ATTICUS, TIBERIUS CLA vows HERODES, an •opulent and munificent citizen of Athens. He was descended from a noble family of large possessions in the district of Marathon, whose lineage was traced back as far as Miltiades, the great hero of the place. His grandfather, Hipparchus, having been proscrib ed, and his property confiscated, Julius Atticus, the father of Herodes, found himself in a state of pover ty, or rather feigned himself to be so : for when the good Nerva reigned, he discovered an immense trea sure in his own house. Filled, it is pretended, with terror, rather than joy at this discovery, he imme diately wrote a letter to the emperor in these words. " I have discovered, 0 emperor, a treasure in my house ; what do you order to be done with it ?" The answer of Nerva was equally laconic : " Use what you have found." JUlius wrote back, that it was " more than he could use." " Abuse it then," re plied the emperor ; " for it is your own." Julius after this resumed the proper rank of his family : and this fortune, together with other possessions, pater nal and maternal, which soon accumulated in the per son of his son, rendered him the richest individual that Attica ever produced.
Herodes possessed excellent talents, which fitted him to shine in any situation. His attention, how ever, was principally directed, according to the taste of the age, to the study of rhetoric, in which he made distinguished proficiency under Scopelian, and other masters of repute : and such was the force and propriety of his eloquence, that when yet a youth, he was selected to be the head of a deputation to the emperor Hadrian, who was then at Sirmium in Pan nonia. The situation, however, was new. Young Herodes failed in his attempt to deliver a speech, and was so mortified at his misfortune, that he had some thou:ats of throwing himself into the Danube. But this precipitate resolution was soon succeeded by a more rational remedy. Far from "being disgusted by the accident with his favourite pursuit, he, on the contrary, redoubled his perseverance ; and attained to such eminence in eloquence and philosophy, that lie still lives, in biography, among. the orators and Wise men of Greece and Rome. His great celebri ty attention of Titus Antoninus, who appointed him to the high and honourable office of preceptor in eloquence to his two sons, M. Aurelius and L. Verna. From this station Herodes ascended
to the summit of greatness, and was created consul A. D. 143. He was also constituted president of the Panhellenic and Panathenxan festivals, on which occasion he was crowned.
At a very early period, he obtained the government of the free cities in Asia, where he distinguished •himself by many acts of munificence. Having ob. served that the chief city of Troas was badly sup plied with water, he obtained from Hadrian a grant of three millions of sesterces for the construction of an aqueduct ; but such was his natural attachment to grand designs, that he laid out seven millions instead of three, in the execution of it. Of this profusion Hadrian complained to the father of Herodes, who, on that occasion, is noted by the ancient writers for one of the most magnificent replies ever made to an emperor. " Hadrian," said the father. " be not dis composed by small matters : whatever he has spent above the three millions my sou shall defray out of my fortune." The death of his father occasioned a considerable quarrel between Herodes and his fellow citizens. Julius had lived more like a prince than a private man among the Athenians. His enormous wealth enabled him to distribute to that abject people the :most ample largesses ever heard of. He sacrificed a hundred beeves in one day, -and regaled the whole Athenian people by tribes and classes on several oc casions. In his last will, he bequeathed to each in dividual, for life, an annuity of one mina, or about three guideas sterling ; a sum which, in those days, was very considerable. This enormous bequest, dic tated more by patriotism than sound judgment, was but ill relished by Herodes, who resolved to with hold it. Having for this purpose got the people to an agreement, that, on his paying down five mime at once, he should be relieved from all future de mands, he collected all the accounts of old debts due by them to his father and himself, and presented these in par't of payment. The people loudly exclaimed against this equitable procedure, and said that they were defrauded of the legacy ; and when Herodes built the great stadium with this money, which had been intended for the encouragement of idleness and beggary, the people insisted, in derision, that it was called the Panathenaicum, not in honour of the fes tival, but as having been built by all the Athenians.