Romans

Lucius Junius Brutus

- Brutus was the founder of the Roman Republic and traditionally one of the first consuls in 509 BC -He was claimed as an ancestor of the Roman gens Junia, including Decimus Junius Brutus and Marcus Junius Brutus, the most famous of Julius Caesar's assassins -Prior to the establishment of the Roman Republic, Rome had been ruled by kings -Brutus led the revolt that overthrew the last king, Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, after the rape of the noblewoman (and kinswoman of Brutus) Lucretia at the hands of Tarquin's son Sextus Tarquinius -Brutus was the son of Tarquinia, daughter of Rome's fifth king Lucius Tarquinius Priscus and sister to Rome's seventh king Tarquinius Superbus -According to Livy, Brutus had a number of grievances against his uncle the king, amongst them was the fact that Tarquin had put to death a number of the chief men of Rome, including Brutus' brother -Brutus avoided the distrust of Tarquin's family by feigning slow-wittedness -He accompanied Tarquin's sons on a trip to the Oracle of Delphi. The sons asked the oracle who would be the next ruler of Rome. The Oracle responded the next person to kiss his mother would become king -Brutus interpreted "mother" to mean the Earth, so he pretended to trip and kissed the ground -Brutus, along with Spurius Lucretius Tricipitinus, Publius Valerius Publicola, and Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus were summoned by Lucretia to Collatia after she had been raped by Sextus Tarquinius, the son of the king Tarquinius Superbus -Lucretia, believing that the rape dishonored her and her family, committed suicide by stabbing herself with a dagger after telling of what had befallen her -According to legend, Brutus grabbed the dagger from Lucretia's breast after her death and immediately shouted for the overthrow of the Tarquins -The four men gathered the youth of Collatia, then went to Rome where Brutus, being at that time Tribunus Celerum, summoned the people to the forum and exhorted them to rise up against the king -The people voted for the deposition of the king, and the banishment of the royal family -Brutus, leaving Lucretius in command of the city, proceeded with armed men to the Roman army then camped at Ardea -The king, who had been with the army, heard of developments at Rome, and left the camp for the city before Brutus' arrival -The army received Brutus as a hero, and the king's sons were expelled from the camp. Tarquinius Superbus, meanwhile, was refused entry at Rome, and fled with his family into exile -Brutus and Lucretia's bereaved husband, Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus, were elected as the first consuls of Rome (509 BC) -However, Tarquinius was soon replaced by Publius Valerius Publicola -Brutus' first acts during his consulship, according to Livy, included administering an oath to the people of Rome to never again accept a king in Rome and replenishing the number of senators to 300 from the principal men of the equites -The new consuls also created a new office of rex sacrorum to carry out the religious duties that had previously been performed by the kings -During his consulship the royal family made an attempt to regain the throne, firstly by their ambassadors seeking to subvert a number of the leading Roman citizens in the Tarquinian conspiracy -Amongst the conspirators were two brothers of Brutus' wife Vitellia, and Brutus' two sons, Titus Junius Brutus and Tiberius Junius Brutus -The conspiracy was discovered and the consuls determined to punish the conspirators with death. Brutus gained respect for his stoicism in watching the execution of his own sons, even though he showed emotion during the punishment -Tarquin again sought to retake the throne soon after at the Battle of Silva Arsia, leading the forces of Tarquinii and Veii against the Roman army. Valerius led the infantry, and Brutus led the cavalry -Aruns, the king's son, led the Etruscan cavalry. The cavalry first joined battle and Aruns, having spied from afar the lictors, and thereby recognising the presence of a consul, soon saw that Brutus was in command of the cavalry -The two men, who were cousins, charged each other, and speared each other to death. The infantry also soon joined the battle, the result being in doubt for some time. The right wing of each army was victorious, the army of Tarquinii forcing back the Romans, and the Veientes being routed -However the Etruscan forces eventually fled the field, the Romans claiming the victory -The surviving consul, Valerius, after celebrating a triumph for the victory, held a funeral for Brutus with much magnificence -The Roman noblewomen mourned him for one year, for his vengeance of Lucretia's violation

Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus (Cininnatus)

- Cininnatus was a Roman aristocrat and statesman whose service as consul in 460 BC and dictator in 458 BC and 439 BC made him a model of civic virtue. -Politically, Cincinnatus was a persistent opponent of attempts to improve the legal situation of the plebeians. His son Caeso Quinctius often drove the tribunes of the plebeians out from the forum, the heart of Roman political life, preventing them from reaching a formal decision. In 461 BC, these actions finally resulted in a capital charge against Caeso. After Caeso was released on bail and escaped to the Etruscans, he was condemned to death in absentia and his father had to pay an immense fine, forcing him to sell most of his lands and retire to a small farm, where he and his family were able to subsist on the work of his hands. -The following year, Cincinnatus was elected suffect consul. During his consulship, his main adversary was the Plebeian Tribune Gaius Terentilius Harsa. During this time period, the Roman senate was preoccupied with a war against the Volsci, a neighbouring Italic people. Though Cincinnatus was initially able to prevent their enactment, Terentilius attempted to use the upheaval associated with the war effort to push through a series of reforms which were specifically to benefit the proletarii and peasantry, including a proposal to draw up a code of written laws applicable equally to patricians and plebeians — an early push for what would eventually become the Ten or Twelve Tables. -In 458 BC, the Romans were fighting the Aequi and the Sabines. The consul Minucius Esquilinus had led an army against them, but had been trapped by the Aequians in the Alban Hills and was attempting to fight off a siege. A few Roman horsemen escaped and returned to Rome to tell the senate what had happened. The senate fell into a panic and authorized the other consul for the year, Horatius Pulvillus, to nominate a dictator. Horatius nominated Cincinnatus for a dictatorial term (also known as Magister Populi or "Master of the People") for six months. -A group of senators were sent to tell Cincinnatus that he had been nominated dictator. According to Livy, the senators found Cincinnatus while he was plowing on his farm. Cincinnatus cried out "Is everything all right?" They said to Cincinnatus that they hoped "it might turn out well for both him and his country," and then they asked him to put on his senatorial toga and hear the mandate of the senate. He called to his wife, Racilia, telling her to bring out his toga from their cottage. -When he put on his toga, the senatorial delegation hailed him as dictator, and told him to come to the city. He then crossed the Tiber river in a boat provided by the senate, as his farm was on the far side of the river. When he reached the other side of the Tiber, he was greeted by his three sons and most of the senators. Several lictors were given to him for protection. -The next morning, Cincinnatus went to the Roman forum and nominated as his Master of the Horse (his second in command) Lucius Tarquitius, who was considered one of the finest soldiers in Rome. Cincinnatus then went to the Roman popular assembly and issued an order to the effect that every man of military age should report to the Campus Martius—the Field of Mars, god of war—by the end of the day. Once the army assembled, Cincinnatus took them to fight the Aequi at the Battle of Mons Algidus. Cincinnatus led the infantry in person, while Tarquitius led the cavalry. The Aequi were surprised by the double attack and were soon cut to pieces. The commanders of the Aequi begged Cincinnatus not to slaughter them all. -Cincinnatus did not want to cause any unnecessary bloodshed, and told the Aequi that he would let them live if they submitted to him and brought their leader, Gracchus Cloelius, and his officers to him in chains. A yoke was set up, made up of three spears, and the Aequi had to pass under it in an act of submission, bowing down while confessing that they had been conquered. After this, the war ended and Cincinnatus disbanded his army. He then resigned his dictatorship and returned to his farm, a mere fifteen days after he had been nominated dictator. -He came out of retirement again for a second term as dictator (439 BC) to put down a conspiracy of Spurius Maelius, who supposedly was planning to become king. He was nominated by his old friend and relative, Titus Quinctius Capitolinus Barbatus, consul of the year. Maelius was killed immediately when the Master of the Horse was sent to bring him to trial and the incipient coup perished with him. With the crisis resolved, Cincinnatus again resigned his commission. -Within his lifetime Cincinnatus became a legend to the Romans. Twice granted supreme power, he held onto it for not a day longer than absolutely necessary. The high esteem in which he was held by his compatriots is illustrated with an anecdote from the end of his life: one of his sons was tried for military incompetence. The great Capitolinus defended him by asking the jury who would go to tell the aged Cincinnatus the news in the event of a conviction. The son was acquitted because the jury could not bring itself to break the old man's heart.

