CORNELII NEPOTIS
NEPOTIS VITAE

FOR THE USE OF SCHOOLS,

WITH

NOTES AND INDICES,

BY THE LATE

REV. J. F. MACMICHAEL, B.A.

TRINITY COLLEGE CAMBRIDGE,

HONORARY CANON OF RIPON CATHEDRAL,

FORMERLY HEAD MASTER OF QUEEN MARY'S GRAMMAR SCHOOL, RIPON.
EDITOR OF "THE ANABASIS OF XENOPHON,

GREEK TESTAMENT," ETC.

LONDON:

WHITTAKER AND CO., AVE MARIA LANE;
GEORGE BELL & SONS, YORK STREET

COVENT GARDEN.

1874

HARVARD
UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

LONDON:

GILBERT AND RIVINGTON, PRINTERS ST. JOHN'S SQUARE.

PREFACE.

CORNELIUS NEPOS was a native of that remarkable district north of the Po,' lying east of the Mincio, which gave the world an epic poet in Virgil, an historian in Livy, a lyric and elegiac poet in Catullus, and a biographer and perhaps the most encyclopædic writer of his time in Cornelius Nepos. His abilities and character won for him the profound respect and warm attachment of such men as Cicero and Atticus.

Cicero, in a letter to Atticus (xvi. 5), bears fine testimony to his character:-"Nepotis epistolam exspecto. Cupidus ille meorum? qui ea, quibus maxime yavpiŵ, legenda non putet. Et ais, μετ' ἀμύμονα. Tu vero ἀμύμων, ille quidem außporos." Cicero is here alluding to a pasἄμβροτος.” sage in Homer in which he describes Ajax as the bravest of the Greeks after Achilles:

Τῶν ἄλλων Δαναῶν μετ ̓ ἀμύμονα Πηλειῶνα. It appears that Atticus had written to Cicero, saying that Nepos was second to Cicero just as Ajax was to Achilles ;

1 Pliny, N. H. iii. calls him Padi accola. Local tradition has preserved Hostilia as his native place.