Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 1.djvu/872

Rh 851 CORIPPUS. named Evantus; his wife was the daughter of a king; his son was cjiUed Peter; he had been em- ployed in the East against the Persians, and had been recalled from thence to head an expedition against the rebellious Moors. (Procop. //. cc. and U. a. iv. 34 ; Johan. i. 197, 380, vii. 576.) Although the designation and age of Corippus are thus satisfactorily ascertained, and the author of the Johannis is proved to be the same person with the panegyrist of Justinian's nephew, we have no means of deciding with equal certainty whether he is to be identified with the African bishop Cresconius who compiled a Cunonum Bre- viarium and a Concordia Canonum, the former being a sort of index or table of contents to the latter, which comprises an extensive and important collection of laws of the Cluirch, aininged not chronologically according to the date of the several councils, but systematically according to the nature of the subjects, and distributed under three hun- dred titles. Saxe and most writers upon the history of ecclesiastical literature j)lace the prelate in the reign of Tiberius III. as low as a. d. 98, this epoch being assigned to him on the double suppo- Bition that he was the composer of the Libyan War and that this was the Libyan War of Leontius ; bat the latter hypothesis has now been proved to be false. The epithets Afiicani and Grammatici — attached, as we have already seen, to the name of Corippus in the editio priiiceps of the panegyric, the former pointing out his countrj% which is clearly indicated by several expressions in the work itself, the latter a complimentary designation equivalent at that period to "learned," — convey the sum total of the information we possess con- cerning his personal history. With regard to his merits, the opigrammatia censure of Riillet, that he was a grer.t flatterer and a little poet, is perhaps not absolutely unjust; but if we view him in relation to the state of lite- rature in the age when he flourished, and compare him with his contemporaries, we may feel inclined to entertain some respect for his talents. He was evidently well read in Virgil, Lucan, and Claudian; the last two especially seem to have been his mo- dels ; and hence, while his language is wonderfully pure, we have a constant display of rhetorical de- clamation and a most ambitious straining after splendour of diction. Nor is the perusal of his verses unattended with profit, inasmuch as he frequently sheds light upon a period of history for which our authorities are singularly imperfect and obscure, and frequently illustrates with great life and vigour, the manners of the Byzantine court. In proof of this, we need only turn to the 45th chapter of Gibbon, where the striking description of Justin's elevation, and the complicated ceremo- nies which attended his coronation, is merely a translation " into simple and concise prose" from the first two books of Corippus. The text, as might be anticipated from the circumstance that each poem depends upon a single MS., that one of these has never been collated or even seen by any modern scholar, and that the other was transcribed at a late period by a most ignorant copyist, — is miserably defective ; nor can we form any reason- able expectation of its being materially improved. The Editio Princeps of the Panegyric is gene- rally marked by bibliographers as having been printed by Plantin, at Antwerp, in 1581; but Funccius {De inerti etc decrepU. L. L. Scncdide, CORN EL L. p. 247) speaks as if Ruiz had previously published an edition at Madrid in 1579; to this, or the.se, succeeded the edition of Thomas Dempster, 8vo., Paris, 1610; of Rivinus, 8vo., Leipzig, 1663 ; ot Ritterhusius, 4to., Altdorf, 1664; of Goetzius, 8vo., Altdorf, 1743 ; and of Foggini, 4to. Rome, 1777, which completes the list. The Johannis, discovered as described above, was first printed at Milan, 4to., 1820, with the notes of Mazuchelli. Both works will be found in the best form in the new Corpus Scriptorura Historiae Byzantinae at present in the course of publication at Bonn. The Cunonum Breviarium and the Concordia Canonum are printed entire in the first volume of the Bibliotheca Juris Canonici published by Voellus and Justellus at Paris, fol. 1661. The lireviurium was first published at Paris by Pithou in 1588, 8vo., and is contained in the Bibliotheca Putrum Lugdun. vol. ix. [W. R. j CORISCUS (Kopio-Kos), is mentioned, with Erastus, as a disciple of Plato, by Diogenes (iii. 31, 8. 46), who also states, that Plato wrote a letter to Erastus and Coriscus. (iii. 36, s. 61.) They were both natives of Scepsis in the Troas. (Diog. /. c; Strab. xiii. p. 608.) [P. S.] CORNE'LIA. 1. One of the noble women at Rome, who was said to have been guilty of poison- ing the leading men of the state in B. c. 331, the first instance in which this crime is mentioned in Roir.an history. The aediles were informed by a slave-girl of the guilt of Cornelia and other Roman matrons, and in consequence of her information they detected Cornelia and her accomplices in the act of preparing certain drugs over a fire, which they were compelled by the magistrates to drink, and thus perished. (Liv. viii. 18; comp. Val. Max. ii. 5. § 3 ; August, de Civ. Dei, iii. 1 7 ; Did. of Ant. s. v. Veneficium.) Family o/iJie Cifinae. 2. Daughter of L. Cinna, one of the great leaders of the Marian party, was married to C. Caesar, afterwards dictator. Caesar married her in B. c. 83, when he was only seventeen years of age ; and when Sulla commanded him to put her away, he refused to do so, and chose rather to be deprived of her fortune and to be proscribed himself. Cornelia bore him his daughter Julia, and died be- fore his quaestorship. Caesar delivered an oration in praise of her from the Rostra, when he was quaestor. (Plut. Cues. 1, 5; Suet. Cues. 1, 5, 6 ; Veil. Pat. ii. 41.) 3. Sister of the preceding, was married to Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus, who was proscribed by Sulla in B. c. 82, and killed in Africa, whither he liad fled. [Ahenobarbus, No. 6.] Family (if the Scipiones. 4. The elder daughter of P. Scipio Africanus the elder, was married in her father's life-time to P. Scipio Nasica. (Liv. xxxviii. 57 ; Polyb. xxxii. 13.) 5. The younger daughter of P. Scipio Africanus the elder, was married to Ti. Sempronius Gracchus, censor b. c. 169, and was by him the mother of the two tribunes Tiberius and Caius. Gracchus espoused the popular party in the commonwealth, and was consequently not on good terms with Scipio, and it was not till after the death of the latter, according to most accounts, that Gracchus