Soranus, Q. Valerius

Works

whom Crassus in the De Oratore designates as " literatissimum togatorum omnium," is the author of two hexameters, quoted at second-hand from Varro, by St. Augustine (De Civ. Dei, 7.9), and also by the third of the mythographers first published by Mai. The lines in question,

Juppiter omnipotens, rerum regumque repertor,

Progenitor genitrixque Deum, Deus unus et idem,

may very possibly, as Meyer conjectures, have been contained in the work spoken of by Pliny (H. N. Praef.) as having been entitled Ἐποπτίδων, while the fragment adduced in the treatise of Varro De Lingua Latina (7.31, comp. 6.5, 10.70), as an example of the word ad agio, is probably extracted from a different piece. It is evident, from the passage in Cicero referred to above, that Soranus mist have been a contemporary of Antonius the orator, and therefore flourished about B. C. 100. (See Anthol. Lat. ed. Meyer. praef. p. x.) The mythographer of Mai calls him Serranus, which is clearly a blunder, perhaps due to the copyist, and in no way must he be confounded with the Serranus of Juvenal (Sat. 7.80), who lived under Nero.

Further Information

Compare Plin. Nat. 3.5; Plut. Quaest. Rom. 61; Gerlach's ed. of Lucilius, 8vo. Turic. 1846. p. xxxi.