Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 1.djvu/871

Rh CORIPPUS. agree. After this the Romans sent the ton chief men of the Senate, and then all the priests and augurs. But Coriolanus would not listen to them. Then, at the suggestion of Valeria, the noblest ma- trons of Rome, headed by Veturia, and Volumnia, the wife of Coriolanus, with his two little children, came to his tent. His mother's reproaches, and the tears of his wife, and the other matrons bent his purpose. He led back his army, and lived in exile among the Volscians till his death. On the spot where he yielded to his mother's words, a temple was dedicated to Fortuna Muliebris, and Valeria was the first priestess. Such is the substance of the legend. The date assigned to it in the annals is b. c 490. Its in- consistency with the traces of real history which have come down to us have been pointed out by Niebuhr, who has also shewn that if his banish- ment be placed some twenty years later, and his attack on the Romans about ten years after that, the groundwork of the story is reconcileable with history. The account of his condemnation is not applicable to the sUite of things earlier than B. c. 470^ about which time a famine happened, while Hiero was tyrant of Syracuse, and might have been induced by his hostility to the Etruscans to send com to the Romans. Moreover, in B. c. 458, the Volscians obtained from the Romans the very tenns which were proposed by Coriolanus. " The list of his conquests is only that of a portion of those made by the Volscians transferred to a Roman whose glory was flattering to national vanity." The circumstance that the story has been referred to a wrong date Niebuhr considers to have arisen from its being mixed up with the foundation of the temple to Fortuna Muliebris, The name Coriolanus may have been derived from his settling in the town of Corioli after his banish- ment. Whether he had anj-^ share in bringing about the peace of 458, Niebuhr considers doubt- ful. (Plut. Coriolanus; Liv. ii. 34 — 40 ; Dionys. vii. 20— viii. 59; Niebuhr, vol. ii. pp. 94—107, 234—260). [C. P. M.] CORIPPUS, FLA'VIUS CRESCO'NIUS. In the year 1581 a work issued from the press of Plantin at Antwerp, editec^ by Michael Ruiz, a Spaniard, and bearing the title Corippi Africani Grammatici fragmentum carminis in laudein impe- rato)is Juatiui Minoris; Carmen paneyyricum in latnlem Anastasii quaestoris et magistri ; de laudibus Justini A ugusti Minoris lieroico carmine libri I V. The two former, of which the first is imperfect, are extremely short, and in reality are merely the pre- face and epistle dedicatory of the third, which extends to nearly 1600 hexameter lines, and is a formal panegyric, conceived in all the hyperbolical extravagance of the Byzantine school, in honour of the younger Justin, who swayed the empire of the East from A, D. 565 to 578. Ruiz asserts, that these pieces were faithfully copied from a MS. more than 700 years old ; but of this document he gives no description ; he does not state how it had come into his possession, nor where it was deposited ; it has never been found ; and no other being known to exist, the text depends upon the editio princeps alone. Corippus, in the preface above mentioned, refers to a poem which he had previously composed upon the African wars. Quid Libycas gentes, quid Syrtica proelia dicam Jam libris completa nieis ? CORIPPUS. 853 Now, Johannes Cuspianus " De Caesaribus ct Im- peratoribus" declares, that he saw in the royal library at Buda a poem in eight books entitled Johannis by F/avitis Cresconius Corippus, the sub- ject of which was the war carried on against the Africans by Johannes Patricius, and he quotes the first five lines beginning Signa, duces gentesque feras, Martisque ruinas. Moreover, we can prove from history that Cuspia- nus was at Buda between the years 1510 and 1515. Secondly, it is known that as late as 1532 a MS. "De Bellis Libycis" was preserved in the monas- tery of the Monte Casino, bearing the name of Cresconius, the first word being " Victoris." This does not correspond, it will be observed, with the commencement given by Cuspianus ; but the differ- ence, as we shall soon see, is only apparent. Both of the above MSS. have disappeared and left no trace behind them. Lastly, in the Valhcellan library at Rome is a MS. of the tenth century, containing a collection of ancient canons, to which the transcriber has prefixed the following note : " Concordia Canonum a Cresconio Afiicano episcopo digesta sub capitulis trecentis : iste nimirum Cres- conius bella et victorias, quas Johannes Patricius apud Africam de Saracenis gessit, hexametris ver- sibus descripsit," &c. From this it was inferred by many scholars, that Cresconius must have flour- ished towards the end of the seventh century, since we learn from Cedrenus that, in 697, the Arabians overran Africa, and were expelled by a certain Johannes Patricius despatched thither by the emperor Leontius ; hence also Corippus and Cresconius were generally distinguished from each other, the former being supposed to be the author of the panegyric upon Justin, the latter of the Concordia Canonura and the poem " de Bellis Libycis." Various other conjectures were formed and combinations imagined which are now not worth discussing, since a great portion of the doubt and difficulty was removed by Mazuchelli in 1814, who discovered the long-lost Juhannis in the li- brary of the Marquis of Trivulzi at Milan, where it had been overlooked in consequence of having been inserted in the catalogue as the production of a Johannes de Aretio, who lived towards the close of the 1 4th century, and who appears to have tran- scribed it into the same volume with his own bar- barous effusions. The Praefatio to this Johannis begins Victoris, proceres, praesumsi dicere lauros, while the first lines of the poem itself are the same with those quoted by Cuspianus, thus establishing the identity of the piece with that contained in the MSS. of Buda and Monte Casino, and enabling us to determine the full name of the author as given at the head of this article. The theme is a war carried on in Africa against the Moors and Vandals during the reign of Justinian, about the year 550, by a proconsul or magister militiae named Johannes, who is the hero of the lay. The campaign in question is noticed by Procopius {Ii. V. ii. 28, B. a. iv. 17) and Pauhis Diaconus. {De. Gestk Longobard. i. 25.) Of Johannes we know nothing except what we are told by Proco- pius and by the poet himself. He was the brother of Pappus; had served along with him on two previous occasions in Africa, under Belisarius m 533, and under Oermanus in 537 ; his father was