Library › Latin: History › Fragments
Publius Rutilius Rufus was consul in 105 BC and a pupil of the Stoic Panaetius. Condemned for extortion around 92 BC, in a trial widely regarded as unjust, he went into exile at Smyrna, where he wrote a history of Rome in Greek and an autobiography, De Vita Sua, in Latin in at least five books. Both works are lost. This text gathers the few Latin fragments printed by Hermann Peter, most of them quoted by the grammarians Charisius and Diomedes.
One fragment of the history, quoted by Aulus Gellius from Rutilius and Polybius together, describes the speaking styles of the three Greek philosophers sent to Rome in 155 BC. The autobiographical fragments are brief, but they show his memoir of a public career, including a remark, which Peter refers to Scipio Aemilianus, about a commander who against custom used lecticae in place of beds. The Greek fragments, preserved by Plutarch and Athenaeus, are left out, as are reports in indirect speech.
About this edition. The Latin text was transcribed for this library from a public-domain printed edition (edition: Hermann Peter, Historicorum Romanorum Reliquiae, vol. 1, 2nd ed., Leipzig: Teubner 1914 (pp. 187–190)), using the scan and text recognition at the Internet Archive; the editor’s notes and critical apparatus are not reproduced. Every word has been analyzed with LatinCy, a neural language model for Latin — click or tap any word for its dictionary form, part of speech, and complete morphology, together with the full entry from Lewis & Short’s A Latin Dictionary.