Hostius, was a
Roman epic
poet, who probably flourished in the
2nd century BC.
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, 10;
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 scholiasi on
Juvenal (vi. 7), being Hostia (perhaps Roscia).
Fragments in F Bührens,
Fragmenta poetarum Romanorum (1884); A Weichert,
Poetarum Latinorum reliquiae (1830).
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