Titus Quinctius Flamininus

-A member of the patrician gens Quinctia, and brother to Lucius Quinctius Flamininus, he served as a military tribune in the Second Punic war and in 205 BC he was appointed propraetor in Tarentum. He was a curule aedile in Rome in 203 BC and a quaestor in 199 BC. He became consul in 198 BC, despite being only about thirty years old, younger than the constitutional age required to serve in that position. As Livy records, two tribunes, Marcus Fulvius and Manius Curius, publicly opposed his candidacy for consulship, as he was just a quaestor, but the Senate overrode the opposition and he was elected along with Sextus Aelius Paetus. -After his election to the consulship he was chosen to replace Publius Sulpicius Galba who was consul with Gaius Aurelius in 200 BC, according to Livy, as general during the Second Macedonian War. He chased Philip V of Macedon out of most of Greece, except for a few fortresses, defeating him at the Battle of the Aous, but as his term as consul was coming to an end he attempted to establish a peace with the Macedonian king. During the negotiations, Flamininus was made proconsul, giving him the authority to continue the war rather than finishing the negotiations. In 197 BC he defeated Philip at the Battle of Cynoscephalae in Thessaly, the Roman legions making the Macedonian phalanx obsolete in the process. Philip was forced to surrender, give up all the Greek cities he had conquered, and pay Rome 1,000 talents, but his kingdom was left intact to serve as a buffer state between Greece and Illyria. This displeased the Achaean League, Rome's allies in Greece, who wanted Macedon to be dismantled completely. -In 198 BC he occupied Anticyra in Phocis and made it his naval yard and his main provisioning port. During the period from 197 to 194 BC, from his seat in Elateia, Flamininus directed the political affairs of the Greek states. In 196 BC Flamininus appeared at the Isthmian Games in Corinth and proclaimed the freedom of the Greek states. He was fluent in Greek and was a great admirer of Greek culture, and the Greeks hailed him as their liberator; they minted coins with his portrait, and in some cities he was deified. According to Livy, this was the act of an unselfish Philhellene, although it seems more likely that Flamininus understood freedom as liberty for the aristocracy of Greece, who would then become clients of Rome, as opposed to being subjected to Macedonian hegemony. With his Greek allies, Flamininus plundered Sparta, before returning to Rome in triumph along with thousands of freed slaves, 1200 of whom were freed from Achaea, having been taken captive and sold in Greece during the Second Punic War. -Meanwhile, Eumenes II of Pergamum appealed to Rome for help against the Seleucid king Antiochus III. Flamininus was sent to negotiate with him in 192 BC, and warned him not to interfere with the Greek states. Antiochus did not believe Flamininus had the authority to speak for the Greeks, and promised to leave Greece alone only if the Romans did the same. These negotiations came to nothing and Rome was soon at war with Antiochus. Flamininus was present at the Battle of Thermopylae in 191 BC, in which Antiochus was defeated. -In 183 BC he was sent to negotiate with Prusias I of Bithynia in an attempt to capture Hannibal, who had been exiled there from Carthage, but Hannibal committed suicide to avoid being taken prisoner. According to Plutarch, many senators reproached Flamininus for having cruelly caused the death of an enemy who had now become harmless. Although nothing is known of him after this, Flamininus seems to have died around 174.

Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa (Agrippa)

-Agrippa was a Roman statesman, general and architect. He was a close friend, son-in-law, and lieutenant to Augustus and was responsible for the construction of some of the most beautiful buildings in the history of Rome and for important military victories, most notably at the Battle of Actium against the forces of Mark Antony and Cleopatra. As a result of these victories Octavian became the first Roman Emperor, adopting the name of Augustus. Agrippa assisted Augustus in making Rome a city of marble and renovating aqueducts to give all Romans, from every social class, access to the highest quality public services. He was responsible for the creation of many baths, porticoes and gardens and was once thought to have commissioned the construction of the Pantheon. Agrippa was also father-in-law to the second Emperor Tiberius, maternal grandfather to Caligula, and maternal great-grandfather to the Emperor Nero. -Agrippa was born between 23 October and 23 November in 64-62 BC, in an uncertain location. His father was perhaps called Lucius Vipsanius Agrippa. He had an elder brother whose name was also Lucius Vipsanius Agrippa, and a sister named Vipsania Polla. The family had not been prominent in Roman public life. However, Agrippa was about the same age as Octavian (the future emperor Augustus), and the two were educated together and became close friends. Despite Agrippa's association with the family of Julius Caesar, his elder brother chose another side in the civil wars of the 40s BC, fighting under Cato against Caesar in Africa. When Cato's forces were defeated, Agrippa's brother was taken prisoner but freed after Octavian interceded on his behalf. -After Octavian's return to Rome, he and his supporters realised they needed the support of legions. Agrippa helped Octavian to levy troops in Campania. Once Octavian had his legions, he made a pact with Mark Antony and Lepidus, legally established in 43 BC as the Second Triumvirate. Octavian and his consular colleague Quintus Pedius arranged for Caesar's assassins to be prosecuted in their absence, and Agrippa was entrusted with the case against Gaius Cassius Longinus. It may have been in the same year that Agrippa began his political career, holding the position of Tribune of the Plebs, which granted him entry to the Senate. -In 42 BC, Agrippa probably fought alongside Octavian and Antony in the Battle of Philippi. After their return to Rome, he played a major role in Octavian's war against Lucius Antonius and Fulvia Antonia, respectively the brother and wife of Mark Antony, which began in 41 BC and ended in the capture of Perusia in 40 BC. However, Salvidienus remained Octavian's main general at this time. After the Perusine war, Octavian departed for Gaul, leaving Agrippa as urban praetor in Rome with instructions to defend Italy against Sextus Pompeius, an opponent of the Triumvirate who was now occupying Sicily. In July 40, while Agrippa was occupied with the Ludi Apollinares that were the praetor's responsibility, Sextus began a raid in southern Italy. Agrippa advanced on him, forcing him to withdraw. However, the Triumvirate proved unstable, and in August 40 both Sextus and Antony invaded Italy (but not in an organized alliance). Agrippa's success in retaking Sipontum from Antony helped bring an end to the conflict. Agrippa was among the intermediaries through whom Antony and Octavian agreed once more upon peace. During the discussions Octavian learned that Salvidienus had offered to betray him to Antony, with the result that Salvidienus was prosecuted and either executed or committed suicide. Agrippa was now Octavian's leading general. -In 39 or 38 BC, Octavian appointed Agrippa governor of Transalpine Gaul, where in 38 he put down a rising of the Aquitanians. He also fought the Germanic tribes, becoming the next Roman general to cross the Rhine after Julius Caesar. He was summoned back to Rome by Octavian to assume the consulship for 37 BC. He was well below the usual minimum age of 43, but Octavian had suffered a humiliating naval defeat against Sextus Pompey and needed his friend to oversee the preparations for further warfare. Agrippa refused the offer of a triumph for his exploits in Gaul - on the grounds, says Dio, that he thought it improper to celebrate during a time of trouble for Octavian. Since Sextus Pompeius had command of the sea on the coasts of Italy, Agrippa's first care was to provide a safe harbour for his ships. He accomplished this by cutting through the strips of land which separated the Lacus Lucrinus from the sea, thus forming an outer harbour, while joining the lake Avernus to the Lucrinus to serve as an inner harbor. The new harbor-complex was named Portus Julius in Octavian's honour.[22] Agrippa was also responsible for technological improvements, including larger ships and an improved form of grappling hook. About this time, he married Caecilia Pomponia Attica, daughter of Cicero's friend Titus Pomponius Atticus. -In 36 BC, Octavian and Agrippa set sail against Sextus. The fleet was badly damaged by storms and had to withdraw; Agrippa was left in charge of the second attempt. Thanks to superior technology and training, Agrippa and his men won decisive victories at Mylae and Naulochus, destroying all but seventeen of Sextus' ships and compelling most of his forces to surrender. Octavian, with his power increased, forced the triumvir Lepidus into retirement and entered Rome in triumph. Agrippa received the unprecedented honour of a naval crown decorated with the beaks of ships; as Dio remarks, this was "a decoration given to nobody before or since". -Agrippa participated in smaller military campaigns in 35 and 34 BC, but by the autumn of 34 he had returned to Rome. He rapidly set out on a campaign of public repairs and improvements, including renovation of the aqueduct known as the Aqua Marcia and an extension of its pipes to cover more of the city. Through his actions after being elected in 33 BC as one of the aediles (officials responsible for Rome's buildings and festivals), the streets were repaired and the sewers were cleaned out, while lavish public spectacles were put on. Agrippa signalled his tenure of office by effecting great improvements in the city of Rome, restoring and building aqueducts, enlarging and cleansing the Cloaca Maxima, constructing baths and porticos, and laying out gardens. He also gave a stimulus to the public exhibition of works of art. It was unusual for an ex-consul to hold the lower-ranking position of aedile, but Agrippa's success bore out this break with tradition. As emperor, Augustus would later boast that "he had found the city of brick but left it of marble", thanks in part to the great services provided by Agrippa under his reign. -Agrippa was again called away to take command of the fleet when the war with Antony and Cleopatra broke out. He captured the strategically important city of Methone at the southwest of the Peloponnese, then sailed north, raiding the Greek coast and capturing Corcyra (modern Corfu). Octavian then brought his forces to Corcyra, occupying it as a naval base. Antony drew up his ships and troops at Actium, where Octavian moved to meet him. Agrippa meanwhile defeated Antony's supporter Quintus Nasidius in a naval battle at Patrae. Dio relates that as Agrippa moved to join Octavian near Actium, he encountered Gaius Sosius, one of Antony's lieutenants, who was making a surprise attack on the squadron of Lucius Tarius, a supporter of Octavian. Agrippa's unexpected arrival turned the battle around. -As the decisive battle approached, according to Dio, Octavian received intelligence that Antony and Cleopatra planned to break past his naval blockade and escape. At first he wished to allow the flagships past, arguing that he could overtake them with his lighter vessels and that the other opposing ships would surrender when they saw their leaders' cowardice. Agrippa objected that Antony's ships, although larger, could outrun Octavian's if they hoisted sails, and that Octavian ought to fight now because Antony's fleet had just been struck by storms. Octavian followed his friend's advice. -On September 2, 31 BC, the Battle of Actium was fought. Octavian's victory, which gave him the mastery of Rome and the empire, was mainly due to Agrippa. As a token of signal regard, Octavian bestowed upon him the hand of his niece Claudia Marcella Major in 28 BC. He also served a second consulship with Octavian the same year. In 27 BC, Agrippa held a third consulship with Octavian, and in that year, the senate also bestowed upon Octavian the imperial title of Augustus. -Agrippa's friendship with Augustus seems to have been clouded by the jealousy of Augustus' nephew Marcus Claudius Marcellus, which was probably fomented by the intrigues of Livia, the third wife of Augustus, who feared his influence over her husband. Traditionally it is said the result of such jealousy was that Agrippa left Rome, ostensibly to take over the governorship of eastern provinces - a sort of honourable exile, but he only sent his legate to Syria, while he himself remained at Lesbos and governed by proxy, though he may have been on a secret mission to negotiate with the Parthians about the return of the Roman legions standards which they held. On the death of Marcellus, which took place within a year of his exile, he was recalled to Rome by Augustus, who found he could not dispense with his services. However, if one places the events in the context of the crisis in 23 BC it seems unlikely that, when facing significant opposition and about to make a major political climb down, the emperor Augustus would place a man in exile in charge of the largest body of Roman troops. What is far more likely is that Agrippa's 'exile' was actually the careful political positioning of a loyal lieutenant in command of a significant army as a backup plan in case the settlement plans of 23 BC failed and Augustus needed military support. Moreover, after 23 BC as part of what became known as Augustus' Second Constitutional Settlement, Agrippa's constitutional powers were greatly increased to provide the Principate of Augustus with greater constitutional stability by providing for a political heir or replacement for Augustus if he were to succumb to his habitual ill health or was assassinated. In the course of the year proconsular imperium, similar to Augustus' power, was conferred upon Agrippa for five years. The exact nature of the grant is uncertain but it probably covered Augustus' imperial provinces, east and west, perhaps lacking authority over the provinces of the Senate. That was to come later, as was the jealously guarded tribunicia potestas, or powers of a tribune of the plebeians. These great powers of state are not usually heaped upon a former exile. -In 18 BC, Agrippa's powers were even further increased to almost match those of Augustus. That year his proconsular imperium was augmented to cover the provinces of the Senate. More than that, he was finally granted tribunicia potestas, or powers of a tribune of the plebeians. As was the case with Augustus, Agrippa's grant of tribunician powers was conferred without his having to actually hold that office. These powers were considerable, giving him veto power over the acts of the Senate or other magistracies, including those of other tribunes, and the power to present laws for approval by the People. Just as important, a tribune's person was sacrosanct, or sacred, meaning that any person who harmfully touched them or impeded their actions, including political acts, could lawfully be killed. After the grant of these powers Agrippa was, on paper, almost as powerful as Augustus was. However, there was no doubt that Augustus was the man in charge. -Agrippa was appointed governor of the eastern provinces a second time in 17 BC, where his just and prudent administration won him the respect and good-will of the provincials, especially from the Jewish population. Agrippa also restored effective Roman control over the Cimmerian Chersonnese (Crimean Peninsula) during his governorship. -Agrippa's last public service was his beginning of the conquest of the upper Danube River region, which would become the Roman province of Pannonia in 13 BC. He died at Campania in 12 BC at the age of 51. His posthumous son, Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa Postumus, was named in his honor. Augustus honoured his memory by a magnificent funeral and spent over a month in mourning. Augustus personally oversaw all of Agrippa's children's educations. Although Agrippa had built a tomb for himself, Augustus had Agrippa's remains placed in Augustus' own mausoleum.

