Lucius Annaeus Cornutus (Ancient Greek:Ἀνναῖος Κορνοῦτος) was aStoicphilosopher who flourished in the reign ofNero[1] (c. 60 AD), when his house in Rome was a school of philosophy.
Cornutus was a native ofLeptis Magna inLibya, but resided for the most part inRome.[1] He is best known as the teacher and friend ofPersius,[1] whose fifthsatire is addressed to him, as well as other distinguished students, such asClaudius Agathemerus.[2] "Through Cornutus Persius was introduced to Annaeus, as well as toLucan, who was of his own age, and also a disciple of Cornutus".[3] At Persius's death, Cornutus returned to Persius' sisters a bequest made to him, but accepted Persius' library of some 700 scrolls. He revised the deceased poet's satires for publication, but handed them over toCaesius Bassus to edit, at the special request of the latter.[1]
Among Persius's satires were lines that, as Suetonius records, "even lashed Nero himself, who was then the reigning prince. The verse ran as follows:
but Cornutus altered it to:
in order that it might not be supposed that it was meant to apply toNero."[3]
Annaeus Cornutus was banished byNero nevertheless – in 66 or 68 AD – for having indirectly disparaged the emperor's projected history of the Romans inheroic verse,[4] after which time nothing more is heard of him.[1]
He was the author of variousrhetorical works in bothGreek andLatin, such asDe figuris sententiarum.[1] Excerpts from his treatiseDe enuntiatione vel orthographia are preserved inCassiodorus. A commentary onVirgil is frequently quoted byServius, but tragedies mentioned by Suetonius have not survived.
Cornutus wrote a work onRhetoric,[5] and a commentary on theCategories of Aristotle, (πρὸς Ἁθηνόδωρον καὶ Ἀριστοτέλην)[6] whose philosophy he attacked along with his fellow Stoic Athenodorus.[7] He also wrote a work calledOn Properties (Περὶ ἐκτῶν).[8]
His one major surviving work, the philosophical treatise,Theologiae Graecae compendium ("Compendium of Greek Theology")[9] is a manual of "popular mythology as expounded in the etymological and symbolical interpretations of the Stoics".[1][10] This early example of a Roman educational treatise, provided an account ofGreek mythology on the bases of highly elaboratedetymological readings. Cornutus sought to recover the earliest beliefs that primitive people had about the world by examining the various names and titles of the gods.[11] The result, to modern eyes, is often bizarre, with many forced etymologies, as can be seen from the opening paragraph, where Cornutus describes Heaven (Ouranos):
The Heaven [ouranos], my boy, encompasses round about the earth and the sea and everything both on the earth and the sea. On this account it has acquired its appellation, since it is an "upper limit" [ouros anô] of all things and "marks of the bounds" [horizôn] of nature. 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. Still others derive its etymology from its "being seen above" [horasthai anô]. 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 asZeus,Hera,Cronus, andPoseidon, to theFuries,Fates,Muses, andGraces. The work is pervaded throughout with a strong undercurrent of Stoic Physics.
We are told that the world has a soul that preserves it called Zeus[13] who dwells in Heaven whose substance is fiery.[14] Zeus is the power that pervades everything,[15] and who assigns Fate to each person.[16] The gods have sent us Reason (Logos),[17] which does not work evil,[18] but which is part of the divine Reason of the universe:
"Ocean" is theLogos that "glides swiftly" and changes continuously, whereasTethys is the stability of the qualities. For from their blending or mixing come about those things that exist; and nothing would exist if either one unmixed gained the upper hand over the other.[19]
Scholia to Persius are also attributed to Annaeus Cornutus; the latter, however, are of much later date, and are assigned by Jahn to theCarolingian period.[1][20] The so-calledDisticha Cornuti belong to theLate Middle Ages.[1]
In 1891,Johannes Graeven proposed that an anonymousrhetorical treatise (theAnonymous Seguerianus) written in the 3rd century was written by a Cornutus. This attribution has not been generally accepted and, in any case, would refer to a later Cornutus.[21]
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