Felix

• a Roman surname of frequent occurrence, first applied to L. Sulla, Plin. 7, 44, 44, § 186.—
• • • • b Claudius Felix, Suet. Claud. 28.—
      • c Antonius Felix, procurator of Judea and Galilee under Claudius, Vulg. Act. 23, 26; 25, 14.—
      • d Julia Felix, i. q. Berytus, Plin. 5, 20, 17, § 78.

Φῆλιξ, an agnomen, having, like Magnus and Augustus, a personal rather than a general or family import. (Senec. De Clement. 14.) It was given to the dictator Sulla, and became a frequent addition to the imperial titles, being probably borrowed from the formula "felix faustum." [W.B.D]

procurator of Judaea, was a brother of the freedman Pallas, and was himself a freedman of the emperor Claudius I. Suidas (s. v. Κλαύδιος) calls him Claudius Felix ; and it is probable that he was known by his patron's name as well as by that which marked his relation to the empress's mother, Antonia, by whom he may have been manumitted. The date of his appointment by Claudius to the government of Judaea is uncertain. It would seem from the account of Tacitus (Tac. Ann. 12.54), that he and Ventidius Cumanus were for some time joint procurators, Galilee being held by Cumanus, and Samaria by Felix; that both of them connived at the acts of violence and robbery mutually committed by their respective subjects, and enriched themselves by the spoils which each party brought back from their incursions; that Quadratus, who commanded in Syria, was commissioned to take cognizance of these proceedings, and to try both the provincials and their governors; and that, while he condemned Cumanus, lie saved Felix by placing him openly among the judges and thus deterring his accusers. But, if we follow Josephus, we must believe that Cumanus was sole procurator during the disturbances in question, and that, when he was condemned and deposed, Felix was sent from Rome as his successor, probably about A. D. 51, and with an authority extending over Judaea, Samaria, Galilee, and Petraea (J. AJ 20.5_7, Bell. Jud. 2.12; Euseb. Hist. Eccl. 2.19; Vales. ad loc.).In his private and his public character alike Felix was unscrupulous and profligate, nor is he unjustly described in the killing words of Tacitus (Tac. Hist. 5.9), " per onmem saevitiam et libidinem jus regium servili ingenio exercuit." Having fallen in love with Drusilla, daughter of Agrippa I., and wife of Azizus, king of Emesa, he induced her to leave her husband; and she was still living with him in A. D. 60, when St. Paul preached before him " of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come." (J. AJ 20.7.2; Acts, 24.25.) Jonathan, the high priest, having become obnoxious to him by unpalatable advice, he procured his assassination. (J. AJ 20.8.5, Bell. Jud. 2.13.3; Euseb. Hist. Eccl. 2.20.) His government, however, though cruel and oppressive, was strong. Disturbances were vigorously suppressed, the country was cleared of the robbers who infested it, and the seditious raised by the false prophets and other impostors, who availed themselves of the fanaticism of the people, were effectually quelled. (J. AJ 20.8, Bell. Jud. 2.13; Euseb. Hist. Eccl. 2.21; comp. Acts, 21.38, 24.2.) He was recalled in A. D. 62, and succeeded by Porcius Festus ; and the chief Jews of Caesareia (the seat of his government) having lodged accusations against him at Rome, he was saved from conidign punishment only by the influence of his brother Pallas with Nero (J. AJ 20.8.9; Euseb. Hist. Eccl. 2.22; Acts, 24.27). For the account which Tacitus (Tac. Hist. 5.9) gives of his marriage with one Drusilla, clearly a different person from the Jewess already mentioned, and a grand-daughter of Antony and Cleopatra, see Vol. I. p. 1075b, and comp. Casaub. ad Sueton. Claud. 28. [E.E]

a celebrated robber chief, who, having collected a band of 600 followers, ravaged Italy for the space of two years, during the reign of Septimius Severus, setting at defiance all the efforts of the imperial officers to effect his capture, till at length he was betrayed by a mistress, taken prisoner, and thrown to wild beasts. Dio Cassius (76.21) has preserved several curious anecdotes of his exploits, which were chairacteriscd by a combination of reckless daring and consummate prudence. [W.R]

[Cassius Iatrosophista.]