Marcus Antonius (Mark Antony)

-Antony was a Roman politician and general who played a critical role in the transformation of the Roman Republic from an oligarchy into the autocratic Roman Empire -Antony's early life was characterized by a lack of proper parental guidance. According to the historian Plutarch, he spent his teenage years wandering through Rome with his brothers and friends gambling, drinking, and becoming involved in scandalous love affairs. According to Cicero, he had a homosexual relationship with Gaius Scribonius Curio. There is little reliable information on his political activity as a young man, although it is known that he was an associate of Publius Clodius Pulcher and his street gang. He may also have been involved in the Lupercal cult as he was referred to as a priest of this order later in life. By age twenty, Antony had amassed an enormous debt. Hoping to escape his creditors, Antony fled to Greece in 58 BC, where he studied philosophy and rhetoric at Athens. -The feud between Caesar and Pompey erupted into open confrontation by early 49 BC. The Consuls for the year, Gaius Claudius Marcellus Maior and Lucius Cornelius Lentulus Crus, were firm Optimates opposed to Caesar. Pompey, though remaining in Rome, was then serving as the governor of Spain and commanded several legions. Upon assuming office in January, Antony immediately summoned a meeting of the Senate to resolve the conflict: he proposed both Caesar and Pompey lay down their commands and return to the status of mere private citizens. His proposal was well received by most of the senators but the Consuls and Cato vehemently opposed it. Antony then made a new proposal: Caesar would retain only two of his eight legions and the governorship of Illyrium if he was allowed to stand for the Consulship in absentia. This arrangement ensured his immunity from suit would continue, he had needed the Consulship to protect himself from prosecution by Pompey. Though Pompey found the concession satisfactory, Cato and Lentulus refused to back down, with Lentulus even expelling Antony from the Senate meeting by force. Antony fled Rome, fearing for his life, and returned to Caesar's camp on the banks of the Rubicon River, the southern limit of Caesar's lawful command. -Within days of Antony's expulsion, on 7 January 49 BCE, the Senate reconvened. Under the leadership of Cato and with the tacit support of Pompey, the Senate passed the "final decree" (senatus consultum ultimum) stripping Caesar of his command and ordering him to return to Rome and stand trial for war crimes. The Senate further declared Caesar a traitor and a public enemy if he did not immediately disband his army. With all hopes of finding a peaceful solution gone after Antony's expulsion, Caesar used Antony as a pretext for marching on Rome. As Tribune, Antony's person was sacrosanct and therefore it was unlawful to harm him or refuse to recognize his veto. Three days later, on 10 January, Caesar crossed the Rubicon River, starting a civil war. During the southern march, Caesar placed Antony as his second in command. -During the Greek campaign, Plutarch records Antony was Caesar's top general and second to only him in reputation. Antony joined Caesar at the western Balkan Peninsula and besieged Pompey's larger army at Dyrrhachium. With food sources running low, Caesar, in July, ordered a nocturnal assault on Pompey's camp, but Pompey's larger forces pushed back the assault. Though an indecisive result, the victory was a tactical win for Pompey. Pompey, however, did not order a counter-assault on Caesar's camp, allowing Caesar to retreat unhindered. Caesar would later remark the civil war would have ended that day if Pompey had only attacked him. Caesar managed to retreat to Thessaly, with Pompey in pursuit. -Whatever conflicts existed between himself and Caesar, Antony remained faithful to Caesar, ensuring their estrangement did not last long. Antony reunited with Caesar at Narbo in 45 BC with full reconciliation coming in 44 BC when Antony was elected Consul alongside Caesar. Caesar planned a new invasion of Parthia and desired to leave Antony in Italy to govern Rome in his name. The reconciliation came soon after Antony rejected an offer by Gaius Trebonius, one of Caesar's generals, to join a conspiracy to assassinate Caesar. -Soon after assuming office together, the Lupercalia festival was held on 15 February 44 BC. The festival was held in honor of Lupa, the she-wolf who suckled the infant orphans Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome. The political atmosphere of Rome at the time of the festival was deeply divided. Caesar had enacted a number of constitutional reforms which centralized effectively all political powers within his own hands. He was granted further honors, including a form of semi-official cult, with Antony as his high priest. Additionally, the day before the festival, Caesar had been named Dictator for Life, effectively granting unlimited power. Caesar's political rivals feared these reforms were his attempts at transforming the Republic into an open monarchy. During the festival's activities, Antony publicly offered Caesar a diadem, which Caesar refused. The event presented a powerful message: a diadem was a symbol of a king. By refusing it, Caesar demonstrated he had no intention of making himself King of Rome. Antony's motive for such actions is not clear and it is unknown if he acted with Caesar's prior approval or on his own. -Antony, having learned of the plot the night before, went to stop Caesar from attending the meeting. However, a group of senators intercepted Caesar just as he was passing the Theater of Pompey, where the Senate was temporarily meeting, and directed him towards the meeting before Antony could reach him. According to the Greek historian Plutarch, as Caesar arrived at the Senate, Lucius Tillius Cimber presented him with a petition to recall his exiled brother. The other conspirators crowded round to offer their support. Within moments, the entire group, including Brutus, was striking out at the dictator. Caesar attempted to get away, but, blinded by blood, he tripped and fell; the men continued stabbing him as he lay defenseless on the lower steps of the portico. According to Roman historian Eutropius, around 60 or more men participated in the assassination. Caesar was stabbed 23 times and died from the blood loss attributable to multiple stab wounds -Antony, as the sole Consul, soon took the initiative and seized the state treasury. Calpurnia Pisonis, Caesar's widow, presented him with Caesar's personal papers and custody of his extensive property, clearly marking him as Caesar's heir and leader of the Caesarian faction. Caesar's Master of the Horse Marcus Aemilius Lepidus marched over 6,000 troops into Rome on 16 March to restore order and to act as the bodyguards of the Caesarian faction. Lepidus wanted to storm the Capitol, but Antony preferred a peaceful solution as a majority of both the Liberators and Caesar's own supporters preferred a settlement over civil war. On 17 March, at Antony's arrangement, the Senate met to discuss a compromise, which, due to the presence of Caesar's veterans in the city, was quickly reached. Caesar's assassins would be pardoned of their crimes and, in return, all of Caesar's actions would be ratified. In particular, the offices assigned to both Brutus and Cassius by Caesar were likewise ratified. Antony also agreed to accept the appointment of his rival Dolabella as his Consular colleague to replace Caesar. Having neither troops, money, nor popular support, the Liberatores were forced to accept Antony's proposal. This compromise was a great success for Antony, who managed to simultaneously appease Caesar's veterans, reconcile the Senate majority, and appear to the Liberatores as their partner and protector -On 19 March, Caesar's will was opened and read. In it, Caesar posthumously adopted his great-nephew Gaius Octavius and named him his principal heir. Then only 19 years old and stationed with Caesar's army in Macedonia, the youth became a member of Caesar's Julian clan, changing his name to "Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus" (Octavian) in accordance with the conventions of Roman adoption. Though not the chief beneficiary, Antony did receive some bequests -Despite the provisions of Caesar's will, Antony proceeded to act as leader of the Caesarian faction, including appropriating for himself a portion of Caesar's fortune rightfully belonging to Octavian. Antony enacted the Lex Antonia, which formally abolished the Dictatorship, in an attempt to consolidate his power by gaining the support of the Senatorial class. He also enacted a number of laws he claimed to have found in Caesar's papers to ensure his popularity with Caesar's veterans, particularly by providing land grants to them. Lepidus, with Antony's support, was named Pontifex Maximus to succeed Caesar. To solidify the alliance between Antony and Lepidus, Antony's daughter Antonia Prima was engaged to Lepidus's son, also named Lepidus. Surrounding himself with a bodyguard of over six thousand of Caesar's veterans, Antony presented himself as Caesar's true successor, largely ignoring Octavian -Octavian arrived in Rome in May to claim his inheritance. Although Antony had amassed political support, Octavian still had opportunity to rival him as the leading member of the Caesarian faction. The Senatorial Republicans increasingly viewed Antony as a new tyrant. Antony had lost the support of many Romans and supporters of Caesar when he opposed the motion to elevate Caesar to divine status. When Antony refused to relinquish Caesar's vast fortune to him, Octavian borrowed heavily to fulfill the bequests in Caesar's will to the Roman people and to his veterans, as well as to establish his own bodyguard of veterans. This earned him the support of Caesarian sympathizers who hoped to use him as a means of eliminating Antony. The Senate, and Cicero in particular, viewed Antony as the greater danger of the two. By summer 44 BC, Antony was in a difficult position due to his actions regarding his compromise with