a Greek historian of considerable celebrity, respecting whose birthplace we are ignorant, but he seems to have spent much time at Rome. Of his private history we know nothing, except that he flourished in the reign of the younger Gordian (A.D. 238). His work, which has been preserved, contains, in eight books, the lives of the later Roman emperors, from the death of M. Aurelius Antoninus (A.D. 180) to the succession of the younger Gordian (A.D. 238), a period of fifty-eight years. It thus contains an account of the transactions during the reigns of Commodus, Pertinax, Julianus, Niger and Albinus, Severus, Caracalla and Geta, Macrinus, Heliogabalus, Alexander Severus, Maximinus, the two Gordians, Balbinus, and Gordian the younger. The style of his history is simple and natural, free from that affected Attic purity which was the fault of the writers of his age. Still in many passages there are evident marks of his having imitated Thucydides, and sometimes Demosthenes and Polybius. The period which he undertook to describe was one full of spirit-stirring events; frequent changes of emperors, constant wars both foreign and domestic, numerous earthquakes, plague and pestilence, were all crowded into the page of half a century. Whilst occupied with these wars and wonderful phenomena, he forgets to make us acquainted with the internal changes that were taking place in the constitution of the Roman empire; and whilst he gives us a minute account of the contests for empire, of court intrigues, and long, often unmeaning, speeches, he omits to notice the movements of those barbarous hordes which had already begun to threaten, and shortly after succeeded in subverting, the Roman empire. All however of which he gives us an account bears on it the stamp of truth, though perhaps he sometimes praises beyond what they deserve, hazards blame with too lenient a hand, and approves of characters which are only distinguished for their follies and their vices. Herodian is the last of the Greek historians of importance. The first edition is by Aldus, Venice, 1503; another by Stephens, Paris, 1581. There is a large edition in five volumes by Irmisch, Leipzig, 1789, 1805. The best is by Becker, Berlin, 1826. See also Wolf, Narratio de Herodiano et libro ejus, in his edition of Herodian, Hal. Sax., 1792. There are several German translations, of which the best are by Gunradi Frankfort, 1784, and by Osiander, Stuttgardt, 1830.

a grammarian of Alexandria in Egypt, was son of the grammarian Apollonius Dyscolus. He seems to have resided at Rome in the reign of M. Aurelius, A.D. 163, to whom we find him dedicating a work on Prosody Herodotus (Ἡρόδωτος Καβάλης), in twenty books. He is praised by the ancients as an acute philologist, and possessed an intimate knowledge of grammar, which is proved to be correct by the numerous fragments of his works. (See Fabricii Biblioth. Graec. ed. Harles, v.-vi. p. 278; also Essai Historique sur l'Ecole d'Alexandrie, par Matter, Par. 1820.)