Lucius Annaeus Cornutus (Ancient Greek: Ἀνναῖος Κορνοῦτος) was a Stoic philosopher who flourished in the reign of Nero[1] (c. 60 AD), when his house in Rome was a school of philosophy.
"[3] Annaeus Cornutus was banished by Nero nevertheless – in 66 or 68 AD – for having indirectly disparaged the emperor's projected history of the Romans in heroic verse,[4] after which time nothing more is heard of him.
Cornutus wrote a work on Rhetoric,[5] and a commentary on the Categories of Aristotle, (πρὸς Ἁθηνόδωρον καὶ Ἀριστοτέλην)[6] whose philosophy he attacked along with his fellow Stoic Athenodorus.
[1][10] This early example of a Roman educational treatise, provided an account of Greek mythology on the bases of highly elaborated etymological readings.
Some say, however, that it is called Heaven [ouranos] from its "looking after" [ôrein] or "tending to" [ôreuein] things, that is, from its guarding them, from which also "doorkeeper" [thyrôros] and "watching carefully" [polyôrein] are named.
Together with everything it encompasses, it is called the "world" [kosmos] from its being "so beautifully ordered" [diakekosmêsthai][12]The book continues in a similar vein, proceeding from such gods as Zeus, Hera, Cronus, and Poseidon, to the Furies, Fates, Muses, and Graces.