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

134 FALCONIA. FALISCUS.
what year is unknown. (SChol. Gronov. pro Leg. Patrum, Lugdun. 1677, vol. v. p. 1218; Isidor.
Man. 19. ed. Orelli).' [W. B. D.] Orig. i. 38, 25, de Script. Eccles. 5.) [W. R.]
FALCO, Q. SO'SIUS, a Roman of high birth FA'LCULA, C. FIDICULA'NIUS, a Roman
and great wealth, consul for the year A. D. 193, senator, was one of the judices at the trial of Staone of those whom Commodus had resolved to put tius Albius Oppianicus, who in B. c. 74 was accused
to death that very night on which he himself was of attempting to poison his step-son, A. Cluentius.
slain. When the Praetorians became disgusted The history of this remarkable trial is given elsewith the reforms of Pertinax, they endeavoured to where [CLUENTIUS]. Falcula was involved in the
force the acceptance of the throne upon Falco, and general indignation that attended the conviction of
actually proclaimed him emperor. The plot, how- Oppianicus. The majority of judices who conever, failed, and many of the ringleaders were put demned Oppianicus was very small. Falcula was
to death; but Falco, whose guilt was by no means accused by the tribune, L. Quintius, of having been
proved, and who was even believed by many to be illegally balloted into the concilium by C. Verres,
entirely innocent, was spared, and, retiring to his at that time city praetor, for the express purpose of
property, died a natural death. (Dion Cass. lxxii. convicting Oppianicus, of voting out of his proper
22, lxxiii. 8; Capitolin. Pertin. 8.) [W. R.] decuria, of giving sentence without hearing the
FALCO'NIA PROBA, a poetess, greatly ad- evidence, of omitting to apply for an adjournment
mired in the middle ages, but whose real name, of the proceedings, and of receiving 40,000
and the place of whose nativity, are uncertain. We sesterces as a bribe from the prosecutor, A.
find her called Flatonia Veccia, Faloni Anicia, Cluentius.
Valeria Paltonia Proba, and Proba Valeiria; while He was, however, acquitted, since his trial did'Rome, Orta, and sundry other cities, claim the not take place until after the excitement that folhonour of her birth. Most historians of Roman lowed the Judicium Albianum had in some measure
literature maintain that she was the noble Anicia subsided. But eight years later, B. c. 66, Falcula
Faltonias Proba, the wife of Olybrius Probus, was again brought to public notice by Cicero, in
otherwise called Hermogenianus Olybrius, whose his defence of Cluentius. After recapitulating the
name appears in the Fasti as the colleague of circumstances of the Judicium Albianum, Cicero
Ausonius, A. D. 379; the mother of Olybrius and asks, if Falcula were innocent, who in the conProbinus, whose joint consulate has been celebrated cilium at Oppianicus's trial could be guilty? an
by Claudian; and, according to Procopius, the equivocal plea that inferred without asserting the
traitress by whom the gates of Rome were thrown guilt of Falcula, in B. C. 74. In his defence of
open to Alaric and his Goths. But there seems to A. Caecina, in B. c. 69, Cicero ushers in the
be no evidence for this identification; and we name of Falcula, a witness against the accused,
must fall back upon the testimony of Isidorus, with with ironical pomp, and proceeds to point out gross
whose words, "Proba uxor Adelfii Proconsulis," inconsistencies in Falcula's evidence. Great unour knowledge begins and ends, unless we attach certainty is thrown over the history of Falcula by
weight to a notice found at the end of one of the the circumstance that it suited Cicero, from whose
MS. copies written in the tenth century, quoted by speeches alone we know any thing of him, to reMontfaucon in his Dia-Pum Itaicurn(p. 36), present at different times, in different lights, the
"Proba uxor Adolphi mater Olibrii et Aliepii cum Judicium Albianum. When Cicero was pleading
Constantii bellum adversus Magnentium conscrip- against C. Verres, Oppianicus was unjustly consisset, conscripsit et hunc librum." demned, and Falcula was an illegal corrupt judge;
The only production of Falconia now extant is when he defended Cluentius, it was necessary to
a Cento Virgilianus, inscribed to the Emperor Ho- soften the details of the Albianum Judicium;
norius, in terms which prove that the dedication when he spoke for Caecina, it was his interest to
must have been written' after A. D. 393, containing direct. public feeling against Falcula. (Cic. pro
narratives in hexameter verse of striking events in' Cluent. 37, 41, pro Caecin. 1 0; Pseudo-Ascon. in
the Old and New Testament, expressed in Iines, Act. I. Verr. p. 146; Schol. Gronov. in Act. I. in
half lines, or shorter portions of lines derived ex- Verr. p. 396. ed. Orelli.) [W. B. D.]
clusively from the poems of Virgil, which are com- FALISCUS, GRA'TIUS, the author of a poem
pletely exhausted in the process. Of course no upon the chase, of whom only one undoubted
praise, except what is merited by idle industry and notice is to be found in ancient writers. This is
clever dulness, is due to this patch-work; and.we contained in the Epistles from Pontus (iv. 16, 33),
cannot but marvel at the gentle terms employed where Ovid speaks of him as a contemporary in
by Boccacio and Henry Stephens in reference to the same couplet with Virgil:such trash. We learn from the prooemium that' she
had published other pieces, of which one upon the Tityrus antiquas et erat qui pasceret herbas,
civil wars is particularly specified, but of these no
trace remains. The Homerocentones, by some (Comp.' Cyneget. 23.) Some lines in Manilius
ascribed to Falconia, belong in reality to Eu- have been supposed to allude to Gratius, but the
doxia. terms in which they are expressed (Astron. ii. 43)
The Cento Virgilianas was first printed at Ve- are too vague to warrant such a conclusion.
nice, fol. 1472, in a volume containing also the Wernsdorf, arguing from the name, has endeaEpigrams of Ausonius, the Consolatio ad Liviam, voured, not without some shadow of reason, to
the pastorals of Calpurnius, together with some prove that he must have been a slave or a freedhymns and other poems; this was followed, in the. man, but the rest of his conjectures are mere fansame century, by the editions published at Rome, tasies.' The cognomen, or epithet, Faliscus, was
4to. 1481; at Antwerp, 4to. 1489, and at Brixia, first introduced by Barth, on the authority of a
8vo. 1496. The most elaborate are those of Mei- MS. which no one else ever saw, and probably
bomius,'Helmst. 4to. 1597, and of Kromayer, Hal. originated in a forced and false interpretation of
Magd.' 8vo. 1719. (See also the Bibliotheca alax. one of the lines in the poem, "At contra nostris