Quintus Didius

Quintus Didius was a Roman governor of Syria (31-29 BC).

Life

Apparently Octavian, who later became Emperor Augustus , sent Quintus Didius as governor to Syria immediately after his victory over Mark Antony in the Battle of Actium (end of 31 BC). There Didius caused the Arabs living around Petra , subjects of the Nabatean king Malchos , to burn the fleet of Cleopatra VII , which had been drawn from the Nile through a silted up canal to Cleopatris (formerly called Arsinoe) on the Gulf of Suez . With these ships the Egyptian queen allegedly had before approaching Octavian want to flee from Egypt . With the help of the Jewish King Herod the Great , who had converted from Antony to Octavian, Didius blocked the path of a gladiator group who wanted to move from Cyclicus in northwestern Asia Minor to Egypt to support Antony, forced them to surrender and temporarily showed them Daphne, the suburb of Antioch , as a settlement too.

literature

• Michael Grant : Cleopatra . 1974 (German 1977), p. 301f. (1998 edition by Bastei-Lübbe).
• Friedrich Münzer : Didius 4 . In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume V, 1, Stuttgart 1903, Col. 407.
• Christoph Schäfer : Cleopatra . Darmstadt 2006. p. 231f.

Remarks

1. ^ Cassius Dio 51, 7, 1 in conjunction with Plutarch , Antonius 69, 3ff.
2. ↑ Cassius Dio 51, 7, 2ff .; Josephus , Jüdische Antiquities 15, 195; Jewish War 1, 392; Schäfer (see lit.), p. 232, who believes that larger contingents of troops from Asia Minor must have joined the gladiators, since these Antonius-loyal groups defeated the Galatian king Amyntas in Cilicia and not by the legions of Didius alone, but first could be overwhelmed with the help of Herod.