History of Julius Caesar Vol. 2 of 2

8. PUBLIUS SULPICIUS RUFUS

Publius Sulpicius Rufus, who belonged to the same family as S. Sulpicius Galba, served, in 705, the cause of Cæsar in Spain (Cæsar, De Bello Civili, I. 74); he commanded in the following year, with the title of prætor, the fleet which was cruising at Vibo, on the coast of Bruttium (Cæsar, De Bella Civili, III. 101); subsequently he obtained the government of Illyria, a country where he had served in the ranks of the Cæsarians, and consequently succeeded Q. Cornificius (Cæsar, De Bello Afric., 10; De Bello Alexandrin., 42). A letter of Cicero, addressed to him (Epist. Familiar., XIII. 77), shows that he was still in that province in 709. We know nothing certain relating to his actions. It has been supposed with probability that he is the same with a P. Sulpicius, censor under the triumvirate, and mentioned in a Latin inscription (Tabula Collatina), to which Drumann refers (tom. i., p. 528).

9. LUCIUS MUNATIUS PLANCUS

Lucius Munatius Plancus, whose name is found in several inscriptions and on a rather great number of medals (see especially Orelli, Inscriptions, N. 591), belonged to an illustrious plebeian family. Intimate at first with Cato, he subsequently gained the entire affection of Cæsar (Plutarch, Cato of Utica, 42. – Cicero, Epist. Familiar., X. 24), and remained faithful to him to the last. After having served in Gaul, he became, in 705, one of his most active lieutenants in Spain (Cæsar, De Bello Civili, I. 40), and afterwards in Africa. (Cæsar, De Bello Afr., 4.) Cæsar caused to be given to him, for the year 710, the government of Transalpine Gaul, without the Narbonnese and Belgic Gaul (Appian, Civil Wars, III. 46 – Cicero, Philipp., III. 15), and named him, with P. Brutus, for the consulship in 712 (Velleius Paterculus, II. 63. – Dio Cassius, XLVI. 53); he was then in great favour with the Dictator: Cicero made his approaches through him to obtain Cæsar’s favour. (Epist. Familiar., X. 3; XIII. 29.)

After the murder of Cæsar, Plancus, who no doubt, like Antony, feared the vengeance of the party of the conspirators, proposed an amnesty, in concert with him and Cicero (Plutarch, Brutus, 22), and hastened to go into the province which had been assigned to him. In Gaul he founded the colonies of Lugdunum and Raurica (Orelli, Inscriptiones, No. 590. – Dio Cassius, XLVI. 50); subsequently, gained by Antony, he abandoned to his vengeance, during the proscription, Plotius, his own brother. (Appian, Civil Wars, IV. 12. – Valerias Maximus, VI. 8, § 5.) In 712, Plancus took, with Lepidus, on the 1st of January, the consulship which Cæsar had destined for him. (Dio Cassius, XLVI. 53; LXVII. 16.) In the war of Perusia, he commanded the troops of Antony, who sent him, in 714, into Asia. In 719 he still governed Syria for that triumvir, and he has been accused of the death of Sextus Pompey. (Appian, Civil Wars, V. 144.) He proceeded to Egypt with Antony, to the court of Cleopatra. (Velleius Paterculus, II. 83.) Foreseeing the ruin of Antony, of whom he has been reproached with being the base flatterer, he did not wait for the defeat of Actium to embrace the party of Octavius: he returned to Rome, and attacked his former friend bitterly in the Senate. (Velleius Paterculus, II. 83.) Dio Cassius (L. 3) accuses him of having revealed Antony’s will. From this time devoted to Octavius, he proposed, in 727, to confer upon him the title of Augustus. (Suetonius, Octavius, 7. – Velleius Paterculus, II. 91.) In 732, he held the office of censor. (Dio Cassias, LIV. 2.) The inscriptions and medals show that he was also invested with other dignities. The date of his death is unknown. Horace addressed to him one of his odes. (Book I., Ode 7.)

