Listed 3 sub titles with search on: Biographies for wider area of: "PRAENESTE Ancient city LAZIO" .
PRAENESTE (Ancient city) LAZIO
170 - 235
Aelianus, Claudius (Klaudios Ailianos), was born according to Suidas (s. v. Ailianos)
at Praeneste in Italy, and lived at Rome. He calls himself a Roman (V. H. xii.
25), as possessing the rights of Roman citizenship. He was particularly fond of
the Greeks and of Greek literature and oratory (V. H. ix. 32, xii. 25). He studied
under Pausanias the rhetorician, and imitated the eloquence of Nicostratus and
the style of Dion Chrysostom; but especially admired Herodes Atticus more than
all. He taught rhetoric at Rome in the time of Hadrian, and hence was called ho
sophistes. So complete was the command he acquired over the Greek language that
he could speak as well as a native Athenian, and hence was called ho meliglottos
or meliphthongos (Philost. Vit. Soph. ii. 31). That rhetoric, however, was not
his forte may easily be believed from the style of his works; and he appears to
have given up teaching for writing. Suidas calls him Archiereus (Pontifex). He
lived to above sixty years of age, and had no children. He did not marry, because
he would not have any. There are two considerable works of his remaining: one
a collection of miscellaneous history (Poikile Historia) in fourteen books, commonly
called his " Varia Historia," and the other a work on the peculiarities of animals
(Peri Zoon idiotetos) in seventeen books, commonly called his " De Animalium Natura."
The former work contains short narrations and aneedotes, historical, biographical,
antiquarian, &c., selected from various authors, generally without their names
being given, and on a great variety of subjects. Its chief value arises from its
containing many passages from works of older authors which are now lost. It is
to be regretted that in selecting from Thucydides, Herodotus, and other writers,
he has sometimes given himself the trouble of altering their language. But he
tells us he liked to have his own way and to follow his own taste, and so he would
seem to have altered for the mere sake of putting something different. The latter
work is of the same kind, scrappy and gossiping. It is partly collected from older
writers, and partly the result of his own observations both in Italy and abroad.
According to Philostratus (in Vit.) he was scarcely ever out of Italy; but he
tells us himself that he travelled as far as Aegypt; and that he saw at Alexandria
an ox with five feet (De Anim. xi. 40; comp. xi. 11). This book would appear to
have become a popular and standard work on zoology, since in the fourteenth century
Manuel Philes, a Byzantine poet, founded upon it a poem on animals. At the end
of the work is a concluding chapter (epilogos), where he states the general principles
on which he has composed his work : --that he has spent great labour, care, and
thought in writing it; --that he has preferred the pursuit of knowledge to the
pursuit of wealth; and that, for his part, he found much more pleasure in observing
the habits of the lion, the panther, and the fox, in listening to the song of
the nightingale, and in studying the migrations of cranes, than in mere heaping
up riches and being numbered among the great: -- that throughout his work he has
sought to adhere to the truth. Nothing can be imagined more deficient in arrangement
than this work: he goes from one subject to another without the least link of
association; as (e. g.) from elephants (xi. 15) to dragons (xi. 16), from the
liver of mice (ii. 56) to the uses of oxen (ii. 57). But this absence of arrangement,
treating things poikila poikilos he says, is intentional; he adopted this plan
to give variety to the work, and to avoid tedium to the reader. His style, which
he commends to the indulgence of crities, though free from any great fault, has
no particular merit. The similarity of plan in the two works, with other internal
evidences, seems to shew that they were both written by the same Aelian, and not,
as Voss and Valckenaer conjecture, by two different persons.
In both works he seems desirous to inculcate moral and religious principles
(see V. H. vii. 44; De Anim. vi. 2, vii. 10, 11, ix. 7, and Epilog.); and he wrote
some treatises expressly on philosophical and religious subjects, especially one
on Providence (Peoi Pronoias) in three books (Suidas, s. v. Abasanistois), and
one on the Divine Manifestations (Peri theion Energeion), directed against the
Epicureans, whom he alludes to elsewhere (De Anim. vii. 44). There are also attributed
to Aelian twenty letters on husbandry and such-like matters (Agroikikai Epistolai),
which are by feigned characters, are written in a rhetorical unreal style, and
are of no value.
There has also been attributed to Aelian a work called Kategoria tou Gunnidos,
an attack on an effeminate man, probably meant for Elagabalus (Suidas, s. v. Arrhen).
This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited Sep 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Flaccus, Verrius, a freedman by birth, and a distinguished grammarian, in the
latter part of the first century B. C. His reputation as a teacher of grammar,
or rather philology, procured him the favour of Augustus, who took him into his
household, and entrusted him with the education of his grandsons, Caius and Lucius
Caesar. Flaccus lodged in a part of the palace which contained the Atrium Catilinae.
