Valerius Maximus - Legacy

Legacy

In Valerius are all the rhetorical tendencies of the age. Direct and simple statement is avoided and novelty pursued at any price. The diction is like that of poetry; the uses of words are strained; metaphors are invented; there are startling contrasts, innuendoes and epithets; variations are played upon grammatical and rhetorical figures of speech.

In the manuscripts of Valerius a tenth book is given, which consists of the so-called Liber de Praenominibus, the work of some grammarian of a much later date. The collection of Valerius was much used for school purposes, and its popularity in the Middle Ages is attested by the large number of manuscripts in which it has been preserved. Like other schoolbooks it was epitomated. One complete epitome, probably of the 4th or 5th century, bearing the name of Julius Paris, has come down to us; also a portion of another by Januarius Nepotianus. Editions by C. Halm (1865), C. Kempf (1888), contain the epitomes of Paris and Nepotianus. New editions have been produced by R. Combès (1995-) with a French translation, J. Briscoe (1998), and D.R. Shackleton Baily (2000) with an English translation. Recent discussions of Valerius' work include W. Martin Bloomer, Valerius Maximus and the Rhetoric of the New Nobility (Chapel Hill, 1992), Clive Skidmore, Practical Ethics for Roman Gentlemen: the Work of Valerius Maximus (Exeter, 1996), and Hans-Friedrich Mueller, Roman Religion in Valerius Maximus (London, 2002).