10. MARCUS LICINIUS CRASSUS

Marcus Licinius Crassus Dives was the elder brother of young Crassus, whose place he had taken as Cæsar’s lieutenant in Gaul. Little is known of his life. Cicero, less intimate with him than with his younger brother, has mentioned him but slightly. (Epist. Familiar., 8.) He ranged himself on Cæsar’s side at the time of the civil war, and became, in 705, governor of Citerior Gaul. (Appian, Civil Wars, II. 41. – Justin, XLII. 4.) The time of his death is unknown.

11. CAIUS FABIUS

It is not known what Caius Fabius had been before the campaign of Gaul. When the civil war broke out, he remained faithful to Cæsar, who sent him orders to proceed from Narbonnese Gaul to Spain. With his usual rapidity, he moved by forced marches to Herda (Herida), near which town Afranius was encamped. He distinguished himself in the whole of this campaign, in which the army of Cæsar, which had joined him, was for a moment in danger.

No further mention is made of C. Fabius. His name does not occur either in the campaigns of Greece, Alexandria, or Africa, or in that of the second Spanish war, or elsewhere.

12. L. ROSCIUS

L. Roscius, who only played a secondary part in the war of Gaul, appears to be the same as a personage to whom Cicero gives the name of L. Fabatus, and who fell in the battle of Modena in 711. (Epist. Familiar., X. 33.) He was prætor in 705, and Pompey, who knew the friendship which Cæsar had for Roscius, deputed him to him at Ariminum with proposals of peace. (Cæsar, De Bello Civili, I. 8, 10. – Dio Cassius, XLI 5.) It is believed that it is his name which, followed by the surname Fabatus, figures on the Roman denarii which bear the image of Juno Lanuvina. It is also believed to occur in a Latin inscription.

13. TITUS SEXTIUS

Titus Sextius, whose history before his arrival in Gaul is not known, became, in 710, governor of Numidia. (Dio Cassius, XLVIII. 21.) According to Appian (Civil Wars, IV. 53), he took the side of Octavius; according to Dio Cassius (XLVIII. 21), that of Antony. He made war against Q. Cornificius, who sought to keep the ancient province of Africa, which the Senate had given him. Sextius aspired to the same government, and prepared to exercise it for Octavius, to whom Africa had been assigned in the partition of the triumvirs. (Appian, Civil Wars, IV. 53.) The defeat and death of Cornificius allowed him to realise his projects, and he remained in possession of his province until 713. Appian and Dio Cassius have told differently the events which forced Sextius, after the battle of Philippi, to abandon Numidia, where Octavius had sent a new governor. Nothing else is known of his biography.

In the year 700 two new lieutenants make their appearance, Q. Tullius Cicero and C. Trebonius, who came to replace Arunculeius Cotta and Titurius Sabinus, slain by the Gauls at Tongres.

