HOSTIUS  ,

Roman epic poet, probably flourished in the 2nd century B.C . He was the author of a Bellum Histricum in at least seven books, of which only a few fragments remain . The poem is probably intended to celebrate the victory gained in 129 by Gaius Sempronius Tuditanus (consul and himself an annalist) over the Illyrian Iapydes (Appian, Illyrica, to; Livy, epit . 59) . Hostius is supposed by some to be the " doctus avus " alluded to in Propertius (iv . 20 . 8), the real name of Propertius's Cynthia, according to Apuleius (Apologia x.) and the scholiast on Juvenal (vi . 7), being Hostia (perhaps Roscia) . Fragments in E . Bahrens, Fragmenta poetarum Romanorum (1884) ; A . Weichert, Poetarum Latinorum reliquiae (183o) .