Gaius Galerius
Gaius Galerius was a Roman eques who was active during the reign of Tiberius. He is best known as the praefectus or governor of Egypt (16-32).[1]
Galerius came of a prominent family of
Some years after Galerius took up the posting in Egypt, Seneca came to live with his and his wife in Alexandria, where the boy stayed for a number of years. When the three of them sailed back to Rome in AD 32, Galerius perished in a shipwreck; according to Seneca, his wife recovered Galerius' body and buried it.[5]
It has been speculated that Galerius may be the ancestor, if not the father, of Publius Galerius Trachalus, consul in 68. Both have a connection to Ariminum, and belong to the Roman voting tribe Aniensis.[6] This would mean Galerius was also related somehow to Galeria Fundana, although Suetonius reports she was the daughter of an unnamed senator who had achieved the traditional Republican magistracy of praetor.[7] However, that Seneca fails to mention any descendants of Galerius in his surviving writings weakens that possibility; another possibility would be that Trachalus and Fundana are related to Galerius through an unrecorded brother or uncle.
Notes
- ^ Guido Bastianini, "Lista dei prefetti d'Egitto dal 30a al 299p", Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik, 17 (1975), p. 270
- ^ Ronald Syme, Tacitus (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958), p. 536
- Annales, ii.59
- Gerald M. Browne, Documentary Papyri from the Michigan Collection (American Studies in Papyrology, vol. 6) (Toronto: Hakkert, 1970), pp. 3-6
- De Consolatione ad Helviam, 19
- ^ Eric Birley, Review of Die Präfekten von Ägypten in römischer Zeit by Arthur Stein, Gnomon, 23 (1951), p. 443
- De Vita Caesarum, "Vitellius", 6