14. Q. TULLIUS CICERO

Quintus Tullius Cicero, younger brother of the great orator, was born in 652, and went with him to Athens, in order to perfect himself in literature, which he cultivated with success. The correspondence of the two brothers which has been preserved is a proof of this, and we know, from other sources, that Quintus had composed divers works which are lost. Quintas had married, before the year 686, Pomponia, sister of Atticus (Cicero, Epist. ad Atticum, I. 5, 6), with whom he lived on bad terms, and from whom he finally separated. He was ædile in 688, the year of his brother’s prætorship; and in 691, when his brother was consul, he lent him in the affair of Catiline his intelligent support, and shared the same dangers. (Cicero, Epist. ad Quintum, I. 1; Catilinaria Quarta, 2, 3.) However, he did not share in his opinion in the judgment of the conspirators, when he voted, with Cæsar, against the punishment of death. (Suetonius, Cæsar, 14.) He became prætor in 692, defeated in Bruttium the bands of the Catilinarian Marcellus (Orosius, VI. 6), and presided over the tribunal which judged Archias. (Scholiast of Bobbio on the Oration for Archias, p. 354, edit. Orelli.) In March of the year 693, he proceeded to the province of Asia, of which he had obtained the government (Cicero, Pro Flacco, 14); he administered that province with as much equity as talent, seconded by able lieutenants. (Cicero, Epist. ad Quintum, I. 1.) They had, however, to reproach him with frequent fits of anger, which drew upon him the remonstrances of his brother. At the end of April, 696, Quintus left Asia in order to proceed direct to Rome, without taking time to visit at Thessalonica M. Cicero, who was still under the weight of his condemnation to exile. The fact was, he feared an accusation of extortion, which his enemies, and those of his brother, endeavoured to prepare against him. (Cicero, Epist. ad Atticum, III. 9; Epist. ad Quintum, I. 3; Oratio pro Domo sua, 36.) He employed himself actively in favour of his brother, and narrowly escaped being killed in the riot raised by Clodius, on the 8th of the Calends of February, 697, on the occasion of the proposition of the tribune Fabricius. (Cicero, Oratio pro Sextio, 35. – Plutarch, Cicero, 44.) When this same Clodius opposed the rebuilding of the house of M. Cicero, Quintus saw his own, which was next to that of his brother, burnt by the partisans of that turbulent demagogue. (Cicero, Epist. ad Atticum, IV. 3.) Towards the end of the same year, Quintus was one of the fifteen lieutenants given to Pompey in order to direct the supplying of victuals, and in that quality he proceeded to Sardinia. (Cicero, Epist. ad Quintum, II. 2.) He started for Gaul in the beginning of 700, and it appears from a passage in the Oratio pro Milone that he was still there in 702. He left Cæsar’s army in 703, and joined, in the quality of legate, his brother, who had been made proconsul of Cilicia, and to whom he lent the indispensable support of his experience and ability in matters of war. (Cicero, Epist. Familiar., XV. 4; Epist. ad Atticum, V, 20.) During the civil war, Quintus took the side of Pompey, but he imitated his brother’s circumspection, and, after the battle of Pharsalia, he made every effort to clear himself in the eyes of Cæsar, to whom he sent as his deputy in Asia his own son, and thus obtained his pardon. After the death of Cæsar, Quintus pronounced energetically, like M. Cicero, against Antony, an opposition which turned out equally fatal to him, for, like his brother, he was comprised in the proscription. Having vainly attempted with him to reach Macedonia, he returned to Rome accompanied by his son, and both were delivered up by slaves to the executioner. (Appian, Civil Wars, IV. 20. – Plutarch, Cicero, 62.)

15. CAIUS TREBONIUS

Caius Trebonius was the son of a Roman knight, of whom Cicero speaks in his Philippica (XIII. 10). Being quæstor in 694, he opposed the law Herennia, which authorised the adoption of Clodius by a plebeian; as tribune of the people in 699, he proposed the celebrated laws which gave to Pompey and Crassus important provinces, and continued for five years Cæsar’s command in Gaul. Having been called by Cæsar the year after in quality of legate, he remained in Gaul until the commencement of the civil war. He was afterwards sent to Spain against Afranius, and next charged with the siege of Marseilles by land. (Cæsar, De Bello Civili, I. 36. – Dio Cassius, XLI. 19;) In 706, he became præter urbanus (Dio Cassius, XLII. 20); a year later he succeeded Cassius Longinus in the government of one of the two Spains. (Cæsar, De Bello Alexandrino, 64; De Bello Hispano, 7. – Dio Cassius, XLIII. 29.) Compelled to leave the Peninsula, after some checks, he returned to Rome, where Cæsar caused him to be named consul in October, 709, and with the province of Asia, on quitting office. (Dio Cassius, XLIII. 46. – Appian, Civil Wars, III. 2.) All these acts of kindness, however, could not secure to the dictator the devotedness of his lieutenant: even before Trebonius had taken possession of his proconsulate of Asia, he entered into the conspiracy formed against the life of Cæsar. But, detained by Antony outside the curia, he could not strike him with his own hand. (Appian, Civil Wars, II. 117. – Dio Cassius, XLIV. 19. – Cicero, Philippica, II. 14; XIII. 10.) After the death of Cæsar, Trebonius started quietly for his government of Asia, and was in May, 710, at Athens. (Cicero, Epist. Familiar., XII. 16.) During his proconsulship he supported the party of Brutus and Cassius. In February, 711, Dolabella, who had come to replace him, drew him into a snare at Smyrna; slew him, and threw his head at the foot of a statue of Cæsar, thus revenging his friend who had been so shamefully betrayed. (Cicero, Philippica, XIII. 10. – Appian, Civil Wars, III. 26. – Velleius Paterculus, II. 69. – Dio Cassius, XLVII. 29.) Cicero, whose correspondent Trebonius had been, stigmatises this murder, in which Antony saw the just punishment of a villain and a parricide. It is certain that Trebonius had entered the conspiracy without remorse, since afterwards he wrote to Cicero: “If you compose anything on the murder of Cæsar, do not attribute a small part of it to me.” (Cicero, Epist. Familiar., XII. 16.)

