Lucius Annaeus Cornutus

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Lucius Annaeus Cornutus, Stoic philosopher, flourished in the reign of Nero, when his house in Rome was a school of philosophy.

He was a native of Leptis Magna in Libya, but resided for the most part in Rome. He is best known as the teacher and friend of Persius, whose fifth satire is addressed to him. "Through Cornutus Persius was introduced to Annaeus, as well as to Lucan, who was of his own age, and also a disciple of Cornutus" (Suetonius, Life of Persius [1]. At Persius' death, Cornutus returned to Persius' sisters a bequest made to him, but accepted Persius' library of some 700 scrolls. He revised the deceased poet's satires for publication, but handed them over to Caesius Bassus to edit, at the special request of the latter.

Among Persius's satires were lines that, as Suetonius records, "even lashed Nero himself, who was then the reigning prince. The verse ran as follows:

Auriculas asini Mida rex habet
(King Midas has an ass's ears)
but Cornutus altered it thus;
Auriculas asini quis non habet?
Who has not an ass's ears?"
in order that it might not be supposed that it was meant to apply to Nero." (Suetonius, Life of Persius).

Annaeus Cornutus was banished by Nero nevertheless—in 66 or 68 CE—for having indirectly disparaged the emperor's projected history of the Romans in heroic verse (Dio Cassius), after which time nothing more is heard of him.

He was the author of various rhetorical works in both Greek and Latin, such as De figuris sententiarum.

His one major survivor, the philosophical treatise, Theologiae Graecae compendium ("Compendium of Greek Theology"; the Greek title being uncertain)[1] is a manual of "popular mythology as expounded in the etymological and symbolical interpretations of the Stoics" (John Edwin Sandys). This early example of a Roman educational treatise, provided an exegesis of Greek mythology on the bases of highly elaborated etymological excursi and allegorical interpretive readings, neo-Stoic traditions that would become Christian stock-in-trade, after the example set by Greek-trained Hilary of Poitiers. A commentary on Virgil is frequently quoted by Servius, but tragedies mentioned by Suetonius have not survived.

Cornutus has in the past been confused (i.e. in EB 1911) with another rhetorician, also named Cornutus, who flourished AD 200-250, who was the author of a treatise (Tex^i? TOV iroXmKoD \6jov). Excerpts from his treatise De enuntiatione vel orthographia are preserved in Cassiodorus. Simplicius of Cilicia and Porphyry refer to his commentary on the Categories of Aristotle, whose philosophy he is said to have defended against an opponent, Athenodorus, in a treatise ('AirtYpa^i vrpos "A0r;ro5copoj>). His Aristotelian studies were probably his most important work.

Scholia to Persius are also attributed to Annaeus Cornutus; the latter, however, are of much later date, and are assigned by Jahn to the Carolingian period. The so-called Disticha Cornuti belong to the Late Middle Ages

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ A new edition is in preparation: Cornutus: A Cursory Examination of the Traditions of Greek Theology (Theologiae Graecae Compendium), with text, translation, and commentary, edited by David Armstrong, Pamela Gordon, Loveday Alexander and L. Michael White.

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