Gaius Flaminius

This article deals with the consul of 223 BC. And fighters for the rights of the plebeians; for his son of the same name (Consul 187 BC) see Gaius Flaminius (Consul 187 BC) .

Gaius Flaminius (* between 280 BC and 275 BC ; † June 24, 217 BC on Lake Trasimeno ) was a Roman statesman from the plebeian gens Flaminia and a leading pioneer of the plebeians against the ruling patrician nobility . In this sense he worked as early as 232 BC. As tribune of the people . 227 BC As praetor he was the first Roman governor of the province of Sicilia . In his first consulate in 223 BC BC he defeated the Celtic Insubrians . After his censorship in 220 BC. He fell in 217 BC. At the beginning of the Second Punic War in the Battle of Lake Trasimeno . The senatorial Roman historiography portrayed his figure in a distorted and extremely unfavorable way. He was a people-friendly demagogue who often acted against the will of the Senate and lost battle and life against Hannibal due to personal defects of character such as excessive ambition and because of godly wickedness . He appears as an antihero and negative counterpart to the pious and Senate-loyal Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus, who was appointed dictator after his death .

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The traditional negative image of Flaminius was in its core probably already at the end of the 3rd century BC. Founded by his contemporary and first Roman historian Quintus Fabius Pictor . Its lost work was included in the representations of the main sources for Flaminius' life that still exist today. These are on the one hand the second and third books of the Histories of Polybios and on the other hand the 21st and 22nd books of the history of Titus Livius . However, detailed information is only available about the short time of the second consulate of Flaminius, since the period up to 219 BC. BC, i.e. until shortly before the outbreak of the Hannibal War, the second decade of Livy’s annals is largely lost and the second book of Polybius’s histories only deals with this period briefly and in summary. Another source on Flaminius' life is a few scattered, equally negative mentions of the speaker Cicero , who was partly based on the (now lost) monograph of the Second Punic War written by Lucius Coelius Antipater .

Lineage and Early Career

Gaius Flaminius was one of the political climbers ( homo novus ), but his grandfather Lucius Flaminius was known to the Fasti Capitolini (in contrast to that of the famous censor Cato ), and at least his father of the same name, Gaius Flaminius, was already politically active.

The first historically tangible office of Gaius Flaminius is his tribunate, which he held in 232 BC. Exercised. In this function, he set significant accents in favor of the Roman people with an agricultural law and thus gained high respect from them. The Romans had in the 3rd century BC BC successively took away large territories from the Celts in northern Italy and subjugated the Senones tribe . As a tribune of the people, Flaminius achieved with the law named after him lex Flaminia de agro Gallico et Piceno viritim dividundo (also lex agraria " Farm Law ") that part of the Senones annexed area, the so-called ager Gallicus south of Ariminum ( today's Rimini ), was distributed to landless Roman colonists. With this allocation of fertile and strategically important land, Flaminius tied in with the expansive Roman settlement policy in northern Italy, but allegedly had to fight bitter resistance from the nobility in the implementation of his legislative proposal. Polybius strongly criticizes Flaminius' measure as the beginning of the change of the Roman people for the worse and as the main cause of 225 BC. A very risky war broke out against the Celts who settled in the Po Valley and who felt more and more harassed by Rome. This view, which goes back to Fabius Pictor, makes Flaminius the alleged initiator of the resurrection of an ancient danger that threatened Rome's existence.

Perhaps Flaminius also met with such great domestic political resistance because his distribution of the fields gave him a large following and thus in power. Even his father is said to have opposed him and prevented him from holding a popular assembly because of his fatherly authority (patria potestas) so that the relevant law could not be passed. From a rhetorical and legal point of view, it was discussed whether the paternal authority, which is private but to a certain extent also effective in public space, or the authority of the tribune (tribunicia potestas) should take precedence.

227 BC In BC the province of Sicilia was headed by a praetor for the first time, and Flaminius received this office. He was the first Roman governor of Sicily and administered the island so satisfactorily that he was honored in 196 BC. A considerable amount of Sicilian grain was delivered to his son of the same name who, as a curulic aedile, had this consignment of food distributed cheaply to the people.

