Li'cinus, Clo'dius
a Roman annalist, who lived apparently about the beginning of the first century B. C., as Cicero (
de Leg. 1.2.6), speaks of him as a successor of Caelius Antipater. [ANTIPATER, CAELIUS.] The work of Clodius Licinus, the title of which Plutarch (
Plut. Num. 1) gives in Greek, as
Ἔλεγχος χρόνων, appears to have extended from the taking of Rome by the Gauls to his own time. Plutarch quotes (
l.c.) his authority for the destruction of the public records of the city when it was captured by the Gauls; and we learn from Livy (
29.22) that Licinus spoke, in the third book, of the second consulship of Scipio Africanus the elder; and from a fragment of Appian (
Celt. 3), that he gave an account of the defeat of L. Cassius Longinus by the Tigurini, B. C. 107. This Clodius is called by Cicero and Plutarch simply
Clodius, by Livy
Clodius Licinus, and by Appian
Παύλῳ τῷ Κλαυδιῳ; instead of the last, which is evidently corrupt, we should perhaps read
Publius Clodius, so that his full name would then be P. Clodius Licinus. This Clodius is frequently confounded with Q. Claudius Quadrigarius. [QUADRIGARIUS.] Niebuhr thinks (
Hist. of Rome, vol. ii. p. 2) that the passage of Plutarch quoted above refers to Claudius Quadrigarius; but as Plutarch speaks of him as
Κλώδιός τις, it seems more probable that he meant to refer to the less celebrated of the two writers. (Krause,
Vitae et Fragm. vet. Hist. Rom. p. 213; Perizon.
Animad. Hist. p. 349.)