[Felix, Antonius.]

an African who flourished towards the close of the fifth century, the author of five short pieces in the Latin Anthology. Of these the first four celebrate the magnificence and utility of the " Thermae Alianae," constructed in the vicinity of Carthage by King Thrasimund, within the space of a single year; the fifth is a whining petition for an ecclesiastical appointment, addressed to Victorianius, the chief secretary of the Vandal monarch. (Anhol. Lat. 3.34-37, 6.86, ed. Bunnann, or n. 291-295, ed. Meyer.) [W.I]

A jurist, named Laelius, flourished in the time of Hadrian; for it appears from a fragment of Paulus, in Dig. 5. tit. 4. s 3, that Laelius, in one of his works, mentions having seen in the palace a free woman, who was brought from Alexandria, in Egypt, in order to be exhibited to Hadrian, with five children, four of whom were brought into the world at one birth, and the fifth forty days afterwards. Gaius (Dig. 34. tit. 5. s. 7) tells the same story, without mentioning the interval of forty days; and we find from him that the name of the woman was Serapia. (Compare also Julianus, in Dig. 46. tit. 3. s. 36; Capitolin. Anton. Pins, 9; Phlegon, de Rebus Mirab. 29.) Indeed, the learned Ant. Augustinus, without sufficient reason, suspects that Gains was no other than Laelius, designated by his praenomen. Laelius is cited by Paulus in another passage (Dig. 5. tit. 3 s. 43), which also relates to the law of hereditas.

The Laelius of the Digest is. by most writers upon the subject (e. g. . Guil. Grotius, Heineccius, and Bach), identified with Laelius Felix, who wrote notes upon Q. Mucius Scaevola (librum ad Q. Mucium,), from which Gellius (15.27) makes some interesting extracts, explaining the distinctions between the different kinds of comitin. In this work Felix cites Labeo. Zimmern (R. R. G. 1.89), after Conradi and Bynkerschoek, moved by the archaic style of the extracts in Gellius, thinks it not improbable that the Laelius Felix of that author was more ancient than the Laelius of the Digest, and that he may even be the same person with the preceptor of Varro. If this be the case, the Labeo he cites must be Q. Antistius Labeo, the father. The preceptor of Vario, however, who is stated by Gellius (16.8) to have written an essay on oratorical introductions (Commentarium de Proloquiis), is, according to a different reading, not Laelius, but L. Aelius, and was perhaps the grammarian, L. Aelius Stilo. In Pliny (Plin. Nat. 14.13) it is doubtful whether the name mentioned in connection with Scaevola and Capito should be read Laelius, or L. Aelius. (Dirksen, Bruchstücke aus den Schriften der Römischen Juristen, p. 101 ; Maiansius, ad , XXX. Ictorum Fragm. Comment. vol. ii. p. 208-217.) [J.T.G]

a fellow-student and correspondent of Sidonius Apollinaris, and consequently lived between A. D. 430-480. Felix was of the family of the Philagrii (Sidon. Propempt. ad Libell. 90, Ep. 2.3), and was raised to the rank of patrician (Ep. 2.3). The letters of Sidonius to Felix are curiously illustrative of the distress and dismemberment of the Roman provinces north of the Alps in the fifth century, A. D.

A poem (Carm. ix.) and five letters (2.3, 3.4, 7, 4.5, 10) are addressed by Sidonius to Felix. [W.B.D]

a distinguished Roman lawyer Works Octavius

He was the author of a dialogue entitled Octavius, which occupies a conspicuous place among the early Apologies for Christianity. The speakers are Caecilius Natalis, a Pagan, and Octavius Januarius, a true believer, who, while rambling along the shore near Ostia during the holidays of the vintage with their common friend Minucius, are led into a discussion in consequence of an act of homage paid by Caecilius to a statue of Serapis, a proceeding which calls forth severe, although indirect animadversions from Octavius. Irritated by these remarks, Caecilius commences a lengthened discourse, in which he combines a formal defence of his own practice with an attack upon the principles of his companion. His arguments are of a twofold character. On the one hand he assails revealed religion in general, and on the other the Christian religion specially. Octavius replies to all his objections with great force and eloquence ; and when he concludes, Caecilius, feeling himself defeated, freely acknowledges his errors, and declares himself a convert to the truth. Assessment

The tone of this production is throughout earnest and impressive; the arguments are well selected, and stated with precision; the style is for the most part terse and pregnant, and the diction is extremely pure; but it frequently wears the aspect of a cento in which a number of choice phrases have been culled from various sources. There is, moreover, occasionally a want of simplicity, and some of the sentiments are expressed in language which borders upon declamatory inflation. But these blemishes are not so numerous as to affect seriously our favourable estimate of the work as a whole, which. in the opinion of many, entitles the author to rank not much below Lactautius. Its value in a theological point of view is not very great, since the various topics are touched upon lightly, the end in view being evidently to furnish a ready reply to the most common popular objections. The censure of Dupin, who imagined that he could detect a tendency to materialism, seems to have been founded upon a misapprehension of the real import of the passages whose orthodoxy he impugns. Authorship

It is remarkable that the Octavius was for a long period believed to belong to Arnobius, and was printed repeatedly as the eighth book of his treatise Adversus Gentes, notwithstanding the express testimony of St. Jerome, whose words (de Viris Ill. 58) are so clear as to leave no room for hesitation.

