Gaius Popilius Laenas

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Gaius Popilius Laenas was a Roman military tribune who lived in the 1st century BC. He came from Picenum , a region in central Italy, and was a freedman or the descendant of one. On December 7, 43 BC He killed the fugitive Marcus Tullius Cicero in a wooded area near Caieta .

Life

Cicero and Gaius Popilius Laenas had known each other personally. Cicero had defended the Roman officer a few years earlier as a lawyer in criminal proceedings and, despite the unfavorable evidence, obtained an acquittal for him. The client was alleged by later declamators to be charged with the murder of his father.

Gaius Popilius Laenas acted at the instigation of Mark Antony , of the former consul of the Roman Republic at the top of its proscription had set as his henchmen . With the help of a centurion named Herennius, Cicero was beheaded and his hands were separated from his body when he was caught by the gunmen while on the run and stuck his head out of his litter. The details of the course of the murder of the speaker are not entirely consistent in the various ancient reports that have survived. According to Appian , the inexperience of those involved made the process extremely brutal and amateurish. Laenas had to execute three blows to knock Cicero's head off the torso. Also Livy and Valerius Maximus call Laenas as murderers of the speaker, Plutarch , however Herennius. The body and extremities were brought to Rome, where they were displayed in public on the Rostra , in the Roman Forum . The military tribune is said to have had a statue of themselves erected next to the severed head under the praise of Antonius.

reception

Gaius Popilius Laenas is characterized in the sources and in later times, alongside Octavian , as the personified ingratitude who unscrupulously executes his former savior for lowly motives, only to ingratiate himself with the current rulers. So he is said to have approached Antonius opportunistically with the request for the assignment of the contract.

In the historical novel Imperium by the British writer Robert Harris , Gaius Popilius Laenas is described as an unsympathetic, violent youth at the age of 15. He is accused of killing his father by stabbing his eyes with a metal pen. Cicero, who defended the accused, obtained an acquittal in court, in which Laenas was made a condition of lifelong military service.

literature

Remarks

  1. ↑ a b c Valerius Maximus , Facta et dicta memorabilia 5, 3, 4
  2. ↑ Plutarch , Cicero 48, 1
  3. ↑ Appian , Civil Wars 4, 20, 77
  4. ^ Livy, Ab urbe condita Periochae 120.
  5. ↑ Plutarch, Cicero 48, 4ff.
  6. ↑ Cassius Dio , Römische Geschichte 47, 11, 12 ; Hieronymus , Chronicle ad annum 43 BC Chr. (From Suetonius )
  7. ^ Eckard Lefèvre : Jakob Baldes grief over Cicero's death
personal data
SURNAME Laenas, Gaius Popilius
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Roman military tribune
DATE OF BIRTH 1st century BC Chr.
DATE OF DEATH 1st century BC BC or 1st century