HOSTIUS, Roman epic poet, probably flourished in the 2nd century B.C. He was the author of a Bellum Histricum in at least seven books, of which only a few fragments remain. The poem is probably intended to celebrate the victory gained in 129 B.C. by Gaius Sempronius Tuditanus (consul and himself an annalist) over the Illyrian Iapydes (Appian Illyrica, Io; Livy, epit. 59). Hostius is supposed by some to be the "doctus avus" alluded to in Propertius (iv. 20, 8) ; the real name of Propertius's Cynthia, according to Apuleius (Apologia x.) and the scholiast on Juvenal (vi. 7), being Hostia (perhaps Roscia).
Fragments in E. Bahrens Fragmenta poetarum Romanorum (1884) ; A. Weichert Poetarum Latinorum reliquiae (183o) .