The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Volume 03: Tiberius eBook

HYGINUS is said to have been a native of Alexandria, or, according to others, a Spaniard.  He was, like Phaedrus, a freedman of Augustus; but, though industrious, he seems not to have improved himself so much as his companion, in the art of composition.  He wrote, however, a mythological history, under the title of Fables, a work called Poeticon Astronomicon, with a treatise on agriculture, commentaries on Virgil, the lives of eminent men, and some other productions now lost.  His remaining works are much mutilated, and, if genuine, afford an unfavourable specimen of his elegance and correctness as a writer.

Celsus was a physician in the time of Tiberius, and has written eight books, De Medicina, in which he has collected and digested into order all that is valuable on the subject, in the Greek and Roman authors.  The professors of Medicine were at that time divided into three sects, viz., the Dogmatists, Empirics, and Methodists; the first of whom deviated less than the others from the plan of Hippocrates; but they were in general irreconcilable to each other, in respect both of their opinions and practice.  Celsus, with great judgment, has occasionally adopted particular doctrines from each of them; and whatever he admits into his system, he not only establishes by the most rational observations, but confirms by its practical utility.  In justness of remark, in force of argument, in precision and perspicuity, as well as in elegance of expression, he deservedly occupies the most distinguished rank amongst the medical writers of antiquity.  It appears that Celsus likewise wrote on agriculture, rhetoric, and military affairs; but of those several treatises no fragments now remain.

To the writers of this reign we must add Apicius COELIUS, who has left a book De Re Coquinaria [of Cookery].  There were three Romans of the name of Apicius, all remarkable for their (250) gluttony.  The first lived in the time of the Republic, the last in that of Trajan, and the intermediate Apicius under the emperors Augustus and Tiberius.  This man, as Seneca informs us, wasted on luxurious living, sexcenties sestertium, a sum equal to 484,375 pounds sterling.  Upon examining the state of his affairs, he found that there remained no more of his estate than centies sestertium, 80,729l. 3s. 4d., which seeming to him too small to live upon, he ended his days by poison.

FOOTNOTES: 

[284] Intramural interments were prohibited at Rome by the laws of the Twelve Tables, notwithstanding the practice of reducing to ashes the bodies of the dead.  It was only by special privilege that individuals who had deserved well of the state, and certain distinguished families were permitted to have tombs within the city.

[285] Among the Romans, all the descendants from one common stock were called Gentiles, being of the same race or kindred, however remote.  The Gens, as they termed this general relation or clanship, was subdivided into families, in Familias vel Stirpes; and those of the same family were called Agnati.  Relations by the father’s side were also called Agnati, to distinguish them from Cognati, relations only by the mother’s side.  An Agnatus might also be called Cognatus, but not the contrary.