Vibius Sequester


Vibius Sequester is the Latin author of lists of geographical names.

Work

De fluminibus, fontibus, lacubus, nemoribus, gentibus, quorum apud poëtas mentio fit is made up of seven alphabetical lists of geographical names mentioned by poets, especially Virgil, Ovid and Lucan.
Several of the names do not appear in our copies of the poets; unless this is the result of carelessness or ignorance by the compiler, he must have had access to sources no longer extant.
The lists are:
  1. Flumina
  2. Fontes
  3. Lacus
  4. Nemora
  5. Paludes
  6. Montes
  7. Gentes
The work was highly regarded by scholars of the Italian Rennaissance, and almost 50 manuscript copies survive. All of these, however, can be traced back to a single Carolingian manuscript written in the second half of the 9th century, Vat. Lat. 4929.
The work is best known for preserving a dactylic pentameter line quoted from Cornelius Gallus, uno tellures dividit amne duas, which was the only known fragment of Gallus's poetry before the discovery in 1978 of several additional lines by him on an Egyptian papyrus.

Editions