Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 3.djvu/111

Rh PALLADIUS. of the Irish. This solution leads, however, to another difficulty. According to Prosper, Palladius converted the Irish, " fecit barbaram (sc. insulam) Christianam ; " while the united testimony of ec- clesiastical antiquity ascribes the conversion of Ireland to Patricius (St. Patrick), who was a little later than Palladius. But possibly the success of Palladius, though far from bearing out the state- ment of Prosper, may have been greater than sub- sequent writers, zealous for the honour of St. Patrick, and seeking to exaggerate his success by extenuating that of his predecessors, were will- ing to allow. There is another difficulty, arising from an apparent contradiction between the two passages in Prosper, one of which ascribes to Palladius the conversion of the island, while the other describes him as being sent " ad Scotos in Christo credentes ;" but this seeming contradic- tion may be reconciled by the supposition that Palladius had visited the island and made some converts, before being consecrated and again sent out as their bishop. This supposition accounts for a circumstance recorded by Prosper, that " Florentio et Dionysio Coss." i.e. in A. D. 429, Palladius, while yet only a deacon, prevailed on Pope Coelestine to send out Germanus of Auxerre [Germanus, No. 6.] to stop the progress of Pe- lagianism in Britain : which indicates on the part of Palladius a knowledge of the state of the British islands, and an interest in them, such as a previous visit would be likely to impart. The various statements of the mediaeval writers have been collected by Usher in his Britannicar. Ec- slesiar. Antiq. c. xvi, p. 799, &c. See also J. B. SoUerius, De S. Palladio in the Acta Sanctor. Jul. vol. ii. p. 286, &c. Palladius is commemorated as a saint by the Irish Romanists on the 27th Jan. : by those of Scotland on July 6th. His shrine, or reputed shrine, at Fordun, in the Mearns, in Scot- land, was regarded before the Reformation with the greatest reverence ; and various localities in the neighbourhood are still pointed out as con- nected with his history. Jocelin, of Furness, a monkish writer of the twelfth century states, in his life of St. Patrick {Acta Sanctor. Mariii, vol. ii. p. 545 ; Julii^ vol. ii. p. 289), that Palladius, dis- heartened by his little success in Ireland, crossed over into Great Britain, and died in the territory of the Picts ; a statement which, supported as it is by the local traditions of Fordun, may be received as containing a portion of truth. The mediaeval writers have, in some instances, strangely con- founded Palladius, the apostle of the Scoti, with Palladius of HelenopoHs ; and Trithemius {De Scriptor. Eccles. c. 133), and even Baronius {An7ial. Ecdes. ad ann. 429. § 8), who is followed by Pos- sevino, make the former to be the author of the Dialogus de Vita Chrysostomi. Baronius, also, as- cribes to him (ibid.) Liber contra Pelagianos, Ho- miliarum Liber unus, and Ad Coelestinuyn Episto- laruni Liber unus, and other works written in Greek. For these statements he cites the au- thority of Trithemius, who however mentions only the Dialogus. It is probable that the statement rests on the very untrustworthy authority of Bale (Bale, &'n/?<. Illuntr. Maj. Britann. cent. xiv. 6; Usher, /.c; Sollerius l.c, Tillemont, Mtm. vol. xiv. p. 154, &c. p. 737 ; Fabricius, Bibl. Med. et Infim. Latinit. vol. v. p. 191.) 14. Of SiJEDRA, in Pamphylia. Prefixed to the Ancoraius of Epiphanius of Silamis or Constantia PALLADIUS. Q9 [Epiphanius], is a Letter of Palladius to that father. It is headed 'Ettjo-toAt) -ypatpuaa irapd naWadiov rijs avrijs iroAews ^oveSpwu TroAtreuo- fi^vov Ka diro(TTae7aa nvpos rov avTov ayiou "EiTKpdviov alrt^a-avTos koI uvtov trepl rwv avrwv, Palladii ejusdem Suedrorum urbis civis ad Sanctum Epiphanium Epistola, qua idem ab eo postulate i. e. in which he seconds the request made by certain Presbyters of Suedra (whose letter precedes that of Palladius) that Epiphanius would answer cer- tain questions respecting the Trinity of which the Ancoratus contains the solution. (Epiphanius, Opera, vol. ii. p. 3. ed. Petav. fol. Paris, 1 622 ; Fabric. Bibl. Grace, vol. x. p. 114.) [J. CM.] PALLA'DIUS, RUTI'LIUS TAURUS AEMILIA'NUS, the author of a treatise De Re Busiica, in the form of a Farmer's Calendar, the various operations connected with agriculture and a rural life being arranged in regular order, according to the seasons in which they ought to be per- formed. It is comprised in fourteen books : the first is introductory, the twelve following contain the duties of the twelve months in succession, com- mencing with January ; the last is a poem, in eighty-five elegiac couplets, upon the art of graft- ing {De Insitione) ; each of these books, with the exception of the fourteenth, is divided into short sections distinguished by the term Tituli instead of the more usual designation Capita, a circum- stance which is by some critics regarded as a pi'oof that the author belongs to a late period. What that period may have been scholars have toiled hard to discover. The first writer by whom Pal- ladius is mentioned is Isidorus of Seville, who refers to him twice, simply as Aemilianus {Orig. xvii. 1. § 1, 10. § 8), the name under which he is spoken of by Cassiodorus also {Divin. Led. c. 28). Barthius supposes him to be the eloquent Gaulish youth Palladius, to whose merits Rutilius pays so warm a compliment in his Itinerary (i. 207), while Wernsdorf, advancing one step farther into the realms of fancy {Fo'dt. Lat. Min. vol. v. pars i. p. 65 1 ), imagines that he may have been adopted by Rutilius, an idea which, however, he afterwards abandoned (vol. vi. p. 20), and rested satisfied with assigning him to the age of Valentinian or Theo- dosius. The internal evidence is by no means so copious as to compensate for the want of informa- tion from without. The style, without being bar- barous, is such as would justify us in bringing the writer down as low as the epoch fixed by Werns- dorf, although he might with equal propriety be placed two centuries earlier ; but the controversy seems to have recently received a new light from the researches of Count Bartolommeo Borghesi, who, in a memoir published among the Transactions of the Turin Academy (voh xxxviii. 1835), has pointed out that Pasiphilus, the person to whom in all probability Palladius dedicates liis fourteenth book, was praefect of the city in A. D. 355. Wa gather from his own words (iv. 10. § 16), that he was possessed of property in Sardinia and in the territorium NeapolUanum, wherever that may have been, and that he had himself practised horticulture in Italy (iv. 10. §24), but the expressions from which it has been inferred he was a native of Gaul (i. 13. § 1, vii. 2. §2) by no means justify such a conclusion. Although evidently not devoid of a practical acquaintance with his subject, a consider- able portion of the whole work is taken directly from Columella; in all that relates to gardening, and H 2