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Updated: June 24, 2025
The bibliographers have discovered sixty-eight books in which he had a capital share; and though a large number of these appear to be mere reprints of books printed in France or Italy the law of copyright in those days was, as might be expected, uncertain , there is a residue in which he really did original work: some notes on the history and geography of Germany which he composed, and editions of Pliny's Natural History, Tacitus, Tertullian and Velleius Paterculus the latter having an almost romantic interest from the fortunes of the manuscript on which it is based.
But this shall soon be made more manifest by the operation of these very things which the world causes. XVIII. In the mean while, Velleius, let me entreat you not to be always saying that we are utterly destitute of every sort of learning. The cone, you say, the cylinder, and the pyramid, are more beautiful to you than the sphere. This is to have different eyes from other men.
RABIRIUS is worth remarking for the extraordinary impression he made on his contemporaries. Ovid speaks of him as Magni Rabirius oris, a high compliment; and Velleius Paterculus goes so far as to couple him with Virgil as the best representative of Augustan poetry! His Alexandrian War was perhaps drawn from his own experience, though, if so, he must have been a very young man at the time.
Velleius is eloquent for the Epicureans, Balbus for the Stoics, and Cotta for the Academy. And in that which each says there is to be found a germ of truth though indeed Cicero makes his Epicurean as absurd as he well can do. But he does not leave a trace behind of that belief in another man's belief which an energetic preacher is sure to create.
Though not a single virtue relieves the vices of Tiberius in the Annals, Suetonius speaks of him as showing clemency when a public officer; Cassius Dio describes him as so humane that he condemned nobody for his estate, nor confiscated any man's goods, nor exacted money by force; and Velleius Paterculus makes him all but a pattern of the virtues, if Velleius Paterculus is an authority, it being just possible that his "Historiae Romanae ad Marcum Vinicium Consulem" may some of these days be as clearly proved to be as glaring a modern forgery, as I am now attempting to prove the Annals of Tacitus to be: certain it is that what we have of Velleius Paterculus is supplied by only one MS., which was found under very suspicious circumstances in very suspicious times.
Manuscripts turned up, as if by magic, in every direction; from libraries of monasteries, obscure as well as famous; from the most out-of-the-way places, the bottom of exhausted wells, besmeared by snails, as the History of Velleius Paterculus; or from garrets, where they had been contending with cobwebs and dust, as the Poems of Catullus.
I do not suppose, Velleius, that you are like some of the Epicureans, who are ashamed of those expressions of Epicurus, in which he openly avows that he has no idea of any good separate from wanton and obscene pleasures, which, without a blush, he names distinctly.
This took place in 31 A.D., when the discovery of Sejanus's conspiracy caused many suspected to be put to death, and it seems that Velleius was among the number. His blind partisanship naturally obscures his judgment; but, making allowance for a defect which he does not attempt to conceal, the reader may generally trust him for all matters of fact.
We may guess of MENANDER's excellency by the Plays of TERENCE; who translated some of his, and yet wanted so much of him, that he was called by C. CAESAR, the Half-MENANDER: and of VARIUS, by the testimonies of HORACE, MARTIAL, and VELLEIUS PATERCULUS. 'Tis probable that these, could they be recovered, would decide the controversy.
You must necessarily confess, indeed, they have none; for what occasion is there for different names if their persons are alike? How much more laudable would it be, Velleius, to acknowledge that you do not know what you do not know than to follow a man whom you must despise! Do you think the Deity is like either me or you? You do not really think he is like either of us. What is to be done, then?
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