Quintus Valerius Soranus

Quintus Valerius Soranus (born between c. 140–130 BC,[1] died 82 BC) was a Latin poet, grammarian, and tribune of the people in the Late Roman Republic. He was executed in 82 BC while Sulla was dictator,[2] ostensibly for violating a religious prohibition against speaking the arcane name of Rome, but more likely for political reasons.[3] The cognomen Soranus is a toponym indicating that he was from Sora.[4]

A single elegiac couplet survives more or less intact from his body of work. The two lines address Jupiter as an all-powerful begetter who is both male and female. This androgynous, unitarian conception of deity,[5] possibly an attempt to integrate Stoic and Orphic doctrine, has made the fragment of interest in religious studies.[6]

Valerius Soranus is also credited with a little-recognized literary innovation: Pliny the Elder says he was the first writer to provide a table of contents to help readers navigate a long work.[7]

  1. ^ Conrad Cichorius, “Zur Lebensgeschichte des Valerius Soranus,” Hermes 41 (1906), p. 67; American Journal of Philology 28 (1907) 468.
  2. ^ T.R.S. Broughton, The Magistrates of the Roman Republic, vol. 2, 99 B.C.–31 B.C. (New York: American Philological Association, 1952), p. 68.
  3. ^ Conrad Cichorius, “Zur Lebensgeschichte des Valerius Soranus,” Hermes 41 (1906) 59–68, remains the most thorough discussion of the evidence; English abstract in American Journal of Philology 28 (1907) 468.
  4. ^ Oxford Latin Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1982, 1985 printing), entry on "Soranus," p. 1793.
  5. ^ Jaime Alvar, “Matériaux pour l'étude de la formule sive deus, sive dea,” Numen 32 (1985), pp. 259–260.
  6. ^ Edward Courtney, The Fragmentary Latin Poets (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), pp. 66–68; Attilio Mastrocinque, "Creating One's Own Religion: Intellectual Choices," in A Companion to Roman Religion, edited by Jörg Rüpke (Blackwell, 2007), p. 382.
  7. ^ Pliny the Elder, preface 33, Historia naturalis; John Henderson, “Knowing Someone Through Their Books: Pliny on Uncle Pliny (Epistles 3.5),” Classical Philology 97 (2002), p. 275.