Gnaeus Domitius Calvinus

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Gnaeus Domitius Calvinus was a Roman senator and general of the first century BC. He was consul in 53 and 40 BC. Chr.

Early career

Calvinus came from the respected plebeian aristocratic family of the Domitier and, according to inscriptions and fasting tables , was the son of a Marcus Domitius. His first known office was that of a legate of Lucius Valerius Flaccus in Asia (62 BC). As a tribune of the people in 59 BC With his colleagues Quintus Ancharius and Gaius Fannius, he supported the consul Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus against hostility from the second consul and later dictator Gaius Iulius Caesar and his partisans Publius Clodius Pulcher and Publius Vatinius . In a fight resulting from these conflicts, Calvinus was injured. 56 BC Calvinus became praetor because influential optimates had campaigned for him. He had to judge in cases of illegal vote buying ( ambitus ), for example when Lucius Calpurnius Bestia was indicted in February. In his role as praetor, he also held particularly brilliant games to increase his popularity.

Calvinus ran in 54 BC. BC with three other men - Gaius Memmius , Marcus Valerius Messalla Rufus and Marcus Aemilius Scaurus - for the consulate of the next year and helped with very unclean methods. First, together with Memmius, he bribed the then acting consuls, who were also election officers, but then, under pressure from Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus , Memmius published the contract agreed upon. Still, Calvinus didn't have a bad chance of getting the consular post. But because of his machinations, the elections were initially delayed and then the applicants were charged with election bribery, namely Calvinus by the tribune Gaius Memmius. Because of this, the consular elections could not be held by the end of the year, and an interregnum of several months followed, which also suspended all ambitus processes. In order to secure the support of Pompey, Calvinus had himself at the end of 54 BC. As a judge very much for the acquittal of because of the repatriation of Ptolemy XII. Aulus Gabinius charged to Egypt . In July 53 BC As a result, he was able to take up the consulship with Valerius Messalla until the end of the year. During her tenure there was public fighting between the consulate candidates for the next year, including Titus Annius Milo and Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius Scipio ; Publius Clodius Pulcher, who wanted to become praetor, also eagerly participated. In the Senate, the consuls appeared without the badges of their dignity to express their displeasure with anarchy. Initially without consequences, the only known resolution of the Senate during her term of office that stipulated a gap of five years between the exercise of a municipal office and the governorship in a Roman province. When the consuls tried to elect their successors, they were hit by stones and injured. During their term of office they could then no longer push through the election of the new consuls.

Campaigns under Caesar

Shortly before the beginning of the Roman civil war, Calvinus went over to the victorious conqueror of Gaul, Caesar. Metellus Scipio, who was approaching from Asia, was supposed to Calvinus at the beginning of 48 BC. Stay in Macedonia with two legions and 500 horsemen. There the two generals stalked each other with clever tactics, but without real acts of war, while Caesar in July 48 BC. BC in the battle of Dyrrhachium against Pompey got the short straw. Then Caesar marched south to Apollonia , Pompeius, however, to the east, so that the latter threatened to pinch Calvinus between his army and that of Metellus Scipio and thereby destroy him. Since Calvinus was no longer in contact with his superior, he only heard this by chance from some Celts who were in the service of Pompey. He quickly retreated south to Aiginion on Peneios in Thessaly, where he could unite with Caesar. During the decisive battle of Pharsalus , Calvinus, who was in the center, was faced again with Metellus Scipio.

Despite his victory, Caesar immediately took up the pursuit of Pompey to Egypt and sent Calvinus as legate or proconsul with three legions to Asia Minor. But since Caesar was besieged by the Egyptians in Alexandria because of his support for Cleopatra VII and had too few troops with him, he gave Calvinus the order to send two of his legions to reinforce him. With the only legion left to him, Calvinus now had to go to war against King Pharnakes II of Bosporus, the son of the famous Roman enemy Mithridates VI. , move out, who wanted to re-conquer Pontus , his father's empire, taking advantage of Rome's weakened position due to the civil wars. Calvinus reinforced his army with two legions sent by the Galatian ruler Deiotarus and another legion recruited in Pontus and invaded the Cappadocia evacuated by Pharnakes . In Nicopolis in Lesser Armia, however, he was born in December 48 BC. Defeated by the enemy and had to retreat to Asia.

After Caesar had the upper hand in heavy fighting in the Alexandrian War , he defeated Pharnakes on August 2, 47 BC. Decisive at Zela . Now Calvinus was finally allowed to subjugate the fled Mithridates son in Sinope ; but since this was no longer a danger, he was released. When Caesar returned to Rome, Calvinus remained governor in Asia Minor. In the war that Caesar saw in 46 BC BC in North Africa against the remaining Pompeians, he was to take Thysdra with two legions after the battle of Thapsus . When the local commander Gaius Considius Longus found out, he quickly evacuated the city. Back in Rome, Calvinus exonerated the accused Deiotarus (45 BC).

On the morning of March 15, 44 BC BC, shortly before his murder, Caesar met the fortune teller Spurinna in Calvinus' house . Probably an act of sacrifice was made, and this would confirm that Calvinus, by the favor of the dictator, around 45 BC. Chr. Pontiff had been made; because that he held this office can be seen on images of his coins as well as by an inscription. The post of magister equitum , which he was appointed by Caesar in 43 BC. Should receive, he could not compete because of his murder.

