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Updated: May 4, 2025
They doubtless owe their origin to Pollio's position as a poet, and Pollio's interest in young men of letters. With regard to Alfenus and Gallus, the scholiasts remained somewhat nearer the truth, for they had at hand a speech of Callus criticizing the former for his behavior at Mantua.
On a comparison of the figures given above, 50 senators and 1000 equites were regarded as victims of Marius, 40 senators and 1600 equites as victims of Sulla; this furnishes a standard at least not altogether arbitrary for estimating the extent of the crimes on both sides. The Sextus Alfenus, frequently mentioned in Cicero's oration on behalf of Publius Quinctius, was one of these.
In fact it reveals Alfenus in the act of seizing an unreasonable amount of land. Vergil, of course, recognizes Alfenus' position as commissioner in his ninth Eclogue where he promises him great glory if he will show mercy to Mantua: Vare, tuum nomen, superet modo Mantua nobis ... And Vergil's appeal to him was reasonable, since he, too, was a man of literary ambitions.
What passed between that frail woman, and the wise orator, none ever fully knew. But they parted—on his side with words of encouragement and kindness—on her’s with a sense of veneration approaching almost to religious awe. And the next day, the usurer Alfenus received in full the debt, both principal and interest, which he had long despaired of touching.
Cicero ascribes his great superiority as a lawyer to the study of philosophy, which disciplined and developed his mind, and enabled him to deduce his conclusions from his premises with logical precision. He left behind him one hundred and eighty treatises, and had numerous pupils, among whom A. Ofilius and Alfenus Varus, Cato, Caesar, Antony, and Cicero, were great lawyers.
Such were Catullus of Verona, Varius Rufus, Quintilius Varus, Furius, and Alfenus of Cremona, Caecilius of Comum, Helvius Cinna apparently of Brescia, and Valerius Cato who somehow managed to inspire in so many of them a love for poetry. To Cremona, Vergil was sent to school.
He has again failed me! and if he have—ruin—ruin!—Debts pressing me in every quarter, and no hope but from him. Alfenus the usurer will lend no more—my farms all mortgaged to the utmost, a hundred thousand sesterces of interest, due these last Calends, and unpaid as yet. What can I do?—what hope for? In him there is no help—none! Nay!
"Flatterer!" murmured the lady, suffering him to enfold her in his arms, and taste her lips for a moment. But the next minute she withdrew herself from his embrace, and said, half-smiling, half-abashed, "But flattery will not pay my debts. Have you brought me the moneys for Alfenus, my sweet Curius? the hundred thousand sesterces, you promised me?" "Perish the dross!" cried Curius, fiercely.
The passage, of course, shows that Alfenus was a commissioner on the colonial board, as Servius says. It does not excuse Servius' error of making Alfenus Pollio's successor as provincial governor after Cisalpine Gaul had become autonomous, nor does it imply that Alfenus had in any manner been generous to Vergil or to any one else.
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