Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 2.djvu/1228

1 214 NUMERIANUS. god, in whom he beholds the ideas according to which he arranges the world harmoniously, being seized with a desire to create the world. The first god communicates his ideas to the second, without losing them himself, just as we communicate knowledge to one another, without depriving our- selves of it. {Ibid. xi. 18.) In regard to the relation existing between the third and second god, and to the manner in which they also are to be con- ceived as one (probably in opposition to the vague duration of matter), no information can be de- rived from the fragments which have come down to us. [Ch. A. B.] NUME'NIUS (Nou^TjVios). 1. A sceptical phi- losopher, and a pupil af Pyrrhon, must be distin- guished from Numenius of Apameia. (Diog. Laert. ix. 68, 102, 114.) 2. A rhetorician, who lived in the reign of Hadrian, to whom he addressed a consolatory dis- course {irapajxvQririKov) on the death of Antiuous. He also wrote Ilepi twu ttjs Aelecos axVP-arwu, XpCLwv crvvaycoyi^, and arguments (viTuOeaeis) to the works of Thucydides and Demosthenes. (Suid. e. V. and Eudoxia.) He was the father of the rhe- torician Alexander, who is hence frequently called Alexander Numenius. [See Vol. I. p. 123, a,] NTJME'NIUS (NoujUTfj'toy), a medical writer, quoted by Celsus (v. 18. § 35, 21. § 4, pp. 88, 92) and Aetius (iv. 1, § 20, p. 621, in which passage for Numius we should read Nuinenms). He is, perhaps, the native of Heracleia, who was a pupil of Dieuches, and lived probably in the fourth or third century b. c, ( Athen. i. p. 5.) He wrote a poem on fishing, 'AAieurt/ca, which is frequently quoted by Athenaeus. A person of the same name, <vho wrote on venomous animals, &i]piaKa., is quoted by the Scholiast on Nicander. (Fabric. Bibl. Gr. vol. ii. p. 627, ed. vet.) [ W. A. G.] NUME'RIA, the goddess. [Numerius.] NUMERIA'NUS, M. AURELIUS, the younger of the two sons of the emperor Carus, and his companion in the expedition against the Per- sians, undertaken in a. d. 283. After the death of his father, which happened in the following year, he was, without opposition, acknowledged as joint emperor with his brother Carinus. The idle fears of the array compelled him to abandon all hopes of prosecuting a campaign commenced with so much glory, and of extending the conquests already achieved. For terrified by the mysterious fate of Carus [CarusJ, which they regarded as a direct manifestation of the wrath of heaven, and an evident fulfilment of the ancient prophecy which fixed the river Tigris as the limit of the Roman sway, the soldiers refused to advance. Yielding to their superstitious terrors, Nuraerianus com- menced a retreat in the very hour of victorj', and slowly retraced his steps towards the Thracian Bosporus. During the greater part of the march, which lasted for eight months, he was duly con- fined to his litter by an aflfection of the eyes, in- duced, it is said, by excessive weeping. After this seclusion had continuea for a considerable period, dark reports began to circulate, and the excitement increasing by degrees, at length became so fierce that the soldiers forced their way into the Im- perial tent, and discovered the dead body of their prince. The concealment practised by Arrius Aper, praefect of the praetorians, father-in-law of the deceased, and who had lately acted as his repre- sentative, gave rise to the worst suspicions. He NUMICIA. was publicly arraigned of the murder in a military council, held at Chalcedon, and, without being per- mitted to speak in his own defence, was stabbed to the heart by Diocletian, whom the trtops had al- ready proclaimed emperor, and who on this occasion acted with a degree of hasty violence strangely at variance with the calmness of his well-regulated mind. [Diocletianus.] The Augustan historian represents Numerianus as a prince remarkable alike for moral and intellec- tual excellence. He gained universal love and ad- miration by gentleness of temper, affability of address, and purity of life, while at the same time he bore away the palm in eloquence and poetiy from all his contemporaries — virtues and accom- plishments which shone the more conspicuous and bright when contrasted with the brutal profligacy and savage cruelty of his brother and colleague Carinus [Carinus]. { o^hc. Numerian.; Aur. Vict. Epit 38, de Cues. 38; Euirop. ix. 12; Zonar. xii. 30.) [W. R.] COIN OF NUMERIANUS. NUME'RIUS, a praenomen among the Romans of rather rare occurrence. Hence the copyists of munuscripts frequently changed N., its contracted form, into M. Varro says that this praenomen was given to those who were born quickly; and that women in childbirth were accustomed to pray to a goddess Numeria, who must have been a deity of some importance, as the pontifex mentioned her in the ancient prayers (Var. Fragm, p. 319, Bipont.; comp. Hartung, Die Religion der Roiner, vol. ii. p. 240). As a Roman praenomen the feminine Nu- meria could not be used any more than Marca ( Varr. L. L. ix. 55, ed. Miiller). Festus relates that Numerius was never used as a praenomen by any patrician house, till the Fabius, who alone sur- vived after the six and thirty had been slaughtered by the Etruscans, married the wealthy daughter oi Otacilius Maleventanus, on the condition that the first child should receive the praenomen of its maternal grandfather, Numerius. (Festus, p. 171, ed. Miiller.) Numerius also occurs as the gentile name of a few persons : — 1. Numerius, one of the friends of Marius, provided a vessel for him at Ostia, when he was proscribed by Sulla in B.C. 88 (Plut. Mar. 3.5). Numerius, however, is probably only the praenomen of the friend of Marius. 2. Q. Numerius Rufus, tribune of the plebs, B. c. 57. [Rufus.] 3. Numerius Atticus. [Atticus.] NUME'STIUS, NUME'RIUS, was received by Cicero among his friends, upon the recom- mendation of Atticus. (Cic. ad Alt. ii. 20, 22, 24.) N L'MFCIA GENS, an ancient patrician house, a member of which, T. Numicius Priscus, obtained the consulship as early as b. c. 469. Priscus is the only cognomen in this gens.