Scholarship
According to Cicero, Nigidius tried with some success to revive the doctrines of Pythagoreanism, which would have included mathematics, astronomy and astrology, and arcana of the magical tradition. He is supposed to have foretold the greatness of Octavian, the future Augustus, on the day of his birth. Apuleius records that, by the employment of magic boys (magici pueri), he helped to find a sum of money that had been lost.
His Commentarii grammatici in at least 29 books was a collection of linguistic, grammatical and antiquarian notes. Nigidius viewed the meaning of words as natural, not created by humans. He paid special attention to orthography, and sought to differentiate the meanings of grammatical cases of like ending by distinctive marks: the apex to indicate a long vowel was once incorrectly attributed to him, but has now been proven to be older. In etymology he tried to find a Roman explanation of words where possible; for example, he derived frater ("brother") from fere alter, "practically another (self)." Quintilian speaks of a rhetorical treatise De gestu by him.
The scholarly approach of the Commentarii may be compared to that of Varro in its combination of grammatical subjects and antiquarianism, but Nigidius's esoteric and scientific interests distinguish him. Known titles of his works include two books on the celestial sphere, one on the Greek system and the other on "barbarian", or non-Greek, systems, a surviving fragment of which indicates that he treated Egyptian astrology. His astrological work drew on the Etruscan tradition and influenced Martianus Capella, though probably through an intermediary source. Nigidius also wrote on the winds and on animals.
His works on theology and other religious topics such as divination included De Diis ("About the Gods"), an examination of various cults and ceremonials, and treatises on divination (De augurio privato and De extis, the latter covering haruspicy) and the interpretation of dreams (De somniis). The literary historian Gian Biaggio Conte notes that "the number of his fragments that has come down to us does not correspond to the general admiration felt by posterity for this interesting scholar-philosopher-scientist-magician" and attributes this loss to "the vastness and especially the obscurity of the works."
Read more about this topic: Nigidius Figulus
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