During the years 701 to 705 new lieutenants joined Cæsar in Gaul: they were Minucius Basilus, Antistius Reginus, M. Silanus, Caninius Rebilus, Sempronius Rutilus, Marcus Antonius, P. Vatinius, Q. Calenus, and Lucius Cæsar.

16. MINUCIUS BASILUS

L. Minucius Basilus had taken his name and surname from a rich Roman who had adopted him. Previously his name was L. Satrius. Cicero names him thus in one of his treatises (De Officiis, III. 18), although elsewhere (Epist. ad Atticum, XI. 5) he designates him by his name and surname. He became prætor in 709. (Dio Cassius, XLIII. 47.) Irritated at not having obtained, on leaving office, the province which he coveted, and at having only received money from Cæsar, he entered into the conspiracy formed against the Dictator. (Appian, Civil Wars, II; 113. – Dio Cassius, XLIII. 47.) A few months after, he was assassinated by his slaves, who thus took revenge for his having subjected several of them to the punishment of castration. (Appian, Civil Wars, III. 98.)

17. C. ANTISTIUS REGINUS

Nothing is known of the antecedents or the end of this lieutenant of Cæsar. To judge by his name, he must have belonged to the family of the Antistii, which produced divers magistrates of the Republic, and several members of which have perpetuated their memory in inscriptions.

18. M. SILANUS

Marcus Junius Silanus, son of Servilia, was brother, by the mother’s side, to M. Brutus. After the murder of Cæsar, he accompanied his brother-in-law Lepidus in his campaign in the north of Italy, and was sent by him, in 711, to Modena, without precise instructions (Dio Cassius, XLVI. 38); to the great regret of Lepidus, he took the side of Antony. (Cicero, Epist. Familiar., X. 30, 34.) After Antony’s defeat, Silanus, who had lost the confidence of Lepidus, proceeded to Sicily, to Sext. Pompey, and did not return to Rome until the peace of Misenum had been concluded with the latter, in 715. (Velleius Paterculas, II. 77.) Nothing more is known of his life, except that Augustus, in 729, took him as his colleague in the consulship. (Dio Cassius, LIII. 25.).

19. C. CANINIUS REBILUS

Caius Caninius Rebilus, great-grandson, in all probability, of the person of that name who was prætor in 583, does not appear in history until the war with Gaul. Cæsar sent him, in 705, to Scribonius Libo, to treat of peace with Pompey. (Cæsar, De Bello Civili, I. 26.) Rebilus next accompanied Curio into Africa, and escaped only with a small number from the defeat inflicted upon them by King Juba. (De Bello Civili, II. 24.) In 708 he was still making war in the same province, and took Thapsus after the defeat of Scipio. (Cæsar, De Bello Africano, 86, 93.) In 709 he commanded in Spain the garrison of Hispalis. (Cæsar, De Bello Hispano, 35.) At the end of the same year, Cæsar caused him to be named consul, in the place of Q. Fabius, who had died suddenly: it was on the eve of the Calends of January that this event had taken place. Rebilus consequently was only consul for a few hours, and the short period of his office has excited the jokes of Cicero. (Epist. Familiar., VII. 30. – Dio Cassius, XLIII. 46. – Plutarch, Cæsar, 63.) No other details are known of the life of this lieutenant of Cæsar.

