Product Code Database
Publius Nigidius Figulus ( – 45 BC)Jerome, in his Chronicon, is the authority for the date of Nigidius's death. was a scholar of the Late Roman Republic and one of the for 58 BC. He was a friend of Cicero, to whom he gave his support at the time of the Catilinarian conspiracy.Plutarch, Cicero, 20; Cicero, Pro Sulla, XIV. 42. Nigidius sided with the Optimates in the civil war between Julius Caesar and Pompeius Magnus.
Among his contemporaries, Nigidius's reputation for learning was second only to that of Varro. Even in his own time, his works were regarded as often abstruse, perhaps because of their esoteric Pythagoreanism, into which Nigidius incorporated Stoicism elements. Jerome calls him Pythagoricus et magus, a "Pythagorean and magi," and in the medieval and Renaissance tradition he is portrayed as a magician, divination, or occultist. His vast works survive only in fragments preserved by other authors.
Arnaldo Momigliano tried to explain the apparent contradictions between Nigidius's active political career and his occult practices:
Even Varro, though schooled in the Stoicism of Aelius Stilo and in skeptical Antiochean Platonism, requested a Pythagorean funeral for himself.Pliny, Historia naturalis 35.160; Momigliano, "Theological Efforts," pp. 201–202. The 19th-century historian Theodor Mommsen compared the occult interests of the Late Republic to the “spirit-rapping and Table-turning” that fascinated “men of the highest rank and greatest learning” in the Victorian era.Theodor Mommsen, History of Rome, vol. IV (London 1867), p. 563 (Dickson’s translation).
Pythagoreanism was not associated with a particular political point of view at Rome. Nigidius remained staunchly among the conservative republicans of the senate, but Publius Vatinius, the other best-known Pythagorean among his political contemporaries, was a fierce and long-term supporter of Caesar. The three eminent Roman intellectuals of the mid-1st century BC — Cicero, Varro, and Nigidius — supported Pompeius in the civil war. Caesar not only showed clemency toward Varro, but recognized his scholarly achievements by appointing him to develop the public library at Rome. Both Cicero and Varro wrote nearly all their work on religion under Caesar's Roman dictator. But despite Cicero's “rather inept and embarrassed” efforts,Momigliano, "Theological Efforts," pp. 200–201. Nigidius died in exile before obtaining a pardon.
His Commentarii grammatici in at least 29 books was a collection of natural language, grammar and antiquarianism notes. Nigidius viewed the Semiotics as natural, not created by humans. He paid special attention to orthography, and sought to differentiate the meanings of of like ending by distinctive marks: the apex to indicate a long vowel was once incorrectly attributed to him, but has now been proven to be older.See Revilo P. Oliver, "Apex and Sicilicus," American Journal of Philology 87 (1966) 129–170; Marcello De Martino, "Noctes Atticae, 13, 26 e il presunto ‘equivoco’ di Gellio: riaperto il caso del ‘casus interrogandi’", in Indogermanische Forschungen, 111, 2006 S. 192–226. In etymology he tried to find a Roman explanation of words where possible; for example, he derived frater ("brother") from fere alter, "practically another (self)." QuintilianQuintilian, Instit. orat. xi. 3. 143. speaks of a treatise De gestu by him.
The scholarly approach of the Commentarii may be compared to that of Varro in its combination of grammatical subjects and antiquarianism, but Nigidius's esoteric and scientific interests distinguish him.Gian Biaggio Conte, Latin Literature (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), pp. 220–221 online. Known titles of his works include two books on the celestial sphere, one on the Greek system and the other on "barbarian", or non-Greek, systems, a surviving fragment of which indicates that he treated Egyptian astrology.A. Swoboda, P. Nigidii Figuli Operum Reliquiae (Amsterdam 1964), p.128. His astrological work drew on the Etruscan tradition and influenced Martianus Capella, though probably through an intermediary source.Stefan Weinstock, "Martianus Capella and the Cosmology of the Etruscans," Journal of Roman Studies 36 (1946) 101–129. Nigidius also wrote on the winds and on animals.
His works on theology and other religious topics such as divination included De Diis ("About the Gods"), an examination of various cults and ceremonials, and treatises on divination ( De augurio privato and De extis, the latter covering Haruspex) and the Oneiromancy ( De somniis). The literary historian Gian Biaggio Conte notes that "the number of his fragments that has come down to us does not correspond to the general admiration felt by posterity for this interesting scholar-philosopher-scientist-magician" and attributes this loss to "the vastness and especially the obscurity of the works."Gian Biaggio Conte, Latin Literature (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), p. 221.
|
|
