No More Learning

528).


9. LUCIUS MUNATIUS PLANCUS.

Lucius Munatius Plancus, whose name is found in several inscriptions and
on a rather great number of medals (see especially Orelli,
_Inscriptions_, N. 591), belonged to an illustrious plebeian family.
Intimate at first with Cato, he subsequently gained the entire affection
of Cæsar (Plutarch, _Cato of Utica_, 42. --Cicero, _Epist. Familiar. _, X.
24), and remained faithful to him to the last. After having served in
Gaul, he became, in 705, one of his most active lieutenants in Spain
(Cæsar, _De Bello Civili_, I. 40), and afterwards in Africa. (Cæsar, _De
Bello Afr. _, 4. ) Cæsar caused to be given to him, for the year 710, the
government of Transalpine Gaul, without the Narbonnese and Belgic Gaul
(Appian, _Civil Wars_, III. 46--Cicero, _Philipp. _, III. 15), and named
him, with P. Brutus, for the consulship in 712 (Velleius Paterculus, II.
63. --Dio Cassius, XLVI. 53); he was then in great favour with the
Dictator: Cicero made his approaches through him to obtain Cæsar’s
favour. (_Epist. Familiar. _, X. 3; XIII. 29. )

After the murder of Cæsar, Plancus, who no doubt, like Antony, feared
the vengeance of the party of the conspirators, proposed an amnesty, in
concert with him and Cicero (Plutarch, _Brutus_, 22), and hastened to go
into the province which had been assigned to him. In Gaul he founded the
colonies of Lugdunum and Raurica (Orelli, _Inscriptiones_, No. 590. --Dio
Cassius, XLVI. 50); subsequently, gained by Antony, he abandoned to his
vengeance, during the proscription, Plotius, his own brother. (Appian,
_Civil Wars_, IV. 12. --Valerias Maximus, VI. 8, § 5. ) In 712, Plancus
took, with Lepidus, on the 1st of January, the consulship which Cæsar
had destined for him. (Dio Cassius, XLVI. 53; LXVII. 16. ) In the war of
Perusia, he commanded the troops of Antony, who sent him, in 714, into
Asia. In 719 he still governed Syria for that triumvir, and he has been
accused of the death of Sextus Pompey. (Appian, _Civil Wars_, V. 144. )
He proceeded to Egypt with Antony, to the court of Cleopatra. (Velleius
Paterculus, II. 83. ) Foreseeing the ruin of Antony, of whom he has been
reproached with being the base flatterer, he did not wait for the defeat
of Actium to embrace the party of Octavius: he returned to Rome, and
attacked his former friend bitterly in the Senate. (Velleius Paterculus,
II. 83. ) Dio Cassius (L. 3) accuses him of having revealed Antony’s
will. From this time devoted to Octavius, he proposed, in 727, to confer
upon him the title of Augustus. (Suetonius, _Octavius_, 7. --Velleius
Paterculus, II. 91. ) In 732, he held the office of censor. (Dio Cassias,
LIV. 2. ) The inscriptions and medals show that he was also invested with
other dignities. The date of his death is unknown. Horace addressed to
him one of his odes. (Book I. , Ode 7. )


10. MARCUS LICINIUS CRASSUS.

Marcus Licinius Crassus Dives was the elder brother of young Crassus,
whose place he had taken as Cæsar’s lieutenant in Gaul. Little is known
of his life. Cicero, less intimate with him than with his younger
brother, has mentioned him but slightly. (_Epist. Familiar. _, 8. ) He
ranged himself on Cæsar’s side at the time of the civil war, and became,
in 705, governor of Citerior Gaul. (Appian, _Civil Wars_, II.
41. --Justin, XLII. 4. ) The time of his death is unknown.


11. CAIUS FABIUS.

It is not known what Caius Fabius had been before the campaign of Gaul.
When the civil war broke out, he remained faithful to Cæsar, who sent
him orders to proceed from Narbonnese Gaul to Spain. With his usual
rapidity, he moved by forced marches to Herda (_Herida_), near which
town Afranius was encamped. He distinguished himself in the whole of
this campaign, in which the army of Cæsar, which had joined him, was for
a moment in danger.

No further mention is made of C. Fabius. His name does not occur either
in the campaigns of Greece, Alexandria, or Africa, or in that of the
second Spanish war, or elsewhere.


