Gannys
distinctly mentioned by Dio Cassius in the thirty-eighth and thirty-ninth chapters of book seventy-eight as an active supporter of Elagabalus, being classed in the latter passage with Comazon, is believed to be the person whose name has dropped out of the text at the commencement of the sixth chapter in book seventy-nine, who is there represented as the preceptor and guardian of Elagabalus, as the individual who by his astuteness and energy accomplished the overthrow of Macrinus, and as one of the first victims of the youthful tyrant after he was seated upon the throne. Salmasius (
ad Spartian. Hadrian. 16) endeavours to show that
Gannys and
Comazon are not real personages, but epithets of contempt applied by the historian to the profligate Syrian, whose sensuality and riotous folly would cause him to be designated as
Γάνον κα Κωμάξοντα (i. e.
glutton and reveller).
This position has, however, been most successfully attacked by Reimarus (
ad Dion. Cass. 78.38), and is unquestionably quite untenable. [COMAZON.]
[
W.R]
