Biography
Gnaeus Egnatius, the son of Gaius Egnatius, was a plebeian and a member of the tribe Stellatina. A member of the Roman Senate, he first turns up in the historical record around the year 149 BC, where he appeared as the senior witness to a Senatus consultum sent to Corcyra. Egnatius was elected Praetor sometime prior to 146 BC, and following this he was assigned the newly created province of Macedonia as its Proconsular governor, replacing Quintus Caecilius Metellus Macedonicus who had just finished pacifying the new province.
During his tenure as governor of Macedonia, Gnaeus Egnatius began the construction of the eponymous Via Egnatia which was begun in 146 BC and completed in 120 BC. His portion of the Roman road began at the Adriatic Sea, crossed the Pindus mountains and travelled eastward into central Macedonia, ending at Thessalonica. Nothing further is known of his tenure as governor of Macedonia, or of his subsequent career.
Read more about this topic: Gnaeus Egnatius
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“A great biography should, like the close of a great drama, leave behind it a feeling of serenity. We collect into a small bunch the flowers, the few flowers, which brought sweetness into a life, and present it as an offering to an accomplished destiny. It is the dying refrain of a completed song, the final verse of a finished poem.”
—André Maurois (1885–1967)
“Had Dr. Johnson written his own life, in conformity with the opinion which he has given, that every man’s life may be best written by himself; had he employed in the preservation of his own history, that clearness of narration and elegance of language in which he has embalmed so many eminent persons, the world would probably have had the most perfect example of biography that was ever exhibited.”
—James Boswell (1740–95)
“In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, “memoirs to serve for a history,” which is but materials to serve for a mythology.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)