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Excerpt from The Lives of Cornelius Nepos: Edited With Notes and an Introduction on the Rapid Reading of Latin and the Art of Translation
N epos' Lives is a work so well adapted to the wants of young readers that it might almost have been written expressly for pedagogic use. Even its defects lend it a certain merit, when considered as a schoolbook. If the biographies are for the most part scrappy and superficial, it is because they were addressed to an unlearned public by a writer himself uncritical and sim ple-minded. Had Nepos been a trained historian, he would hardly have preserved his familiar and easy manner. The Lives, however, are no mere epitomes. They are redeemed by their distinctly anecdotical character, as well as by the fresh feeling and evident sincerity of the writer. Admiration of his heroes leads him often, to be sure, to exaggerate their virtues and achievements in a boyish way; but the admiration is always real, the sympathy is with noble things, the simple pathos is genuine. Nepos was chie¿y concerned with his subject-matter, the little story that he had to tell. Hence, though properly artistic, as every ancient author was in some measure bound to be, he is not rhetorical or affected. His faults as a writer are occasioned by too little rather than too much attention to the strict-demands of literary form and usage.1.
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