Nemesianus

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Marcus Aurelius Nemesianus was a Roman poet who probably came from Carthage and flourished around AD 283. He was popular at the court of Emperor Carus.

A bogus poet named Olympius Nemesianus appears in the late source Historia Augusta, where he is credited with two works, Halieutica (fishing) and Nautica (boating). Modern scholars think this is a mistaken mix-up. A marginal note mentioning Cynegetica (a hunting poem) in Greek was probably copied into the text, and the name Olympius was confused with the real Nemesianus.

Nemesianus wrote Cynegetica, a hunting poem of about 325 lines in solid Latin that was used as a school text by the 9th-century scholar Hincmar of Reims. There are two fragments of a bird-catching poem (De aucupio) whose attribution to Nemesianus is doubtful. Four pastoral poems, called eclogues, are now usually regarded as his; they were once thought to be by Calpurnius Siculus. A Praise of Hercules is sometimes printed with Claudian’s works and may be by Nemesianus.

Scholars have published various editions of his work since the 19th century. Key editions include Emil Baehrens’s Poetae Latini Minores (1881) and Cynegetica editions by Moritz Haupt (1838) and R. Stern (1832). An Italian translation with notes appeared from L. F. Valdrighi (1876). The four eclogues appear in editions by H. Schenkl (1885) and C. Haines Keene (1887). The Cynegetica, the eclogues, and the De aucupio fragments were issued in Vol. II of Minor Latin Poets in the Loeb Classical Library (1934), with English translations.