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

HOSTILIUS.'HOSTILIUS. 631
whole house with fire. Later times placed his commissiqners for re-apportioning the demesne lands
sepulchre on the Velian hill. (Varr. fragm. p. 241. of Rome in Samnlium and Apulia (xxxi. 4). In
Bipont. ed.) 190 he was legatus of L. Scipio Asiaticus, and was
That the story of Tullus Hostilius in Dionysius involved with him in the charge of taking bribes
and Livy is the prose form of an heroic legend from Antiochus the Great. Hostilius in B. C. 187
there seems little reason to doubt. The incidents was convicted of receiving for his own share fromn
of the Alban war, the meeting of the armies on the the king of Syria 40 pounds of gold and 403 of
boundary line of Rome and Alba, the combat of silver. He gave sureties for his appearance; but
the triad of brethren, the destruction of the city, since Scipio, a greater defaulter, eluded punishment,
the wrath of the gods, and the extinction of the Hostilius probably escaped also. (xxxviii. 55, 58.)
Hostilian house, are genuine poetical features. 2. C. HosTIL1US CATO, brother of the preceding,
Perhaps the only historical fact embodied in them and his colleague in the praetorship B. C. 207.
is the ruin of Alba itself; and even this is mis- After several changes in his appointment, the
represented, since, had a Roman king destroyed it, senate at length directed Hostilius to combine in
the territory and city would have become Roman, his own person the offices of praetor urbanus and
whereas Alba remained a member of the Latin praetor peregrinus, in order that the other praetors
league until the dissolution of that confederacy in of the year might take the field against Hannibal.
B. c. 338. Yet, on the other hand, with Hostilius (Liv. xxvii. 35, 36.)
begins a new era in the early history of Rome, the 3. L. HOSTILIUS CATO, was one of the comrn
mytho-historical, with higher pretensions and per- missioners [HOSTILIUS CATO, No. 1] for rehaps nearer approaches to fact and personality. As dividing the demesne lands of Rome in Samnium
Romulus was the founder and eponymus of the and Apulia B. C. 201 (Liv. xxxi. 4), and subRamnes or first tribe, and Tatius of the Titienses sequently legatus of L. Scipio Asiaticus in the
or second, so Hostilius, a Latin of Medullia, was Syrian war, B. C. 190. L. Hostilius, as well as
probably the founder of the third patrician tribe, Aulus, was accused of taking bribes from Antiochus,
the Luceres, which, whatever Etruscan admixture but, unlike Aulus, was acquitted. (Liv. xxxviii.
it may have had, was certainly in its main element 55.) [W. B. D.]
Latin. Hostilius assigned lands, added to a national HOSTI'LIUS FIRMI'NUS, legatus of Marius
priesthood, and to the patriciate, instituted new- Priscus, proconsul of the Roman province of Africa
religious festivals, and, according to one account at in Trajan's reign. He was involved in the charges
least, increased the number of the equites, all of brought against the proconsul A. D. 101 (comp.
which are tokens of permanent additions to the Juv. i. 49, viii. 120) of extortion and cruelty; and,
populus or burgherdom, and characteristics of a without being degraded from his rank as senator,
founder of the nation. Consistent with these he was prohibited the exercise'of all senatorial
glimpses of historical existence are his building the functions. (Plin. Ep. ii. 11, 12.) [W. B. D.]
Hostilia curia, and his enclosure of the comitium. HOSTI'LIUS, the proposer of the Lex HosHe was not therefore, like Romulus, merely an tilia, of uncertain date. The old Roman law proeponymus, nor, like Numa, merely an abstraction hibited actions from being brought by one person
of one element, the religious phase of the common- in the name of another, except in the case of actions
wealth, but a hero-king, whose personality is dimly pro populo, pro libertate, and pro tutela. (Inst. 4.
visible through the fragments of dismembered re- tit. 10. pr.) By an action pro tutela seems to be
cord and among the luminous clouds of poetic meant the case of an action brought by a tutor in
colouring. (Dionys. iii. 1-36; Liv. i. 22-32; the name of a ward (compare Gell. v. 13); and
Cic. de Rep. ii. 17; Niebuhr, Hist. of Rome, vol. it was a rule of law that no third person could
i. pp. 296-298, 346-352; Arnold, Hist. of act for the tutor in behalf of the ward. By the
Rome, vol. i. pp. 15-19.) Lex Hostilia, an actio furti was allowed to be
3. M. HOSTILIUS, removed the town of Salapia brought in the name of one who was absent on the
in Apulia from the unhealthy borders of the palus public service, military or civil; and if the absent
Sallapina-Lago di Salpi-to a site four miles person were a tutor, a third person was allowed to
nearer the coast, and converted the lake, by drain- supply his place, where his ward had received an
age, into the harbour of the new town. (Vitruv. i. injury, for which an actio furti was the proper
4. p. 30. Bipont. ed.) remedy. This law, which exempted soldiers on
4. C. HosTILIUS was sent by the senate to foreign duty from ordinary rules of law, was proAlexandria in B. C. 168 to interpose as legatus be- bably connected with the actiones Hostilianae mentween Antiochus Epiphanes, king of Syria [ANTI- tioned by Cicero. (De Orat. i. 57.) As in an
OCHUS, IV.] and Ptolemy Physcon and Cleopatra, actio furti, founded upon the Lex Hostilia, the
the sovereigns of Egypt. [CLEOPATRA, No. 6.] damage recovered by the nominal plaintiff ensued
(Liv. xliv. 19, 29.) to the benefit of the absent soldier, a legal argument
5. TULLUS HOSTILIUS, a creature of M. An- might be drawn by analogy-in favour of the claim
tony's, and tribune elect of the plebs for B. C. 43. of the soldier to whom allusion is made by Cicero.
Cicero plays upon his name, as befittingly affixed in the passage referred to. The father of the
to the gate-probably of the Curia Hostilia. (Phi- soldier had died during his son's absence, after
lipp. xiii. 12. ~ 26.) having made a stranger his heir, in the erroneous
6. HosTIMuS, a cynic philosopher, banished by belief of his son's death. The argument from anaVespasian A. D, 72-3. (Dion Cass. lxvi. 13; logy would be, that the stranger took the inheritcomp. Suet. Vesp. 13.) [W. B. D.] ance for the soldier's benefit. Hugo and others
HOST]'LIUS CATO. 1. A. HOSTILIUS CATO, have supposed that the actiones Hostilianae were
was praetor in B. C. 207 (Liv. xxvii. 35, 36), and testamentary formulae. [J. T. G.]
obtained Sardinia for his province. (xxviii. 10.) HOSTI'LIUS. Priscian (p. 719; ed. Putsch.)
In 201, after the evacuation of Italy by the Car- quotes a single line
thaginians, the senate named Hostilius one of ten " Saepe greges pecuum ex hibernis.pastubu' pu!si':
M M 2