12. L. ROSCIUS.

L. Roscius, who only played a secondary part in the war of Gaul, appears
to be the same as a personage to whom Cicero gives the name of _L.
Fabatus_, and who fell in the battle of Modena in 711. (_Epist.
Familiar. _, X. 33. ) He was prætor in 705, and Pompey, who knew the
friendship which Cæsar had for Roscius, deputed him to him at Ariminum
with proposals of peace. (Cæsar, _De Bello Civili_, I. 8, 10. --Dio
Cassius, XLI 5. ) It is believed that it is his name which, followed by
the surname Fabatus, figures on the Roman denarii which bear the image
of Juno Lanuvina. It is also believed to occur in a Latin inscription.


13. TITUS SEXTIUS.

Titus Sextius, whose history before his arrival in Gaul is not known,
became, in 710, governor of Numidia. (Dio Cassius, XLVIII. 21. )
According to Appian (_Civil Wars_, IV. 53), he took the side of
Octavius; according to Dio Cassius (XLVIII. 21), that of Antony. He made
war against Q. Cornificius, who sought to keep the ancient province of
Africa, which the Senate had given him. Sextius aspired to the same
government, and prepared to exercise it for Octavius, to whom Africa had
been assigned in the partition of the triumvirs. (Appian, _Civil Wars_,
IV. 53. ) The defeat and death of Cornificius allowed him to realise his
projects, and he remained in possession of his province until 713.
Appian and Dio Cassius have told differently the events which forced
Sextius, after the battle of Philippi, to abandon Numidia, where
Octavius had sent a new governor. Nothing else is known of his
biography.

In the year 700 two new lieutenants make their appearance, Q. Tullius
Cicero and C. Trebonius, who came to replace Arunculeius Cotta and
Titurius Sabinus, slain by the Gauls at Tongres.


14. Q. TULLIUS CICERO.

Quintus Tullius Cicero, younger brother of the great orator, was born in
652, and went with him to Athens, in order to perfect himself in
literature, which he cultivated with success. The correspondence of the
two brothers which has been preserved is a proof of this, and we know,
from other sources, that Quintus had composed divers works which are
lost. Quintas had married, before the year 686, Pomponia, sister of
Atticus (Cicero, _Epist. ad Atticum_, I. 5, 6), with whom he lived on
bad terms, and from whom he finally separated. He was ædile in 688, the
year of his brother’s prætorship; and in 691, when his brother was
consul, he lent him in the affair of Catiline his intelligent support,
and shared the same dangers. (Cicero, _Epist. ad Quintum_, I. 1;
_Catilinaria Quarta_, 2, 3. ) However, he did not share in his opinion in
the judgment of the conspirators, when he voted, with Cæsar, against the
punishment of death. (Suetonius, _Cæsar_, 14. ) He became prætor in 692,
defeated in Bruttium the bands of the Catilinarian Marcellus (Orosius,
VI. 6), and presided over the tribunal which judged Archias. (_Scholiast
of Bobbio on the Oration for Archias_, p. 354, edit. Orelli. ) In March
of the year 693, he proceeded to the province of Asia, of which he had
obtained the government (Cicero, _Pro Flacco_, 14); he administered that
province with as much equity as talent, seconded by able lieutenants.
(Cicero, _Epist. ad Quintum_, I. 1. ) They had, however, to reproach him
with frequent fits of anger, which drew upon him the remonstrances of
his brother. At the end of April, 696, Quintus left Asia in order to
proceed direct to Rome, without taking time to visit at Thessalonica M.
Cicero, who was still under the weight of his condemnation to exile. The
fact was, he feared an accusation of extortion, which his enemies, and
those of his brother, endeavoured to prepare against him. (Cicero,
_Epist. ad Atticum_, III. 9; _Epist. ad Quintum_, I. 3; _Oratio pro Domo
sua_, 36. ) He employed himself actively in favour of his brother, and
narrowly escaped being killed in the riot raised by Clodius, on the 8th
of the Calends of February, 697, on the occasion of the proposition of
the tribune Fabricius. (Cicero, _Oratio pro Sextio_, 35. --Plutarch,
_Cicero_, 44. ) When this same Clodius opposed the rebuilding of the
house of M. Cicero, Quintus saw his own, which was next to that of his
brother, burnt by the partisans of that turbulent demagogue. (Cicero,
_Epist. ad Atticum_, IV. 3. ) Towards the end of the same year, Quintus
was one of the fifteen lieutenants given to Pompey in order to direct
the supplying of victuals, and in that quality he proceeded to Sardinia.
(Cicero, _Epist. ad Quintum_, II. 2. ) He started for Gaul in the
beginning of 700, and it appears from a passage in the _Oratio pro
Milone_ that he was still there in 702. He left Cæsar’s army in 703, and
joined, in the quality of legate, his brother, who had been made
proconsul of Cilicia, and to whom he lent the indispensable support of
his experience and ability in matters of war. (Cicero, _Epist.
Familiar_. , XV. 4; _Epist. ad Atticum_, V, 20. ) During the civil war,
Quintus took the side of Pompey, but he imitated his brother’s
circumspection, and, after the battle of Pharsalia, he made every effort
to clear himself in the eyes of Cæsar, to whom he sent as his deputy in
Asia his own son, and thus obtained his pardon. After the death of
Cæsar, Quintus pronounced energetically, like M. Cicero, against Antony,
an opposition which turned out equally fatal to him, for, like his
brother, he was comprised in the proscription. Having vainly attempted
with him to reach Macedonia, he returned to Rome accompanied by his son,
and both were delivered up by slaves to the executioner. (Appian, _Civil
Wars_, IV. 20. --Plutarch, _Cicero_, 62. )


