Trachalus, Galerius
was consul A. D. 68 with Silius Italicus, and a relation of Galeria Fundana, the wife of Vitellius, who protected him on the accession of her husband to the throne. Trachalus is frequently mentioned by his contemporary Quintilian, as one of the most distinguished orators of his age. Tacitus takes notice of a report that Trachalus wrote the orations which the emperor Otho delivered, but the speeches of Otho in the Histories of Tacitus (1.37, 83) were composed by the historian and not by Trachalus. (Tac. Hist. 1.90, 2.60; Quint. Inst. 6.3.78, 8.5.19, 10.1.119, 12.5 § 5, 12.10.11; Spalding, ad Quintil. 6.3.78; Bernardi, Recherches sur Galerius Trachalus, in the Mémoires de l'Institut Royal de France, vol. vii. p. 119, foll., Paris, 1824; Meyer, Oratorum Romanorum Fragmenta, p. 592, foll., 2d ed.)
From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.