Marcus Licinius Crassus (Consul 30 BC)

Marcus Licinius Crassus (* around 60 BC) was a Roman politician of the late Republic and the Augustan period.

Life

Crassus was a son of Marcus Licinius Crassus , the older son of the triumvir of the same name , and Caecilia Metella , who is known for her tomb on the Via Appia . In the civil wars after the death of Gaius Julius Caesar , he initially fought on the side of Sextus Pompeius . When this 39 BC BC at Misenum an armistice with Octavian (later Augustus ) and Mark Antony concluded, Crassus could return to Rome. From 36 BC He was a follower of Antony and governor of the province of Creta et Cyrene .

When the conflict between Octavian and Antonius broke out, Crassus defected to Octavian shortly before the Battle of Actium and was given the consulate of the year 30 BC. Chr. (Together with Octavian himself) rewarded. In the following two years, as proconsul of Macedonia , he commanded strong troops in the Balkans and fought successfully against various peoples. He succeeded in 29 BC. To kill the king of the Bastarner with his own hands, whereby he received the claim to the Spolia opima (which only three earlier Roman generals had managed).

Against Octavian's will, Crassus continued the war against the Thracians and Geten when he had already been awarded a triumph . He celebrated this on July 4th, 27 BC. Augustus (as Octavian was called since the beginning of the year) rejected his claim to consecrate the armor taken from the Bastarner king as spolia opima : Crassus did not fight as an autonomous general (“under his own auspices ”), but under the empire Octavians, to whom all honors are due. In ancient historical research it is controversial whether Augustus' claim agrees with the earlier practice of spolia opima or was invented by him to secure the military monopoly of the princeps .

literature

• Jörg Fündling : Licinius [I 13]. In: The New Pauly (DNP). Volume 7, Metzler, Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 3-476-01477-0 , column 163.
• Peter Kehne : Augustus and the spolia opima . In: Theodora Hantos , Gustav Adolf Lehmann (Hrsg.): Ancient historical colloquium on the occasion of the 70th birthday of Jochen Bleicken . Steiner, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-515-07176-8 , pp. 187-211 .
• Harriet I. Flower: The tradition of the spolia opima. M. Claudius Marcellus and Augustus . In: Classical Antiquity . tape 19 , no. 1 , 2000, ISSN  0278-6656 , p. 34-64 , doi : 10.2307 / 25011111 .