Gaius Sempronius Tuditanus (Consul 129 BC)

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Gaius Sempronius Tuditanus was a politician and historian of the Roman Republic . He was one of the consuls of 129 BC. Chr.

Life

Gaius Sempronius Tuditanus came from the Sempronians . His father of the same name was a senator and 146 BC. BC Member of the ten men commission for the reorganization of the political situation in Greece . The Roman speaker and politician Marcus Tullius Cicero mistaken Gaius Sempronius Tuditanus Senior and Junior several times and had to wonder about his error in May 45 BC. From his friend Titus Pomponius Atticus .

The younger Tuditanus is believed to be first in 146 BC. Attested as an officer of Lucius Mummius during his war in Greece. The first station of his course honorum was 145 BC. The clothing of the bursary . As a partisan of the Scipions, he could easily pass through the curular offices within the legally permitted periods. 132 BC He officiated as praetor .

Tuditanus reached the high point of his political career in 129 BC. When he reached the consulate together with Manius Aquillius . Entrusted with the province of Italy, he was to decide on the legitimacy of the allegations of expropriated Roman allies, who had complained about the annexation of some of their properties by the Gracchian agricultural distribution commission, by a resolution of the Senate. But Tuditanus preferred not to fulfill this task by moving to Illyria because of an allegedly impending war . In doing so, he also prevented further land grants from being granted.

The campaign against the tribe of the Iapoden in Illyria went for Tuditanus not initially desired. Supported by his military tribune Decimus Junius Brutus Callaicus , who was very experienced in armed conflicts , he managed to win a clear victory. Therefore he was allowed to hold a triumph over the tribe he had defeated. He had his war successes over the Iapods and also the Histrians recorded by an inscription (partly reproduced by the Roman author Pliny ) on a statue, as well as by a consecration to the river god Timavus in 1906 - perhaps identical to the statue - found in two fragments in 1906 Aquileia with a victory inscription written in Saturnians. At his request, the Roman poet Hostius also poetically honored his deeds in the Bellum Histricum .

The further living conditions of Tuditanus are unknown.

plant

Tuditanus also emerged as a writer, but only very few fragments of his works have survived. Cicero emphasized his elegant style. In the inner Roman power struggles Tuditanus stood on the side of the Optimates and wrote a correspondingly tendentious constitutional work (libri magistratuum) in at least 13 books for their political support . On the other hand, Marcus Junius Congus Gracchanus put together a similar, at least seven-volume work De potestatibus for the Gracchi party . These two writings were the earliest of their kind in Roman literature. The libri magistratuum dealt with intercalation , the establishment of the tribunate , the Nundinae (market and feast days of the old Roman calendar), etc.

Since some quotations without a title (about the indigenous population of Lazio , the Aborigines , about the discovery of books supposedly originating from the legendary Roman king Numa Pompilius , etc.) do not seem to fit into a work on constitutional law, some scholars ascribe another script to Tuditanus: A representation of Roman history, from its beginnings to the 2nd century BC. Chr. Was enough.

Presumably the Roman polymath Marcus Terentius Varro stated that Tuditanus used the historians Marcus Porcius Cato and Lucius Cassius Hemina as sources for his works , and that his presentation coincided with that of his contemporary Lucius Calpurnius Piso Frugi , however (because of the above Said) from that of Junius Gracchanus. Most of the surviving Tuditanus quotations from later authors ( Dionysius of Halicarnassus , Pliny, Macrobius ) were probably conveyed to them indirectly through works by Varro, while the two quotations in Aulus Gellius (7, 4, 1 and 13, 15, 4) refer to the historian Quintus Aelius Tubero or the Augur Messalla go back.

output

  • Hermann Peter : Historicorum Romanorum Reliquiae . (HRR) 1, pp. 143-147.

literature

Remarks

  1. ^ Statue base in Olympia : Inscriptions from Olympia , No. 323 ; Cicero , ad Atticum 13, 4, 1; 13, 6, 4; 13, 30, 2; 13, 32, 3.
  2. ↑ Cicero, ad Atticum 13, 33, 3.
  3. ↑ Cicero, ad Atticum 13, 4, 1.
  4. ↑ Cicero, ad Atticum 13, 32, 3.
  5. ↑ Cicero, ad Atticum 13, 30, 2; 13, 32, 3.
  6. ↑ Cicero, ad Quintum fratrem 3, 5, 1; de re publica 1, 14; de natura deorum 2, 14; Velleius 2, 4, 4; among others
  7. ^ Appian , Civil Wars 1:80 .
  8. ^ Livius , periochae 59; Appian, Illyrica 10.
  9. ↑ Triumphalakten: Inscrit 13, 1, p. 83.
  10. ↑ Pliny, Natural History 3, 129.
  11. ↑ Dessau 8885 = CIL²I 652 = CIL 5, 8270 .
  12. ↑ Cicero, Brutus 95.
  13. ↑ Macrobius , Saturnalia 1, 13, 21; Gellius 13, 15, 4.
  14. ↑ So z. B. Sempronius [I 22]. In: The New Pauly (DNP). Volume 11, Metzler, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-476-01481-9 , Sp. 396 .; on the other hand, F. Münzer (RE II A 1, Sp. 1442f.) believes that all of Tuditanus' quotations come from only one work on constitutional law.
  15. ↑ F. Münzer, RE II A 1, Sp. 1442f.
personal data
SURNAME Sempronius Tuditanus, Gaius
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Tuditanus, Gaius Sempronius
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Roman consul 129 BC Chr.
DATE OF BIRTH 2nd century BC Chr.
DATE OF DEATH 2nd century BC BC or 1st century BC Chr.