Aetius
(Ἀέτιος). (1) Of Amida in Mesopotamia, a Greek physician of the sixth century A.D., who lived at Constantinople as imperial physician in ordinary. He was the author of a great miscellany on pathology and diagnosis in sixteen books.
(2) An heresiarch of the fourth century A.D., called by his adversaries “the Atheist.” Epiphanius has preserved forty-seven heretical propositions from the work of Aëtius, among them the rejection of the authority of the prophets and apostles; the assertion that the Son of God was not like the Father; the doctrine that faith without works is sufficient; and the claim that the most culpable acts are the necessities of nature. He died A.D. 366.
(3) A Roman general born in Moesia towards the end of the fourth century A.D. He led an army of Huns to suppress the usurpation of the emperor John. In A.D. 433 he became consul and general-in-chief, and as such kept back the Western barbarians for twenty years, defeating the Goths, Burgundians, Gauls, and Franks; and at Châlons routed the famous Attila (q.v.) in the year 451. In 454, the emperor Valentinian, jealous of his fame, slew him with his own hand.
- king of Troezenia: Paus. 2.30.8
- his descendants found Halicarnassus and Myndus in Caria: Paus. 2.30.9
- founds sanctuary of Saviour Zeus: Paus. 2.31.10