Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Gratius Faliscus
GRATIUS FALISCUS, a Roman poet, contemporary with Virgil and Ovid, and author of a poem on hunting (Cynf.yetica), of which somewhat more than 536 lines have been preserved. Of his personal history nothing is known ; but it has been doubtfully conjectured from his cognomen that he was a native of Falerii. The only reference to him to be met with in any writer of antiquity (Ovid, Pont., iv. 1G, 33) is of the most incidental kind, and his poem seems very early to have fallen into comparative oblivion. Our knowledge of it is derived chiefly from a manuscript of the 10th century, preserved at Vienna, but partly also from one of nearly the same age at Paris. It describes, some what after the manner of Xenophon, various kinds of game, the means to be employed for their pursuit and capture, the best breeds of horses and dogs ; and in doing so it seldom rises above the dull level of the driest technicality, although occasionally there are faint reminiscences of Virgil.
The cditio princcps of this author was published in Venice in 1534 ; his work was also included by Ulitius (1645-55) and Havcr- camp(1728)in their editions of Auctores Rci Venaticce, as well as by
and by Weber in the Corpus Poctarum Latinorum. The most recent editions are those of Stern (1832) and Haupt (1838). A rendering into English verse was published by Christopher Wase in 1654; there is also a German translation by Perlet (1826).