stripes, and extorted from him a large sum of money. He died, according
to tradition, in the fifty-first year of his age.

CORNELIUS NEPOS was born at Hostilia, near the banks of the Po. Of his
parentage we meet with no account; but from his respectable connections
early in life, it is probable that he was of good extraction. Among his
most intimate friends were Cicero and Atticus. Some authors relate that
he composed three books of Chronicles, with a biographical account of all
the most celebrated sovereigns, generals, and writers of antiquity.

The language of Cornelius Nepos is pure, his style perspicuous, and he
holds a middle and agreeable course between diffuseness and brevity. He
has not observed the same rule with respect to the treatment of every
subject; for the account of some of the lives is so short, that we might
suspect them to be mutilated, did they not contain evident marks of their
being completed in miniature. The great extent of his plan induced him,
as he informs us, to adopt this expedient. "Sed plura persequi, tum
magnitudo voluminis prohibet, tum festinatio, ut ea explicem, quae
exorsus sum." [270]

Of his numerous biographical works, twenty-two lives only remain, which
are all of Greeks, except two Carthaginians, Hamilcar and Hannibal; and
two Romans, M. Porcius Cato and T. Pomponius Atticus. Of his own
life,--of him who had written the lives of so many, no account is
transmitted; but from the multiplicity of his productions, we may
conclude that it was devoted to literature.

TITUS LIVIUS may be ranked among the most celebrated historians the world
has ever produced. He composed a history of Rome from the foundation of
the city, to the conclusion of the German war conducted by Drusus in the