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FREJUS (Town) VAR
Agricola, Gnaeus Julius, is one of the most remarkable men whom we meet with in
the times of the first twelve emperors of Rome, for his extraordinary ability
as a general, his great powers, shewn in his government of Britain, and borne
witness to by the deep and universal feeling excited in Rome by his death (Tac.
Agric. 43), his singular integrity, and the esteem and love which he commanded
in all the private relations of life.
His life of 55 years (from June 13th, A. D. 37, to the 23rd August, A. D. 93)
extends through the reigns of the nine emperors from Caligula to Domitian. He
was born at the Roman colony of Forum Julii, the modem Frejus in Provence. His
father was Julius Graecinus of senatorial rank; his mother Julia Procilla, who
throughout his education seems to have watched with great care and to have exerted
great influence over him. He studied philosophy (the usual education of a Roman
of higher rank) from his earliest youth at Marseilles. His first military service
was under Suetonius Paulinus in Britain (A. D. 60), in the relation of Contubernalis.
Hence he returned to Rome, was married to Domitia Decidiana, and went the round
of the magistracies; the quaestorship in Asia (A. D. 63), under the proconsul
Salvius Titianus, where his integrity was shewn by his refusal to join the proconsul
in the ordinary system of extortion in the Roman provinces; the tribunate and
the praetorship,--in Nero's time mere nominal offices, filled with danger to the
man who held them, in which a prudent inactivity was the only safe course. By
Galba (A. D. 69) he was appointed to examine the sacred property of the temples,
that Nero's system of robbery (Sueton. Ner. 32) might be stopped. In the same
year he lost his mother; it was in returning from her funeral in Liguria, that
he heard of Vespasian's accession, and immediately joined his party. Under Vespasian
his first service was the command of the 20th legion in Britain (A. D. 70). On
his return, he was raised by the emperor to the rank of patrician, and set over
the province of Aquitania, which he held for three years (A. D. 74-76). He was
recalled to Rome to be elected consul (A. D. 77), and Britain, the great scene
of his power, was given to him, by general consent, as his province.
In this year he betrothed his daughter to the historian Tacitus; in
the following he gave her to him in marriage, and was made governor of Britain,
and one of the college of pontiffs.
Agricola was the twelfth Roman general who had been in Britain; he
was the only one who completely effected the work of subjugation to the Romans,
not more by his consummate military skill, than by his masterly policy in reconciling
the Britons to that yoke which hitherto they had so ill borne. He taught them
the arts and luxuries of civilised life, to settle in towns, to build comfortable
dwelling-houses and temples. He established a system of education for the sons
of the British chiefs, amongst whom at last the Roman language was spoken, and
the Roman toga worn as a fashionable dress.
He was full seven years in Britain, from the year A. D. 78 to A. D.
84. The last conquest of his predecessor Julius Frontinus had been that of the
Silures (South Wales); and the last action of Agricola's command was the action
at the foot of the Grampian hills, which put him in possession of the whole of
Britain as far north as the northern boundary of Perth and Argyle. His first campaign
(A. D. 78) was occupied in the reconquest of Mona (Anglesea), and the Ordovices
(North Wales), the strongholds of the Druids; and the remainder of this year,
with the next, was given to making the before-mentioned arrangements for the security
of the Roman dominion in the already conquered parts of Britain. The third campaign
(A. D. 80) carried him northwards to the Taus, probably the Solway Frith; and
the fourth (A. D. 81) was taken up in fortifying and taking possession of this
tract, and advancing as far north as the Friths of Clyde and Forth. In the fifth
campaign (A. D. 82), he was engaged in subduing the tribes on the promontory opposite
Ireland. In the sixth (A. D. 83), he explored with his fleet and land forces the
coast of Fife and Forfar, coming now for the first time into contact with the
true Caledonians. They made a night attack on his camp (believed to be at Loch
Ore, where ditches and other traces of a Roman camp are still to be seen). and
succeeded in nearly destroying the ninth legion; but in the general battle, which
followed, they were repulsed. The seventh and last campaign (A. D. 84) gave Agricola
complete and entire possession of the country, up to the northernmost point which
he had reached, by a most decided victory over the assembled Caledonians under
their general Galgacus (as it is believed, from the Roman and British remains
found there, and from the two tumuli or sepulchral cairns) on the moor of Murdoch
at the foot of the Grampian hills. In this campaign his fleet sailed northwards
from the coast of Fife round Britain to the Trutulensian harbour (supposed to
be Sandwich), thus for the first time discovering Britain to be an island. He
withdrew his army into winter quarters, and soon after (A. D. 84) was recalled
by the jealous Domitian.