First consulate

For the first time Flaminius was 223 BC. Was elected consul and in this office had the preponderance over his colleague Publius Furius Philus . Both consuls were to continue the fight against the northern Italian Celts, which was going into the third year of the war, and thereby concentrate on the fight against the Insubres . Although the campaign was within the framework of previous Roman foreign policy and was quite successful, Flaminius was portrayed by the historiography, which was hostile to him, as an opponent of the Senate, a despiser of religious duties and an incompetent general. Livy's report on this is lost, but it can be partially reconstructed through references in his surviving books and later excerpts. Accordingly, the election of the top state officials was declared invalid due to unfavorable omens and the consuls were sent a letter from the Senate calling them back to Rome. However, Flaminius read this document only after a victorious battle and then used his success as an opportunity to claim that this invalidated the religious objections. Then he continued the war.

Polybius 'report provides more detailed information on the course of Flaminius' campaign. The Greek historian is primarily interested in the military details and therefore does not tell anything about the political and religious background mentioned by Livy. Its representation is based on the historical work of Fabius Pictor, who as a subordinate officer in 225 BC. Had participated in the Celtic War. According to Polybios, Flaminius and his colleague Furius crossed the border to the Insubrian Empire near the confluence of the Adda and Po rivers, but could not hold their own for long and withdrew into the territory of the allied Cenomaniac after an armistice had been agreed . After this Celtic people had given auxiliary troops to the Romans, the consuls again invaded the territory of the Insubrians and devastated their lands. The chiefs of the Insubrians now gathered all available armed forces and challenged the Romans to battle with their superior strength. They did not trust the Cenomaniac and therefore sent their allies away. Then they prepared for the inevitable battle, with an impassable river behind them.

Polybios alleges that Flaminius positioned his troops badly for the battle, because the Romans were positioned far too close to the river and thus could not carry out their maneuver of a slow tactical retreat. The military tribunes, on the other hand, had taught the soldiers a new tactic to combat the Celts. This consisted of the fact that initially the front rows of the Romans received the javelins of the soldiers ( triarii ) positioned behind them as an additional weapon . They then approached their enemies under the protection of the lance hail, thus reducing the effectiveness of the Celtic slashing swords and for their part stabbing the enemy with their own swords. Eventually the Romans won a decisive victory and took great booty. According to the unlikely statements of Polybius, the consul had proven to be incapable, whereupon the military tribunes subordinate to him, contrary to his intention, determined the battle and saved the situation with their clever arrangements.

The Senate allegedly wanted to hold Flaminius accountable after his return to Rome for his insubordinate behavior and did not allow him to hold a triumph over the Insubres, which he nevertheless celebrated with the encouragement of the people.

Further career up to the second consulate

Flaminius was probably born in 221 BC. BC Magister equitum of the dictator Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus. The two politically warring men had to resign immediately after their appointment because of sacred concerns, as allegedly the beeping of a mouse was heard when they were elected.

220 BC Flaminius practiced together with the consul from 225 BC. Chr., Lucius Aemilius Papus , the influential function of a censor. However, little is known about this very important official activity of Flaminius due to the extremely inadequate tradition. The censors developed brisk construction activity through the award of public contracts. Flaminius had two important structures that bear his name built: First, the Circus Flaminius on the Field of Mars in Rome and, second, the Via Flaminia, which connects Rome with Ariminum . By building this road, Flaminius opened a route to the Roman troops to northern Italy. He was also able to influence the composition of the political elite by keeping the list of senators, perhaps ordered a reform of the constitution of the Centuries and in any case limited the registration of the freedmen to the four urban electoral districts. In addition, he and his colleague initiated the law of a Metilius on smoothing the toga by the walkers.

