Difference between revisions of "Manlius"

Manlius <ref name="term_49791" />  

<p> the name of one of the ambassadors who is said to have written a letter to the Jews confirming whatever concession [[Lysias]] had granted them. Four letters were written to the Jews, of which the last is from "Quintus Memmius and Titus [[Manlius]] (Gr. Τίτος Μάνλιος , v. r. Μάνιος; Vulg. Titus Manilius), ambassadors ( πρεσβῦται) of the Romans" ( 2 [[Maccabees]] 11:34). There is not much doubt that the letter is a fabrication, as history is entirely ignorant of these names. [[Polybius]] (Reliq. 31:9, 6), indeed, mentions C. [[Sulpitius]] and Manius Sergius, who were sent to [[Antiochus]] IV [[Epiphanes]] about B.C. 163, an also (Relig. 31:12, 9) Cn. Octavius, Spurius Lucretius, and L. Aurelius, who were sent into [[Syria]] in B.C. 162 in consequence of the contention fir the guardianship of the young king Antiochus V Eupator, but entirely ignores Q. Memmius or T. Manlius. We may therefore conclude that legates of these names were never in Syria. The true name of T. Manlius may be T. Manius, and as there is not sufficient time for an embassy to have been sent to Syria between the two recorded by Polybius, the writer may have been thinking of the former. The letter is dated in the 148th year of the Seleucidan sera (= B.C. 165), and in this year there was a consul of the name of T. Macnlius Torquatus, who appears to have been sent on an embassy to [[Egypt]] about B.C. 164, to mediate between the two Ptolemies, [[Philometor]] and [[Euergetes]] (Livy, 43:11; Polybius, Relig. 32:1, 2). The employment of this Seleucidan aera as a date, the absence of the name of the city, and especially the fact that the first intercourse of the Jews and Romans did not take place till two years later, when [[Judas]] heard of the fame of the Romans (1 Maccabees 8, I sq.), all prove that the document is far from authentic. </p> <p> The three other letters do not merit serious attention ( 2 Maccabees 11:16-33). See Wernsdorff, Defid. Libr. Maccab. sec. 66; Grimm, Exeg. Handbuch, ad loc., and on the other side, Patritius, De Cons. Maccabees p. 142, 280. </p>

==References ==