A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology. By various writers. Ed. by William Smith. Illustrated by numerous engravings on wood.

462 BARBULA.
the Tarentines in the open field, and took several
of their towns. Alarmed at his progress, and
trusting to his clemency, as he had treated the
prisoners kindly and dismissed some without ransom, the Tarentines appointed Agis, a friend of
the Romans, general with unlimited powers. But
the arrival of Cineas, the chief minister of Pyrrhus,
almost immediately afterwards, caused this appointment to be annulled; and as soon as Milo
landed with part of the king's forces, he marched
against Barbula and attacked the army as it was
passing along a narrow road by the sea-coast. By
the side of the road were precipitous mountains,
and the Tarentine fleet lay at anchor ready to
discharge missiles at the Roman army as it marched by. The army would probably have been
destroyed, had not Barbula covered his troops by
placing the Tarentine prisoners in such a manner
that they would have become the first object of
the enemy's artillery. Barbula thus led his army
by in safety, as the Tarentines would not injure
their own countrymen.
Barbula continued in southern Italy after the
expiration of his consulship as proconsul. He
gained victories over the Samnites and Sallentines,
as we learn from the Fasti, which record his triumph over these people, as well as over the
Etruscans, in Quinctilis of 280. (Zonar. viii. 2;
Oros. iv. 1; Appian, Sacmn. p. 58, &c., ed. Schw.;
Dionys. Exc. p. 2342, &c., ed. Reiske; Frontin.
Strat. i. 4. ~ 1, where Aemilius Paullus is a mistake.)
3. M. AEIIfLIUS L. F. Q. N. BARBULA, son of
No. 2, was consul in n. c. 230, and had in conjunction with his colleague the conduct of the war
against the Ligurians. (Zonar. viii. 19.) Zonaras
says (1. c.), that when the Carthiaginians heard of
the Ligurian war, they resolved to march against
Rome, but that they relinquished their design
when the consuls came into their country, and received the Romans as friends. This is evidently
a blunder, and must in all probability be referred
to the Gauls, who, as we learn from Polybius (ii.
21), were in a state of great ferment about this
time owing to the lex Flaminia, which had been
passed about two years previously, B. c. 232, for
"the division of the Picentian land.
4. BARBULA purchased Marcus, the legate of
Brutus, who had been proscribed by the triumvirs
in B. c. 43, and who pretended that he was a slave in
order to escape death. Barbula took Marcus with
him to Rome, where he was recognized at the citygates by one of Barbula's friends. Barbula, by means
of Agrippa, obtained the pardon of Marcus from
Octavianus. Marcus afterwards became one of the
friends of Octavianus, and commanded part of his
forces at the battle of Actium, B. c. 31. Here he had
an opportunity of returning the kindness of his former master. Barbula had served under Antony, and
after the defeat of the latter fell into the hands of the
conquerors. He, too, pretended to be a slave, and
was purchased by Marcus, who procured his pardon from Augustus, and both of them subsequently
obtained the consulship at the same time. Such
is the statement of Appian (B. C. iv. 49), who does
not give us either the gentile or family name of
Marcus, nor does he tell us whether Barbula belonged to the Aemilia gens. The Fasti do not
contain any consul of the name of Barbula, but he
and his friends may have been consuls suffecti, the
names of all of whom are not preserved.

BARDESANES.
BARCA, the surname of the great Hatmilcar,
the father of Hanibal. [HAMILCAR.] It is probably the same as the Hebrew Barak, which signifies lightning. Niebuhr (Rom. Hist. iii. p. 609)
says, that Barca must not be regarded as the name
of a house, but merely as a surname of Hamilcar:
but, however this may be, we find that the family
to which he belonged was distinguished subsequently as the " Barcine family," and the war and
democratical party as the " Barcine party." (Liv.
xxi. 2, 9, xxiii. 13, xxviii. 12, xxx. 7, 42.)
BARDANES. [ARsAcEs XXI., p. 358.]
BARDESANES, a Syrian writer, whose history is involved in partial obscurity, owing to the
perplexed and somewhat contradictory notices of
him that are furnished by ancient authorities.
He was born at Edessa in Mesopotamia, and
flourished in the latter half of the second century,
and perhaps in the beginning of the third. The
Edessene Chronicle (Assemani, Dibl. Orient. i.
389) fixes the year of his birth to A. D. 154; and
Epiphanius (Haer. 56) mentions, that he lived in
favour with Abgar Bar Manu, who reigned at
Edessa from A. D. 152 to A. D. 187. It is difficult
to decide whether he was originally educated in
the principles of the famous Gnostic teacher Valentinus (as Eusebius seems to intimate), or whether
(as Epiphanius implies) he was brought up in the
Christian faith and afterwards embraced the
Valentinian heresy. It is clear, however, that he
eventually abandoned the doctrines of Valentinus
and founded a school of his own. For an account
of the leading principles of his theology see
Mosheim, de Rebus Christian. ante Constantinnum
M. pp. 395-397, or C. W. F. Walch's Ketzerhistorie, vol. i. pp. 415-422.
Bardesanes wrote much against various sects of
heretics, especially against the school of Marcion.
His talents are reported to have been of an elevated
order, and Jerome, referring to those of his works
which had been translated out of Syriac into Greek,
observes, " Si autem tanta vis est et fulgor in interpretatione, quantam putamus in sermone proprio."
He elsewhere mentions that the writings of Bardesanes were held in high repute among the
philosophers. Eusebius, in his Praeparatio Evangelica (vi. 10), has preserved a fragment of the
dialogue on Fate by this writer, and it undoubtedly
displays abilities of no ordinary stamp. This fragment is published by Grabe, in his Spicilegium SS.
Patrum, vol. i. pp. 289-299; and by Orelli, in the
collection entitled A lexandri, Ammonii, Plotini,Bardesanis, ic., de Fato, quae supersunt, Turici, 1824.
Grabe there shews that the writer of the Recognitiones, falsely ascribed to Clemens Romanus, has
committed plagiarism by wholesale upon Bardesanes.
It appears from this fragment that the charge of
fatalism, preferred against Bardesanes by Augustin, is entirely groundless. It is acutely conjectured by Colberg (de Orig. et Progress. Haeres. p.
140), that Augustin knew this work of Bardesanes
only by its title, and hastily concluded that it
contained a defence of fatalism. Eusebius says that
this work was inscribed to Antoninus, and Jerome
declares that this was the emperor Marcus Aurelius; but it was most probably Antoninus Verus,
who, in his expedition against the Parthians, was
at Edessa in the year 165.
Eusebius mentions that Bardesanes wrote several
works concerning the persecution of the Christians.
The majority of the learned suppose that this was