Publius Licinius Crassus Dives Mucianus

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Publius Licinius Crassus Dives Mucianus (* around 182 BC; † beginning of 130 BC ) was a lawyer and important politician of the Roman Republic . He was a very wealthy man and an able public speaker, had a great deal of legal knowledge, and was one of the political leaders of the Scipions' party . 132 BC He became Pontifex Maximus . As consul in 131 BC BC he received the supreme command in the fight against Aristonikos in Asia Minor , but was killed at the beginning of the following year after a lost battle.

Lineage and Early Career

Publius Licinius Crassus Dives Mucianus, whose birth name was Quintus Mucius Scaevola, was born as the son of the consul in 175 BC. BC, Publius Mucius Scaevola , and as the brother of the consul of the same name from 133 BC. The Roman plebeian family of the Mucier . Due to his adoption by an unknown son of the Pontifex Maximus Publius Licinius Crassus Dives, he became a member of the plebeian family of the Licinians and has since been known as Publius Licinius Crassus Dives Mucianus.

Mucianus took a Clodia for his wife. The couple's offspring included at least three children: a little-known son named Publius (?) Licinius Crassus Dives and two daughters named Licinia. The elder Licinia married Gaius Sulpicius Galba , the younger son of the consul from 144 BC. BC, Servius Sulpicius Galba , the younger Licinia became the wife of the popular tribune Gaius Sempronius Gracchus .

The first known office of Mucianus' cursus honorum is the bursar , which he held in 152 BC. BC (possibly not until the following year). Not until 147 BC He was accepted into the ranks of senators. Around 142 BC He achieved the curular aedility after he had been supported in the candidacy for this office by political companions, such as the consul of 144 BC. BC, Servius Sulpicius Galba, with whom he had already entered the family relationship mentioned above at this point in time. Perhaps because of violent domestic political battles with the opposing Scipion party, his further career was noticeably delayed. No later than 134 BC However, he was able to hold the praetur .

Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus officiated in 133 BC. As a tribune of the people and wanted to push through an agrarian reform to improve the social and economic situation against the patrician senate opposition. In this endeavor he was actively supported by Mucianus and his brother Publius Mucius Scaevola, who was then the consulate. Mucianus is said to have given Tiberius Gracchus all kinds of ideas about the reform plans. After the tribune, along with 200-300 followers, fell victim to his conservative opponents, led by the Pontifex Maximus Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica Serapio , Mucianus was defeated at the beginning of 132 BC. Chr. Tiberius Gracchus' successor in the field instruction commission. Its leaders also included Gaius Sempronius Gracchus, the younger brother, and Appius Claudius Pulcher , the murdered man's father-in-law. 132 BC The death of the political opponent Scipio Nasica followed, whose high priestly office Mucianus could now take over. This represented an important achievement for Mucianus.

Consulate and subsequent death

Soon afterwards, Mucianus was able to record another high point in his political career when he was born in 131 BC. Reached the consulate and became one of the first men in Rome. He received Lucius Valerius Flaccus as a colleague. The approximately in May 133 BC. BC deceased ruler Attalus III. of Pergamon had left his kingdom to the Roman people, while Aristonikos , the illegitimate son of King Attalus II , resisted because he himself wanted to succeed him as Pergamene king. A struggle for independence that he initiated therefore had more of the social revolutionary character of a war by the oppressed against the upper class of Asia Minor. The situation was initially uncontrollable for Rome, and now both consuls sought from 131 BC. Afterwards to march at the head of an army into the disputed area and solve the problem in the spirit of Rome. In his capacity as Pontifex Maximus, Mucianus forbade his colleague Valerius Flaccus, who was competing against him for military command, to leave Rome because of his priestly office of Flemish Martialis . The people's assembly lifted the threat of punishment, but the Flemish had to obey Mucianus' orders. Although a Pontifex Maximus also had to stay in his home country, Mucianus himself did not want to hear about this sacral restriction and finally obtained authorization to wage war by means of a popular resolution.