All that is known of Flaminius' further work in the next two years is that he died in 218 BC. Chr., The first year of the war against Hannibal, as the only senator to stand for the lex Claudia de nave senatorum requested by the tribune Quintus Claudius . Under this law, senators were not allowed to own ships of such a size that they could engage in commercial sea trade. With the support of lex Claudia , according to tradition, Flaminius continued to be enemies with the political ruling class, but made it even more popular with the people, so that he again, this time in 217 BC. BC, the consulate could take up.

Second consulate and death

End of 218 BC Hannibal, who was allied with the northern Italian Celts, had already celebrated two important victories over the Romans in the battles of the Ticinus and the Trebia . The Romans therefore organized extensive armaments and sent armies to Sardinia and Sicily to secure their outposts. Contrary to later tradition, Flaminius was evidently regarded as a capable general, whose re-election as consul was probably not least due to his successes and experiences in the previous Celtic War.

On the assumption of office and the actions of Flaminius and his co-consul Gnaeus Servilius Geminus against Hannibal, Polybius reports mainly from the military perspective, while Livy more from the sacral-political perspective. Polybios relates that both consuls jointly carried out levies for their legions and brought together federal contingents, whereby they received 1000 Peltasts and 500 Cretans from King Hieron II of Syracuse, among others . At the beginning of spring Flaminius set out with his troops, marched through Etruria and took up his position near Arretium (today Arezzo ). Servilius stationed his army in Ariminum. It was from these two locations that the consuls expected the Punic attack.

According to Livius, Flaminius feared that, due to his poor relationship with many nobles, when he took up his consulate in Rome he would be detained in the capital for all sorts of sham reasons, such as invented unfavorable prodigies, since the Senate had already wanted to deny him his first consulate. Therefore, before his term of office, which began on the Ides of March, he had secretly left for Ariminum, where he had ordered the troops assigned to him, in order to be able to take over his office undisturbed there. The senators would have been very angry because of this and accused Flaminius of neglecting the sacred rites associated with taking up the consulate and thus despising the gods. But Flaminius had insisted on his plan despite an embassy calling on him to repent. Now several ominous omens are said to have occurred to him, first on the day he took office, when the already wounded sacrificial calf tore itself away and splattered many people with the victim with blood. From Ariminum Flaminius then moved on with his army to Arretium. Servilius, on the other hand, took up his consulate regularly in Rome and directed religious measures to reconcile the gods in order to atone for the iniquity of Flaminius.

The consuls' task was to protect Italy proper from an incursion by Hannibal. From Ariminum, Servilius blocked his opponent's easy access to the north of the Apennines , while Flaminius covered access to Etruria from Arretium. The consuls were also so close that one could unite with the other in just a few days if necessary. However, the great Punic general took a path that was surprising for the Romans. On a route that is not exactly known, he probably marched from Bononia (today Bologna ) over the Apennines and through a marshland of the Arno to Faesulae (today Fiesole ). Therefore he was now closer to Flaminius from the two consuls.

Hannibal found out about the character and party status of Flaminius and set up his further course of action accordingly. In this context, Polybios describes the consul very negatively, whereby his assessment of Flaminius is based on that of his political opponents. According to this, the Punic general had learned that Flaminius was a talented demagogue with too much self-confidence, but not a capable leader of serious military undertakings. In any case, Hannibal now chose the tactic of looting and scorching the fertile landscape of Etruria, not far from Flaminius and his army, in order to incite the consul to a careless pursuit. In fact, Flaminius did not want to watch this devastation for long and decided, allegedly against the advice of his officers, not to wait for a union with the army of Servilius, but to go straight out with his troops and put the enemy into battle.