15. CAIUS TREBONIUS.

Caius Trebonius was the son of a Roman knight, of whom Cicero speaks in
his _Philippica_ (XIII. 10). Being quæstor in 694, he opposed the law
Herennia, which authorised the adoption of Clodius by a plebeian; as
tribune of the people in 699, he proposed the celebrated laws which gave
to Pompey and Crassus important provinces, and continued for five years
Cæsar’s command in Gaul. Having been called by Cæsar the year after in
quality of legate, he remained in Gaul until the commencement of the
civil war. He was afterwards sent to Spain against Afranius, and next
charged with the siege of Marseilles by land. (Cæsar, _De Bello Civili_,
I. 36. --Dio Cassius, XLI. 19;) In 706, he became præter urbanus (Dio
Cassius, XLII. 20); a year later he succeeded Cassius Longinus in the
government of one of the two Spains. (Cæsar, _De Bello Alexandrino_, 64;
_De Bello Hispano_, 7. --Dio Cassius, XLIII. 29. ) Compelled to leave the
Peninsula, after some checks, he returned to Rome, where Cæsar caused
him to be named consul in October, 709, and with the province of Asia,
on quitting office. (Dio Cassius, XLIII. 46. --Appian, _Civil Wars_, III.
2.
) All these acts of kindness, however, could not secure to the
dictator the devotedness of his lieutenant: even before Trebonius had
taken possession of his proconsulate of Asia, he entered into the
conspiracy formed against the life of Cæsar. But, detained by Antony
outside the curia, he could not strike him with his own hand. (Appian,
_Civil Wars_, II. 117. --Dio Cassius, XLIV. 19. --Cicero, _Philippica_,
II. 14; XIII. 10. ) After the death of Cæsar, Trebonius started quietly
for his government of Asia, and was in May, 710, at Athens. (Cicero,
_Epist. Familiar_. , XII. 16. ) During his proconsulship he supported the
party of Brutus and Cassius. In February, 711, Dolabella, who had come
to replace him, drew him into a snare at Smyrna; slew him, and threw his
head at the foot of a statue of Cæsar, thus revenging his friend who had
been so shamefully betrayed. (Cicero, _Philippica_, XIII. 10. --Appian,
_Civil Wars_, III. 26. --Velleius Paterculus, II. 69. --Dio Cassius,
XLVII. 29. ) Cicero, whose correspondent Trebonius had been, stigmatises
this murder, in which Antony saw the just punishment of a villain and a
parricide. It is certain that Trebonius had entered the conspiracy
without remorse, since afterwards he wrote to Cicero: “If you compose
anything on the murder of Cæsar, do not attribute a small part of it to
me. ” (Cicero, _Epist. Familiar. _, XII. 16. )

During the years 701 to 705 new lieutenants joined Cæsar in Gaul: they
were Minucius Basilus, Antistius Reginus, M. Silanus, Caninius Rebilus,
Sempronius Rutilus, Marcus Antonius, P. Vatinius, Q. Calenus, and Lucius
Cæsar.


