Crispinus

• a Roman surname, Cic. Font. 1, 1; Liv. 24, 39, 12; Hor. S. 1, 1, 120 al.; Capitol. M. Antonin. 27.

1. A person ridiculed by Horace (Sat. 1.1. 120), was, according to the statement of the scholiasts on that passage, a bad poet and philosopher, who was surnamed Aretalogus, and wrote verses upon the Stoics. This is all that is known about him, and it is not improbable that the name may be a fictitious one, under which Horace intended to ridicule some philosophical poetaster.

2. A late Greek rhetorician, concerning whom nothing is known, but a sentiment of his, taken from a work Κατὰ Διονυσίου, is preserved in Stobaeus. (Flor. 47.21.)

3. Of Lampsacus. Works Life of St. Parthenius

He wrote a life of St. Parthenius of Lampsacus, who is said to have been a bishop in the time of Constantine the Great. Editions

A Latin version of that Life is printed in the collections of the lives of the Saints by Surius and Bollandus under the 7th of February.

A MS. containing the Greek original exists in the imperial library at Vienna. Further Information

Fabric. Bibl. Gr. xi. p. 597. [L.S]

was quaestor about B. C. 69, but is otherwise unknown. (Cic. pro Fontcio, loci Niebuhr. 1.) [L.S]

was consul A. D. 224, and fourteen years afterwards (A. D. 238) persuaded the inhabitants of Aquileia to shut their gates and defend their walls against the savage Maximin, whose rage when he found his attacks upon the city baffled led to those excesses which caused his assassination. [Maximinus.] (Capitolin. Max. duo, 100.21; Herodian. 8.4.) [W.R]

[Caepio, p. 535b.]

Crispinus occurs as an agnomen in the family of the Penni Capitolini of the Quinctia gens. [Capitolinus, p. 606a.] The full name of the L. Quinctius Crispinus, who was praetor in B. C. 186, and who triumphed in B. C. 184, on account of his victories in Spain, was probably L. Quinctius Pennus Capitolinus Crispinus. (Liv. 39.6, 8, 30, 42.) [L.S]

a Roman eques and contemporary of the emperors Claudius and Nero. He was praefectus praetorio under Claudius, who employed him in arresting and dragging to Rome Valerius Asiaticus. For this service he was rewarded by a large sum of money and the insignia of the quaestorship. In A. D. 52 he was removed from his office at the instigation of Agrippina, who believed him to be attached to the children of Messalina. Crispinus was married to the notorious Poppaea Sabina, who had a son by him, bearing the same name as his father. She afterwards became the mistress of Nero, and the circumstance, that she had once been the wife of Crispinus, was a sufficient reason for the tyrant to send Crispinus into exile to Sardinia, A. D. 66, under the pretext of his being an accomplice in aconspiracy. Shortly after when Crispinus received the sentence of death, he put an end to his own life. (Tac. Ann. 11.1, 4, 12.42, 13.45, 15.71, 16.17; Senec. Octavia, 728 &c.; Plut. Galba, 19.) His son, Rufius Crispinus, was likewise put to death by Nero. (Suet. Nero 35.) [L.S]