On his return to Rome, he lived in retirement, and when the government
either of Asia or Africa would have fallen to him, he considered it more prudent
to decline the honour. He died A. D. 93; his death was, as his biographer plainly
hints, either immediately caused or certainly hastened by the emissaries of the
emperor, who could not bear the presence of a man pointed out by universal feeling
as alone fit to meet the exigency of times in which the Roman arms had suffered
repeated reverses in Germany and the countries north of the Danube. Dion Cassius
(lxvi. 20) says expressly, that he was killed by Domitian.
In this account we can do no more than refer to the beautiful and
interesting description given by Tacitus (Agric. 39-46) of his life during his
retirement from office, his death, his person, and his character, which though
it had no field of action at home in that dreary time, shewed itself during the
seven years in which it was unfettered in Britain, as great and wise and good.
(Tacitus, Agricola.)
This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited Nov 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Gallus, C. Cornelius, (Eutropius, vii. 10, erroneously calls him Cneius), a contemporary
of Augustus, who distinguished himself as a general, and still more as a poet
and an orator. He was a native of Forum Julii (Frejus), in Gaul, and of very humble
origin, perhaps the son of some freedman either of Sulla or Cinna. Hieronymus,
in Eusebius, states that Gallus died at the age of forty (others read forty-three);
and as we know from Dion Cassius (liii. 23) that he died in B. C. 26, lie must
have been born either in B. C. 66 or 69. He appears to have gone to Italy at an
early age, and it would seem that he was instructed by the Epicurean Syron, together
with Varus and Virgil, both of whom became greatly attached to him. (Virg. Eclog.
vi. 64, &c.) lie began his career as a poet about the age of twenty, and seems
thereby to have attracted the attention and won the friendship of such men as
Asinius Pollio. (Cic. ad Fam. x. 32.) When Octavianus, after the murder of Caesar,
came to Italy from Apollonia, Gallus must have embraced his party at once, for
henceforth he appears as a man of great influence with Octavianus, and in B. C.
41 he was one of the triumviri appointed by Octavianus to distribute the land
in the north of Italy among his veterans, and on that occasion he distinguished
himself by the protection he afforded to the inhabitants of Mantua and to Virgil,
for he brought an accusation against Alfenus Varus, who, in his measurements of
the land, was unjust towards the inhabitants. (Serv. ad Virg. Eclog. ix. 10; Donat.
Vit. Virg. 30, 36.) Gallus afterwards accompanied Octavianus to the battle of
Actium, B. C. 31, when he commanded a detachment of the army. After the battle,
when Octavianus was obliged to go from Samos to Italy, to suppress the insurrection
among the troops, he sent Gallus with the army to Egypt, in pursuit of Antony.