The behavior of Flaminius described in this way appears in the tradition completely contrary to that of Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus, who after Flaminius' death as dictator had to lead the fight against the Carthaginians and was in the same situation, namely the devastation of Hannibal, not carried away to a thoughtless battle. Livy also emphasizes the opposition between Fabius Maximus Verrucosus and Flaminius, which has been firmly anchored in tradition since Fabius Pictor, with regard to their attitude towards the state religion; Polybios, however, ignored this aspect. While the dictator faithfully followed ancient religious customs, Flaminius is said not to have bothered about them at all. This is also clear in two other unfavorable prodigies related by Livius, which Flaminius ignored. When he swung himself on his horse as he marched from Arretium, the animal collapsed under him. Then he ordered a standard to be excavated because it could not be pulled out of the earth. Not frightened by these warning omens, which foreshadowed his failure, he set out to fight Hannibal.

In the pursuit of Hannibal, Flaminius was ambushed, apparently mainly because he failed to provide the necessary information about the movements of his opponent. Early in the morning of June 24, 217 BC He moved with his troops in an elongated column along the northern shore of Lake Trasimeno , as the mountains that reached close to the water did not leave much room for marching. Visibility was also very limited due to thick fog. But Hannibal had secretly occupied the hills dominating the riverside path by his troops, waited until all the Roman soldiers had taken this route and then had them attacked along the entire length. The surprised Romans could not form a battle order and were mostly wiped out; only 6,000 men at the top managed to break through the enemy lines, but were later captured. In the description of this armed conflict, remnants of an older, more positive image of Flaminius can still be seen, for example when it is mentioned that the consul kept his composure, tried to re-establish the battle lines and bravely cheered his soldiers on to battle. According to Livy, Flaminius was killed by the lance of an Insubrian rider named Ducarius, who allegedly wanted to take revenge for the tribesmen who had fallen in the consul's earlier Celtic War. Hannibal intended to have the consul's body buried in an honorable manner, but looked for it in vain.

evaluation

Joseph-Noël Sylvestre's depiction of the death of Flaminius on the battlefield (1882)

The catastrophic defeat of Flaminius against the Carthaginians greatly distorted his picture in the tradition. In fact, in the period before the Second Punic War, he was not only militarily and politically successful, he could obviously rely on broad support not only from the people but also from parts of the Senate aristocracy - otherwise, his steep career would be, which would bring him to the highest Offices such as censorship and a second consulate could not be explained. It was only the failure of his offensive approach against Hannibal that led to him being conveniently labeled a scapegoat. The motivation for this lay not only in the hatred of the patrician nobility for Flaminius, but also in their general initial failure to effectively fight Hannibal, which shook confidence in their leadership qualities. By blaming Flaminius for the development of the war, which threatened the very existence of Rome, and by justifying his defeat, in addition to character weaknesses, in particular with his alleged contempt for the gods, the senators were able to shift the responsibility onto him. All of the main negative traits in Flaminius' view of history probably go back to Fabius Pictor. Since the Senate dominated historical tradition for centuries, this view was also preserved for posterity.

literature

• Burkhard Meißner : Gaius Flaminius - or: how an outsider became a scapegoat. In: Karl-Joachim Hölkeskamp , Elke Stein-Hölkeskamp (ed.): From Romulus to Augustus. Great figures of the Roman Republic. Beck, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-406-46697-4 , pp. 92-105.
• Friedrich Münzer : Flaminius 2). In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume VI, 2, Stuttgart 1909, Col. 2496-2502.

Web links

• Literature by and about Gaius Flaminius in the catalog of the German National Library

