Lusius Quietus

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Lusius (in some sources, probably accidentally, Lucius ; † 118 ) Quietus was a Roman general under Trajan and governor of Judea in 117 .

Quietus was of North African descent, supposedly from a royal family. Already under Domitian he led a troop of horsemen of his tribe in Roman service, but was dismissed because of an offense, although he was knighted in the Roman rank. In the Dacian wars of Trajan , however, he succeeded in winning the trust of this emperor through his military skills. In the Parthian War he was one of Trajan's most important generals. When the Jewish inhabitants of Mesopotamia rose against the Roman occupation in 116/117 , Trajan tasked Quietus with the suppression of the diaspora uprising .

The merciless efficiency with which he carried out this mission recommended Quietus, who was admitted to the Senate and held a suffect consulate in 116 or 117 , for the post of governor of Judea. The small but troubled province required a strong Roman military presence. In addition to the Legio X Fretensis , Trajan had also moved the Legio III Cyrenaica to Judea in his last years . The governor was therefore a Legatus Augusti pro praetore with the rank of a previous consul .

In Judea, too, the Quietus regime seems to have been characterized by ruthless brutality, at least that is what Talmudic sources suggest. However , it cannot be proven that Quietus was the archetype of Holofernes in the Book of Judith , as Heinrich Graetz suspects after Gustav Volkmar. There seems to have been an uprising in Judea that went down in tradition as the “War of Quietus” ( polemos schel kitos ). More precise news is missing. In any case, the day of his recall on Adar 12 (February 118 ?) Entered the Jewish festival calendar as a half- holiday ("Trajanstag", Jom Tirjanus ).

Trajan's successor Hadrian dismissed Quietus shortly after he came to power and left him in 118, together with three other consulars who had been Trajan's close confidants, Aulus Cornelius Palma Frontonianus , Lucius Publilius Celsus and Avidius Nigrinus, from his former guardian and close confidante, the Praetorian Prefect Publius Acilius Attianus , murdered for treason.

literature

  • Anthony R. Birley : Hadrian: the restless emperor. Routledge, London 1997, pp. 87 f.
  • Willem den Boer : Lusius Quietus, to Ethiopian. In: Mnemosyne. 4th series, Volume 3, 1950, pp. 263-267.
  • Silvia Bussi: Lusio Quieto. Un "maghrebino" ai vertici dell'Impero. In: Africa Romana. Volume 16, Number 2, 2006, pp. 721-728.
  • Werner Eck : Lusius [II 2]. In: The New Pauly (DNP). Volume 7, Metzler, Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 3-476-01477-0 .
  • Giulio Firpo: La "guerra di Quieto" e l'ultima fase della rivolta Giudaica del 115–117 d. C. In: Rivista storica dell'Antichità. Volume 35, 2005, pp. 99-116.
  • Heinrich Graetz : History of the Jews. 3rd ed., Vol. IV. Pp. 116f, 407f.
  • Prosopographia Imperii Romani , 2nd ed., Volume 5, Fasc. 1, 1970, L 439.
  • AG Roos: Lusius Quietus again . In: Mnemosyne. 4th series, Volume 3, 1950, pp. 158-165.
  • Adolf Schlatter : The days of Trajan and Hadrian. Gütersloh 1897, p. 90.
  • Karl Strobel : Investigations into the Dacer wars of Trajan. Studies on the history of the middle and lower Danube region in the High Imperial Era. Habelt, Bonn 1984, pp. 68ff.
  • Emil Schürer : History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ. 3rd ed. Volume I, Hinrichs, Leipzig 1901, pp. 617, 666-670.
  • Quietus, Q. Lusius . In: William Smith (Ed.): Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology . tape 3 : Oarses-Zygia and Zygius . Little, Brown and Company, Boston 1870, p. 633 (English, Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cassius Dio Roman History 68,32,4 (excerpt from John Xiphilinos )
  2. ^ Rudolf Hanslik : Lusius (3). In: The Little Pauly (KlP). Volume 3, Stuttgart 1969, Col. 787 f. Werner Eck : Lusius [II 2]. In: The New Pauly (DNP). Volume 7, Metzler, Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 3-476-01477-0 .
  3. ^ Graetz: History of the Jews. Volume IV. 116 f. The apocryphal book of Judit is mentioned for the first time in the first letter of Clement , which is dated between 80 and 140.
  4. ↑ Seder Olam Rabba 30.
personal data
SURNAME Lusius Quietus
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lucius Quietus; Quietus, Lusius
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Roman general
DATE OF BIRTH 1st century
DATE OF DEATH 118