Gaius Valgius Rufus

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Gaius Valgius Rufus (* around 65 BC; † after 12 BC) was a Roman writer who lived at the time of Augustus . In addition to poems in the tradition of the neotericists, he also wrote works on rhetoric , grammar and herbalism . The consulate .

Valgius Rufus was born around 65 BC. Born in BC. Like Gaius Octavius ​​(later Augustus), as a young man he was a student of the famous Greek rhetorician Apollodorus of Pergamon , whose lectures , according to Quintilian , he translated into Latin with great care . He later dedicated an unfinished work on medicinal plants to his former classmate Augustus, which Pliny the Elder used as a source for his Naturalis historia .

Apparently Valgius composed numerous elegies in which he lamented the loss of his friend Mystes. Horace then advised him to write about Augustus' military successes. Only short fragments of the elegies of Valgius have survived; one of them deals with a previously unidentified Codrus who wrote poems in the style of the neoteric Gaius Helvius Cinna . His lyrical work also included epigrams and probably bucolic poems .

Valgius was held in high regard in the Roman literary scene of his time. Horace names him alongside Augustus, Maecenas and Virgil among the people whose literary judgment he values. In Panegyricus Messallae, a poem in praise of the general and author Marcus Valerius Messalla Corvinus , he is even compared with Homer .

Despite the high opinion that his contemporaries apparently had of Valgius, only a few fragments of poems and the grammatical collection of letters De rebus per epistulam quaesitis have survived from his works . One reason for this could be that Valgius as poeta doctus was difficult to understand for later readers due to numerous learned allusions to other authors.

In the year 12 BC BC Valgius held the consulate together with Lucius Volusius Saturninus as the subsequent consul . The exact year of his death is not known; he may have survived Augustus, who died in AD 14.

literature

Overview representations

Investigations

  • Niklas Holzberg : A Sensitive, Even Weak and Feeble Disposition? C. Valgius Rufus and His Elegiac Ego . In: Alexander Arweiler , Melanie Möller (eds.): From self-understanding in antiquity and modern times. Notions of the Self in Antiquity and Beyond (=  Transformations der Antike . Band 8 ). de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2008, ISBN 978-3-11-020571-8 , pp. 21–32 (with references).

Remarks

  1. ^ Suetonius , Augustus 89.1 .
  2. Quintilian, Institutio oratoria 3,1,18 . For Apollodor see Michael Weißenberger : Apollodoros [8]. In: The New Pauly (DNP). Volume 1, Metzler, Stuttgart 1996, ISBN 3-476-01471-1 , Sp. 860.
  3. Pliny, Naturalis historia 25.2 .
  4. Horace, Odes 2.9 . Discussion of the ode with Niklas Holzberg : A Sensitive, Even Weak and Feeble Disposition? In: Alexander Arweiler , Melanie Möller (eds.): From self-understanding in antiquity and modern times . Berlin u. a. 2008, ISBN 978-3-11-020571-8 , pp. 21-28 .
  5. Fragmenta Poetarum Latinorum 2. Discussion of the fragment with Niklas Holzberg: A Sensitive, Even Weak and Feeble Disposition? In: Alexander Arweiler, Melanie Möller (eds.): From self-understanding in antiquity and modern times . Berlin u. a. 2008, ISBN 978-3-11-020571-8 , pp. 28-30 .
  6. Fragmenta Poetarum Latinorum 1.
  7. Fragmenta Poetarum Latinorum 5.
  8. Horace, Satires 1,10,81 ff .
  9. Tibull 3,179 f. For Messalla see Werner Eck : Valerius [II 16]. In: The New Pauly (DNP). Volume 12/1, Metzler, Stuttgart 2002, ISBN 3-476-01482-7 , column 1109 f.
  10. Cf. Martin Schanz : Roman literature in the time of the monarchy up to Hadrian. Edited by Carl Hosius . Munich 1980, ISBN 3-406-01392-9 , pp. 172-174.
  11. Cf. Niklas Holzberg: A Sensitive, Even Weak and Feeble Disposition? In: Alexander Arweiler, Melanie Möller (eds.): From self-understanding in antiquity and modern times . Berlin u. a. 2008, ISBN 978-3-11-020571-8 , pp. 30 .
  12. This is what Niklas Holzberg suspects: A Sensitive, Even Weak and Feeble Disposition? In: Alexander Arweiler, Melanie Möller (eds.): From self-understanding in antiquity and modern times . Berlin u. a. 2008, ISBN 978-3-11-020571-8 , pp. 24 (based on the information in Pliny, Naturalis historia 25.2, Valgius Rufus' work on medicinal plants is dedicated to the deified Augustus).