the Liberatores following Caesar's assassination. He could either denounce the Liberatores as murderers and alienate the Senate or he could maintain his support for the compromise and risk betraying the legacy of Caesar, strengthening Octavian's position. In either case, his situation as ruler of Rome would be weakened. Roman historian Cassius Dio later recorded that while Antony, as reigning Consul, maintained the advantage in the relationship, the general affection of the Roman people was shifting to Octavian due to his status as Caesar's son -Supporting the Senatorial faction against Antony, Octavian, in September 44 BC, encouraged the leading Senator Marcus Tullius Cicero to attack Antony in a series of speeches portraying him as a threat to the Republican order. Risk of civil war between Antony and Octavian grew. Octavian continued to recruit Caesar's veterans to his side, away from Antony, with two of Antony's legions defecting in November 44 BC. At that time, Octavian, only a private citizen, lacked legal authority to command the Republic's armies, making his command illegal. With popular opinion in Rome turning against him and his Consular term nearing its end, Antony attempted to secure a favorable military assignment to secure an army to protect himself. The Senate, as was custom, assigned Antony and Dolabella the provinces of Macedonia and Syria, respectively, to govern in 43 BC after their Consular terms expired. Antony, however, objected to the assignment, preferring to govern Cisalpine Gaul which had been assigned to Decimus Junius Brutus Albinus, one of Caesar's assassins. When Decimus refused to surrender his province, Antony marched north in December 44 BC with his remaining soldiers to take the province by force, besieging Decimus at Mutina The Senate, led by a fiery Cicero, denounced Antony's actions and declared him an outlaw. -Ratifying Octavian's extraordinary command on 1 January 43 BC, the Senate dispatched him along with Consuls Hirtius and Pansa to defeat Antony and his five legions. Antony's forces were defeated at the Battle of Mutina in April 43 BC, forcing Antony to retreat to Transalpine Gaul. Both consuls were killed, however, leaving Octavian in sole command of their armies, some eight legions -With Antony defeated, the Senate, hoping to eliminate Octavian and the remainder of the Caesarian party, assigned command of the Republic's legions to Decimus. Sextus Pompey, son of Caesar's old rival Pompey Magnus, was given command of the Republic's fleet from his base in Sicily while Brutus and Cassius were granted the governorships of Macedonia and Syria respectively. These appointments attempted to renew the "Republican" cause. However, the eight legions serving under Octavian, composed largely of Caesar's veterans, refused to follow one of Caesar's murderers, allowing Octavian to retain his command. Meanwhile, Antony recovered his position by joining forces with Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, who had been assigned the governorship of Transalpine Gaul and Nearer Spain. Antony sent Lepidus to Rome to broker a conciliation. Though he was an ardent Caesarian, Lepdius had maintained friendly relations with the Senate and with Sextus Pompey. His legions, however, quickly joined Antony, giving him control over seventeen legions, the largest army in the West -The primary objective of the Triumvirate was to avenge Caesar's death and to make war upon his murderers. Before marching against Brutus and Cassius in the East, the Triumvirs decided to eliminate their enemies in Rome. To do so, they employed a legalized form of mass murder: proscription. First used by the Dictator Lucius Cornelius Sulla in 82 BC, Sulla drew up a list of his political enemies to purge Rome of opposition to his rule. Any man whose name appeared on the list was stripped of his citizenship and excluded from all protection under the law. Furthermore, reward money was given to anyone who gave information leading to the death of a proscribed man, and any person who killed a proscribed man was entitled to keep part of his property, with the remainder going to the state. No person could inherit money or property from proscribed men, nor could any woman married to a proscribed man remarry after his death. -In the summer of 42 BC, Octavian and Antony sailed for Macedonia to face the Liberators with nineteen legions, the vast majority of their army. Likewise, the army of the Liberators also commanded an army of nineteen legions; their legions, however, were not at full strength while the legions of Antony and Octavian were. While the Triumvirs commanded a larger number of infantry, the Liberators commanded a larger cavalry contingent. The Liberators, who controlled Macedonia, did not wish to engage in a decisive battle, but rather to attain a good defensive position and then use their naval superiority to block the Triumvirs' communications with their supply base in Italy. They had spent the previous months plundering Greek cities to swell their war-chest and had gathered in Thrace with the Roman legions from the Eastern provinces and levies from Rome's client kingdoms. -The battles of Philippi ended the civil war in favor of the Caesarian faction. With the defeat of the Liberators, only Sextus Pompey and his fleet remained to challenge the Triumvirate's control over the Republic. -Led by Fulvia, the wife of Antony, the Senators grew hostile towards Octavian over the issue of the land confiscations. According to the ancient historian Cassius Dio, Fulvia was the most powerful woman in Rome at the time. According to Dio, while Publius Servilius Vatia and Lucius Antonius were the Consuls for the year 41 BC, real power was vested in Fulvia. As the mother-in-law of Octavian and the wife of Antony, no actions was taken by the Senate without her support. Fearing Octavian's land grants would cause the loyalty of the Caesarian veterans to shift away from Antony, Fulvia traveled constantly with her children to the new veteran settlements in order to remind the veterans of their debt to Antony. Fulvia also attempted to delay the land settlements until Antony returned to Rome, so that he could share credit for the settlements. With the help of Antony's brother, the Consul of 41 BC Lucius Antonius, Fulvia encouraged the Senate to oppose Octavian's land policies. -Despite the Parthian Empire's invasion of Rome's eastern territories, Fulvia's civil war forced Antony to leave the East and return to Rome in order to secure his position. Meeting her in Athens, Antony rebuked Fulvia for her actions before sailing on to Italy with his army to face Octavian, laying siege to Brundisium. This new conflict proved untenable for both Octavian and Antony, however. Their centurions, who had become important figures politically, refused to fight due to their shared service under Caesar, with the legions under their command followed suit. Meanwhile in Sicyon, Fulvia died of a sudden and unknown illness. Fulvia's death and the mutiny of their soldiers allowed the triumvirs to effect a reconciliation through a new power sharing agreement in September 40 BC. The Roman world was redivided, with Antony receiving the Eastern provinces, Octavian receiving the Western provinces, and with Lepidus being relegated to a clearly junior position as governor of Africa. This agreement, known as the Treaty of Brundisium, reinforced the Triumvirate and allowed Antony begin preparing for Caesar's long-awaited campaign against the Parthian Empire. As a symbol of their renewed alliance, Antony married Octavia, Octavian's sister, in October 40 BC. -Meanwhile, in Rome, the triumvirate was no more. Octavian forced Lepidus to resign after the older triumvir attempted to take control of Sicily after the defeat of Sextus. Now in sole power, Octavian was occupied in wooing the traditional Republican aristocracy to his side. He married Livia and started to attack Antony in order to raise himself to power. He argued that Antony was a man of low morals to have left his faithful wife abandoned in Rome with the children to be with the promiscuous queen of Egypt. Antony was accused of everything, but most of all, of "going native", an unforgivable crime to the proud Romans. Several times Antony was summoned to Rome, but remained in Alexandria with Cleopatra. -Again with Egyptian money, Antony invaded Armenia, this time successfully. In the return, a mock Roman Triumph was celebrated in the streets of Alexandria. The parade through the city was a pastiche of Rome's most important military celebration. For the finale, the whole city was summoned to hear a very important political statement. Surrounded by Cleopatra and her children, Antony ended his alliance with Octavian. -During 33 and 32 BC, a propaganda war was fought in the political arena of Rome, with accusations flying between sides. Antony (in Egypt) divorced Octavia and accused Octavian of being a social upstart, of usurping power, and of forging the adoption papers by Caesar. Octavian responded with treason charges: of illegally keeping provinces that should be given to other men by lots, as was Rome's tradition, and of starting wars against foreign nations (Armenia and Parthia) without the consent of the Senate. -In 31 BC, the war started. Octavian's loyal and talented general Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa captured the Greek city and naval port of Methone, loyal to Antony. The enormous popularity of Octavian with the legions secured the defection of the provinces of Cyrenaica and Greece to his side. On September 2, the naval battle of Actium took place. Antony and Cleopatra's navy was destroyed, and they were forced to escape to Egypt with 60 ships. -Octavian, now close to absolute power, did not intend to give them rest. In August 30 BC, assisted by Agrippa, he invaded Egypt. With no other refuge to escape to, Antony committed suicide by stabbing himself with his sword in the mistaken belief that Cleopatra had already done so. When he found out that Cleopatra was still alive, his friends brought him to Cleopatra's monument in which she was hiding, and he died in her arms.

Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus

-Bibulus was a politician of the late Roman Republic. An opponent of Julius Caesar, he was consul alongside Caesar in 59 BC, and fought against him in the civil war that broke out between Caesar and Pompey in 49 BC. -Married as he was to the daughter of Marcus Porcius Cato Uticencis, another implacable opponent of Caesar, Bibulus was firmly in the camp of the self described boni, politicians who believed that the traditional role of the Senate was being usurped by the Roman assemblies of the people for the benefit of a few power hungry individuals, and thus were against anyone who was determined to use the legislative assemblies to reform the state, of which Julius Caesar was a primary example. Consequently, when Caesar nominated himself to stand for the consular elections of 59 BC, with the support of Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus and Marcus Licinius Crassus, Cato and the rest of the boni, fearing him to be a radical who would destroy the Mos maiorum, bribed heavily in order to ensure that Bibulus would be his consular colleague. He succeeded, defeating Caesar's preferred consular candidate, Lucius Lucceius. -By the middle of his consulship, Caesar's popularity apparently began to wane, whilst Bibulus's popularity was, according to Cicero, on the rise, mostly due to his vitriolic attacks on Caesar. Seeking to further cause trouble for Caesar and Pompey, in July he directed that the consular elections for 58 were to be postponed until October 18. However, in August, Bibulus, alongside one of the consular candidates for 58, Lucius Cornelius Lentulus, were accused by Lucius Vettius of being involved in a plot to assassinate Pompey. Bibulus responded by declaring that he had warned Pompey of the possibility of an assassination attempt on May 13. Vettius was then murdered the day before Bibulus was going to be questioned about his alleged involvement in the plot, and Lentulus was unsuccessful when the delayed elections finally took place. -Bibulus tried again to block Caesar's five year appointment as governor of the provinces of Cisalpine Gaul and Transalpine Gaul by declaring that no public business could be conducted whilst he observed the sky for omens, but was again rebuffed by Pompey and one of the consul-designates who supported Caesar's appointment. Finally, at the end of the year, Bibulus emerged from his self-enforced retirement. When he presented himself before the assembly, he took the traditional oath declaring he had done his duty in his consulship. He was then about to justify his actions as consul when the new Tribune of the Plebs, Publius Clodius Pulcher, used his veto to prohibit Bibulus from speaking further. -As a result of a law passed by Pompey during his sole consulship, proscribing that governorships could not be held by persons who had served as praetor or consul within five years of leaving office, Bibulus was appointed governor of Syria in 51 BC. He offended the army there by claiming the victory won by Gaius Cassius Longinus over the Parthians at Antioch, for which the Senate granted Bibulus a thanksgiving of twenty days. With the Parthian threat still present, Bibulus sent two of his sons to Egypt in 50 BC to demand the recall of the Roman soldiers who had settled there, but were killed by the soldiers who refused to march. When Cleopatra sent him the murderers to be punished, he returned them saying it was up to the Senate to punish them. -Bibulus then proceeded to blockade all the harbors along the coast, hoping to prevent any further crossings from Italy, and leaving Caesar stranded in Epirus. Unfortunately, he found that he could not resupply his ships without abandoning the blockade, and so he attempted to bluff Caesar's legates at Oricum into getting Caesar to agree to a temporary truce in order that he could resupply. However, when Bibulus refused to guarantee the safety of Caesar's envoys to discuss a peaceful settlement with Pompey, Caesar realised it was a bluff and pulled out of negotiations. Determined to continue with the blockade, Bibulus pushed himself too hard; he fell ill in early 48 BC and died near Corcyra before the end of winter.

