Gaius Helvidius Priscus

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Gaius Helvidius Priscus († around 75) was a stoic philosopher and politician who held high offices from the reign of the Roman emperor Claudius to that of Vespasian .

Life

Gaius Helvidius Priscus was the son of a Primipilaris from the city ​​of Cluviae in Samnium (central Italy) . One of the early offices of the cursus honorum he took was his bursary , which he held under Emperor Claudius in the province of Achaea in southern Greece . As a legionary legate in Syria, he was given the task of intervening in the turmoil in Armenia in 51 . Under Emperor Nero he was 56 people's tribune and tried in this function to take action against hardships that occurred at auctions.

Helvidius took Priscus Fannia , the daughter of Publius Clodius Thrasea Paetus, to his second wife . Like him, he was respected for his passionate and courageous Republicanism . His declared sympathy for Brutus and Cassius as well as his involvement in the court proceedings of his father-in-law led to his exile in Apollonia in 66. Fannia accompanied him into exile. He stayed in Macedonia until Nero's death.

After having arranged for Helvidius to return in 68, Galba immediately indicted Eprius Marcellus , the accuser of his father-in-law Thrasea Paetus, but dropped the lawsuit when it became clear that a conviction of Marcellus would have affected a number of senators . He also took care of Galba's funeral. As elected praetor , he dared to oppose Vitellius in the Senate, and when he was later in office in 1970, he insisted, in opposition to Vespasian, that the administration of finances should remain at the discretion of the Senate. He proposed that the Capitol , which had been destroyed by the conflagration in the civil war between Vitellius and Vespasian, be restored at public expense.

Finally, Gaius Helvidius Priscus, who was considered an important and principled speaker, was banished a second time for his offensive behavior towards Vespasian and a short time later, in 75, was executed on the orders of the emperor. His life was written down by Herennius Senecio in the form of an eulogy on behalf of his widow Fannia, who had also followed him into his second exile . This led to the death of the author at the instigation of Emperor Domitian at the end of 93 .

The same fate befell his son of the same name, who allegedly allowed himself to mock Domitian in a play in 93.

literature

Overview representations

  • Werner Eck : Helvidius. In: The New Pauly (DNP). Volume 5, Metzler, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-476-01475-4 , column 339 f.
  • Michèle Ducos: Helvidius Priscus (C.). In: Richard Goulet (ed.): Dictionnaire des philosophes antiques . Volume 3, CNRS Éditions, Paris 2000, ISBN 2-271-05748-5 , pp. 547-548

Investigations

  • Jürgen Malitz : Helvidius Priscus and Vespasian. On the history of the "stoic" Senate opposition. In: Hermes 113, 1985, pp. 231–246 ( online ; PDF; 784 kB)
  • Wolfgang-Rainer Mann: "You're Playing You Now": Helvidius Priscus as a Stoic Hero. In: Gareth D. Williams, Katharina Volk (ed.): Roman Reflections. Studies in Latin Philosophy. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2016, ISBN 978-0-19-999976-7 , pp. 213-237
  • Jean Melmoux: C. Helvidius Priscus, disciple et héritier de Thrasea. In: La Parola del Passato 30, 1975, pp. 23-40
  • David Wardle: Vespasian, Helvidius Priscus and the restoration of the Capitol . In: Historia 45, 1996, pp. 208-222

Remarks

  1. ^ Tacitus , Historien 4, 5.
  2. ↑ Scholion to Juvenal , Saturae 5, 36; among others
  3. ↑ Tacitus, Annals 12, 49, 2.
  4. ^ Tacitus, Annalen 13, 28, 3.
  5. ↑ Pliny the Younger , Epistulae 9, 13, 3.
  6. ↑ Tacitus, Annalen 16, 35, 1; Pliny the Younger, Epistulae 7, 19, 4.
  7. ^ Tacitus, Historien 4, 6, 1.
  8. ↑ Plutarch , Galba 28.
  9. ^ Tacitus, Historien 2, 91.
  10. ↑ Pliny the Younger, Epistulae 7, 19, 4; Suetonius , Vespasian 15. See Kai Brodersen , Bernhard Zimmermann (Ed.): Personen der Antike , Stuttgart / Weimar 2004, p. 93.
  11. ↑ Pliny the Younger, Epistulae 7, 19, 5; Tacitus, Agricola 2, 1.
  12. ↑ Pliny the Younger, Epistulae 3, 11, 3 and 7, 19, 5f .; Tacitus, Agricola 45, 1.
  13. ↑ Kai Brodersen, Bernhard Zimmermann (ed.): Personen der Antike , Stuttgart / Weimar 2004, p. 93.
personal data
SURNAME Helvidius Priscus, Gaius
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Priscus, Gaius Helvidius
BRIEF DESCRIPTION stoic philosopher and politician at the time of the emperors Nero and Vespasian
DATE OF BIRTH 1st century BC BC or 1st century
DATE OF DEATH 71 or 74