Roman History (Historia Romana)

(see Dodwell, Lectures on Spartianus Hadrian, §§ 8 and 14), it follows that Velleius, then in his twenty-fifth year, was born in the year 735 A.U.C. 19 BC, the year in which Virgil died in the month of September; and indeed, since he reviews the poet among the talents of his own age, he was born before Virgil's death (cf. II. 36).

The furthest ancestor of Velleius to whom his memory reached was Decius Magius, a prince of the Campanians, a man most distinguished in the Second Punic War for his remarkable loyalty to the Romans, and consequently most hostile to Hannibal. Livy (XXIII. 7–10) relates the fortune of this man, who was thrown into chains and deported to Carthage, but rescued from the hands of the enemy by a storm during the journey. The grandson of this man, Minatius Magius, the great-great-grandfather of Velleius, served the Romans so well during the Social War—by bringing in auxiliaries from the Hirpini on his own authority—that he himself was received into citizenship and his sons were advanced to the praetorship (see II. 16). Our author traced his descent from these Magii, either through his mother or, as Dodwell thinks, by some Magius being adopted into the Velleius Paterculus family, thus also through his father.

Of the Velleii, our author praises as the last his grandfather, C. Velleius, whose honor, military duty in the army of Brutus and Cassius, attitude toward Octavian, and the end of his life (714 A.U.C.) he narrates briefly (II. 76). Regarding his father, however, whom he does not praise by name, he records nothing memorable beyond his rank as prefect of the cavalry (see II. 104). But his uncle, Capito, who perhaps had been adopted into the Ateian or Fonteian family (for there are Capitones in both), subscribed in 711 A.U.C. 43 BC to the accusation against the assassins of Julius Caesar brought by Agrippa under the Lex Pedia a law condemning the assassins of Julius Caesar (see II. 69). Finally, our author’s brother, Magius Celer Velleianus, who, as his agnomen reveals, seems to have passed into the Magian family again through adoption, was a legate of Tiberius in the Pannonian and Dalmatian war (II. 115), was later honored with gifts during the Emperor’s triumph (see loc. cit. and II. 121), and was recommended by Augustus for the praetorship shortly before his death (see II. 124).

Velleius therefore originated from a senatorial family. For that Epicurean was senatorial; the sons of Minatius Magius were elevated to the praetorship after the Social War; and our author himself began his military career as a military tribune, a privilege which Augustus, as Suetonius (Aug. 38) testifies, granted to the sons of senators.