Teacher of the poets Persius and Lucan, exiled for an honest remark about Nero's poetry. Left a fortune by a student, he kept the books and gave back the money.
Lucius Annaeus Cornutus taught philosophy and literature in Rome under Claudius and Nero. A Byzantine lexicon says he came from Leptis in Roman Africa. His family name suggests a connection with the household of the Annaei, the family of Seneca, perhaps as a freed slave, though that is a guess. His students included the satirist Persius and the epic poet Lucan, Seneca's nephew.
Persius came to him at sixteen and, according to an ancient life, hardly left his side afterwards. In his fifth satire, addressed to Cornutus, he writes that he put himself in his teacher's hands and that Cornutus took up his young years in a Socratic embrace. Persius died in 62, at 27. He left Cornutus a sum of money and his library, some seven hundred volumes of Chrysippus. Cornutus took the books and gave the money to Persius's sisters. He also prepared the unfinished satires for publication.
Cassius Dio records the remark that ended his time in Rome. Nero was planning an epic in verse on the whole history of the Romans and, before writing a line, was asking people how many books it should run to. Some proposed four hundred. Cornutus said that was too many, since nobody would read them. When someone objected that Chrysippus, whom Cornutus admired and imitated, had written far more, he answered that those were useful for the conduct of life. Nero came close to having him killed, and sent him to an island instead.
One work of his survives, a short handbook of Greek theology written for a young reader. It explains the gods of myth as names for the forces of nature, the usual Stoic way of reading the old stories.
The exile rests on Dio, who wrote some 150 years later and survives here only in a Byzantine summary. The ancient life of Persius is short and anonymous but generally trusted. Where Cornutus came from, whether he was a freedman, where he was sent and when he died are all unknown.
The answer to Nero was his; the island was not. The choice about the bequest was his too: of everything Persius left him, he took only what served the work and returned the rest.
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