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Mamertini

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or "children of Mars," the name taken by a band of Campanian (or Samnite) freebooters who about 289 B.C. seized the Greek colony of Messana at the northeast corner of Sicily, after having been hired by Agathocles to defend it (Polyb. I. 7.2). The adventure is explained by tradition (e.g. Festus 158, Muller) as the outcome of a ver sacrum; the members of the expedition are said to have been the male children born in a particular spring of which the produce had been vowed to Apollo (cf. Samnites), and to have settled first in Sicily near Tauromenium. An inscription survives (R. S. Conway, Italic Dialects, 1) which shows that they took with them the Oscan language as it was spoken in Capua or Nola at that date, and the constitution usual in Italic towns of a free community (touta=) governed by two annual magistrates (meddices). The inscription dedicated some large building (possibly a fortification) to Apollo, which so far confirms the tradition just noticed. Though in the Oscan language, the inscription is written in the Greek alphabet common to south Italy from the 4th century B.C. onwards, viz. the Tarentine Ionic, and so are the legends of two coins of much the same date as the inscription (Conway, ib. 4). From 282 onwards (B. V. Head, Historia numorum, 136) the legend itself is Graecized (Mameptins2n, instead of Maameptinotm) which shows how quickly here, as everywhere, "Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit." On the Roman conquest of Sicily the town secured an independence under treaty (Cicero, Verr. 3.6. 13). The inhabitants were still called Mamertines in the time of Strabo (vi. 2.3).

See further Mommsen, C.I.L. x. sub loc., and the references already given. (R. S. C.) Mamertinus, Claudius (4th century A.D.), one of the Latin panegyrists. After the death of Julian, by whom he was evidently regarded with special favour, he was praefect of Italy (365) under Valens and Valentinian, but was subsequently (368) deprived of his office for embezzlement. He was the author of an extant speech of thanks to Julian for raising him to the consulship, delivered on the 1st of January 362 at Constantinople. Two panegyrical addresses (also extant) to Maximian (emperor A.D. 286-305) are attributed to an older magister Mamertinus, but it is probable that the corrupt MS. superscription contains the word memoriae, and that they are by an unknown magister memoriae (an official whose duty consisted in communicating imperial rescripts and decisions to the public). The first of these was delivered on the birthday of Rome (April 21, 289), probably at Maximian's palace at Augusta Trevirorum (Treves), the second in 2 9 0 or 291, on the birthday of the emperor. By some they are attributed to Eumenius who was a magister memoriae and the author of at least one (if not more) panegyrics.

The three speeches will be found in E. Behrens, Panegyrici latini, (1874); see also Teuffel-Schwabe, Hist. of Roman Literature (Eng. trans.), § 417, 7.