Lex Manilia
The Lex Manilia was a law that was passed in 66 BC at the request of the tribune of the people Gaius Manilius . . BC was adopted by the National Assembly. It entrusted Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus with an imperium extraordinarium (extraordinary supreme command) in the war against Mithridates VI. of Pontus and Tigranes II of Armenia . For Manilius’s proposal, Marcus Tullius Cicero spoke with his speech Pro lege Manilia (also: De imperio Cn. Pompei ).
The 3rd Mithridatic War , which it was about, had already occurred in 74 BC. And had so far been led very successfully by Lucius Licinius Lucullus . However, Lucullus had been recalled by the Senate the previous year (67 BC) after a mutiny by his soldiers, which was followed by severe military setbacks. Manilius therefore requested the transfer of the supreme command to Pompey, who had just successfully ended the war against the pirates in less than three months. This success secured him supremacy in Rome and made him the first choice as a general. In addition, he was in Cilicia after the pirate war ended and was able to quickly intervene in the war in Asia.
The Lex Manilia came not unanimous approval in the Senate. The great speaker Quintus Hortensius Hortalus , among others, spoke against the motion with the argument: "If you have to transfer everything to one person, Pompey is most worthy, but you shouldn't transfer everything to you". The Senate rejected laws like this because the granting of extraordinary empires to "great individuals" brought a concentration of power among the generals and undermined traditional practices. Because normally a man was elected to office and then received the related empire for the duration of his tenure; Pompey, on the other hand, seemed to want to fill the gaps between his consulates with an uninterrupted chain of extraordinary empires - the order against the pirates had also been one ( Lex Gabinia ).
Approval of this law can therefore be seen as a symptom of the crisis in the Roman Republic. The Senate feared a seizure of power by Pompey, as Caesar later did. Plutarch, for example, describes the senators' constant fear that Pompey would take Rome with his army and, like Sulla, establish a dictatorship.
literature
- Tenney Frank : The Background of the Lex Manilia. The University of Chicago Press Journals 1914, pp. 191–193 (English)
Web links
- Klaus M. Girardet : Imperium and provinciae of Pompeius since 67 BC Chr. Cahiers du Center Gustave Glotz 1992, pp. 177-188. Persée , accessed August 18, 2019
Individual evidence
- ↑ Mithridates VI. Eupator, Rome's most dangerous enemy in the east. In: Gunther Ernst (Ed.): M. Tullius Cicero: De imperio Cn. Pompei. Cornelsen Verlag 1996, pp. 14-15
- ↑ Marcus Tullius Cicero : De imperio Gnaei Pompei sive de lege Manilia [52], translation after Christian Nathanael by Osiander , held 66 BC. In the popular assembly
- ↑ Plutarch : Vitae parallelae, Pompeius. 30th