20. M. SEMPRONIUS RUTILUS

History is silent on what became of this lieutenant after the war of Gaul.

21. MARCUS ANTONIUS (MARK ANTONY)

The biography of Mark Antony is too well known, and is too much mixed up with the events which followed the war in Gaul, to render it necessary to give a sketch of it here. It is well known that Mark Antony, born in 671, was the son of a Mark Antony who had served in Crete, and grandson of the celebrated orator of the same name. His mother was a Julia, and belonged, consequently, to the family of Cæsar. After having encouraged and supported Cæsar in his projects on Rome, he became his magister equitum, when the dictature had been conferred upon him. At Pharsalia, he commanded the left wing of Cæsar’s army. After the murder of the great man, he was the rival of Octavius, and subsequently, with Lepidus, his colleague in the triumvirate. When disunion arose between the future Augustus and the ancient lieutenant of his uncle, the battle of Actium completed the ruin of Antony, who, having taken refuge in Egypt, slew himself in despair, on the information which Cleopatra, with whom he was violently in love, gave him of her intended suicide.

22. PUBLIUS VATINIUS

The part played by Publius Vatinius, before he became lieutenant in Gaul, has been told in the course of this work. At the conclusion of his tribuneship, he was employed in the army of Cæsar; but he had already, after his quæstorship, served in Spain in the same quality of lieutenant, under the proconsul C. Cosconius. Threatened by the laws Licinia and Junia, Vatinius returned to Rome, and succeeded, thanks to the support of Clodius, in avoiding the trial with which he was threatened. He failed in his candidature for the ædileship, figured as one of the witnesses in the trial of Sextius, in which he showed great animosity against the accused, and against Cicero who defended him. Important events marked his prætorship in 699. As lieutenant of Cæsar in the civil war (De Bello Civili, III. 19), after the battle of Pharsalia, he defended Brundusium against Lælius. (De Bello Civili, III. 100.) In 706 and 707 he continued to serve in the ranks of the partisans of the Dictator, who, in the end of that year, caused the consulship to be conferred upon him for a few days. (Dio Cassius, XLII. 55. – Macrobius, Saturnalia, II. 3.) In 709 he was sent by Cæsar into Illyria, with the title of proconsul (Appian, Illyric War, 13), from which province he sent obliging letters to Cicero. (Epist. Familiar., V. 9, 10.) After the murder of the Dictator, when the Dalmatians had revolted and had defeated a considerable corps of his army, Vatinius, who mistrusted the fidelity of his soldiers, retired to Epidamnus, and delivered his province and his legions to M. Brutus, (Titus Livius, Epitome, CXVIII. – Velleius Paterculus, II. 69. – Appian, Illyric War, 13.) Nevertheless, he obtained, at the end of that year (711), a triumph for his victories. It is not known what became of him afterwards.

