Gaius Cassius Longinus (Consul 171 BC)

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Gaius Cassius Longinus came from the Roman plebeian family of the Cassier and was 171 BC. Chr. Consul and 154 BC Chr. Censor .

Life

Gaius Cassius Longinus, whose father and grandfather led the same prenomen, is the first known carrier of the cognomen Longinus . He was also the most important representative of his family in the 2nd century BC. Chr.

For the first time Cassius Longinus is 178 BC. Mentioned when he served as a military tribune . 174 BC He held the office of praetor urbanus and in the following year 173 BC he held the office of praetor urbanus . That of a decemvir for arable land in Liguria .

Cassius Longinus moved to the consulate in 171 BC. And received a fellow plebeian official, Publius Licinius Crassus , although there had been a purely plebeian college of consuls the previous year, for the first time in Roman history. Cassius Longinus tried in vain to obtain supreme command in the war against the Macedonian king Perseus . Rather, this task fell to his fellow consul, while he himself, to his disappointment, was given Italy as an official area. He gathered his troops in Aquileia and set out from there on his own initiative to reach the Macedonian theater of war via Illyria , but had to return to Italy on the orders of the Senate .

While Cassius Longinus had behaved peacefully on the march to Macedonia in the areas through which he passed, he devastated these regions on the way back, pillaging and plundering. Therefore, envoys from the affected tribes of the Karner , Istrian and Iapyden as well as a delegation led by the brother of the first known ruler of Noricum , Cincibilus , led in the following year 170 BC. BC lawsuit before the Senate. At that time Cassius Longinus served as the military tribune of the consul Aulus Hostilius Mancinus in Macedonia, and so the Senate expressed its disapproval of the previous consul's approach to the ambassadors, but at the same time believed that a man of consular rank who was absent in the service of the state cannot be condemned unheard. When he returned from Macedonia, they could bring their complaints against him again. At least the senators had the foreign ambassadors present gifts and commissioners to travel to the damaged areas. Cassius Longinus worked in Macedonia until 168 BC. Chr .; after that he was no longer prosecuted.

The last attested office of Cassius Longinus is censorship , which he gave in 154 BC. BC together with Marcus Valerius Messalla . The censors planned to build a stone theater; but the two-time consul Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica Corculum appealed against this building project as being perishable for customs. Scipio Nasica managed to have the theater that had already started being torn down again by virtue of a senate resolution. It is uncertain whether the Cassius treated here or another representative of his gens accused the elder Cato .

literature

Remarks

  1. ↑ Titus Livius 41, 5, 8.
  2. ↑ Livy 42, 4, 4.
  3. ↑ Fasti Capitolini ad annum 171 BC. Chr .; Livy 42, 28, 5 and 42, 29, 1; among others
  4. ^ Livy 42, 32, 1-5.
  5. ^ Livy 43: 1, 4-12.
  6. ↑ Livy 43: 5, 1-9.
  7. ^ Livy 44, 31, 15.
  8. ↑ Fasti Capitolini ; Cicero , De domo sua 130 and 136; Piso in Pliny , Naturalis historia 17, 244; Festus , p. 285.
  9. ↑ Velleius Paterculus 1, 15, 3; Valerius Maximus 2, 4, 2; Orosius 4, 21, 4; Appian , Civil Wars 1, 28 (which puts the event too late in time and gives Cassius Longinus the false prenomen Lucius ); among others
  10. ^ Aulus Gellius , Noctes Atticae 10, 14, 3.
personal data
SURNAME Cassius Longinus, Gaius
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Longinus, Gaius Cassius
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Roman consul 171 BC BC as well as censor 154 BC Chr.
DATE OF BIRTH 3rd century BC Chr.
DATE OF DEATH after 154 BC Chr.