Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 3.djvu/868

Rh 856 SOEMIS. 6. Of Rhodes, an historian, who seems to have lived in the time of Augustus, and who wrote a work on the civil war, from which Athenaeus quotes some particulars respecting Antony and Cleo- patra. (Ath. iv. p. 147, e. ; Menag. /. e. ; Vos- sius, I. c. and p. 227.) 7. The author of a work on Thrace, the second book of which is quoted by Plutarch {Farall. 18, p. 310, a). 8. A grammarian cited in the Etymologicum Magnum {s. v. EvSo'b ; Vossius, p. 499). There seem to have been also other persons of the name, but not of sufficient importance to be noticed here. The name is confounded by the ancient writers with Crates, Isocrates, Sosicrates, and Sostratus. (Fabric, Vossius, Menag. //. cc. ; lonsius. Script. Hist.Philos. vol. i. c. 2.) [P. S.] SO'CRATES, artists. 1. Of Thebes, a sculptor, who, in conjunction with his fellow-citizen Aris- tomedes, made a statue of the " Dindymenian Mother" (Cybele), which was dedicated by Pin- dar in her temple near Thebes. The artists there- fore flourished probably about 01. 75, B. c. 480. The statue, as well as the throne on which it sat, was of Pentelic marble ; and it was preserved with extraordinary reverence. (Paus. ix. 25. § 3.) 2. The celebrated philosopher, was the sou of a sculptor, Sophroniscus, and claimed to be of the mythical lineage of the Daedalids, and himself practised the art during part of his life (see the article above). Pausanias ascribes to him the statue of Hermes Propylaejis, and the group of the three Graces, which stood in the very entrance of the Acropolis at Athens ; and he informs us that the Graces were draped (Paus. i. 22. § 8, ix. 35. § 2. s. 7). Pliny also mentions the Graces of Socrates, as not inferior to the finest works of marble in existence ; but he says that some sup- posed them to be the production of the painter of the same name (Plin. H.N. xxxvi. 5. s. 4. § 10). There can, however, be little doubt that the ac- count which Pausanias heard at Athens itself was the correct one. 3. A painter who seems, from the manner in which he is mentioned by Pliny, to have been a disciple of Pausias ; and if so, he must have flourished about the latter half of the fourth cen- tury B. c, or between b. c. 340 — 300. His pic- tures were extremely popular. As examples of them, Pliny mentions Aesculapius and his daugh- ters, Hygia, Aegle, Panacea, and laso ; and also a slothful fellow, or perhaps a personification of Sloth (piger qui appellaiur Oenos), making a rope of broom (spartum), which an ass gnaws away at tlie other end as fast as he twists it. (Plin. //. A^. XXXV. 11. 8. 40. §31.) [P. S.] SOE'MIS or SO AE'M1AS,JU'LIA, the daugh- ter of Julia Maesa, and the mother of Elagabalus, either by her husband Sextus Varius Marcellus, or, according to the report industriously circulated with her own consent, by Caracalla. Of her early history we know nothing, but it is manifest that she must have been living at the Roman court under the protection of her aunt Julia Domna, about A.D. 204, otherwise the story with regard to the origin of her son, who was born in the follow- ing year, would have been palpably impossible. In the battle which transferred the empire from Macriims to Elagabalus, she is said to have decided the fortune of the day, having succeeded in rallying the fl^'ing soldiers by prayers and entreaties, and SOLINirS. by placing her boy in their path. Being forthwith created Augusta, she became the chosen counsellor of the youthful prince, and seems to have encou- raged and shared his follies and enormities. She took a place in the senate, which then, for the first time, witnessed the intrusion of a woman, and was herself the president of a sort of female parliament, which held its sittings in the Quirinal, and published edicts for the regulation of all matters connected with the morals, dress, etiquette, and equipage of the matrons. She was slain by the praetorians, in the arms of her son, on the 1 1th of March, a. d. 222, and her body, after having been subjected to every indignity, was cast into a common sewer. [See Caracalla ; Elagabalus ; Julia Domna ; Macrinus,] (Laniprid. Elagab. 2 ; Dion Cass. Ixxviii. 30, 38 ; Herod ian v. 5, &c. ; Scaliger, in Chronic. Euseb. p. 232 ; Eckhel, vol. vii. p. 264.) Her name, according to Herodian and Dion Cassius, ought to be written Soemis ; on all Roman and most Greek medals it appears as Soaemias. In the text of the Augustan historians, Capitolinus and Lampridius, we find the corrupt form Semiamira. In Greek inscriptions she is styled Bassiana, from her grandfather, the founder of the family. With regard to the title Julia, see Julia Domna. [W. R.] coin of soemis or soaemias. SOFO'NIUS TIGELLI'NUS. [Tigelli- NUS.] SOGDIA'NUS (2o78mj/o's), or SECUN- DIA'NUS (SeKyi/Siaw's), as he is called by Ctesias, was one of the illegitimate sons of Artaxerxes I. Longimanus. The latter on his death in B. c. 425 was succeeded by his legitimate son Xerxes II., but this monarch after a reign of only two months was murdered by Sogdianus, who now became king. Sogdianus, however, was murdered in his turn after a reign of seven months, by his brother Ochus, as is related in the life of the latter. Ochus reigned under the name of Dareius II. [Dareius II.] (Diod. xii. 71 ; Ctesias, Pers. c. 44.) SOHAEMIAS. [Soemis.] SOIDAS, artist. [Menaechmus]. SOL. [Helios.] SOLI'NUS, C. JU'LIUS, the author of a geo- graphical compendium, divided into fifty-seven] chapters, containing a brief sketch of the world as] known to the ancients, diversified by historicall notices, remarks on the origin, habits, religious rites and social condition of various nations enume- j rated, together with details regarding the remark- able productions of each region, whether animal, j vegetable or mineral. The arrangsment, materials,] and frequently the very words, are derived almost-j exclusively from the Natural History of Pliny, but j little knowledge, care, or judgment, are displayed in the selection, and the writer nowhere indicates the source from whence he has drawn so largely- contenting himself with assuring his friend Ad