16. MINUCIUS BASILUS.

L. Minucius Basilus had taken his name and surname from a rich Roman who
had adopted him. Previously his name was L. Satrius. Cicero names him
thus in one of his treatises (_De Officiis_, III. 18), although
elsewhere (_Epist. ad Atticum_, XI. 5) he designates him by his name and
surname. He became prætor in 709. (Dio Cassius, XLIII. 47. ) Irritated at
not having obtained, on leaving office, the province which he coveted,
and at having only received money from Cæsar, he entered into the
conspiracy formed against the Dictator. (Appian, _Civil Wars_, II;
113. --Dio Cassius, XLIII. 47. ) A few months after, he was assassinated
by his slaves, who thus took revenge for his having subjected several of
them to the punishment of castration. (Appian, _Civil Wars_, III. 98. )


17. C. ANTISTIUS REGINUS.

Nothing is known of the antecedents or the end of this lieutenant of
Cæsar. To judge by his name, he must have belonged to the family of the
_Antistii_, which produced divers magistrates of the Republic, and
several members of which have perpetuated their memory in inscriptions.


18. M. SILANUS.

Marcus Junius Silanus, son of Servilia, was brother, by the mother’s
side, to M. Brutus. After the murder of Cæsar, he accompanied his
brother-in-law Lepidus in his campaign in the north of Italy, and was
sent by him, in 711, to Modena, without precise instructions (Dio
Cassius, XLVI. 38); to the great regret of Lepidus, he took the side of
Antony. (Cicero, _Epist. Familiar. _, X. 30, 34. ) After Antony’s defeat,
Silanus, who had lost the confidence of Lepidus, proceeded to Sicily, to
Sext. Pompey, and did not return to Rome until the peace of Misenum had
been concluded with the latter, in 715. (Velleius Paterculas, II. 77. )
Nothing more is known of his life, except that Augustus, in 729, took
him as his colleague in the consulship. (Dio Cassius, LIII. 25. ).


19. C. CANINIUS REBILUS.

Caius Caninius Rebilus, great-grandson, in all probability, of the
person of that name who was prætor in 583, does not appear in history
until the war with Gaul. Cæsar sent him, in 705, to Scribonius Libo, to
treat of peace with Pompey. (Cæsar, _De Bello Civili_, I. 26. ) Rebilus
next accompanied Curio into Africa, and escaped only with a small number
from the defeat inflicted upon them by King Juba. (_De Bello Civili_,
II. 24. ) In 708 he was still making war in the same province, and took
Thapsus after the defeat of Scipio. (Cæsar, _De Bello Africano_, 86,
93. ) In 709 he commanded in Spain the garrison of Hispalis. (Cæsar, _De
Bello Hispano_, 35. ) At the end of the same year, Cæsar caused him to be
named consul, in the place of Q. Fabius, who had died suddenly: it was
on the eve of the Calends of January that this event had taken place.
Rebilus consequently was only consul for a few hours, and the short
period of his office has excited the jokes of Cicero. (_Epist.
Familiar. _, VII. 30. --Dio Cassius, XLIII. 46. --Plutarch, _Cæsar_, 63. )
No other details are known of the life of this lieutenant of Cæsar.


20. M. SEMPRONIUS RUTILUS.

History is silent on what became of this lieutenant after the war of
Gaul.


21. MARCUS ANTONIUS (MARK ANTONY).

The biography of Mark Antony is too well known, and is too much mixed up
with the events which followed the war in Gaul, to render it necessary
to give a sketch of it here. It is well known that Mark Antony, born in
671, was the son of a Mark Antony who had served in Crete, and grandson
of the celebrated orator of the same name. His mother was a Julia, and
belonged, consequently, to the family of Cæsar. After having encouraged
and supported Cæsar in his projects on Rome, he became his _magister
equitum_, when the dictature had been conferred upon him. At Pharsalia,
he commanded the left wing of Cæsar’s army. After the murder of the
great man, he was the rival of Octavius, and subsequently, with Lepidus,
his colleague in the triumvirate. When disunion arose between the future
Augustus and the ancient lieutenant of his uncle, the battle of Actium
completed the ruin of Antony, who, having taken refuge in Egypt, slew
himself in despair, on the information which Cleopatra, with whom he was
violently in love, gave him of her intended suicide.


