Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 1.djvu/228



virtue, and chastity. Her portrait on the annexed coin supports the accounts which are given of her beauty. (Plut. Ant. 87; Dion Cass. lviii. 11, lix. 3, lx. 5; Suet. Cal. i. 15, 23; Tac. Ann. iii. 3, 18, xi. 3; Val. Max. iv. 3. § 3; Eckhel, vi. p. 178, &c.)

7. The daughter of the emperor Claudius by Petina, was married by her father first to Pompeius Magnus, and afterwards to Faustus Sulla. Nero wished to marry her after the death of his wife Poppaea, 66; and on her refusing his proposal, he caused her to be put to death on a charge of treason. According to some accounts, she was privy to the conspiracy of Piso. (Suet. Claud. 27, Ner. 35; Tac. Ann. xii. 2, xiii. 23, xv. 53; Dion Cass. lx. 5.)

ANTO'NIA GENS, patrician and plebeian. The patrician Antonii bear the cognomen Merenda []; the plebeian Antonii bear no surname under the republic, with the exception of Q. Antonius, propraetor in Sardinia in the time of Sulla, who is called Balbus upon coins. (Eckhel, v. p. 140.) The plebeian Antonii are given under. Antonius, the triumvir, pretended that his gens was descended from Anton, a son of Hercules. (Plut. Ant. 4, 36, 60.) We are told that he harnessed lions to his chariot to commemorate his descent from this hero (Plin. H. N. viii. 16. s. 21; comp. Cic. ad Att. x. 13); and many of his coins bear a lion for the same reason. (Eckhel, vi. pp. 38, 44.)

 ANTO'NINUS. 1. A Roman of high rank, and a contemporary and friend of Pliny the Younger, among whose letters there are three addressed to Antoninus. Pliny heaps the most extravagant praise upon his friend both for his personal character and his skill in composing Greek epigrams and iambics. (Plin. Epist. iv. 3, 18, v. 10.)

2. A new-Platonist, who lived early in the fourth century of our era, was a son of Eustathius and Sosipatra, and had a school at Canopus, near Alexandria in Egypt. He devoted himself wholly to those who sought his instructions, but he never expressed any opinion upon divine things, which he considered beyond man's comprehension. He and his disciples were strongly attached to the heathen religion; but he had acuteness enough to see that its end was near at hand, and he predicted that after his death all the splendid temples of the gods would be changed into tombs. His moral conduct is described as truly exemplary. (Eunapius, Vit. Aedesii, p. 68, ed. Antw. 1568.)

 ANTONI'NUS. The work which bears the title of is usually attributed to the emperor M. Aurelius Antoninus. It is also ascribed in the MSS. severally to Julius Caesar, Antonius Augustus, Antonius Augustalis, and Antoninus Augustus. It is a very valuable itinerary of the whole Roman empire, in which both the principal and the cross-roads are described by a list of all the places and stations upon them, the distances from place to place being given in Roman miles.

We are informed by Aethicus, a Greek geographer whose Cosmographia was translated by St. Jerome, that in the consulship of Julius Caesar and M. Antonius ( 44), a general survey of the empire was undertaken, at the command of Caesar and by a decree of the senate, by three persons, who severally completed their labours in 30, 24, and 19,, and that Augustus sanctioned the results by a decree of the senate. The probable inference from this statement, compared with the MS. titles of the Itinerary, is, that that work embodied the results of the survey mentioned by Aethicus. In fact, the circumstance of the Itinerary and the Cosmographia of Aethicus being found in the same MS. has led some writers to suppose that it was Aethicus himself who reduced the survey into the form in which we have it. The time of Julius Caesar and Augustus, when the Roman empire had reached its extent, was that at which we should expect such a work to be undertaken; and no one was more likely to undertake it than the great reformer of the Roman calendar. The honour of the work, therefore, seems to belong to Julius Caesar, who began it; to M. Antonius, who, from his position in the state, must have shared in its commencement and prosecution; and to Augustus, under whom it was completed. Nevertheless, it is highly probable that it received important additions and revision under one or both of the Antonines, who, in their labours to consolidate the empire, would not neglect such a work. The names included in it, moreover, prove that it was altered to suit the existing state of the empire down to the time of Diocletian ( 285–305), after which we have no evidence of any alteration, for the passages in which the name "Constantinopolis" occurs are probably spurious. Whoever may have been its author, we have abundant evidence that the work was an official one. In several passages the numbers are doubtful. The names are put down without any specific rule as to the case. It was first printed by H. Stephens, Paris. (1512.) The best edition is that of Wesseling, Amst. 1735, 4to. (The Preface to Wesseling's edition of the Itinerary; The Article 'Antoninus, the Itinerary of,' in the Penny Cyclopædia.)

 ANTONI'NUS, M. AURE'LIUS. [ . ]

 ANTONI'NUS PIUS. The name of this emperor in the early part of his life, at full length, was Titus Aurelius Fulvus Boionius Arrius Antoninus—a series of appellations derived from his paternal and maternal ancestors, from whom he inherited great wealth. The family of his father was originally from Nemausus (Nismes) in Transalpine Gaul, and the most important members of the stock are exhibited in the following table:

