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, the son of Diego Garcia, one of the great officers of the house of Ferdinand and Isabella, was born about the end of the fifteenth century, and died at the age of ninety, in the reign of Philip II. His father sent him, when very young, to study at Louvain, under the care of John Louis Vives, and he made extraordinary proficiency in Greek, Latin, and philosophy. Charles V. made him his private secretary, and he was retained in the same station by Philip II. and enjoyed great favour at court. He is extolled by his countrymen, as a man of piety, wisdom, and Christian philosophy. His works are principally translations. 1. A translation of Xenophon, in elegant Spanish, Salamanca, 1552, fol. 2. Translations of the greater part of the works of Plutarch, Isocrates, Dio Chrysostom, Agapetus the deacon: 3. A Translation of Thucydides, Salamanca, 1554, fol. He also wrote a “History of the taking of Africa,” a sea-port on the coast of Barbary; and left behind him a collection of the military treatises which had appeared in Greek, Latin, andFrench, translated into Spanish for the use of his countrymen. His taste, and his rank in society, gave him a considerable influence in the progress of Spanish literature, during his long life.

. See Paul the Deacon.

, of Lombardy, a writer who lived in the eighth and part of the ninth century, began early in life to bear arms, and was made prisoner of war, but afterwards retired to Monte Cassino, where he embraced the rule of St. Benedict at the age of about twenty-five. The government of a neighbouring monastery was conferred upon him but here he was exposed to so many vexations, that he was obliged once more to retire and in his retreat wrote a Chronicle, or a History at large of the Lombards, which is thought to be lost, and an abridgment of the same history, from the year 774 to 888, which forms & sort of supplement to Paul the deacon. Anthony Caraccioli, priest of the order of regular clerks, published this abridgment, which relates some curious facts, with other pieces, at Naples, in 1620, 4to. Camillus Peregrinus inserted it afterwards in his history of the princes of Lombardy, 1643, 4to.

, a Roman empress (wife to Theodosius the younger), whose proper name was Athenais, was the daughter of Leontius, an Athenian philosopher, and born about the year 400. Her father took such care of her education, that she became at length so accomplished in learning, that, at his death, he left his whole estate to his two sons, except an hundred pieces of gold, which he bequeathed to his daughter, with this declaration, that “her own good fortune would be sufficient for her.” This compliment, however, did not satisfy her, and having gone to law with her brothers, without success, she carried her cause to Constantinople, where she was recommended to Pulcheria, sister of the emperor Theodosius the younger, and became her favourite. In the year 421 she embraced Christianity, and changed her name from Athenais to Eudocia 3 and the same year was married to the emperor, through the powerful recommendation of his sister; by which event her father’s prophecy appeared to be fulfilled. Amidst all the grandeurof her new situation, she still continued to lead a very studious and philosophic life, spending much of her time in reading and writing; and lived very happily till the year 445, when an apparently trifling accident exposed her to the emperor’s jealousy. The emperor, it is said, having sent her an apple of an extraordinary size, she sent it to Paulinus, whom she respected on ac­"count of his learning. Paulinus, not knowing from whom it came, presented it to the emperor who, soon after seeing the empress, asked her what she had done with it. She, being apprehensive of raising suspicions in her husband, if she should tell him that she had given it to Paulinus, very unwisely declared that she had eaten it, which excited a suspicion of her intimacy with Paulinus, that seemed to be confirmed by her confusion on his producing the apple. He also put Paulinus to death. Upon this she went to Jerusalem, where she spent many years in building and adorning churches, and in relieving the poor. It is said that even when here, the jealousy of Theodosius pursued her, and that hearing she visited the priest Severus and the deacon John, he sent Saturninus with orders to put them both to death. Eudocia was so irritated at this barbarous persecution, that she for once stained the purity of her own life, by procuring Saturninus to be murdered. Dupin says, she did not return while the emperor lived; but Cave tells us, that she was reconciled to him, returned to Constantinople, and continued with him till his death; after which, she went again to Palestine, where she spent the remainder of her life in pious works. She died about A. D. 460; and, as Cave says, upon her death-bed, took a solemn oath, by which she declared herself entirely free from any stains of unchastity.

, was a celebrated grammarian of antiquity, who abridged a work of “Verrius Flaccus de signih'catione verborum,” as is supposed, in the fourth century. Flaccus’s work had been greatly commended by Pliny, Aulus Gellius, Priscian, and other ancient writers, but Festus in his abridgment took unwarrantable liberties; for he was not content with striking out a vast number of words, but pretended to criticize the rest, in a manner, as Vossius has observed, not favourable to the reputation of Flaccus. Another writer, however, in the eighth century, afterwards revenged this treatment of Flaccus, by abridging Festus in the same way. This was Paul the deacon, who so maimed and disfigured Festus, that it was scarce possible to know his work, which lay in this miserable state till, a considerable fragment being found in the library of cardinal Farnese, some pains were taken to put it again into a little order. The first, or princeps editio, is without a date, but supposed to have been printed in 1470, which, was followed by one with the date of 1471. Since that time there have been various editions by Scaliger, Fulvius Ursinus, Aldus Minucius, and others; but the most complete is the Delphin edition of Paris, 1681, in 4to, published by Dacier, or perhaps the reprint of it by Le Clero, Amst. 1699. It is also among the “Auctores Latinae Linguae,” collected by Gothofredus in 1585, and afterwards reprinted with emendations and additions at Geneva, in 1622. Scaliger says that Festus is an author of great use to those who would attain the knowledge of the Latin tongue with accuracy.

, born in 1686, at Paris, was the son of Guy Carre“, maitre des requetes. He was but twenty-five when he purchased a counsellor’s place in the parliament, and acquired some degree of credit in that situation by his wit and exterior accomplishments. He had, by his own account, given himself up to all manner of licentiousness, for which his conscience frequently checked him, and although he endeavoured to console himself with the principles of infidelity, his mind was still harassed, when accident or design led him to visit the tomb of M. Paris the deacon, September 7, 1731, with the crowd which, from various motives, were assembled there. If we may believe his own account, he went merely to scrutinize, with the utmost severity, the (pretended) miracles wrought there, but felt himself, as he says, suddenly struck and overwhelmed by a thousand rays of light, which illuminated him, and, from an infidel, he immediately became a Christian, but in truth was devoted from that moment to fanaticism, with the same violence and impetuosity of temper which had before led him into the most scandalous excesses. In 1732 he was involved in a quarrel which the parliament had with the court, and was, with others, banished to Auvergne. Here he formed a plan for collecting the proofs of the miracles wrought at the tomb of the abbe Paris, making them clear to demonstration, as he called it, and presenting them to the king. At his return to Paris, he prepared to put this plan in execution, went to Versailles, July 29, 1737, and presented the king with a quarto volume magnificently bound, which he accompanied with a speech. In consequence of this step Montgeron was sent to thebastile, then confined some months in a Benedictine abbey belonging to the diocese of Avignon, removed soon after to Viviers, and carried from thence to be shut up in the citadel of Valence, where he died in 1754, aged sixty-eight. The work which he presented to the king is entitled” La Verite des Miracles operes par l'Intercession de M. de Paris,“&c. 4to. This first volume by M. Montgeron has been followed by two more, and he is said also to have left a work in ms. against the incredulous, written while he was a prisoner. De Montgeron would, however, have scarcely deserved a place here, if bishop Douglas, in his” Criterion," had not bestowed so much pains on examining the pretended miracles which he records, and thus rendered his history an object of some curiosity.

, the Deacon, or Paulus Diaconus, so called because he had been a deacon of the church of Friuli, though some call him by his father’s name Warmafridcs, and others, from the profession he took up in his latter years Paulus Monachus, was originally a Lombard, born in the city of Friuli, in the eighth century, and educated in the court of the Lombard kings at Pavia. After Desiderius, the last king of the Lombards, was taken prisoner by Charlemagne, and carried to France, tired of the tumult of the public world, he retired from the busy scenes he had been engaged in, and became a monk in the famous monastery of Monte Casino, where he wrote his history of the Lombards, in six books, from their first origin down to the reign of Luitprandus, who was their eighteenth king that reigned in Italy, and died in the year 743. He was an eye-witness of many of the transactions he relates; and as he was a Lombard, we may suppose him well informed of the affairs of his own nation, and had read the history of the Lombards, written in the same century in which they began to reign in Italy, by Secundus Tridentinus, originally a Lombard, but a native of the city of Trent, who flourished, according to Baronius, in the year 615; but his history is now lost. He often quotes his authority, and though he sometimes falls into trivial mistakes, about foreign affairs, and such as happened long before his time, as Grotius learnedly evinces, yet, in the transactions of his own nation, he is, generally speaking, very exact. He died in the year 799.His history was printed at Hamburgh in 1611, and is besides to be found in the eighteenth volume of Muratori’s Rerum Italic. Scriptores.