22. PUBLIUS VATINIUS.

The part played by Publius Vatinius, before he became lieutenant in
Gaul, has been told in the course of this work. At the conclusion of his
tribuneship, he was employed in the army of Cæsar; but he had already,
after his quæstorship, served in Spain in the same quality of
lieutenant, under the proconsul C. Cosconius. Threatened by the laws
Licinia and Junia, Vatinius returned to Rome, and succeeded, thanks to
the support of Clodius, in avoiding the trial with which he was
threatened. He failed in his candidature for the ædileship, figured as
one of the witnesses in the trial of Sextius, in which he showed great
animosity against the accused, and against Cicero who defended him.
Important events marked his prætorship in 699. As lieutenant of Cæsar in
the civil war (_De Bello Civili_, III. 19), after the battle of
Pharsalia, he defended Brundusium against Lælius. (_De Bello Civili_,
III. 100. ) In 706 and 707 he continued to serve in the ranks of the
partisans of the Dictator, who, in the end of that year, caused the
consulship to be conferred upon him for a few days. (Dio Cassius, XLII.
55. --Macrobius, _Saturnalia_, II. 3. ) In 709 he was sent by Cæsar into
Illyria, with the title of proconsul (Appian, _Illyric War_, 13), from
which province he sent obliging letters to Cicero. (_Epist. Familiar. _,
V. 9, 10. ) After the murder of the Dictator, when the Dalmatians had
revolted and had defeated a considerable corps of his army, Vatinius,
who mistrusted the fidelity of his soldiers, retired to Epidamnus, and
delivered his province and his legions to M. Brutus, (Titus Livius,
_Epitome_, CXVIII. --Velleius Paterculus, II. 69. --Appian, _Illyric War_,
13. ) Nevertheless, he obtained, at the end of that year (711), a triumph
for his victories. It is not known what became of him afterwards.


23. Q. FUFIUS CALENUS.

Q. Fufius Calenus, of one of the most illustrious families of Rome, the
_gens Fufia_, was tribune of the people in 693, and served at that time
actively the interests of Clodius, when the latter was accused of having
violated the mysteries of the _Bona Dea_. (Cicero, _Epist. ad Atticum_,
I. 14. ) As prætor during the consulship of Cæsar and Bibulus, he gave
his name to a judiciary law, and served with zeal, during his
magistracy, the projects of him whose lieutenant he became in Gaul. He
also supported Clodius in the affair of Milo. When the civil war broke
out, Fufius Calenus joined Cæsar at Brundusium; he followed him
afterwards into Spain, in the character of lieutenant. (_Epist. ad
Atticum_, IX. 5. --Cæsar, _De Bello Civili_, I. 87. ) Sent afterwards into
Epirus, he took, before the battle of Pharsalia, the principal towns of
Greece. In 707, he became consul with Vatinius (Dio Casius, XLII. 55);
sided, after the death of Cæsar, with Antony, whom he defended against
the attacks of Cicero (_Philippica_, VIII. 4. --Dio Cassius, XLVI. 1-28),
and was his lieutenant during the struggles which followed. He commanded
an army in Transalpine Gaul in 713, when he was carried off by a sudden
death, at the moment when he was on the point of encountering the troops
of Octavius. (Appian, _Civil Wars_, V. 3, 51. --Dio Cassius, XLVIII. 20. )


24. L. CÆSAR

L. Julius Cæsar, who appears as lieutenant of the great Cæsar only at
the end of the war of Gaul, belonged to the same family as himself; he
was a son of L. Julius Cæsar, consul in the time of the war against the
Marsi, who was assassinated by Fimbria, and brother of Julia, mother of
Mark Antony. He stood for the ædileship without success (Cicero, _Orat.
pro Plancio_, 21), was more fortunate in his petition for the
consulship, and exercised that high magistracy in 690. (Cicero, _Orat.
pro Murena_, 34; _Epist. ad Atticum_, I. 1, 2. --Dio Cassius, XXXVII. 6. )
He was, with Cæsar, the year after, one of the judges (_duumvir
perduellionis_) in the trial of C. Rabirius. (Dio Cassius, XXXVII. 27. )
When the Senate was deliberating on the conspiracy of Catiline, the
relationship which united him with P. Lentulus did not prevent him from
voting for his condemnation to death. After the war of Gaul, he returned
to Rome, and, in the year 707, Mark Antony invested him with the
functions of prefect of the town; he was then very aged. (Dio Cassius,
XLII. 30. ) After Cæsar had been assassinated, L. Cæsar withdrew from the
party of Antony, although the latter was his nephew, for which he has
been praised by Cicero. (_Epist. Familiar. _, XII. 2. ) But his opposition
softened down afterwards, and he rejected the proposal to declare war
against the ancient lieutenant of Cæsar, made by the great orator.