Quintus Minucius Thermus (Proprätor)

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Quintus Minucius Thermus (* around 105 BC; † after 35 BC) was a native of the 1st century BC. Living politician of the Roman Republic , who came from a plebeian branch of the Minucier family. He was friends with the well-known speaker Marcus Tullius Cicero and supported the outbreak of the civil war in early 49 BC. Chr. Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus against his opponent Gaius Iulius Caesar , but then did not step forward. In the power struggle after Caesar's murder he was probably 43 BC. Outlawed by the members of the Second Triumvirate , fled to Sextus Pompeius in Sicily and finally became reconciled in 35 BC. With the triumvirs.

Life

Quintus Minucius Thermus was already in 73 BC. Member of the Senate and was a member of the 16-member committee that mediated in a legal dispute between the Greek city of Oropos and Roman tax farmers. This emerges from a Senate Consultation for Oropos, which also cites the full name of Thermus.

62 BC Thermus was a tribune of the people . The same function was held that year by Marcus Porcius Cato Uticensis , who was supported by Thermus in a dispute he fought with another tribune of the year, Quintus Caecilius Metellus Nepos . Nepos proposed that Pompey should be summoned to Italy with troops to protect Rome from the danger posed by the Catilinaries . When Nepos, supported by Caesar, tried to frighten the voting meeting with armed men, Thermus accompanied Cato fearlessly with only a few people to the tribunal. As a result, Nepos could not read his application because Cato tore the document from his hand and Thermus covered his mouth. Initially driven out by the gunmen, Cato was finally able to assert himself; Nepos had to flee.

At 58 or 53 BC Thermus was praetor . Then he was the province of Asia as propaetor from mid-51 to mid-50 BC. BC, while Cicero took over the administration of Cilicia at the same time . End of July 51 BC A visit by Cicero to Thermus in Ephesus is documented. The speaker also had a lively correspondence with Thermus, in which he advocated the affairs of his friend Titus Pomponius Atticus and his people in the provinces and wrote him various letters of recommendation, for example for his legate Marcus Annaeus . Thermus, according to Cicero, exercised the administration and jurisdiction of Asia mildly and righteously. The relationship between Thermus and his quaestor Lucius Antonius , a younger brother of the later triumvir Marcus Antonius, was tense . Cicero warned Thermus in May 50 BC. Before the Antonians' lust for vengeance and advised him not to hand over their provisional administration to his quaestor as usual, but to one of his legates when leaving his province.

After Thermus' return to Italy, shortly before mid-January 49 BC, BC (according to the pre-Julian calendar) the civil war between Caesar and Pompey. Thermus joined the latter and quickly occupied the city of Iguvium (today's Gubbio ) with five cohorts . However, due to the mood of the inhabitants, he withdrew from Iguvium very soon (late January 49 BC [pre-Julian]) when Gaius Scribonius Curio , who was fighting on Caesar's side, advanced on the city with three cohorts. Thermus then marched south to lead his army to the other Pompeians, but it broke up on the way. When describing the further development of the civil war, Thermus is no longer mentioned in the preserved sources.

The next known effectiveness of Thermus is only for February 43 BC. When he conferred with Lucius Aemilius Lepidus Paullus and Gaius Fannius on behalf of the Senate in Massilia with Sextus Pompeius in order to persuade him to provide military aid against Mark Antony in the Mutinensian War . Sextus persisted in a wait-and-see attitude, supposedly because of the mood of the veterans. End of 43 BC Thermus was most likely put on their proscription lists by the triumvirs Marcus Antonius, Octavian and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus as well as his two former emissaries Lepidus Paullus and Fannius and, like the latter, fled to Sextus Pompey in Sicily, because he is probably with that of the ancient writer Appian to be identified only with the cognomen designated Thermus , the 35 BC BC just as Fannius changed to the side of Antonius. This is how the old Praetorian had apparently finally come to terms with the new rulers. Nothing is known about its end.

literature

Remarks

  1. ^ Inscriptiones Graecae (IG) VII 413, line 14 ( online ).
  2. ↑ Plutarch , Cato minor 26-29; Cassius Dio 37, 43, 1-4; among others
  3. ↑ Cicero, Epistulae ad Atticum 5, 13, 2; 5, 20, 10; 5, 21, 14.
  4. ↑ Cicero, Epistulae ad familiares 13, 55 and 13, 57.
  5. ↑ Cicero, Epistulae ad Atticum 6, 1, 13; Epistulae ad familiares 2, 18, 1 and 13, 55, 2.
  6. ^ Cicero, Epistulae ad familiares 2, 18.
  7. ↑ Caesar, De bello civili 1, 12, 1f .; Cicero, Epistulae ad Atticum 7, 13a, 3 and 7, 23, 1; Florus 2, 13, 19; Lucan , Pharsalia 2, 463.
  8. ^ Cicero, Philippine Speeches 13:13.
  9. ^ Appian, Civil Wars 5, 139, 579.
  10. ↑ Friedrich Münzer : Minucius 67). In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume XV, 2, Stuttgart 1932, Col. 1073 f.
personal data
SURNAME Minucius Thermus, Quintus
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Thermus, Quintus Minucius
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Roman politician
DATE OF BIRTH around 105 BC Chr.
DATE OF DEATH after 35 BC Chr.