C. Cornelius, a native of Forum Julii, now Fréjus, in Gaul, was distinguished amongst Latin poets for his elegiac poetry, being the intimate friend of Virgil, who speaks in the very highest terms of his works. He was appointed prefect of Egypt by Augustus 30 B.C., and was governor at the time when Antony and Cleopatra put an end to their lives. A short time afterwards he was recalled, and being accused of treason, was tried and condemned to death (26 B.C.); but he escaped the ignominy of a public execution by suicide, at the age of forty, according to Eusebius. Of his four books of elegies, which he addressed to his beloved Lycoris, nothing has been preserved. The six elegies known under his name are the work of Maximianus Gallus Etruscus, who flourished under Anastasius (491 A.D.). Besides these elegies, Gallus translated a Greek poem of Euphorion of Chalcedon; and some ascribe also to him the poem Ciris, generally considered as the work of Virgil. (Fabric. Bibl. Lat. i. 14; Souchay, in the Mem. de l'Acad. des Inscript. tom. xvi. p. 399.)