Nepos

Nepos, CORNELIUS, a Roman historical writer, was a native of Pavia, as Mommsen thinks, of Hostilia (now Ostiglia), as its citizens believed they proved by erecting a statue in 1868. He was the contemporary and friend of Cicero, Atticus, and Catullus, and was probably still alive in 25 or 24 B.C. The ancients ascribed to him the following works: Chronica, Exemplorum Libri, Lives of Cato and Cicero, and De Viris Illustribus. The last is supposed to have consisted of sixteen books, but only twenty-five brief biographies of warriors and statesmen, mostly Greeks, have survived. These biographies are untrustworthy as history, but are written in a clear and elegant style, although affected archaisms and enthusiastic mannerisms are not unfrequent. Until the middle of the 16th century they were generally ascribed to Æmilius Probus (4th century); but in 1569 the famous Dionysius Lambinus claimed them as part of the lost work of Cornelius Nepos. Other good editions are those of Cellarius (1689) and, in modern days, Nipperdey (2d ed. 1879). See Freudentberg, Questiones historicae in C. Nepotis vitas (1839).