Remarks

1. ^ Friedrich Münzer : Flaminius 2). In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume VI, 2, Stuttgart 1909, Col. 2496.
2. ↑ Dating from Polybios (2, 21, 7), while Cicero's ( Cato maior de senectute 11) approach to 228 BC BC is probably incorrect.
3. ↑ Polybios 2, 21, 7-8; Cicero, De inventione 2, 52; Brutus 57; Cato maior de senectute 11; Livy 21:63, 2; on this Klaus Bringmann : History of the Roman Republic. Munich 2002, p. 102 f .; Burkhard Meißner: Gaius Flaminius - or: how an outsider became a scapegoat. In: Karl-Joachim Hölkeskamp, ​​Elke Stein-Hölkeskamp (ed.): From Romulus to Augustus. Munich 2000, pp. 92-105, here: pp. 94 f.
4. ↑ Cicero, De inventione 2, 52; Valerius Maximus 5, 4, 5; Dionysius of Halicarnassus 2, 26, 5; Burkhard Meißner: Gaius Flaminius - or: how an outsider became a scapegoat. In: Karl-Joachim Hölkeskamp, ​​Elke Stein-Hölkeskamp (ed.): From Romulus to Augustus. 2000, pp. 92-105, here p. 95.
5. ↑ Solinus 5: 1; Livy, periochae 20 and 33, 42, 8; T. Robert S. Broughton : The Magistrates Of The Roman Republic. Volume 1: 509 BC - 100 BC (= Philological Monographs. Vol. 15, Part 1, ZDB -ID 418575-4 ). American Philological Association, New York NY 1951, p. 229, (Unchanged reprint 1968).
6. ↑ Fasti Capitolini ; among others
7. ↑ Livius 21:63; 22, 3 and ö .; Plutarch , Marcellus 4, 2-5; Florus 1, 20, 4; Orosius 4, 13, 14; among others
8. ↑ Polybios 2, 32.
9. ↑ Polybios 2:33 ; Burkhard Meißner: Gaius Flaminius - or: how an outsider became a scapegoat. In: Karl-Joachim Hölkeskamp, ​​Elke Stein-Hölkeskamp (ed.): From Romulus to Augustus. 2000, pp. 92-105, here p. 98.
10. ↑ Triumphal Acts; Plutarch, Marcellus 4; among others
11. ↑ Valerius Maximus 1: 5, 5; see. Pliny , Naturalis historia 8, 223; Plutarch, Marcellus 5, 5.
12. ^ Livius, periochae 20; 23, 22, 3; 23, 23, 3ff .; 24, 11, 7; Pliny, Naturalis historia 35, 197.
13. ^ Livius periochae 20; among others
14. ↑ This Metilius may have been associated with the tribune of 217 BC. BC, Marcus Metilius , identical.
15. ↑ Pliny, Naturalis historia 35, 197.
16. ^ Livius 21, 63, 3f.
17. ↑ Polybios 3:75.
18. ↑ Polybios 3, 75, 5-8 and 3, 77, 1f.
19. ^ Livy 21, 63, 1-15 and 22, 1, 5-20.
20. ^ Serge Lancel: Hannibal. A biography. Artemis & Winkler, Düsseldorf et al. 1998, ISBN 3-538-07068-7 , p. 155; Friedrich Münzer: Servilius 61). In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume II A, 2, Stuttgart 1923, column 1794.
21. ^ Serge Lancel: Hannibal. A biography. Düsseldorf et al. 1998, p. 156 f.
22. ↑ Polybios 3, 80, 3ff .; see. Livy 22, 3, 3ff.
23. ↑ Polybios 3, 82, 1ff .; Livy 22, 3, 6ff .; Appian , Hannibalica 9; among others
24. ^ Friedrich Münzer: Flaminius 2). In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume VI, 2, Stuttgart 1909, Col. 2500 f.
25. ↑ Livy 22: 3, 11-14; see. Plutarch, Fabius 3, 1; Cicero, De divinatione 1, 77f. (after Lucius Coelius Antipater ).
26. Jump up ↑ Ovid , Fasti 6, 767f.
27. ↑ Polybios 3, 82-84; Livy 22: 3-7; among others; on this Serge Lancel: Hannibal. A biography. Düsseldorf et al. 1998, ISBN 3-538-07068-7 , pp. 158-162.
28. ↑ Livy 22: 7, 5; Valerius Maximus 1, 6, 6; Plutarch, Fabius 3, 3f.
29. ↑ Burkhard Meißner: Gaius Flaminius - or: how an outsider became a scapegoat. In: Karl-Joachim Hölkeskamp, ​​Elke Stein-Hölkeskamp (ed.): From Romulus to Augustus. Munich 2000, pp. 92-105, here: pp. 92f .; 98; 103f.