Gaius Cassius Longinus

-Cassius was a Roman senator, a leading instigator of the plot to kill Julius Caesar,and the brother in-law of Marcus Junius Brutus -Little is known of Gaius Cassius' early life, apart from a story that he showed his dislike of despots while still at school, by quarreling with the son of the dictator Sulla -He studied philosophy at Rhodes under Archelaus and became fluent in Greek -He was married to Junia Tertia (Tertulla), who was the daughter of Servilia Caepionis and thus a half-sister of his co-conspirator Brutus -They had one son, who was born in about 60 BC -In 53 BC he took part in the Battle of Carrhae lost by Marcus Licinius Crassus against the Parthians -Cassius returned to Rome in 50 BC, when civil war was about to break out between Julius Caesar and Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus -Cassius was elected tribune of the Plebs for 49 BC, and threw in his lot with the Optimates, although his brother Lucius Cassius supported Caesar -Cassius left Italy shortly after Caesar crossed the Rubicon -He met Pompey in Greece, and was appointed to command part of his fleet -In 48 BC, Cassius sailed his ships to Sicily, where he attacked and burned a large part of Caesar's navy -He then proceeded to harass ships off the Italian coast. News of Pompey's defeat at the Battle of Pharsalus caused Cassius to head for the Hellespont, with hopes of allying with the king of Pontus, Pharnaces II -Cassius was overtaken by Caesar en route, and was forced to surrender unconditionally -Caesar made Cassius a legate, employing him in the Alexandrian War against the very same Pharnaces whom Cassius had hoped to join after Pompey's defeat at Pharsalus -However, Cassius refused to join in the fight against Cato and Scipio in Africa, choosing instead to retire to Rome -Cassius spent the next two years without office, and apparently tightened his friendship with Cicero -In 44 BC, he became praetor peregrinus with the promise of the Syrian province for the ensuing year -The appointment of his junior and brother-in-law, Marcus Brutus, as praetor urbanus deeply offended him -Although Cassius was "the moving spirit" in the plot against Caesar, winning over the chief assassins to the cause of tyrannicide, Brutus became their leader -On the Ides of March, 44 BC, Cassius urged on his fellow liberators and struck Caesar in the chest area. Though they succeeded in assassinating Caesar, the celebration was short-lived, as Mark Antony seized power and turned the public against them -In letters written during 44 BC, Cicero frequently complains that Rome was still subjected to tyranny, because the "Liberators" had failed to kill Antony -According to some accounts, Cassius had wanted to kill Antony at the same time as Caesar, but Brutus dissuaded him -Cassius' reputation in the East made it easy to amass an army from other governors in the area, and by 43 BC he was ready to take on Publius Cornelius Dolabella with 12 legions -By this point the Senate had split with Antonius and cast its lot with Cassius, confirming him as governor of the province -Dolabella attacked but was betrayed by his allies, leading him to commit suicide -Cassius was now secure enough to march on Egypt, but on the formation of the Second Triumvirate, Brutus requested his assistance -Cassius quickly joined Brutus in Smyrna with most of his army, leaving his nephew behind to govern Syria -The conspirators decided to attack the triumvirate's allies in Asia -Cassius set upon and sacked Rhodes, while Brutus did the same to Lycia. They regrouped the following year in Sardis, where their armies proclaimed them imperator -They crossed the Hellespont, marched through Thrace, and encamped near Philippi in Macedon. Gaius Julius Caesar Octavian (later known as Augustus) and Mark Antony soon arrived, and Cassius planned to starve them out through the use of their superior position in the country -However, they were forced into a pair of battles by Antony, collectively known as the Battle of Philippi -Brutus was successful against Octavian, and took his camp. Cassius, however, was defeated and overrun by Antony. Cassius, unaware of Brutus' victory, gave up all for lost, and ordered his freedman Pindarus to kill him -He was mourned by Brutus as "the Last of the Romans" and buried in Thasos

Lucius Sergius Catilina (Catiline)

-Catiline was born in 108 BC to one of the oldest patrician families in Rome, gens Sergia. Although his family was of consular heritage, they were then declining in both social and financial fortunes. Virgil later gave the family an ancestor, Sergestus, who had come with Aeneas to Italy, presumably because they were notably ancient; but they had not been prominent for centuries. The last Sergius to be consul had been Gnaeus Sergius Fidenas Coxo in 380 BC. Later, these factors would dramatically shape Catiline's ambitions and goals as he would desire above all else to restore the political heritage of his family along with its financial power. -An able commander, Catiline had a distinguished military career. He served in the Social War with Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus and Cicero, under Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo in 89 BC. During Gaius Marius, Lucius Cornelius Cinna and Gnaeus Papirius Carbo's regime, Catiline played no major role, but he remained politically secure. He later supported Lucius Cornelius Sulla in the civil war of 84 BC-81 BC. It was during Sulla's proscriptions that Catiline, according to accusations made by Cicero, maimed and then killed and beheaded his brother-in-law, Marcus Marius Gratidianus, at the tomb of Catulus; he then carried the head through the streets of Rome and deposited it at Sulla's feet at the Temple of Apollo. He is also accused of murdering his first wife and son so that he could marry the wealthy and beautiful Aurelia Orestilla, daughter of the Consul of 71 BC, Gnaeus Aufidius Orestes. In the early 70s BC he served abroad, possibly with Publius Servilius Vatia in Cilicia. In 73 BC, he was brought to trial for adultery with the Vestal Virgin, Fabia, who was a half-sister of Cicero's wife, Terentia, but Quintus Lutatius Catulus, the principal leader of the Optimates, testified in his favor, and eventually Catiline was acquitted. -He was praetor in 68 BC, and for the following two years was the propraetorian governor for Africa. Upon his return home in 66 BC, he presented himself as a candidate for the consular elections, but a delegation from Africa appealing to the Senate, indicting him for abuses, prevented this as the incumbent consul, Lucius Volcatius Tullus, disallowed the candidacy. He was finally brought to trial in 65 BC, where he received the support of many distinguished men, including many consulars. Even one of the consuls for 65 BC, Lucius Manlius Torquatus, demonstrated his support for Catiline. Cicero also contemplated defending Catiline in court. Eventually, Catiline was acquitted. The author of Commentariolum Petitionis, possibly Cicero's brother, Quintus Cicero, suggests that Catiline was only acquitted by the fact that: "he left the court as poor as some of his judges had been before the trial," implying that he bribed his judges. -The first Catilinarian conspiracy was a plot to murder the consuls of 65 BC and seize power. Historians consider it unlikely that Catiline would have been involved in the First Catilinarian Conspiracy or, indeed, that the conspiracy existed at all. -During 64 BC, Catiline was officially accepted as a candidate in the consular election for 63 BC. He ran alongside Gaius Antonius Hybrida, who some suspect may have been a fellow conspirator. Nevertheless, Catiline was defeated by Cicero and Antonius Hybrida in the consular election, largely because the Roman aristocracy feared Catiline and his economic plan. The Optimates were particularly repulsed because he promoted the plight of the urban plebs along with his economic policy of tabulae novae, the universal cancellation of debts. -He was brought to trial later that same year, but this time it was for his role in the Sullan proscriptions. At the insistence of Cato the Younger, then quaestor, all men who had profited during the proscriptions were brought to trial. For his involvement, Catiline was accused of killing his former brother-in-law Marcus Marius Gratidianus, carrying this man's severed head through the streets of Rome and then having Sulla add him to the proscription to make it legal. Other allegations claimed that he murdered several other notable men. Despite this, Catiline was acquitted again, though some surmise that it was through the influence of Caesar, who presided over the court. -Catiline chose to stand for the consulship again in the following year. However, by the time of the consular election for 62 BC, Catiline had lost much of the political support he had enjoyed during the previous year's election. He was defeated by two other candidates, Decimus Junius Silanus and Lucius Licinius Murena, ultimately crushing his political ambitions. The only remaining chance of attaining the consulship would be through an illegitimate means, conspiracy or revolution. -The second Catilinarian conspiracy was a plot, devised by Catiline with the help of a group of aristocrats and disaffected veterans, to overthrow the Roman Republic in 63 BC. Cicero exposed the plot, which forced Catiline to flee from Rome. -The failure of the conspiracy in Rome was a massive blow to Catiline. Upon hearing of the death of Publius Cornelius Lentulus Sura and the others, many men deserted his army, reducing the size from about 10,000 to a mere 3,000. He and his ill-equipped army began to march towards Gaul and then back towards Rome several times in vain attempts to avoid a battle. However, Catiline was forced to fight when Quintus Caecilius Metellus Celer blocked him from the north with three legions. So, he chose to engage Antonius Hybrida's army near Pistoria, hoping that he could defeat Antonius in the ensuing battle and dishearten the other Republican armies. Catiline also hoped that he might have an easier battle against Antonius who, he assumed, would fight less determinedly, as he had once been allied with Catiline. In fact, Catiline may have still believed that Antonius Hybrida was conspiring with him—which may have been true, as Antonius Hybrida claimed to be ill on the day of the battle. -Catiline and all his troops fought bravely, with Catiline himself fighting on the front lines. Once Catiline saw that there was no hope of victory, he threw himself into the thick of the fray. When the corpses were counted, all Catiline's soldiers were found with frontal wounds, and his corpse was found far in front of his own lines. -After Catiline's death, many of the poor still regarded him with respect and did not view him as the traitor and villain that Cicero claimed he was. However, the aristocratic element of Rome certainly viewed him in a much darker light. Sallust wrote an account of the conspiracy that epitomized Catiline as representative of all of the evils festering in the declining Roman republic. In his account, Sallust attributes countless crimes and atrocities to Catiline, but even he refuses to heap some of the most outrageous claims on him, particularly a ritual that involved the drinking of blood of a sacrificed child. Later historians such as Florus and Dio Cassius, far removed from the original events, recorded the claims of Sallust and the aforementioned rumors as facts. Up until the modern era Catiline was equated, as Sallust described, to everything depraved and contrary to both the laws of the gods and men. Nevertheless, many Romans still viewed his character with a degree of respect. Well after Catiline's death and the end of the threat of the conspiracy, even Cicero reluctantly admitted that Catiline was an enigmatic man who possessed both the greatest of virtues and the most terrible of vices. -Catiline spoke with an eloquence that demanded loyalty from his followers and strengthened the resolve of his friends. Without doubt Catiline possessed a degree of courage that few have, and he died a particularly honorable death in Roman society. Unlike most Roman generals of the late republic, Catiline offered himself to his followers both as a general and as soldier on the front lines.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

