The Birthplaces of Latin Writers

W. J. Watts

doi:10.1017/S0017383500017721

The Birthplaces of Latin Writers

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2009

W. J. Watts

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In his introduction to the Loeb translation of Suetonius, J. C. Rolfe suggests that Suetonius' unknown birthplace may be Rome, adding: ‘There is no prominent writer of whom this [being born in Rome] can be asserted positively; it seems probable in the case of Caesar and Lucretius.’ One wonders, then, just where the writers in the Latin language were born, and what effect, if any, this had on the literature, especially that now extant. I have investigated the birthplaces of the major authors up to a.d. 200, and propose here to summarize my results and offer a few comments.

Type: Research Article
Information: Greece & Rome , Volume 18 , Issue 1 , April 1971 , pp. 91 - 101

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0017383500017721 [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: Copyright © The Classical Association 1971

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^{page 91 note 1} Rolfe, J. C. (trans.), Suetonius (London, 1914), 9 n. 5.Google Scholar

^{page 91 note 2} This paper is intended to summarize available information in the briefest possible manner, and not to document exhaustively.

^{page 91 note 3} Ap. Cic. De Or. iii. 168. Elsewhere (Arch. 22) Cic. calls him Rudinus. Sil. Ital. says he came from the Messapi, and specifies Rudiae (xii. 393): the Messapi were a tribe of Illyrian origin.

^{page 91 note 4} Sat. ii. 1. 34–5. Suet. Vit. Hor. 1 calls him Venusinus, presumably on the authority of these lines.

^{page 91 note 5} Area: Pont. iv. 14. 49; Am. ii. 1. 1, 14. 37; iii. 15. 3, 8. Town: Am. iii. 15. 11; Pont. iv. 14. 49.

^{page 91 note 6} Silv. i. 2. 260–1.

^{page 91 note 7} iii. 5. 12, 78–9, 106.

^{page 91 note 8} i. 61. 12; iv. 55. 8; i. 49. 3; iv. 55. 11; x. 103. 1–2, 104. 6; xii. 18. 9.

^{page 92 note 1} Who duly (Vit. Ter. 1) identifies him as P. Terentius Aifer.

^{page 92 note 2} It could also be argued that Terence was thought to be African because of his association with Scipio, without being African at all; but is that not perverse reasoning?

^{page 92 note 3} Plut. Cat. mai. 1; Cic. Leg. ii. 5; Sull. 23; Planc. 20; Rep. i. 1; Nepos, Vir. Ill. 47. 1; Veil. Pat. ii. 128. 2.

^{page 92 note 4} Juv. 1. 20; Aus. xv. 9, p. 173s.

^{page 92 note 5} Quint, x. 1. 93.

^{page 92 note 6} Ov. Am. iii. 15. 7; Plin. NH xxxvi. 48; Mart. i. 60. 1–2; x. 103. 5; xiv. 195; Cat. 39. 13.

^{page 92 note 7} 31. 1.

^{page 92 note 8} Mart. i. 61. 2; xiv. 195. 2; Suet. Vit. Verg. 1. But Virgil may come from the near-by town of Andes; cf. PW viii. 1. 1038.

^{page 92 note 9} Jer. on Euseb. Chron. 1958 = 59 b.c. and2033 = a.d. 17; Mart. i. 61.3, ‘Aponatellus’; Stat. Silv. iv. 7. 55, ‘Timavi alumnum’; Plut. Caes. 47; Quint, i. 5. 55; Symm. Ep. iv. 18; Sid. Ep. ix. 14. 7.

^{page 92 note 10} i. 61. 7–8; cf. Anth. Lat. 409R.

^{page 92 note 11} This Vita is in August Reifferscheid's Suet., p. 76.

^{page 92 note 12} vita Auli Persi Flacci, init.

^{page 93 note 1} CIL v. 5262–4, 5279, 5677: all from Comum.

^{page 93 note 2} Suet. ap. Jer. 2104 = a.d. 88, ‘ex Hispania Calagurritanus’; cf. contr. Vigil, (L. Migne), xxiii. 340. Aus. Prof. Burd. i. 7, ‘Fabium Calagurris alumnum’.

^{page 93 note 3} i. 5. 57.

^{page 93 note 4} Apol. 24.

^{page 93 note 5} Augus. Civ. Dei viii. 14; cf. PW ii. 1. 246 for further references.

^{page 93 note 6} Oct. 9. 6; cf. 31. 2.

^{page 93 note 7} Ep. ad amic, ii. 11, where he writes ‘IIIviris et decurionibus’ (sc. Cirtensibus); the tide from the Index, two pages being lost from the text here. He refers to ‘patriae nostrae’ in the course of the letter.

^{page 93 note 8} Jer. on Euseb. Chron. 1817=200 b.c. Controversy exists over Plautus’ nomen: Was it Accius or Maccius? But in any case Paulus Diaconus, 725–97, serves our purpose.

^{page 93 note 9} NA i. 24. 1–2. Ed. Fraenkel, PW Suppl. vi. 622 even suggests Capua as a possibility.

^{page 93 note 10} pw Suppl. v. 599. Cf. Plut. Men. 29; Dio Cass. fr. 39. 5; Appian, Samn. 7; Zonar. viii. 2. 13.

