Nepos, Cornel i us

, a celebrated historian in the reign of August us. He was born at Hostilia, and, like the rest of his learned contemporaries, he shared the favours and enjoyed the patronage of the emperor. He was the intimate friend of Cicero and of Atticus, and recommended himself to the notice of the great and opulent by delicacy of sentiment and a lively disposition. According to some writers, he composed three books of chronicles, as also a biographical account of all the most celebrated kings, generals, and authors of antiquity. Of all his valuable compositions, nothing remains but his lives of the illustrious Greek and Roman generals, which have often been attributed to Æmylius Probus, who published them in his own name in the age of Theodosius, to conciliate the favour and the friendship of that emperor. The language of Cornel i us has always been admired, and as a writer of the August an age, he is entitled to many commendations for the delicacy of his expre ions, the elegance of his style, and the clearne and precision of his narrations. Some support that he translated Dares Phrygius from the Greek original; but the inelegance of the diction, and its many incorrect expre ions, plainly prove that it is the production, not of a writer of the August an age, but the spurious composition of a more modern pen. Cornel i us speaks of his account of the Greek historians Dion , ch. 3 . Among the many good editions of Cornel i us Nepos, two may be selected as the best, that of Verheyk, 8vo, Leiden, 1773, and that of Glasgow, 12mo, 1761.――Julius, an emperor of the west, .