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Poems by Julius Caesar are mentioned by several sources in antiquity.〔Pliny, ''Natural History'' 19.8.144; Tacitus, ''Dialogus de oratoribus'' 21; Suetonius 56; Nonius Marcellus fr. 15; Isidorus, ''Etymologiae'' 4.12.7; Firmicus Maternus, '' Matheseos'' 2. pr. 2.〕 None are extant. Tacitus considered their loss a happy accident for the dictator's literary reputation:〔Unless otherwise noted, citations of primary sources and general overview from Edward Courtney, ''The Fragmentary Latin Poets'' (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), pp. 153–155 and 187–188.〕 Plutarch says that verse compositions were among the entertainments Caesar offered the Cilician pirates who captured him as a young man in 75 BC.〔Plutarch, ''Life of Caesar'' 2, Bill Thayer's edition at LacusCurtius (online. )〕 Pliny places "the divine Julius" on his list of serious men who wrote not-so-serious poems.〔Pliny, ''Epistulae'' 5.3.5, Latin text at (The Latin Library. )〕 Caesar's ''Dicta Collectanea'', a collection of his memorable quotations, is assumed to have contained quotations from his verse as well as prose works.〔Gian Biagio Conte, ''Latin Literature: A History'' (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), p. 226 (online. )〕 The titles of two works Caesar wrote as a young man are known, a ''Laudes Herculis'' ("Praises of Hercules") and the verse tragedy ''Oedipus''; their planned publication by the librarian Pompeius Macer was squelched by a "short and simple" — or perhaps "curt and direct"〔''Brevis et simplex.''〕 — letter from Caesar's heir Augustus as incompatible with his program of deification. A third title, ''Iter'' ("The Journey"), dates from 46 BC, composed during a 24-day trip from Rome to Spain during the civil war.〔Suetonius, ''Julius Caesar'' 56, Bill Thayer's edition at LacusCurtius (online. )〕 This verse travelogue may have been modeled after Lucilius's poem about a trip to Sicily.〔Lucilius 3; Courtney, ''Fragmentary Latin Poets'', p. 187.〕 Caesar's choice of writing as a pastime in prelude to the decisive and brutal Battle of Munda illustrates the dual preoccupations of the Late Republican aristocrat, with militarism and political power-plays balanced by elite intellectual and aesthetic aspirations.〔Llewelyn Morgan, "Escapes from Orthodoxy: Poetry of the Late Republic," in ''Literature in the Roman World'' (Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 336–339 (online. )〕 ==What survives== A single incomplete line survives that might come from the ''Iter'', quoted by Isidore of Seville〔Isidore of Seville, ''Etymologiae'' 4.12.7, Bill Thayer's edition of the Latin text at LacusCurtius (online. )〕 in discussing the word ''unguentum,'' "ointment": The quoted phrase ''corpusque suaui telino unguimus'' is part of a scazon or iambic trimeter.〔Courtney, ''Fragmentary Latin Poets'', p. 187.〕 Its author has also been identified as C. Iulius Caesar Strabo, the dictator's uncle.〔Priscilla Throop, ''Isidore of Seville's'' Etymologies'': Complete English Translation'' (2005), notes to XII ( online ); William D. Sharpe, "Isidore of Seville: The Medical Writings," ''Transactions of the American Philosophical Society'' 54 (1964), p. 63 ( online. ) Michael von Albrecht takes no position on the attribution of this line, but notes that Caesar was likely influenced by his uncle; see ''A History of Roman Literature: From Livius Andronicus to Boethius'' (Brill, 1997), p. 409 (online. )〕 In his ''Life of Terence'', Suetonius preserves six lines of dactylic hexameter by Caesar praising the Roman playwright, along with a more lukewarm assessment by Cicero.〔Suetonius, ''Life of Terence'' 7.〕 These two verse passages, with their similarity of purpose and wording, may have resulted from a school assignment, since both men studied with the teacher and grammarian Gnipho.〔Courtney, ''Fragmentary Latin Poets'', p. 155.〕 As such, Caesar's lines are probably not to be taken too seriously as literary criticism, but his notice of Terence as "lover of a pure conversational style"〔''Puri sermonis amator''.〕 points toward Caesar's own stylistic predilections and linguistic nationalism.〔Courtney, ''Fragmentary Latin Poets'', pp. 153–154; Lindsay Hall, "''Ratio'' and ''Romanitas'' in the ''Bellum Gallicum''," in ''Julius Caesar as Artful Reporter: The War Commentaries as Political Instruments'' (Classical Press of Wales, 1998).〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Poems by Julius Caesar」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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