Works
whom Crassus in the
De Oratore designates as " literatissimum togatorum
omnium," is the author of two hexameters, quoted at second-hand from Varro, by St. Augustine
(
De Civ. Dei, 7.9), and also by the third of the mythographers first
published by Mai. The lines in question,
Juppiter
omnipotens, rerum regumque repertor,Progenitor genitrixque Deum, Deus unus et idem,
may very possibly, as Meyer conjectures, have been contained in the work spoken of by Pliny
(H. N. Praef.) as having been entitled
Ἐποπτίδων, while the fragment adduced in the treatise of Varro
De Lingua Latina (7.31, comp. 6.5, 10.70), as an example of the word
ad agio, is probably extracted from a different piece. It is evident, from the passage
in Cicero referred to above, that Soranus mist have been a contemporary of Antonius the
orator, and therefore flourished about
B. C. 100. (See
Anthol. Lat. ed. Meyer. praef. p. x.) The mythographer of Mai calls him
Serranus, which is clearly a blunder, perhaps due to the copyist, and in no
way must he be confounded with the Serranus of Juvenal (
Sat. 7.80), who
lived under Nero.