, led him also into absurdity.
One of his works, Antiquitates Divinarum Rerum, acquires a peculiar interest from the fact of its having been the storehouse from which St. Augustine, who was a great admirer of his learning, derived much of his treatise De Civitate Dei. How this laborious compilation was lost it is impossible to say. We can only lament the accident which deprives us of the work to which especially the author owes his reputation. In the treatise, which together with this forms one work, namely, Antiquitates Rerum Humanarum, he investigated the early history and chronology of Rome,[[886]] and fixed the date of the building of the city in the year B. C. 753, a date which is now commonly received by the best historians.[[887]]
A catalogue of his numerous books and tracts on almost every subject which then engaged the attention of literary men—on history, biography, geography, philosophy, criticism, and morals—would be uninteresting, but his principal works were as follows:—
I. De Re Rustica, Libri III. II. De Lingua Latina, Libri XXIV., of which only six are extant, and these in a mutilated condition. III. Antiquitates Rerum Humanarum, Libri XXV. Antiquitates Rerum Divinarum, Libri XVI. IV. Saturæ, partly in prose, partly in verse; consisting of moral essays and dialogues, exposing the vices and follies of the day, and teaching their lessons rather in a light and amusing than a didactic form. V. Poems, of which eighteen short epigrams of no great merit are extant.
CHAPTER XI.
ROMAN HISTORICAL LITERATURE—PRINCIPAL HISTORIANS—LUCCEIUS—LUCULLUS—CORNELIUS NEPOS—OPINIONS OF THE GENUINENESS OF THE WORKS WHICH BEAR HIS NAME—BIOGRAPHY OF J. CÆSAR—HIS COMMENTARIES—THEIR STYLE AND LANGUAGE—HIS MODESTY OVERRATED—OTHER WORKS—CHARACTER OF CÆSAR.
Historical Writers.
In historical composition alone can the Romans lay claim to originality; and in their historical literature especially is exhibited a faithful transcript of their mind and character. History at once gratified their patriotism, and its investigations were in accordance with their love of the real and practical. Thus those natural powers which had been elicited and cultivated by an acquaintance with Greek literature were applied with a naïve simplicity to the narration of events, and embellished them with all the graces of a refined style. The practical good sense and political wisdom which the Roman social system was admirably adapted to nurture found food for reflection: their shrewd insight into character, and their searching scrutiny into the human heart gave them a power over their materials; and hence they were enabled in this department of literature to emulate, not merely imitate, the Greeks, and to be their rivals, and sometimes their superiors. The elegant simplicity of Cæsar is as attractive as that of Herodotus; not one of the Greek historians surpasses Livy in talent for the picturesque, and in the charm with which he invests his spirited and living stories; whilst for condensation of thought, terseness of expression, and political and philosophical acumen, Tacitus is not inferior to Thucydides.
The subjects which historical investigation furnished were so peculiarly national, so congenial to the character of the mind of the Romans, that they seem to have cast aside their Greek originals, and to have struck out an independent line for themselves.
The catalogue of Roman historians is a proud one. At the head of it stand the four great names of Cæsar, Sallust, Livy, and Tacitus; all of whom, except the last, belong to the Augustan age. It comprehends those of Cornelius Nepos, Trogus Pompeius, Cremutius Cordus, Aufidius Bassus, and Sallust, in the golden age; Velleius Paterculus, Valerius Maximus, Q. Curtius, Suetonius, and Florus, in the succeeding one; nor must L. Lucceius and L. Licinius Lucullus be passed over without mention.