^{page 94 note 1} Ep. i. 2. But cf. Aug. Civ. Dei iv. 1, ‘Romae natus et educatus’.

^{page 94 note 2} Tusc. v. 23. 66.

^{page 94 note 3} Juv. 8. 237; Jer. Chron. on 168th Olympiad.

^{page 94 note 4} Op. xxiii. 9.

^{page 94 note 5} NH iii. 127.

^{page 94 note 6} Ep. iv. 28. 1.

^{page 94 note 7} Cic. ad fam. xv. 16. 1; Ptol. iii. 1. 29. Milan was another Insubrian town.

^{page 94 note 8} Ab Abr. 1931=86 b.c.

^{page 94 note 9} i. 22, iv. 1. 120–6, of which K. Lachmann emends the manuscripts Asis (125) to Asisi. Cf. Sellar, A. Y., CR iv (1890), 393Google Scholar, and his Horace and the Elegiac Poets (Oxford, 1899), 270–8. Also Pliny (Ep. vi. 15 and ix. 22) calls Passennus Paulus a countryman of Propertius and we know (CIL xi) that many Propertii and Passenni are recorded in inscriptions from the region of Assisi.

^{page 94 note 10} i. 4. Hor. says ‘in regione Padana’ referring to Albius.

^{page 94 note 11} Cf. Marx, F., PW i. 1321 f.Google Scholar

^{page 94 note 12} Ibid.

^{page 94 note 13} Schuster, M., Tibullstudien (Hildesheim, 1968), 81ff.Google Scholar, tries to reconcile the paupertas with the implications of Horace's Epistle.

^{page 95 note 1} Plin. Ep. iii. 7, especially 7.

^{page 95 note 2} Ecl. ix. 7–10.

^{page 95 note 3} Vita Marci 1. 4–5.

^{page 95 note 4} Despite the amusing efforts of her uncle and father to deprive her of her in heritance; Phil. Ep. viii. 18.

^{page 95 note 5} Bailey, C., T. Lucreti Cari de Rerum Natura Libri Sex (Oxford, 1947), i introd., 5–8.Google Scholar

^{page 95 note 6} CIL v. 3464: Vitruvius, L.Architectus, L. L. Cerdo. Teuffel-Schwabe, History of Roman Literature (London, 1900), i. § 264.Google Scholar

^{page 96 note 1} Vopisc. Tac. 10. 3 and Florian. 2. 1 = Tac. 15. 1.

^{page 96 note 2} Syme, R., Tacitus (Oxford, 1958), ii. 611–19.Google Scholar

^{page 96 note 3} Quintilian is similarly reticent about his origin.

^{page 96 note 4} CIL x. 5382 (Dessau 2926).

^{page 96 note 5} Verse 319.

^{page 96 note 6} Highet, G.'s biography of Juvenal in Juvenal the Satirist (Oxford, 1954), 4–41Google Scholar, is most interesting but is necessarily speculative. Even if one cannot accept it, there is admittedly no strong reason to reject Aquinum as Juvenal's birthplace.

^{page 96 note 7} Macé, A., Essai sur Suétone (Paris, 1900), 33–5.Google Scholar G. Funaioli, PW iva. 1 suggests the family may have been long in Rome, if not Roman originally.

^{page 96 note 8} Sittl, K., Die lokalen Verschiedenheiten der Lateinischen Sprache (Erl., 1882), 144Google Scholar, but cf. Th. Vogel, Jahrbücher für Klassische Philologie cxxvii (1883), 188.Google Scholar For Rome cf. Hosius, , PW vii. 1. 992.Google Scholar

^{page 97 note 1} Cicero, 1.

^{page 97 note 2} v. 30. 2; viii. 18. 5; xii. 94. 5.

^{page 97 note 3} Cic. Brutus 72. Accius' chronology is wrong but his geography could well be right.

^{page 98 note 1} 7. 147–9 (cf. 15. 111). It is interesting that Juvenal contrasts Rome, which we are told would not support even a Cicero nowadays.

^{page 98 note 2} Beaudelaire, Beaumarchais, Boileau, Duhamel, France, Fustel de Coulanges, Gide, Goncourt, Mallarmé, Marivaux, Mérimée, Molière, Musset, Proust, George Sand, Mme de Sévigné, Mme de Staël, Villon, Zola.

^{page 98 note 3} Arnold, Bacon, Blake, Byron, Campion, Carew, Chaucer, Defoe, Donne, Herrick, Jonson, Keats, Kyd, Lamb, Lovelace, Milton, Morris, Pepys, Pope, Ruskin, Spenser, Suckling, Vanbrugh, Walpole (some in near-by suburbs like Twickenham and Woolwich).

^{page 99 note 1} Nigrinus, passim. Lucian, of course, wrote in Greek.

^{page 99 note 2} xii. 18.

^{page 99 note 3} Op. cit. ii. 614.

^{page 99 note 4} p. 92 n. 11

^{page 99 note 5} 11. 190; 12. 89.

^{page 100 note 1} Unlike Martial.

^{page 100 note 2} i. 5. 55.

^{page 100 note 3} My thanks for their most helpful comments are due to Dr. Ellenor Swallow, Miss J. M. Gilmartin, Mr. G. T. Griffith, Mr. E. J. Kenney, Prof. A. Trevor Hodge.

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