Cornelius Gallus
Gaius Cornelius Gallus (c. 70 – 26 BC) was a Roman poet, orator, politician and military commander, at one time appointed by the Emperor Augustus as prefect of Egypt.
[7] Born in a humble family, Gallus moved to Rome at an early age where he was taught by the same master as Virgil and Varius Rufus.
Gallus enjoyed a high reputation among his contemporaries as a man of intellect, and Ovid (Tristia, IV) considered him the first of the elegiac poets of Rome.
He wrote four books of elegies chiefly on his mistress Lycoris (a poetical name for Cytheris, a notorious actress), in which he took for his model Euphorion of Chalcis; he also translated some of this author's works into Latin.
Scholars used to believe, in the absence of any surviving poetry by Gallus and on the basis of his high reputation among his contemporaries, that his poetical gifts were little short of those of Virgil.
The classicist Tenney Frank famously declared in 1922: 'What would we not barter of all the sesquipedalian epics of empire for a few pages of Cornelius Gallus, a thousand for each!
It has been argued[17] that the next four lines pay homage to Julius Caesar shortly before his assassination in 44 BC, on the eve of his projected campaign against the Parthians: Fāta mihi, Caesar, tum erunt mea dulcia, quom tū maxima Rōmānae pars eris historiaepostque tuum reditum multōrum templa deōrum fīxa legam spolieis deivitiōra tueis.
"I will count myself blessed by fortune, Caesar, when youbecome the greatest part of Roman history;and when, after your return, I admire the temples of many godsadorned and enriched with your spoils."
Later Augustan poets tended to distance themselves from the world of high politics and often drew a humorous contrast between the martial ambition of their ruler and their own ignoble love affairs.
The fragments of four poems attributed to him, first published by Aldus Manutius in 1590 and printed in Alexander Riese's Anthologia Latina (1869), are generally regarded as a forgery;[8] and Pomponius Gauricus's ascription to him of the elegiac verses of Maximianus is no longer accepted.
The story of Gallus's fall from Augustus's favour forms the framework for an extensive learned discourse on what life was like in Rome as evidenced in Latin extracts from a number of writers (Suetonius, Martial, Pliny, Ovid, etc.)
