Marcus Aurelius Olympius Nemesianus, Roman poet, a native of Carthage

Carthage

Carthage , implying it was a 'new Tyre') is a major urban centre that has existed for nearly 3,000 years on the Gulf of Tunis, developing from a Phoenician colony of the 1st millennium BC...

, flourished about AD 283

283

Year 283 was a common year starting on Monday of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Carus and Carinus...

.

He was a popular poet at the court of the Roman emperor Carus

Carus

Carus , was Roman Emperor from 282 to 283. During his short reign, Carus fought the Germanic tribes and Sarmatians along the Danube frontier with success. During his campaign against the Sassanid Empire he sacked their capital Ctesiphon, but died shortly thereafter...

 (Historia Augusta, Carus, 11). He wrote poems on the arts of fishing (Halieutica), aquatics (Nautica) and hunting (Cynegetica), but only a fragment of the last, 325 hexameter

Hexameter

Hexameter is a metrical line of verse consisting of six feet. It was the standard epic metre in classical Greek and Latin literature, such as in the Iliad and Aeneid. Its use in other genres of composition include Horace's satires, and Ovid's Metamorphoses. According to Greek mythology, hexameter...

 lines, has been preserved. It is neatly expressed in good Latin

Latin

Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

, and was used as a school text-book in the 9th century.

Four eclogue

Eclogue

An eclogue is a poem in a classical style on a pastoral subject. Poems in the genre are sometimes also called bucolics.The form of the word in contemporary English is taken from French eclogue, from Old French, from Latin ecloga...

s, formerly attributed to Titus Calpurnius Siculus

Titus Calpurnius Siculus

Titus Calpurnius was a Roman bucolic poet. Eleven eclogues have been handed down to us under his name, of which the last four, from metrical considerations and express manuscript testimony, are now generally attributed to Nemesianus, who lived in the time of the emperor Carus and his sons .Hardly...

, are now generally considered to be by Nemesianus, and the Praise of Hercules, sometimes printed in Claudian

Claudian

Claudian was a Roman poet, who worked for Emperor Honorius and the latter's general Stilicho.A Greek-speaking citizen of Alexandria and probably not a Christian convert, Claudian arrived in Rome before 395. He made his mark with a eulogy of his two young patrons, Probinus and Olybrius, thereby...

's works, may be by him.

Complete edition of the works attributed to him in Emil Baehrens

Emil Baehrens

Paul Heinrich Emil Baehrens was a German classical scholar.After completing his studies he became Privatdozent at Jena. In 1877 he was appointed ordinary professor at the University of Groningen...

, Poetae Latini Minores, iii. (1881); Cynegetica: ed. Moritz Haupt

Moritz Haupt

Moritz Haupt , was a German philologist.He was born at Zittau, in Lusatia. His early education was mainly conducted by his father, Ernst Friedrich Haupt, burgomaster of Zittau, a man of learning who took pleasure in translating German hymns or Goethe's poems into Latin, and whose memoranda were...

 (with Ovid

Ovid

Publius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria...

's Halieutica and Grattius

Grattius

Grattius was a Roman poet of the age of Augustus. He was the author of a Cynegetica, a poem on hunting, of which 541 hexameter lines remain. He describes various kinds of game, methods of hunting, and the best breeds of horses and dogs....

) 1838, and R. Stern, with Grattius (1832); Italian translation with notes by L. F. Valdrighi (1876). The four eclogues are printed with those of Calpurnius in the editions of H. Schenkl (1885) and Charles Haines Keene (1887); see L. Cisorio, Studio sulle Egloghe di Nemesiano (1895) and Dell' imitazione nelle Egloghe di Nemesiano (1896); and M. Haupt, De Carminibus Bucolicis Calpurnii et Nemesiani (1853), the chief treatise on the subject. The text of the Cynegetica, the Eclogues, and the doubtful Fragment on Bird-Catching were published in Vol. II of Minor Latin Poets (Loeb Classical Library

Loeb Classical Library

The Loeb Classical Library is a series of books, today published by Harvard University Press, which presents important works of ancient Greek and Latin Literature in a way designed to make the text accessible to the broadest possible audience, by presenting the original Greek or Latin text on each...

 with English translations (1934).

External links

• Nemesianus, Latin text and English translations in the Loeb edition, at LacusCurtius
  LacusCurtius
  LacusCurtius is a website specializing in ancient Rome, currently hosted on a server at the University of Chicago. It went online on August 26, 1997; in January 2008 it had "2786 pages, 690 photos, 675 drawings & engravings, 118 plans, 66 maps." The site is the...
  
  .