The time, however, at which Minucius Felix lived is very uncertain. By some he is placed as early as the reign of M. Aurelius; by some as low as Diocletian; while others have fixed upon various points intermediate between these two extremes. The critics who, with Van Iloven, carry him back as far as the middle of the second century, rest their opinion chiefly on the purity of his diction, upon the indications afforded by allusions to the state of the Church, both as to its internal constitution, and to the attention which it attracted from without, upon the strong resemblance which the piece bears to those Apologies which confessedly belong to the period in question, and upon the probability that the Fronto twice named in the course of the colloquy is the same with the rhetorician, M. Cornelius Fronto, so celebrated under the Antonines. But this position, although defended with great learning, can scarcely be maintained against the positive evidence afforded by St. Jerome, who, in his account of illustrious men, where the individuals mentioned succeed each other in regular chronological order, sets down Minucius Felix after Tertullian and before Cyprian, an arrangement confirmed by a paragraph in the Epistola ad Magnum, and not contradicted by another in the Apologia ad Pammachium, where Tertullian, Cyprian, and Felix, are grouped together in the same clause. The circumstance that certain sentences in the Octavius and in the De Idolorum Vanitate are word for word the same, although it proves that one writer copied from the other, leads to no inference as to which was the original. We may therefore acquiesce in the conclusion that our author flourished about A. D. 230. That he was a lawyer, and attained to eminence in pleading, is distinctly asserted both by St. Jerome and Lactantius; but beyond this we know nothing of his personal history, except in so far as we are led by his own words to believe that he was by birth a Gentile, and that his conversion did not take place until he had attained to manhood. We are further told (Hieron. l.c.) that a book entitled De Fato, or Contra Mathematicos, was circulated under his name, but that, although evidently the work of an accomplished man, it was so different in style and general character from the Octavius, that they could scarcely have proceeded from the same pen. Editions

It has already been remarked that this dialogue was long supposed to form a part of the treatise of Arnobius, Adversus Gentes. It was first assigned to its rightful owner, and printed in an independent form, by Balduinus (Heideiberg. 1560), who prefixed a dissertation, in which he proved his point so indisputably, that we are surprised that such an error should have escaped the keen eyes of Erasmus and other great scholars. Since that time a vast number of editions have been published, a full account of which will be found in Funceius, Schönemann, and Bähr. For general purposes, that of Jac. Gronovius (8vo. Lug. Bat. 1707) forming one of the series of Variorum Classics; that of Lindner (8vo. Longosal. 1760) reprinted, with a preface by Ernesti (ibid. 1773); and that of Muralto, with a preface, by Orelli (8vo. Turic. 1836), will be found the most useful. Translations

The German translations by J. G. Russwurm (4to. Hamb. 1824), and by J. H. B. Lübkert (8vo. Leip. 1836), may be consulted with advantage. Further Information

In illustration, we may read the essay of Balduinus, which is appended to the edition of Gronovius; J. D. Van Hoven, Epistola ad Gerh. Meermann, 4to. Camp. 1766, reprinted in Lindner's edition of 1773; H. Meier, Comment. de Minucio Felice (8vo. Turic. 1824); and the remarks prefixed to the translation of Russwurm.

Hieronym. de Viris Ill. 58, Ep. ad Magnum, Apolog. ad Pammach., Epitaph. Nepot.; Lactant. Div. Instit. 1.9, 5.1.; Dupin, Bibl. Eccles. vol. i. p. 117; Funceius, de L. L. Vegeta Senectute, 10.10-16 ; Le Nourry, Apparat. ad Bibl. Patr. vol. ii. diss. i.; Schröck, Kirchengescht. vol. iii. p. 417; Schönemann, Bibl. Patr. Lat. 3.2; Bähr, Gesch. der Römisch. Litt. Suppl. Band ii. Abtheil. § 18-21. [W.R]

was stationed, A. D. 70, on the frontiers of Raetia by Antonius Primus to watch the movements of Porcius Septiminus, procurator of that province under Vitellius. Felix remained in Raetia until the following year, when he assisted in quelling an insurrection of the Treviri. (Tac. Hist. 3.5, 4.70.) [W.B.D]

Antonius. Procurator of Judaea, in the reigns of Claudius and Nero. He induced Drusilla, wife of Azizus, king of Emesa, to leave her husband; and she was still living with Felix in A.D. 60, when St. Paul preached before him “of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come.” He was recalled in A.D. 62.

Minucius. See Minucius Felix.