This was his lecture-room, where he was allowed to continue his instructions to
his former scholars, but not to admit any new pupils, after he became preceptor
of the young Caesars. If we receive Ernesti's correction of Suetonius (Octav.
86), it was the pure and percritics spicuous Latinity of Verrius, not Veranius,
Flaccus, which Augustus contrasted with the harsh and obsolete diction of Annius
Cimber. Flaccus rethe ceived a yearly salary of more than 800l. He died at an
advanced age, in the reign of Tiberius.
At the lower end of the market-place at Praeneste was a statue of
Verrius Flaccus, fronting the Hemicyclium, on the inner curve of which, so as
to be visible to all persons in the forum (Vitruv. v. 1), were set up marble tablets,
inscribed with the Fasti Verriani. These should be distinguished from the Fasti
Praenestini. The latter, like the similar Fasti of Aricium, Tibur, Tusculum, &c.
were the townrecords. But the Fasti of Flaccus were a calendar of the days and
vacations of public business--dies fasti, nefasti, and intercisi--of religious
festivals, triumphs, &c., especially including such as were peculiar to the family
of the Caesars. In 1770 the foundations of the Hemicyclium of Praeneste were discovered,
and among the ruins were found portions of an ancient calendar, which proved to
be fragments of the Fasti Verriani. Further portions were recovered in subsequent
excavations, and Foggini, an Italian antiquary, reconstructed from them the entire
months of January, March, April, and December, and a small portion of February
was afterwards annexed. (Franc. Foggini, Fastorum Ann. Roman. Reliquiae, &c. Rom.
1779, fol. ; and Dict. of Antiq. s. v. Fasti.) They are also given at the end
of Wolf's edition of Suetonius, 8vo. Lips. 1802, and in Orelli's Inscriptiones
Latinae, vol. ii.
Flaccus was an antiquary, an historian, a philologer, and perhaps
a poet; at least Priscian (viii.) ascribes to him an hexameter line, " Blanditusque
labor molli curabitur arte." It is seldom possible to assign to their proper
heads the fragments of his numerous writings. But the following works may be attributed
to him:--An historical collection or compendium, entitled Rerum Memoria Dignarum,
of which A. Gellius (iv. 5) cites the first book for the story of the Etruscan
aruspices, who gave perfidious counsel to Rome (Niebuhr, Hist. Rome, vol. i.);
a History of the Etruscans-Rerum Etruscarum--(Intpp. ad Aen. x. 183, 198, ed.
Mai; compare also Serv. ad Aen. vii. 53, viii. 203, xi. 143); a treatise, De Orthographia
(Suet. Ill. Gramm. 17). This work drew upon Flaccus the anger of a rival teacher
of philology, Scribonius Aphrodisius, who wrote a reply, and mixed up with the
controversy reflections on the learning and character of Flaccus. Flaccus was
also the author of a work en titled Saturnus, or Saturnalia (Macrob. Saturn. i.
4, 8), and of another, De Obscuris Catonis, on the archaisms used by Cato the
Censor : the second book of which is cited by A. Gellius (xvii. 6). Besides the
preceding references, Flaccus is quoted by Gellius (v. 17, 18), who refers to
the fourth book, De Significatu Verborum, of Flaccus, while discussing the difference
between history and annals (see also xvi. 14, xviii. 7), and by Macrobius (Saturn.
i. 10, 12, 16). Flaccus is cited by Pliny in his Elenchos (H. N. 1), or summary
of the materials of his Historia Naturalis, generally (Lib. i. iii. vii. viii.
xiv. xv. xviii. xxviii. xxix. xxxiii. xxxiv. xxxv.), and specially, but without
distinguishing the particular work of Flaccus which he consulted (H. N. vii. 53,
s. 54, mortes repentinac ; viii. 6, elephantos in circo ; ix. 23, s. 39, praetextatos
muraenarum tergore verberatos ; xviii. 7, s. 11, far P. Rom. victus; xxviii. 2.4,
Deorum evocatio ; xxxiii. 3.19, Tarquinii Prisci aurea tunica ; 16, 7.36, Jovis
facies minio illita). Flaccus is also referred to by Lactantius (Instit. i. 20),
by Arnobius (adv. Gent. i. 59), and by Isidorus (Orig. xiv. 8.33). But the work
which more than any other embodies the fragments of an author, whose loss to classical
antiquity is probably second only to that of Varro, is the treatise, De Verborum
Significatione, of Festus. Festus abridged a work of the same kind, and with probably
a similar title, by Verrius Flaccus, from which also some of the extracts in Gellius
and Macrobius, and the citations in the later grammarians, Priscianus, Diomedes,
Charisius, and Velius Longus, are probably taken. (Sueton. Ill. Gramm. 17; K.
O. Muller, Praefaeatio ad Pompeium Festum, Lips. 1839.)
This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited Nov 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
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