Quintus Valerius Soranus

Who was Quintus Valerius Soranus?

Quintus Valerius Soranus was a Latin poet, grammarian, and tribune of the people in the Late Roman Republic. He was executed in 82 BC while Sulla was dictator, ostensibly for violating a religious prohibition against speaking the arcane name of Rome, but more likely for political reasons. The cognomen Soranus is a toponym indicating that he was from Sora.

A single elegiac couplet survives more or less intact from his body of work. The two lines address Jupiter as an all-powerful begetter who is both male and female. This androgynous, unitarian conception of deity, possibly an attempt to integrate Stoic and Orphic doctrine, has made the fragment of interest in religious studies.

Valerius Soranus is also credited with a little-recognized literary innovation: Pliny the Elder says he was the first writer to provide a table of contents to help readers navigate a long work.