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and according to his characteristic principle of “natural explanation.” In his explanation of the Gospel narratives Paulus sought to remove what other interpreters regarded as miracles from the Bible by distinguishing between the fact related and the author’s opinion of it, by seeking a naturalistic exegesis of a narrative, e.g. that ἐπὶ τῆς θαλάσσης (Matt. xiv. 25) means by the shore and not on the sea, by supplying circumstances omitted by the author, by remembering that the author produces as miracles occurrences which can now be explained otherwise, e.g. exorcisms. His Life of Jesus (1828) is a synoptical translation of the Gospels, prefaced by an account of the preparation for the Christ and a brief summary of His history, and accompanied by very short explanations interwoven in the translation. The form of the work was fatal to its success, and the subsequent Exegetisches Handbuch rendered it quite superfluous. In this Handbuch Paulus really contributed much to a true interpretation of the Gospel narratives. In 1803 he became professor of theology and Consistorialrat at Würzburg. After this he filled various posts in south Germany—school director at Bamberg (1807), Nuremberg (1808), Ansbach (1810)—until he became professor of exegesis and church history at Heidelberg (1811–1844). He died on the 10th of August 1851.

PAULUS (older form Paullus), LUCIUS AEMILIUS, surnamed Macedonicus (c. 229–160 B.C.), Roman general, a member of a patrician family of the Aemilian gens, son of the consul of the same name who fell at Cannae. As consul for the second time (168) he was entrusted with the command in the Macedonian War, which the incapacity of previous generals had allowed to drag on for three years. He brought the war to a speedy termination by the battle of Pydna, fought on the 22nd of June (Julian calendar) 168. Macedonia was henceforward a Roman province, and Paulus, having made a tour through Greece, with the assistance of ten Roman commissioners arranged the affairs of the country. He enjoyed a magnificent triumph, which lasted three days and was graced by the presence of the captive king Perseus and his three children. He lost his two sons by his second wife, and was thus left without a son to bear his name, his two sons by his first wife having been adopted into the Fabian and Cornelian gentes. Paulus was censor in 164, and died in 160 after a long illness. At the funeral games exhibited in his honour the Hecyra of Terence was acted for the second and the Adelphi for the first time. An aristocrat to the backbone, he was yet beloved by the people. Of the vast sums brought by him into the Roman treasury from Spain and Macedonia he kept nothing to himself, and at his death his property scarcely sufficed to pay his wife’s dowry. As a general he was a strict disciplinarian; as an augur he discharged his duties with care and exactness. He was greatly in sympathy with Greek learning and art, and was a friend of the historian Polybius.

PAULUS, surnamed Silentiarius (“the silentiary,” one of the ushers appointed to maintain silence within the imperial palace), Greek poet, contemporary and friend of Agathias, during the reign of Justinian. In addition to some 80 epigrams, chiefly erotic and panegyric in character, preserved in the Greek Anthology, there is extant by him a description (ἔκφρασις) of the church of St Sophia, and of its pulpit (ἄμβων), in all some 1300 hexameters after the style of Nonnus, with short iambic dedications to Justinian. The poem was recited at the second dedication of the church (A.D. 562), in the episcopal hall of the patriarchate. The poems are of importance for the history of Byzantine art in the 6th century. Another poem, (also preserved in the Anthology) on the warm baths of Pythia in Bithynia, written in the Anacreontic rhythm, has sometimes been attributed to him.

PAULUS DIACONUS, or Warnefridi, or Casinensis (c. 720–c. 800), the historian of the Lombards, belonged to a noble Lombard family and flourished in the 8th century. An ancestor named Leupichis entered Italy in the train of Alboin and received lands at or near Forum Julii (Friuli). During an invasion the Avars swept off the five sons of this warrior into Illyria, but one, his namesake, returned to Italy and restored the ruined fortunes of his house. The grandson of the younger Leupichis was Warnefrid, who by his wife Theodelinda became the father of Paulus. Born between 720 and 725 Paulus received an exceptionally good education, probably at the court of the Lombard king Ratchis in Pavia, learning from a teacher named Flavian the rudiments of Greek. It is probable that he was secretary to the Lombard king Desiderius, the successor of Ratchis; it is certain that this king’s daughter Adelperga was his pupil. After Adelperga had married Arichis, duke of Benevento, Paulus at her request wrote his continuation of Eutropius. It is possible that he took refuge at Benevento when Pavia was taken by Charlemagne in 774, but it is much more likely that his residence there was anterior to this event by several years. Soon he entered a monastery on the lake of Como, and before 782 he had become an inmate of the great Benedictine house of Monte Cassino, where he made the acquaintance of Charlemagne. About 776 his brother Arichis had been carried as a prisoner to France, and when five years later the Frankish king visited Rome, Paulus successfully wrote to him on behalf of the captive. His literary attainments attracted the notice of Charlemagne, and Paulus became a potent factor in the Carolingian renaissance. In 787 he returned to Italy and to Monte Cassino, where he died on the 13th of April in one of the years between 794 and 800. His surname Diaconus, or Levita, shows that he took orders as a deacon; and some think he was a monk before the fall of the Lombard kingdom.