With significant troop contingents, Mucianus now went to the Asian theater of war, where the kings Nicomedes II of Bithynia, Pylaimenes of Paphlagonia, Ariarathes V of Cappadocia and Mithridates V of Pontus supported the Romans militarily. The consul, who - as confirmed by a preserved fragment from the Roman historian Sempronius Asellio - had a great deal of legal knowledge, stood out in the civil sector for his ability to give legal instructions in several Greek dialects.

As a Roman general, Mucianus attacked Aristonikos' main base at Leukai (near Smyrna ). Not only the mentioned kings, but also autonomous cities in Asia Minor such as Mylasa and Halicarnassus helped to overthrow the insurgent. The consul sent the order to Mylasa to send a large mast that was to be used to make a battering ram needed to storm Leukai. When this order was not carried out to the satisfaction of the consul, Mucianus had the person responsible in the allied city flogged.

At the end of his term of office, Mucianus wanted to establish himself in early 130 BC BC, but suffered a catastrophic defeat at Leukai in the course of a surprising enemy attack against Aristonikos. He fled north but was captured in the area between Myrina and Elaia . In order not to end up as a slave, he challenged one of the opposing mercenaries now in custody to stab him with a riding crop in the eye. His body was beheaded and his head sent to Aristonikos, and the rest of his body was buried in Smyrna. Only the new consul Marcus Perperna , who became Mucianus' military successor, was able to succeed in the summer of 130 BC Capture Aristonikos and thus largely victoriously end the war.

literature

Remarks

  1. ↑ Cicero , De oratore 1, 170 and 1, 240; Brutus 98; among others
  2. ↑ Cicero, De oratore 1, 239; Brutus 98 and 127.
  3. ↑ Plutarch , Tiberius Gracchus 21, 1; Gaius Gracchus 15, 2.
  4. ↑ See T. Robert S. Broughton : The Magistrates Of The Roman Republic. Volume 3: Supplement (= Philological Monographs. Vol. 15, Part 3). Scholars Press, Atlanta GA 1986, ISBN 0-89130-811-3 , p. 119.
  5. ↑ Valerius Maximus 2, 2, 1.
  6. ↑ Cicero, De oratore 1, 239f.
  7. ^ So Friedrich Münzer : Licinius 72). In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume XIII, 1, Stuttgart 1926, Sp. 335.
  8. ↑ Cicero, De re publica 1, 31; Plutarch, Tiberius Gracchus 9, 1.
  9. ↑ Plutarch, Tiberius Gracchus 21, 1; Landmarks: Attilio Degrassi : Inscriptiones Latinae Liberae Rei Publicae (ILLRP) 467-475.
  10. ↑ Cicero, In M. Antonium oratio Philippica 11, 18; Livy , periochae 59; among others
  11. ↑ Fasti Capitolini : P. Lici [ni] us P. f. P. n. Cr [assus mucianus] ; among others
  12. ^ Cicero, In M. Antonium oratio Philippica 11, 18.
  13. ↑ Strabo 14, p. 646; Eutropius 4, 20, 1; Orosius 5, 10, 1f.
  14. ^ Sempronius Asellio in Aulus Gellius , Noctes Atticae 1, 13, 10.
  15. ↑ Valerius Maximus 8, 7, 6; Quintilian , Institutio oratoria 11, 2, 50.
  16. ^ Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae 1, 13, 11ff.
  17. ^ Frontinus , Strategemata 4, 5, 16; Valerius Maximus 3, 2, 12; Florus 1, 35, 4f .; Orosius 5, 10, 3; among others
  18. ↑ Eutropius 4:20, 1.
personal data
SURNAME Licinius Crassus Dives Mucianus, Publius
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Crassus Dives Mucianus, Publius Licinius (permutation form)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Roman consul 131 BC Chr.
DATE OF BIRTH around 182 BC Chr.
DATE OF DEATH 130 BC Chr.