-Cicero was a Roman philosopher, politician, lawyer, orator, political theorist, consul and constitutionalist. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the Roman equestrian order, and is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists -His influence on the Latin language was so immense that the subsequent history of prose in not only Latin but European languages up to the 19th century was said to be either a reaction against or a return to his style -Cicero wanted to pursue a public career in politics along the steps of the Cursus honorum. In 90 BC-88 BC, he served both Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo and Lucius Cornelius Sulla as they campaigned in the Social War, though he had no taste for military life, being an intellectual first and foremost. Cicero started his career as a lawyer around 83-81 BC. His first major case, of which a written record is still extant, was his 80 BC defense of Sextus Roscius on the charge of patricide.Taking this case was a courageous move for Cicero; patricide was considered an appalling crime, and the people whom Cicero accused of the murder, the most notorious being Chrysogonus, were favorites of Sulla. At this time it would have been easy for Sulla to have the unknown Cicero murdered. Cicero's defense was an indirect challenge to the dictator Sulla, and on the strength of his case, Roscius was acquitted -His first office was as one of the twenty annual quaestors, a training post for serious public administration in a diversity of areas, but with a traditional emphasis on administration and rigorous accounting of public monies under the guidance of a senior magistrate or provincial commander. Cicero served as quaestor in western Sicily in 75 BC and demonstrated honesty and integrity in his dealings with the inhabitants. As a result, the grateful Sicilians asked Cicero to prosecute Gaius Verres, a governor of Sicily, who had badly plundered the province. His prosecution of Gaius Verres was a great forensic success for Cicero. Governor Gaius Verres hired the prominent lawyer of a noble family Quintus Hortensius Hortalus -Cicero was elected consul for the year 63 BC. His co-consul for the year, Gaius Antonius Hybrida, played a minor role. During his year in office, he thwarted a conspiracy centered on assassinating him and overthrowing the Roman Republic with the help of foreign armed forces, led by Lucius Sergius Catilina. Cicero procured a senatus consultum ultimum (a declaration of martial law) and drove Catiline from the city with four vehement speeches (the Catiline Orations), which to this day remain outstanding examples of his rhetorical style. The Orations listed Catiline and his followers' debaucheries, and denounced Catiline's senatorial sympathizers as roguish and dissolute debtors clinging to Catiline as a final and desperate hope. Cicero demanded that Catiline and his followers leave the city. At the conclusion of his first speech, Catiline hurriedly left the Senate, (which was being held in the Temple of Jupiter Stator). In his following speeches, Cicero did not directly address Catiline. He delivered the second and third orations before the people, and the last one again before the Senate. By these speeches, Cicero wanted to prepare the Senate for the worst possible case; he also delivered more evidence against Catiline -Catiline fled and left behind his followers to start the revolution from within while Catiline assaulted the city with an army of "moral bankrupts and honest fanatics". Catiline had attempted to involve the Allobroges, a tribe of Transalpine Gaul, in their plot, but Cicero, working with the Gauls, was able to seize letters which incriminated the five conspirators and forced them to confess their crimes in front of the Senate -In 60 BC Julius Caesar invited Cicero to be the fourth member of his existing partnership with Pompey and Marcus Licinius Crassus, an assembly that would eventually be called the First Triumvirate. Cicero refused the invitation because he suspected it would undermine the Republic -The struggle between Pompey and Julius Caesar grew more intense in 50 BC. Cicero favoured Pompey, seeing him as a defender of the senate and Republican tradition, but at that time avoided openly alienating Caesar. When Caesar invaded Italy in 49 BC, Cicero fled Rome. Caesar, seeking the legitimacy an endorsement by a senior senator would provide, courted Cicero's favour, but even so Cicero slipped out of Italy and traveled to Dyrrachium, Illyria, where Pompey's staff was situated. Cicero traveled with the Pompeian forces to Pharsalus in 48 BC, though he was quickly losing faith in the competence and righteousness of the Pompeian side. Eventually, he provoked the hostility of his fellow senator Cato, who told him that he would have been of more use to the cause of the optimates if he had stayed in Rome. After Caesar's victory at Pharsalus, Cicero returned to Rome only very cautiously. Caesar pardoned him and Cicero tried to adjust to the situation and maintain his political work, hoping that Caesar might revive the Republic and its institutions. -In a letter to Varro on c. April 20, 46 BC, Cicero outlined his strategy under Caesar's dictatorship. Cicero, however, was taken completely by surprise when the Liberatores assassinated Caesar on the ides of March, 44 BC. Cicero was not included in the conspiracy, even though the conspirators were sure of his sympathy. Marcus Junius Brutus called out Cicero's name, asking him to restore the republic when he lifted the bloodstained dagger after the assassination. A letter Cicero wrote in February 43 BC to Trebonius, one of the conspirators, began, "How I could wish that you had invited me to that most glorious banquet on the Ides of March"! Cicero became a popular leader during the period of instability following the assassination. He had no respect for Mark Antony, who was scheming to take revenge upon Caesar's murderers. In exchange for amnesty for the assassins, he arranged for the Senate to agree not to declare Caesar to have been a tyrant, which allowed the Caesarians to have lawful support and kept Caesar's reforms and policies intact -Cicero and Antony now became the two leading men in Rome—Cicero as spokesman for the Senate; Antony as consul, leader of the Caesarian faction, and unofficial executor of Caesar's public will. Relations between the two, never friendly, worsened after Cicero claimed that Antony was taking liberties in interpreting Caesar's wishes and intentions. Octavian was Caesar's adopted son and heir; after he returned to Italy, Cicero began to play him against Antony. He praised Octavian, declaring he would not make the same mistakes as his father. He attacked Antony in a series of speeches he called the Philippics, after Demosthenes's denunciations of Philip II of Macedon. At the time Cicero's popularity as a public figure was unrivalled. -Cicero was one of the most viciously and doggedly hunted among the proscribed. He was viewed with sympathy by a large segment of the public and many people refused to report that they had seen him. He was caught December 7, 43 BC leaving his villa in Formiae in a litter going to the seaside where he hoped to embark on a ship destined for Macedonia. When his killers - Herennius (a centurion) and Popilius (a tribune) - arrived, Cicero's own slaves said they had not seen him, but he was given away by Philologus, a freed slave of his brother Quintus Cicero -Cicero's last words are said to have been, "There is nothing proper about what you are doing, soldier, but do try to kill me properly." He bowed to his captors, leaning his head out of the litter in a gladiatorial gesture to ease the task. By baring his neck and throat to the soldiers, he was indicating that he wouldn't resist. According to Plutarch, Herennius first slew him, then cut off his head. On Antony's instructions his hands, which had penned the Philippics against Antony, were cut off as well; these were nailed along with his head on the Rostra in the Forum Romanum according to the tradition of Marius and Sulla, both of whom had displayed the heads of their enemies in the Forum. Cicero was the only victim of the proscriptions to be displayed in that manner. According to Cassius Dio (in a story often mistakenly attributed to Plutarch), Antony's wife Fulvia took Cicero's head, pulled out his tongue, and jabbed it repeatedly with her hairpin in final revenge against Cicero's power of speech

