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Herodes Atticus | |
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 Herodes Atticus bust, from his villa atKephissia. mid-2nd century | |
| Born | Lucius Vibullius Hipparchus Tiberius Claudius Atticus Herodes[1] 101[1] |
| Died | 177 (aged 75–76)[2] |
| Occupations | Imperial magistrate, engineering and architectural consultant |
| Employer(s) | Senate and people of Rome |
| Organization | Imperial administration |
| Criminal charges | First-degree murder of his wife[3] |
| Criminal status | Exonerated by emperor Marcus Aurelius |
Herodes Atticus (Ancient Greek:Ἡρώδης; AD 101–177) was an Athenianrhetorician, as well as aRoman senator. A great philanthropic magnate, he and his wifeAppia Annia Regilla, for whose murder he was potentially responsible, commissioned many Athenian public works, several of which stand to the present day. He was one of the best-known figures of theAntonine Period,[4] and taughtrhetoric to theRoman emperorsMarcus Aurelius andLucius Verus, and was advanced to the consulship in 143. His full name as a Roman citizen wasLucius Vibullius Hipparchus Tiberius Claudius Atticus Herodes.[5]
According toPhilostratus, Herodes Atticus, in possession of the best education that money could buy, was a notable proponent of theSecond Sophistic. Having gone through thecursus honorumof civil posts, he demonstrated a talent for civil engineering, especially the design and construction of water-supply systems. The Nymphaeum at Olympia was one of his dearest projects. However, he never lost sight ofphilosophy and rhetoric, becoming a teacher himself. One of his students was the young Marcus Aurelius, last of the "Five Good Emperors".M.I. Finley describes Herodes Atticus as "patron of the arts and letters (and himself a writer and scholar of importance), public benefactor on an imperial scale, not only in Athens but elsewhere in Greece and Asia Minor, holder of many important posts, friend and kinsman of emperors."[6]
Herodes Atticus was a Greek ofAthenian descent. His ancestry could be traced to the Athenian noblewomanElpinice, a half-sister of the statesmanCimon and daughter ofMiltiades.[7] He claimed lineage from a series of mythic Greek kings:Theseus,Cecrops, andAeacus, as well as the godZeus. His father's family, known as theClaudii of Marathon, rose to prominence in the late first century BC, when his great-great-great grandfather Herodes and his great-great grandfatherEucles forged links withJulius Caesar andAugustus.[8][9] The family received Roman citizenship fromEmperor Claudius, receiving the Romannomen Claudius.[10] They were exceptionally wealthy.[11]
Herodes' father,Tiberius Claudius Atticus Herodes entered the Roman Senate and becameRoman consul, the first Athenian to do so.[12] His mother was the wealthy heiress Vibullia Alcia Agrippina.[7][13][14] He had a brother named Tiberius Claudius Atticus Herodianus and a sister namedClaudia Tisamenis.[7] His maternal grandparents were Claudia Alcia and Lucius Vibullius Rufus, while his paternal grandfather wasHipparchus.[14]
His parents were related as uncle and niece.[13][14][15] His maternal grandmother and his father were sister and brother.[14][15] His maternal uncleLucius Vibullius Hipparchus was an Archon of Athens in the years 99–100[14][16] and his maternal cousin,Publius Aelius Vibullius Rufus, was an Archon of Athens between 143–144.[14][16]
Herodes Atticus was born inMarathon, Greece,[18] and spent his childhood years between Greece and Italy. According toJuvenal[19] he received an education inrhetoric andphilosophy from many of the best teachers from both Greek and Roman culture.[20] Throughout his life, however, Herodes Atticus remained entirely Greek in his cultural outlook.[20]
He was a student ofFavorinus and inherited Favorinus' library.[21] Like Favorinus, he was a harsh critic ofStoicism.
these disciplines of the cult of the unemotional, who want to be considered calm, brave, and steadfast because they show neither desire nor grief, neither anger nor pleasure, cut out the more active emotions of the spirit and grow old in a torpor, a sluggish, enervated life.[22]
In 125, EmperorHadrian appointed himprefect of the free cities in theRoman province of Asia. He later returned to Athens, where he became famous as a teacher. In the year 126-127, Herodes Atticus was elected and served as anArchon of Athens. Later in 140, the EmperorAntoninus Pius invited him to Rome from Athens to educate his two adopted sons, the future EmperorsMarcus Aurelius andLucius Verus. Sometime after, he was betrothed toAppia Annia Regilla, a wealthy aristocrat, who was related to the wife of Antoninus Pius,Faustina the Elder. When Regilla and Herodes Atticus married, she was 14 years old and he was 40. As a mark of his friendship, Antoninus Pius appointed Herodes Atticus consul in 143.
Herodes Atticus and Regilla controlled a large tract around the third mile of theAppian Way outsideRome, which was known as the "Triopio" (fromTriopas, King ofThessaly). For his remaining years he travelled between Greece and Italy.
Some time after his consulship, he returned to Greece permanently with his wife and their children.
In 160, the year that her brother was consul, Regilla, while eight months pregnant, was brutally kicked in the abdomen by a freedman of Herodes Atticus named Alcimedon. This caused her to go into premature labor, killing her. Consul Appius Annius Atilius Bradua brought charges against his brother-in-law inRome, alleging that Herodes Atticus had ordered her beaten to death; the emperorMarcus Aurelius exonerated his old tutor of his wife's murder.[23]
Herodes Atticus was the teacher of three notable students: Achilles, Memnon and Polydeuces (Polydeukes). "The aged Herodes Atticus in a public paroxysm of despair at the death of his perhapseromenos Polydeukes, commissioned games, inscriptions and sculptures on a lavish scale and then died, inconsolable, shortly afterwards."[24] He also taught many orators and philosophers such asAristocles of Pergamon.
Herodes Atticus had a distinguished reputation for his literary work, most of which is now lost,[20] and was a philanthropist and patron of public works. He funded more building projects in Roman Greece than anyone aside from the Roman emperors,[25] including:
He also contemplated cutting a canal through theIsthmus of Corinth, but was deterred from carrying out the plan because the same thing had been unsuccessfully attempted before by the emperorNero.[26]
Throughout his life, Herodes Atticus had a stormy relationship with the citizens of Athens, but before he died he was reconciled with them.[20] When he died, the citizens of Athens gave him an honored burial, his funeral taking place in the Panathenaic Stadium in Athens, which he had commissioned.[20]
Regilla bore Herodes Atticus six children, of whom three survived to adulthood. They were:
After Regilla died in 160, Herodes Atticus never married again. Sometime after his wife's death, he adopted his cousin's first grandson Lucius Vibullius Claudius Herodes as his son.[28] When Herodes Atticus died in 177, his son Atticus Bradua and his grandchild survived him.
Herodes Atticus and his wife Regilla, from the 2nd century until the present, have been considered great benefactors in Greece, in particular in Athens. The couple are commemorated inHerodou Attikou Street and Rigillis Street and Square, in downtown Athens. InRome, their names are also recorded on modern streets, in the Quarto Miglio suburb close to the area of the Triopio.
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One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Atticus Herodes, Tiberius Claudius".Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 2 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 885.
| Political offices | ||
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| Preceded by (Sulpicius?) Julianus, and as suffect consulsTitus Julius Castus | Roman consul 143 withGaius Bellicius Flaccus Torquatus | Succeeded byas suffect consuls |
