218 ROLFE— SUETONIUS AND HIS BIOGRAPHIES. [April 17, 



to this custom/" each time giving Cato as his authority. Valerius 

 tutem alacriorem redderent," while Varro/^ referring to the same 

 custom, says that the singers were pueri modesti. Horace also 

 refers to such songs/^ and Macaulay attempted to give an imitation 

 of them in his " Lays of Ancient Rome." Granting him, as we may, 

 a fair degree of success in reproducing their spirit, although their 

 form was of course quite different, it is clear that such lays were not 

 biography, although they contained material for such writings and 

 two powerful impulses to their composition. The theory of Peri- 

 zonius, which Macaulay followed, with regard to an early ballad 

 literature is of course generally given up, but we have no ground 

 for doubting the testimony of Cato and Varro as to the existence of 

 the custom referred to. 



The Romans possessed a closer model for biographical literature 

 in the funeral eulogies which were spoken from the rostra by a son 

 or some other near , relative in honor of distinguished men and 

 women, and in the eulogies of their ancestors by magistrates on 

 their entrance to office.^'' The former custom must have been a 

 very early one, for Livy tells us^^ that it was first extended to women 

 after the capture of Rome by the Gauls, in gratitude for their con- 

 tribution to the city's ransom, an indication of the antiquity of the 

 custom, whatever be the truth of the statement itself. The epitaphs 

 of the Scipios may be regarded as condensed summaries of such 

 eulogies, stripped of their minor details. For example : 



Cornelius Lucius Scipio Barbatus, 



Gnaivod patre prognatus, fortis vir sapiensque, 



Quoius forma virtutei parisuma fuit, 



Cbnsol, censor, aidilis, quel fuit apud vos. 



** " Tusc. Disp.," IV., 2, 3: gravissimus auctor in Originibus dixit Cato 

 morem apud maiores hunc epularum fuisse, ut deinceps qui accubarent caner- 

 ent ad tibiam clarorum virorum laudes atque virtutes; "Brut.," 19, 75. 

 .Maximus*^ adds that their purpose was " quo ad ea imitanda iuven- 



"II., I, 10. 



*' In Nonius, s. v. assa (vox). 



*»"Odes," IV., 15, 25 ff. 



"' For the former see Polybius, VI., 53-54, and for the latter, Suet. 

 Tib., 32, I. 



" v., 50, 7. 



