Nepos, C: Select Biographies (Classic Reprint) -

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Résumé :
Excerpt from Select Biographies

Ivhat'we'have left Of his works is so little in keeping with the high praise bestowed on Nepos by his contem poraries and successors that some authorities have sup posed that what goes by his name is an abstract or summary Of his original work. As a historian he is most inaccurate. Even when he appears to be translating his authorities almost word for word, as in the accounts Of Themistocles and Pausanias, he cannot follow them faith fully. One would think that he was writing from memory, and that his memory played him false. His chief merit is that he was the first Roman to supply a sort Of universal chronicle, and that he wrote a collec tion of biographies Of Greeks and other foreigners as well as of Romans. He writes in a very liberal and cosmo politan spirit. In his preface, addressed to Atticus, he deprecates the criticism Of those who judge everything from a Roman stand-point, and points out that the Greeks found fault with certain Roman customs, such as the liberty given to Roman ladies, who were not, as in Greece, confined to the women's part Of the house. In his life Of Hannibal he writes as though he were a Car thaginian himself. Before him the Roman writers had contented themselves with improving on the city Annals, or with mere lists Of magistrates and genealogies. Caelius Antipater, in the period Of the Gracchi, did indeed write with some vigour, if with little elegance Of style, a history of the Punic war, and Lucius Cornelius Sisenna composed an account of the Social and Civil wars, that was read able and lively, but the style Of which was bad.

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