23. Q. FUFIUS CALENUS

Q. Fufius Calenus, of one of the most illustrious families of Rome, the gens Fufia, was tribune of the people in 693, and served at that time actively the interests of Clodius, when the latter was accused of having violated the mysteries of the Bona Dea. (Cicero, Epist. ad Atticum, I. 14.) As prætor during the consulship of Cæsar and Bibulus, he gave his name to a judiciary law, and served with zeal, during his magistracy, the projects of him whose lieutenant he became in Gaul. He also supported Clodius in the affair of Milo. When the civil war broke out, Fufius Calenus joined Cæsar at Brundusium; he followed him afterwards into Spain, in the character of lieutenant. (Epist. ad Atticum, IX. 5. – Cæsar, De Bello Civili, I. 87.) Sent afterwards into Epirus, he took, before the battle of Pharsalia, the principal towns of Greece. In 707, he became consul with Vatinius (Dio Casius, XLII. 55); sided, after the death of Cæsar, with Antony, whom he defended against the attacks of Cicero (Philippica, VIII. 4. – Dio Cassius, XLVI. 1-28), and was his lieutenant during the struggles which followed. He commanded an army in Transalpine Gaul in 713, when he was carried off by a sudden death, at the moment when he was on the point of encountering the troops of Octavius. (Appian, Civil Wars, V. 3, 51. – Dio Cassius, XLVIII. 20.)

24. L. CÆSAR

L. Julius Cæsar, who appears as lieutenant of the great Cæsar only at the end of the war of Gaul, belonged to the same family as himself; he was a son of L. Julius Cæsar, consul in the time of the war against the Marsi, who was assassinated by Fimbria, and brother of Julia, mother of Mark Antony. He stood for the ædileship without success (Cicero, Orat. pro Plancio, 21), was more fortunate in his petition for the consulship, and exercised that high magistracy in 690. (Cicero, Orat. pro Murena, 34; Epist. ad Atticum, I. 1, 2. – Dio Cassius, XXXVII. 6.) He was, with Cæsar, the year after, one of the judges (duumvir perduellionis) in the trial of C. Rabirius. (Dio Cassius, XXXVII. 27.) When the Senate was deliberating on the conspiracy of Catiline, the relationship which united him with P.Lentulus did not prevent him from voting for his condemnation to death. After the war of Gaul, he returned to Rome, and, in the year 707, Mark Antony invested him with the functions of prefect of the town; he was then very aged. (Dio Cassius, XLII. 30.) After Cæsar had been assassinated, L. Cæsar withdrew from the party of Antony, although the latter was his nephew, for which he has been praised by Cicero. (Epist. Familiar., XII. 2.) But his opposition softened down afterwards, and he rejected the proposal to declare war against the ancient lieutenant of Cæsar, made by the great orator. (Cicero, Philippica, VIII. 1; Epist. Familiar., X. 28.) This was the effect of the influence exercised upon him by his sister Julia, to whom he owed his safety in the proscription which followed the conclusion of the triumvirate. (Appian, Civil Wars, IV. 12. – Plutarch, Cicero, 61; Antony, 20. – Floras, IV. 6. – Velleias Paterculus, II. 67.) Nothing is known concerning his after life.

END OF VOL. II

1

Justin, XXIV. 4. – Titus Livius, V. 48.

2

Polybius, II. 17-19. – Titus Livius, V. 35.

3

Pausanias, X. 19-23. – Diodorus Siculus, Eclog., XXII. 13.

4

Strabo, IV. p. 156, edit. Dübner and Müller. – Justin, XXXII. 3.

5

Polybius, IV. 46.

6

Justin, XXV. 2. – Titus Livius, XXXVIII. 16. – Pausanias, VII. 6, § 5.

7

Polybius, XXXIII. 7, 8. – Titus Livius, Epitome, XLVII.

8

Strabo, IV., p. 169.

9

Titus Livius, Epitome, LX.

10

Titus Livius, Epitome, LXI.

11

Strabo, IV., pp. 154, 159. – Titus Livius, Epitome, LXI. – Florus, III. 2. – Velleius Paterculus, II. 10.

12

Lucan, I. 424.

13

Cæsar, De Bello Gallico, I. 45. – Strabo, IV., p. 158.

14

Titus Livius, Epitome, LXII. – Eutropius, IV. 10. – Velleius Paterculus, I. 15.

15

Strabo, VII., p. 243.

16

This victory was gained by the Tigurini, a people of Helvetia, on the territory of the Allobroges. According to the Epitome of Titus Livius (LXV.), the battle took place in the district of the Nitiobriges, a people inhabiting the banks of the Garonne, which is not very probable.