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And thus the servants of Cornutus deserve the greater praise and admiration, who, having concealed their master in the house, took the body of one of the slain, cut off the head, put a gold ring on the finger, and showed it to Marius's guards, and buried it with the same solemnity as if it had been their own master.
Finally, a mediatising writer such as Cornutus could explain that the Logos was Hermes, and so triumphantly reconcile philosophy and myth, by giving a mythological meaning to a philosophic term. All this is clear enough; but the difficulty begins when one asks in which sense the writer of the Fourth Gospel used the phrase. Did he mean that the Logos was the anima mundi?
And decrees that, as they have preserved the republic, the city, the temples of the immortal gods, the property and fortunes and families of all the citizens, by their own exertions in battle, and at the risk of their own lives; on account of these virtuous and gallant and successful achievements, Caius Pansa and Aulus Hirtius, the consuls, imperators, one or both of them, or, in their absence, Marcus Cornutus, the city praetor, shall appoint a supplication at all the altars for fifty days.
Quintilian says that he has gained much true glory in his single book; Martial, that he is oftener quoted than Domitius Marsus in all his long Amazonis. He is affirmed by his biographer to have written seldom and with difficulty. All his earlier attempts were, by the advice of Cornutus, destroyed.
At that time Cornutus was a tragic writer; he belonged to the sect of the Stoics, and left behind him some philosophical works. Lucan was so delighted with the writings of Persius Flaccus, that he could scarcely refrain from giving loud tokens of applause while the author was reciting them, and declared that they had the true spirit of poetry.
Cornutus, however, would only take the books, and gave up the legacy to the sisters, whom his brother had constituted his heirs. He wrote seldom, and not very fast; even the work we possess he left incomplete.
At the house of Cornutus he enjoyed the society of two very learned and excellent men, who were then zealously devoting themselves to philosophical enquiries, namely, Claudius Agaternus, a physician from Lacedaemon, and Petronius Aristocrates, of Magnesia, men whom he held in the highest esteem, and with whom he vied in their studies, as they were of his own age, being younger than Cornutus.
But Cornutus used his whole influence with the mother of Persius to prevail upon her to destroy these compositions. As soon as his book of Satires was published, all the world began to admire it, and were eager to buy it up.
"One who honors thee, O Cyrus; and, besides, a poor Stoic-" "I hate the Stoics," said Nero. "I hate Thrasea; I hate Musonius and Cornutus. Their speech is repulsive to me; their contempt for art, their voluntary squalor and filth." "O lord, thy master Seneca has one thousand tables of citrus wood. At thy wish I will have twice as many. I am a Stoic from necessity.
We can imagine the feverish delight with which a youth of three and twenty found himself recognised as prince of Roman poets. But Lucan had a spirit of truthfulness in him that pined after better things. At the lectures of Cornutus, in the company of Persius, he caught a glimpse of this higher life.
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