Severus, Publius Cornelius

, was an ancient Latin poet of the Augustan age, whose “Ætna” was published with notes and a prose interpretation by Le Clerc, at Amsterdam, 1703, in 12mo, but some copies have the date 1715. It is annexed to “Petri Bembi jEtna,” and is also in Maittaire’s “Corpus Poet.” It had been before inserted | among the “Catalecta Virgilii,” published by Scaliger; whose notes, as well as those of Lindebrogius and Nicolas Heinsius, Le Clerc has mixed -.nth his own. Quintilian calls Severus “a versificator,” rather than a poet; yet adds, that “if he had finished the Sicilian war,” probably, between Augustus and Sextus Pompeius, “in the manner he had written the first book, he might have claimed a much higher rank. But though an immature death prevented him from doing this, yet his juvenile works shew the greatest genius.” Ovid addresses him, not only as his friend, but as a court favourite and a great poet. ¹