Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 2.djvu/546

Rh 532 HOSTIUS. fix)m "Ilostilius in primo Annali," where VVeichert, although unsupported by any MS. authority, pro- poses to substitute Hosiius for Hostilius, and sup- poses that a reference is here made to a work by that Hostius who wrote a poem on the Histric War [Hostius]. If Hostilius be the true reading, we find no other allusion to this personage in any ancient author, since he can scarcely be the raimo- grapher mentioned by TertuUian {Apolog. 1 .5 ), who in classing together " Lentulorum et Hostiliorum venustates " seems to bring down the latter to the reign of Doraitian, which we know to have been the epoch of Lentulus, while the versification of the hexameter given above appears to belong to some period not later than the age of Cicero. (See Weichert, Poet. Lat. Reliquiae^ Lips. 1830. p. 17.) [W. R.] HO'STIUS. Festus, Macrobius, and Servius, make quotations, extending in all to about six lines, from the first and second books of the Bellum Histricum of Hostius. From these fragments, from the title of the piece, and from the expressions of the grammarians, we learn that the poem was composed in heroic hexameters ; that the subject must have been the lUyrian war, waged in the consulship of A. Manlius Vulso and M. Junius Brutus, B.C. 178, the events of which are chro- nicled in the forty-first book of Livy ; and that the author lived before Virgil ; but no ancient writer has recorded the period of his birth or of his death, the place of his nativity, the precise epoch when he flourished, or any circumstance connected with his personal history. In the absence of any thing substantial, critics have caught eagerly at shadows. We are told by Appuleius in his Apology, that Hostia was the real name of the lady so often ad- dressed as Cynthia in the lays of Propertius. Hence Vossius {de Poet. Lat. c. 2) has boldly asserted that Hostius belongs to the age of Julius Caesar, a position somewhat vague in itself, and resting upon no basis save the simple conjecture that Hostia was his daughter. {De Hist. Lat. i. lb".) Weichert, while he rejects this assump- tion, is willing to admit that a connection ex- isted between the parties, and conceives th^t the precise degree of relationsliip is indicated by the words of the amatory bard, who, having paid a tribute in the first book of his elegies (ii. 27) to the poetical powers of the fair one, refers expressly in another place (iii. 18, 7; comp. ii. 10, 9) to the glory reflected on her by the fame of a learned grandsire — " Est tibi forma potens, sunt castae Palladis artes, Splendidaque a docto fama refulget avo." Now if we grant that a paternal ancestor is here pointed out, since no one bearing the name of Hostius is celebrated in the literary annals of Rome, except the Hostius whom we are now dis- cussing, it follows that he must be the person in question ; and since Cynthia appears to have been considerably older than her lover, we may throw back her grandfather beyond the era of the Grac- chi. This supposition, at first sight far-fetched and visionary, receives some support from the Language and versification of the scanty remains transmitted to us, which, although far removed from barbarism, savour somewhat of antique rudeness, and also from the circumstance that the Histric war was a contest flo far from being prominent or important, that it was little likely to have been selected as a HYACINTHUS. theme by any one not actually alive at the time when the scenes Avhich he described were enacted, or at all events while the recollection of them was still fresh in the minds of his countrymen. (Festus, s. w. tesca ; scaeva ; Macrob. Sat. vi. 3, 5 ; Serv. ad Virg. Aen. xii. 121 ; W ^ichevi^ Poet. Lat. Reli- quiae, Lips. 1830, pp. 1 — 18.) [W. R.] HUNNERIC {'Ovcipixos king of the Vandals in Africa (a. d. 477 — 484) son of Genseric. He succeeded his father a. d. 477, and married Eu- docia, daughter of the emperor Valentinian, in whose court he had been a hostage. His reign was chiefly marked by his savage persecution of the Catholics — rendered famous by the alleged miracle of the confession of Tipasa ; and he died of a loath- some disease, a. d. 484. (Procop. Bell. Vand. i. 5, 8 ; Victor Vitensis, apud Ruinart. ; Gibbon, c. 37.) [A. P. S.] HYACI'NTHTDES. [Hyacinthus, No. 2.] HYACINTHUS {'TdKivdos). 1. The youngest son of the Spartan king Amyclas and Dioraede (ApoUod. iii. 10. § 3; Pans. iii. 1. § 3, 19. § 4), but according to others a son of Pierus and Clio, or of Oebalus or Eurotas (Lucian, Dial. Deor. 14 ; Hygin. Fah. 271.) He was a youth of extraor- dinary beauty, and beloved by Thamyris and Apollo, who unintentionally killed him during a game of discus. (Apollod. i. 3. § 3.) Some tra- ditions relate that he was beloved also by Boreas or Zephyrus, who, from jealousy of Apollo, drove the discus of the god against the head of the youth, and thus killed him. (Lucian, I. c ; Serv. ad Virg. Eclog. iii. 63 ; Philostr. Imag. 1. 24 ; Ov, Met. x. 184.) From the blood of Hyacinthus there sprang the flower of the same name (hyacinth), on the leaves of which there appeared the exclamation of woe A I, AI, or the letter T, being the initial of 'TaKivQos. According to other traditions, the hya- cinth (on the leaves of which, however, those characters do not appear) sprang from the blood of Ajax. (Schol. ad Theocrit. x. 28 ; comp. Ov. Met. xiii. 395, &c., who combines both legends ; Plin. H. N. xxi. 28.) Hyacinthus was worshipped at Amyclae as a hero, and a great festival, Hya- cinthia, was celebrated in his honour. {Diet, of Ant. s. V.) 2. A Lacedaemonian, who is said to have gone to Athens, and in compliance with an oracle, to have caused his daughters to be sacrificed on the tomb on the Cyclops Geraestus, for the purpose of delivering the city from famine and the plague, under which it was suiTering during the war with Minos. His daughters, who were sacrificed either to Athena or Persephone, were known in the Attic legends by the name of the Hyacinthides, which they derived from their father. (Apollod. iii. 15. § 8 ; Hygin. Fah. 238 ; Harpocrat. s. v.) Some traditions make them the daughters of Erechtheus, and relate that they received their name from the village of Hyacinthus, where they were sacrificed at the time when Athens was attacked by the Eleusinians and Thracians, or Thebans. ( Suid. s.v. YlapQlvoi ; Demosth. Epitaph, p. 1 397 ; Lvcurg. c. Leocrut. 24 ; Cic. p. Scjct. 48 ; Hygin. Fab. 4G.) The names and numbers of the Hyacinthides diff'er in the diff'erent writers. The account of Apollo- dorus is confused : he mentions four, and repre- sents them as man-ied, although they were sacrificed as maidens, whence they are sometimes called simply al irapdfvoi. Those traditions in which they are described as the daughters of Erechtheus confouud