In the neighbourhood of Cyrene, Pinarius Scarpus, one of Antony's legates, in
despair, surrendered, with four legions, to Gallus, who then took possession of
the island of Pharus, and attacked Paraetonium. When this town and all its treasures
had fallen into the hands of Gallus, Antony hastened thither, hoping to recover
what was lost, either by bribery or by force; but Gallus thwarted his schemes,
and, in an attack which he made on Antony's fleet in the harbour of Paraetonium,
he sunk and burnt many of the enemy's ships, whereupon Antony withdrew, and soon
after made away with himself. Gallus and Proculeius then assisted Octavianus in
securing Cleopatra, and guarded her as a prisoner in her palace. After the death
of Cleopatra, Octavianus constituted Egypt as a Roman province, with peculiar
regulations, and testified his esteem for and confidence in Gallus by making him
the first prefect of Egypt. (Strab. xvii.; Dion Cass. li. 9, 17.) He had to suppress
a revolt in the Thebais, where the people resisted the severe taxation to which
they were subjected. He remained in Egypt for nearly four years, and seems to
have made various useful regulations in his province; but the elevated position
to which he was raised appears to have rendered him giddy and insolent, whereby
he drew upon himself the hatred of Augustus. The exact nature of his offence is
not certain. According to Dion Cassius (liii. 23), he spoke of Augustus in an
offensive and insulting manner; he erected numerous statues of himself in Egypt,
and had his own exploits inscribed on the pyramids. This excited the hostility
of Valerius Largus, who had before been his intimate friend, but now denounced
him to the emperor. Augustus deprived him of his post, which was given to Petronius,
and forbade him to stay in any of his provinces. As the accusation of Valerius
had succeeded thus far, one accuser after another came forward against him, and
the charges were referred to the senate for investigation and decision. In consequence
of these things, the senate deprived Gallus of his estates, and sent him into
exile; but, unable to bear up against these reverses of fortune, he put an end
to his life by throwing himself upon his own sword, B. C. 26. Other writers mention
as the cause of his fall merely the disrespectfull way in which he spoke of Augustus.
or that he was suspected of forming a conspiracy, or that he was accused of extortion
in his province. (Comp. Suet. Aug. 66, de Illustr. Gram. 16; Serv. ad Virg. Eclog.
x. 1; Donat. Vit. Virg. 39; Amm. Marc. xvii. 4; Ov. Trist. ii. 445, Amor. iii.
9, 63; Propert. ii. 34. 91.)
The intimate friendship existing between Gallus and the most eminent
men of the time, as Asinius Pollio, Virgil, Varus, and Ovid, and the high praise
they bestow upon him, sufficiently attest that Callus was a man of great intellectual
powers and acquirements. Ovid (Trist. iv. 10. 5) assigns to him the first place
among the Roman elegiac poets ; and we know that he wrote a collection of elegies
in four books, the principal subject of which was his love of Lycoris. But all
his productions have perished, and we can judge of his merits only by what his
contemporaries state about him. A collection of six elegies was published under
his name by Pomponius Gauricus (Venice, 1501, 4to), but it was soon discovered
that they belonged to a much later age, and were the productions of Maximianus,
a poet of the fifth century of our era. There are in the Latin Anthology four
epigrams (Nos. 869, 989, 1003, and 1565, ed. Meyers, which were formerly attributed
to Gallus, but none of them can have been the production of a contemporary of
Augustus. Gallus translated into Latin the poems of Euphorion of Chalcis, but
this translation is also lost. Some critics attribute to him the poem Ciris, usually
printed among the works of Virgil, but the arguments do not appear satisfactory.
Of his oratory too not a trace has come down to us ; and how far the judgment
of Quintilian (x. 1. § 93; comp. i. 5. § 8) is correct, who calls him durior Gallus,
we cannot say. The Greek Anthology contains two epigrams under the name of Gallus,
but who their author was is altogether uncertain. Some writers ascribe to C. Cornelius
Gallus a work on the expedition of Aelius Gallus into Arabia, but he cannot possibly
have written any such work, because he died before that expedition was undertaken.
(Fontanini, Hist. Lit. Aquilejae, lib. i.; C. C. C. Volker, Commentat. de C. Cornelii
Galli Forojuliensis Vita et Scriptis, part i., Bonn, 1840, 8vo., containing the
history of his life, and part ii., Elberfeld, 1844, on the writings of Gallus).
A. W. Becker, in his work entitled Gallus, has lately made use of the life of
Corn. Gallus for the purpose of explaining the most important points of the private
life of the Romans in the time of Augustus. An English translation of this work
was published in 1844.
This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited Nov 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
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