Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus

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Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus (* 103 BC or earlier; † 48 BC ) was a politician of the late Roman Republic . He was one of the Optimates .

Life

Bibulus went down in history as an opponent of Caesar , whose colleague he both during his aedilate in 65 and in his praetur 62 and in his consulate in 59 BC. Was. Tensions between the two had existed since the year 65 when, as Aedile, they jointly financed extremely lavish circus games - 320 gladiators are said to have competed against each other - but Caesar pretended to have paid everything out of his own pocket, thanks to the plebs urbana so focused on him alone.

During the joint consulate, the tensions between Caesar and Bibulus escalated: the latter, the son-in-law of Caesar's most determined opponent, Cato , held the hopes of the Senate Party to stop the foreseeable activities of the popular consul of 59. Bibulus was married to Porcia , the daughter of Cato the Younger and later wife of Brutus , and had a son with her.

When Bibulus tried to prevent a vote on Caesar's agricultural law in the popular assembly by pretending to have observed unfavorable Omina (every magistrate was entitled to this right on the basis of the Lex Aelia Fufia ), Caesar left him with dung from the political thugs of Publius Vatinius and then chased away from the forum at gunpoint . At the Senate meeting the following day, no senator dared to support Bibulus' complaint about this manifest violation of the law. He then withdrew from all official business, no longer left his house, but only contradicted all official acts of Caesar in writing, which were thereby de jure invalid. De facto, however, the edicts of Bibulus had no effect, so that the joke was circulating in Rome that this was the year "Julius and Caesar were consuls" .

In the years that followed, the consular Bibulus was quite an influential senator. So he applied in 56 BC Successful in having the Egyptian king Ptolemy Neos Dionysus , the father of Cleopatra , reinstated by Roman ambassadors; four years later, during the unrest after the death of Clodius, he campaigned for Caesar's most powerful opponent, Pompey, to be the sole consul. 51 BC He took over the administration of Syria as proconsul - originally only the forests and meadows of the empire were planned for him and his counterpart in the consulate as a province, a measure with which the Senate Caesar wanted to acidify the consulate. Since Bibulus had no inclination to play the chief forester of the Imperium Romanum , he had to wait until the majority in the Senate had changed and he was assigned a profitable province .

When the civil war broke out , Bibulus was naturally on the side of Pompey and took command of his fleet . Although he could not prevent Caesar's passage across the Adriatic, he at least cut him off from supplies from Italy. But since all ports were in the hands of the Caesarians, he could not disembark for months. His sailors were in distress, and Bibulus himself could not get the treatment for his severe cold, which he had caught during the long months at sea. After he had offered Caesar a sham armistice negotiations, just to give his dying of thirsty sailors an opportunity to go ashore and fetch water, he died in the early summer of 48 BC. In the battle of Dyrrhachium , which took place shortly afterwards, the Pompeian fleet acted without uniform strategic leadership, because a successor for Bibulus had not been determined.

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personal data
SURNAME Calpurnius Bibulus, Marcus
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bibulus, Marcus Calpurnius
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Roman politician, consul 59 BC Chr.
DATE OF BIRTH before 103 BC Chr.
DATE OF DEATH 48 BC Chr.
Place of death on the Adriatic