Career among the triumvirs

Calvinus supported Caesar's heir Octavian from the beginning . It does not appear in the sources again until autumn 42 BC. At that time he was supposed to bring the triumvirs Mark Antony and Octavian, who led the decisive battles against the Caesar murderers in the Battle of Philippi in Macedonia, but were largely cut off from Italy, to reinforce two new legions from Brundisium by sea. But the commanders Lucius Staius Murcus and Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus , who belonged to the party of the murderers of Caesar, destroyed most of Calvinus' fleet on the very day of the first battle at Philippi, when it was sailing through the Ionian Sea, and the elite unit of the Mars Legion perished. Calvinus was able to save himself and returned to Brundisium after five days.

40 BC BC Calvinus became consul for the second time, this time with Gaius Asinius Pollio, who became famous as a historian . As was often the case among the triumvirs, the two could not exercise their office all year round, but received successors in the suffect consuls Lucius Cornelius Balbus Maior and Publius Canidius Crassus .

39 to 36 BC Calvinus was governor of the whole of Spain and led wars especially against some Pyrenees tribes. When some of his troops were afraid and therefore lost a battle, he punished them so severely that he then easily made up for the defeat and probably won at Osca (today Huesca ). Because of his success in Spain he was allowed to call himself Imperator and after his return to Rome on July 17th, 36 BC. Celebrate a triumph . Some coins minted during his governorship in Spain were found, as well as brick stamps from Emporiae (today Empúries ).

On the Palatine Hill , Calvinus built a consecration gift from the treasures he had stolen in Spain, the inscription of which is preserved on the base. Most of the money he received from cities in his province to finance his triumph was used for the magnificent new building and the expansion of the burned-down seat of the Pontifex Maximus , the Regia , which was located at the Roman Forum . For their inauguration, he borrowed statues that were not returned from Octavian. The remains of this building can be used to give a rough idea of ​​its original layout. Calvinus had engraved on the walls of the Regia the list of Roman consuls and triumphs that is now called the Capitoline fast. Near the regia was Calvinus' own house. Probably he was still alive around 20 BC. BC, since he is apparently mentioned in preserved fragments of the Arvalakten and a calendar as a member of the Arvalbrothers .

literature

Remarks

  1. ^ Marcus Tullius Cicero , pro Valerio Flacco 31, 68.
  2. ^ Cicero, per Sestio 113; in P. Vatinium testem interrogatio 16 with Scholia Bobiensia p. 304, 317f. and 324 or .; Cassius Dio 38, 6, 1, who gives no names.
  3. ^ Cicero, de oratore 2, 249.
  4. ^ Cicero, per Sestio 113; in Vatinium testem interrogatio 16 with Scholia Bobiensia p. 304, 317f. and 324 Or.
  5. ^ Cicero, ad Quintum fratrem 2, 3, 6.
  6. ↑ Cicero, ad Atticum 4, 16, 6; 4, 17, 3.
  7. ↑ Cicero, ad Atticum 4, 15, 7; 4, 17, 2; ad Quintum fratrem 2, 15, 2; 3, 1, 16.
  8. ↑ Cicero, ad Atticum 4, 17, 3ff .; ad Quintum fratrem 3, 2, 3.
  9. ^ Cicero, ad Quintum fratrem 3, 4, 1.
  10. ↑ consular lists (in Hydatius et al.); Cassius Dio 40, 17, 1; 40, 46, 1; among others
  11. ^ Cassius Dio 40, 46, 1.
  12. ↑ Cassius Dio 40, 30, 1; 40, 46, 2.
  13. ^ Cicero in Scholia Bobiensia, p. 343 or .; Cassius Dio 40, 46, 3.
  14. ^ Caesar, Civil War 3, 34, 3.
  15. ↑ Caesar, Civil Wars 3, 36, 1–38, 4; with deviations Cassius Dio 41, 51, 2 f. and Appian , Civil Wars 2, 60.
  16. ↑ Caesar, Civil War 3, 78, 2-79, 7.
  17. ^ Caesar, Civil War 3, 89, 3; Appian, Civil Wars 2, 76; Plutarch, Pompey 69, 1; Caesar 44, 1.
  18. ↑ Alexandrian War 9, 3; 34, 1 ff.
  19. ↑ Alexandrian War 34–40; Appian, Civil Wars 2, 91; Mithridates 120; Cassius Dio 42, 46, 1f .; 42, 47, 2; among others
  20. ^ Appian, Mithridates 120.
  21. ^ Cassius Dio 42, 49, 1.
  22. ↑ African War 86, 3; 93, 1.
  23. ↑ Cicero, pro active Deiotaro 14; 25; 32.
  24. ↑ Valerius Maximus 8:11, 3.
  25. ↑ CIL 6, 1301 .
  26. ↑ Capitoline fasts.
  27. ^ Appian, Civil Wars 4, 115f.
  28. ↑ Consular fasting CIL I² p. 60 and 64; Cassius Dio 48, 15, 1; 48, 32, 1; among others
  29. ↑ Velleius Paterculus 2, 78, 3; Cassius Dio 48, 42, 1-3.
  30. ↑ Triumph Fast; Cassius Dio 48, 42.
  31. ↑ CIL II Supplement 6186.
  32. ↑ CIL 6, 1301 with the listing of the offices of Calvinus.
  33. ^ Cassius Dio 48, 42, 4f.
  34. ↑ Festus, p. 154.
  35. ↑ Ephemeris epigraphica VIII p. 317; CIL I² p. 214f.
personal data
SURNAME Domitius Calvinus, Gnaeus
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Calvinus, Gnaeus Domitius
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Roman senator and general
DATE OF BIRTH 1st century BC Chr.
DATE OF DEATH after 36 BC Chr.