n history and literature. The source from which he
derived nearly all his information on literature is universally
admitted to have been the work of Suetonius _De Viris Illustribus_.
With the statements in the surviving sections of that treatise the
observations of Jerome agree, and there can be no reasonable doubt
that he made a similar use of the parts no longer extant. It is a
significant fact that the important authors on whom Jerome is silent,
_e.g._ Tacitus, Juvenal, and the younger Pliny, are precisely those
whom Suetonius, as a contemporary, naturally could not discuss.

The statements of Jerome, based as they are on the high authority of
Suetonius, may be regarded as in the main trustworthy. Some of them,
however, are doubtful, and others manifestly wrong.

(_a_) Jerome's plan obliged him to fix every event to a definite year;
and this, in many cases, can only be guess-work, for Suetonius, as may
be seen from his extant writings, was often vague in his chronology.

(_b_) Comparison with the remains of Suetonius shows that Jerome's
claim to have made his extracts with care was not always well
grounded; _e.g._ his statement that Ennius was a native of Tarentum
(see p. 27).

(_c_) In reckoning, according to his system of dates, events dated by
one of the many confusing systems of chronology current in ancient
times, many openings for error presented themselves; _e.g._ he
sometimes erred through confusing consuls of the same or similar
names, as in the case of Lucilius (p. 59); or through confusing
similar events, as in the case of Livius Andronicus, although the
mistake about the latter was of long standing (p. 2). Once at least he
seems to have confused the date of an author's _floruit_ and that of
his death, making Plautus die in B.C. 200 instead of B.C. 184 (p. 8).

2. AULUS GELLIUS[118] was born probably about A.D. 123, and studied
under the most eminent teachers both at Rome and at Athens. Of his
subsequent life nothing is known except that he held some judicial
post at Rome. His work, the _Noctes Atticae_ in twenty Books (of Book
viii. only the headings of chapters are preserved), is a miscellany of
information on philology, philosophy, rhetoric, history, biography,
literary criticism, natural science, and antiquities. The title is due
to the fact that the book was commenced in the winter evenings during
the author's residence at Athens. The arrangement of the contents
simply follows the haphazard order