Lucius Fabius Cilo

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Lucius Fabius Cilo Septiminus Catinius Acilianus Lepidus Fulcinianus was a Roman senator of the late 2nd and early 3rd centuries. He took on important administrative tasks and was popular with the urban Roman population.

career

Cilo probably came from the Hispania Baetica province . Between 180 and 184 he was a legate of the legio XVI Flavia company and military prefect (approx. 187–189). Around 185 he became proconsul of Gallia Narbonensis , then legate of Galatia , around 189 to 192. After the murder of the emperor Commodus (December 31, 192) his successor commissioned Pertinax Cilo with the burial in Hadrian's mausoleum.

In 193, Cilo became a suffect consul . During the turmoil of the second year of the four emperors in 193, he sided with Septimius Severus . On behalf of this emperor, whom he henceforth always served loyally, he operated with vexillations in Thrace in 193 , was for a short time proconsul of Bithynia et Pontus (193/4) and, as comes Augusti, secured Severus' campaign in the Orient against the counter-emperor Pescennius in 194 Niger . In 195/6 Cilo became a legate of Moesia superior , with Caracalla , the older of the emperor's two sons, being entrusted to his care. In the second half of 196 he commanded the vexillations in Italy that took Severus to Rome. After his Upper Pannonian governorship from 197 to 201/2, Cilo became city ​​prefect , maybe in 202, but at the latest in 203. While still in his city prefecture, he became consul again in 204. After the assassination of the Praetorian prefect Gaius Fulvius Plautianus in 205 Cilo saved the life of the future emperor Macrinus . In any case, the end of his city prefecture fell in the time after the death of Septimius Severus, who died in February 211; It is very likely that the new Emperor Caracalla removed him from this office in the second half of December 211. Cilo retired into private life and from then on no longer held any offices. The year of his death is unknown.

Cilo was rich as amicus Augustorum and owned a palace on the Aventine (near the Baths of Caracalla near today's Ospizio di S. Margherita), which Septimius Severus had given him. Apparently he always enjoyed the full confidence of this ruler.

Assassination attempt

Cilo tried in vain to mediate in the deadly conflict between Caracalla and his younger brother Geta , with which he incurred the disfavor of Caracalla. After Caracalla had succeeded in assassinating Geta, he had numerous actual or supposed followers of Geta killed in late 211 and early 212. Cilo was also among those who were scheduled to be murdered at the time. In the spring of 212 Caracalla sent a tribune with a troop of soldiers - apparently Praetorians - to arrest him. Cilo was taken to the Imperial Palace and ill-treated while his home was being ransacked. However, this led to an uproar among the urban population, with whom Cilo was popular, and the soldiers ( urbaniciani ) stationed in Rome who intervened on behalf of their former superior and wanted to free him. This created a threatening situation for Caracalla. The emperor rushed out of the palace and acted as Cilo's savior, giving the impression that the Praetorians had acted on their own initiative. So Cilo got away with his life. Caracalla had the tribune he had entrusted with the action and the Praetorians involved executed, allegedly as a punishment for their arbitrariness, in reality because they had failed to carry out the order. The process shows that the emperor was unable to get his way through against the resistance of the population and the soldiers, although the large-scale terrorism against the opposition was already in full swing at that time.

See also

literature

personal data
SURNAME Fabius Cilo, Lucius
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Fabius Cilo Septiminus Catinius Acilianus Lepidus Fulcinianus, Lucius
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Roman suffect consul 193 and consul 204
DATE OF BIRTH before 180
DATE OF DEATH after 212