HERODIANUS, the author of a Greek history of the period extending from 180 to 238 a.d. Of his origin and condition in life very little is known. He was in Rome in 203, and seems to have held some public office. It has been conjectured that he was first “procurator Caesaris”and afterwards “legatus” of the Sicilian provinces, and that, while fulfilling his official duties, he wrote at intervals the history which bears his name. It is entitled Ήρωδιανου της μcτa Μάρκον Βασιλείας ιστοριών βιβλία οκτώ, and it narrates the events of the fifty-eight years that intervened between the death of Marcus Aurelius and the proclamation of Gordianus III. The narrative is of special value for the reigns of the emperors subsequent to Alexander Severus, with whom the work of Dion Cassius ends. As an historian Herodianu3 has prominent merits and defects. His work has the value that attaches to a record written by one chronicling the events of his own times, gifted with respectable powers of observation, indubitable candour, and independence of view. But he prefers the interest of style to the interest of truth, and is thus led into exaggerations and errors. The inner life anl thought of Rome, the formidable barbarian pressure on her borders, are alike unheeded, that he may blazon his pages with the dazzling vicissitudes of the purple. Though the somewhat sober declamations which he introduces are apt to become tedious, his story is on the whole clear, graceful, and vivacious. The frequent antitheses and studied tricks of phrase savour of the rhetorical schools. Imitations of Thucydides and Latinisms are frequent. Yet in the main his style retains an original cast, a genuine unborrowed beauty, and contrasts favourably with the thin, ...