most intimate friends were Cicero and Atticus. Some authors relate that he composed three books of Chronicles, with a biographical account of all the most celebrated sovereigns, generals, and writers of antiquity.
The language of Cornelius Nepos is pure, his style perspicuous, and he holds a middle and agreeable course between diffuseness and brevity.
He has not observed the same rule with respect to the treatment of every subject; for the account of some of the lives is so short, that we might suspect them to be mutilated, did they not contain evident marks of their being completed in miniature.
The great extent of his plan induced him, as he informs us, to adopt this expedient.
“Sed plura persequi, tum magnitudo voluminis prohibet, tum festinatio, ut ea explicem, quae exorsus sum.”
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Of his numerous biographical works, twenty-two lives only remain, which