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Latin history during this period made considerable progress. It was a common practice among statesmen to write memoirs of their own life and times; among others of less note, Sulla the dictator left at his death twenty-two books of Commentarii Rerum Gestarum, which were afterwards published by his secretary. In regular history the most important name is that of Quintus Claudius Quadrigarius.
There is no proof that Cæsar kept a diary. That kind of labour is suited to men of a different stamp from him. Plutarch means the Commentarii. There were abundant sources for anecdotes about Cæsar. Cato's opinion on this occasion was merely dictated by party hostility and personal hatred. His proposal was unjust and absurd. They bordered on the Ubii, and were north of them.
Jupiter hunc coeli dignatus honore fuisset, Censorem lingua sed timet esse suae. Raphael Maffei, surnamed Volaterranus, the compiler of the Commentarii urbani , a huge encyclopaedia published in thirty-eight books, composed the following witty stanza on the death of Valla: Tandem Valla silet solitus qui parcere nulli est Si quaeris quid agat? nunc quoque mordet humum.
Kingsford furnishes the following list: 1. "Commentarii in Versus Aegidii de Urinis," quoted by John Gaddesden and probably authentic. "Practica Medicinae," mentioned by Pits, but of doubtful authenticity. "Experimenta Magistri Gilliberti, Cancellarii Montepessulani," noticed on page 2, but authenticity doubtful. "Compendium super Librum Aphorismorum Hippocratis." MS. in Bodleian.
I wish I had Virgil, or even "Commentarii de Bello Gallico." I'd be arrested and tried if I asked for them in a book store.... If only I could obtain some money, and buy a decent suit and get away, to Vladivostok, and then through America to France. It seems as though France is all. It is life. It is salvation from my miseries.
Goethe asserts that Spinozism transmuted into a creed by analytic reflection is simply Machiavelism. The twenty-two books of Sulla's Memoirs, rerum suarum gestarum commentarii, were dedicated to his friend Lucullus; they were still in existence in the time of Tacitus and Plutarch, though the fragments which now remain serve but to mock us with regret for the loss.
Nigidius was a mystic, and devoted much of his time to Pythagorean speculations, and the celebration of various religious mysteries. His Commentarii treated of grammar, orthography, etymology, &c. In the latter he appears to have copied Varro in deriving all Latin words from native roots. One or two references are made to him in the curious Apology of Apuleius.
Caesar issued it under the unpretending name of Commentarii "notes" on the events of his campaigns, which might be useful as materials for history; but there was no exaggeration in the splendid compliment paid it a few years later by Cicero, that no one in his senses would think of recasting a work whose succinct, perspicuous, and brilliant style pura et inlustris brevitas has been the model and the despair of later historians.
While telling of the books he has lately been engaged with, he wanders off in the same sentence to talk of the dream which urged him to write the De Subtilitate, and of the execution of the Commentarii in Ptolomæum, during his voyage down the Loire.
The part relating to England and Scotland was published, in Latin, in 1559 under a title as sonorous and impressive as the Roman office for the dead, Rerum in Ecclesia Gestarum Maximarumque per Europam Persecutionum Commentarii.
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