Lucius Cornelius Cinna

-Cinna was a four-time consul of the Roman Republic, serving four consecutive terms from 87 to 84 BC. -Cinna's influence in Rome exacerbated the tensions which existed between Gaius Marius and Lucius Cornelius Sulla. After the death of Marius, he became the leading power in Rome until his own death. His main impact upon Roman politics was his ability to veil his tyranny and make it appear that he was working under a constitutional government. His policies also impinged on Julius Caesar, who married his daughter. -One of Cinna's first decisions as consul was not to let his oath to Sulla influence his decisions as consul. Cinna argued that the oath should not prevent him from helping the people of Rome. Soon after this, Cinna sought to remove Sulla from the city. He brought some sort of charge against Sulla soon after coming to power. Sulla, rather than facing the charge, escaped with his army and led them to fight the army of Mithridates VI of Pontus in Boeotia. This left only Octavius and the Senate to defend the causes of Sulla in Rome. Cinna eventually supported many causes, which leads to some debate concerning his original goals and to accusations that he chose his issues based on bribes. -Two causes predominated, that of the exiles and that of the Italians. Marius and his supporters, as well as many prominent supporters of Publius Sulpicius Rufus, had been exiled from Rome under Sulla's rule, but were still very popular amongst the people. It is clear that there were later connections between Cinna and this group (see "Preparations while in exile"), but it is not clear at what point he took up this cause. The other cause, to which Cinna can be more clearly connected, is that of the "novus homo" or "new citizen". These were members of Italian tribes who had been promised citizenship as a condition of peace in the Social War. Technically they had been given citizenship, but in such a way that they had no real power. Cinna, even before his election, seems to have favored this cause. Certainly after his election, he worked to increase their rights, fighting against Octavius, who tried to maintain the status quo. This feud ended in one of the largest street fights ever to occur in Rome, between the supporters of Octavius and the supporters of Cinna. Although Appian states that Cinna had no support from the "old citizens" in anything, including the street fight, this is highly unlikely, as none of his laws would have been a threat without at least some support from this quarter. Why the "old citizens" supported him, and how many of them supported him, is entirely unknown. Octavius used the street fight to justify exiling Cinna immediately, deposing him of his office and citizenship, an accusation that seems to have stuck with many historians, who accused Cinna of acting as a dictator. The deposition of Cinna was unconstitutional and the only instance of its kind in the history of the Roman Republic. -Cinna then began to raise an army from the Italian countryside. His connections with the Italian groups seem to have been quite strong, as they quickly joined his forces. At this point, the connections between Marius and Cinna become quite clear. Because they shared the support of the Italians, Cinna was willing to join forces with Marius. Together they planned to retake the city. Cinna and Marius' army moved through the countryside, cutting off supply routes and cities used for food storage from the city. -The first major battle of the conflict occurred at the Janiculum, where Octavius' forces prevailed, but with heavy losses, including the general Pompeius Strabo. This demoralized Octavius' army, but did not hinder the siege of Cinna and Marius, further weakening Rome. Eventually, after various skirmishes around the outskirts of Rome, negotiators secured Cinna's assurance that he would not "willingly cause anyone's death on reentering Rome". Thus, in late 87 BC, Cinna was reinstated as consul and the armies reentered the city. As Cinna and his bodyguard entered, however, Marius refused to enter Rome until his exile was officially repealed. The Senate quickly began to vote to approve this, but before it finished, Marius had given up all pretense and entered the city with his bodyguard, the Bardyiae. This unit consisted of Marius' slaves who killed at Marius' orders. Marius, according to the ancient historians, filled the city with blood, slaughtering anyone who remotely supported Sulla, had a lot of property, or was a personal enemy of Marius. These claims are most likely exaggerated, as they do not appear in Sulla's memoirs, a source that would seem biased against Marius. These seem to appear later, but all agree that Cinna distanced himself from the indiscriminate slaughter, ordering only the deaths of Octavius and others who were direct political threats. -Eventually, "Cinna had had enough of murder", and he and Quintus Sertorius, a general who supported Marius and later governed Spain, had their troops ambush the sleeping Bardyiae, ending their reign of terror. Soon after this, in 86 BC, Marius and Cinna were reelected for consulship. Seventeen days after attaining his much sought seventh consulship, Marius died This began the era many historians have termed the "Dominatio Cinnae" (Domination of Cinna). -What occurred during this period is not as well documented as other parts of Cinna's life. After the death of Marius, Lucius Valerius Flaccus (suffect consul 86 BC) succeeded him. Flaccus' major contribution was the submission of a bill attempting to solve a financial crisis. The Social War had caused a financial depression, resulting in exorbitant interest on loans and collapsing financial confidence in Rome after the start of the Mithridatic War. Counterfeiting became rampant, forcing Cinna and the government to develop testing stations to discover the false coins and replace them with good ones. -Flaccus was disliked by his soldiers and many deserted to Sulla. That any remained was due to the legate Fimbria, who used his popularity and influence with the troops to convince them to stay. This did not benefit Flaccus for long though, as Fimbria later had the army rebel against Flaccus and continue against Mithridates under his own leadership. Fimbria tried to offer peace with Sulla, but Sulla and Mithridates were already in negotiations which were favorable to both parties, therefore negating any necessity for Fimbria's offer to Mithridates. After confirming peace with Mithridates, Sulla went to negotiate with Fimbria, at which point Fimbria's army deserted to Sulla and Fimbria committed suicide. -After finishing his war, Sulla returned to Italy. He sent out letters to the Italians in order to soothe the fear that he would take away their citizenship. Sulla also sent a letter to the Senate regaling them of his victories over Mithridates and assuring them that he had received those exiled by Cinna and that he would provide swift retribution to those who were guilty of causing himself and the Senate to suffer. Cinna and his colleague, Carbo, prepared for war. They postponed the elections of that year, declaring themselves re-elected so that they would not have to return to Rome early to participate in an election. It is unlikely that this was contested because Cinna and his allies had enough power that no one dared to run in opposition to them. While complying with the constitution, this allowed Cinna to act as monarch while still appearing to follow the will of the population. As Cinna and Carbo doubled their efforts for war with the looming threat of Sulla, Cinna was unaware that it would not be battle, but his preparations for war, which would cost him his life. -Cinna was murdered in a mutiny of his own soldiers in 84 BC. He had been working to transport his troops across the Adriatic in order to meet Sulla on foreign soil. The troops were not eager for the upcoming fight, which promised no booty. Their dissatisfaction increased when they heard that the second convoy of troops, still in transit, had been shipwrecked in a storm. The survivors had returned to their homes. Cinna ordered an assembly in order to frighten the troops into obedience. One of his lictors struck a soldier who had been standing in the way as Cinna entered the gathering, and when the soldier hit back, Cinna ordered his arrest. This caused another soldier to throw a stone at Cinna, which struck him. The spirit of the mob then took hold as more missiles were thrown and the nearest soldiers stabbed Cinna to death. -Lucius Cornelius Cinna was important within Roman history. He played an important role in the dispute between Gaius Marius and Lucius Sulla, allowing Marius to return to Rome for his seventh consulship. Cinna's rule was not well documented and many argue that his only goal was his own advancement. His alliance with Marius was to better his interests rather than as a statement of his politics. He attempted to become a tyrant behind a veiled disguise of a republic under a strict constitution. His only real cause was that of the equalization of the Italian groups. Although he was not as well documented as his contemporaries, Cinna was still an essential player in the fall of the system of the Roman Republic, ushering in a thinly veiled form of tyranny.

Publius Clodius Pulcher

-Clodius was a Roman politician known for his popularist tactics. As tribune, he pushed through an ambitious legislative program, including a grain dole, but is chiefly remembered for his feud with Cicero and Milo, whose supporters murdered him in the street -Between 68 and 67 BC, Clodius was a Legatus. In 62 BC or later he married Fulvia of Tusculum, daughter of Sempronia the formidable principal heiress of the plebeian high noble family of Semproni Tuditani, which had died out in the male line with her father (70s BC). Fulvia bore him at least one son and one daughter who survived to adulthood, and following his death she married C. Scribonius Curio, tribune of plebs in 50 BC, and then Marcus Antonius the Triumvir (47-40 BC), also producing children by both of those important politicians -He took part in the Third Mithridatic War under his brother-in-law, Lucullus. However, considering himself treated with insufficient respect, he stirred up a revolt. Another brother-in-law, Q. Marcius Rex, governor of Cilicia, gave him the command of his fleet, but he was captured by pirates. On his release he repaired to Syria, where he nearly lost his life during a mutiny he was accused of instigating -Returning to Rome in 66 BC, Clodius was in serious need of protection from his brother-in-law because of the treason he had committed in Lucullus' army, and his incestuous relations with Lucullus' wife, which Lucullus had discovered upon his return the same year, prompting him to divorce her. Turning 27 in the year of his return (and already having exceeded the normal age for a first marriage, which was 20-26, owing to his extended service in the east), Clodius wed Fulvia the daughter of Sempronia of the Tuditani that year or the next. At about the same time, Lucullus' very close relative (probably nephew) L. Licinius Murena became Sempronia's third husband. He also collusively prosecuted Catiline in 65 on a charge of extortion from his African command, and so helped secure his acquittal -The rites of Bona Dea ("The Good Goddess") were held in December, at the house of Rome's leading magistrate. In 62, they were held in Julius Caesar's grace and favour house in the Regia, loaned to him as pontifex maximus. They were hosted by his wife, Pompeia, and his mother Aurelia, and were supervised by the Vestal Virgins. This was a cult from which men were excluded, so completely that they were not permitted to know or even speak the goddess's name - hence the euphemism "Good Goddess". Clodius intruded on the rites, disguised as a woman and apparently intent on finding and seducing Pompeia; but he was discovered. The ensuing scandal dragged on for months, during which Pompey returned from the east, Caesar divorced his wife, and most public business was suspended. Lucullus was determined to use the opportunity to destroy Clodius' political career, and eventually brought him to trial on the capital charge of incestum. Three Corneli Lentuli prosecuted.[20] Lucullus had numerous household slaves testify to Clodius' incest with his sister Clodia; Terentia, who had hosted the previous year's rites, almost certainly pressed Cicero to testify against Clodius in revenge for the latter's unsuccessful but still damaging prosecution in 73 of her half-sister, the Vestal Fabia, on a charge of incestum with Catiline. Caesar's mother Aurelia and sister Julia testified to Clodius' offense. Caesar did his best to help Clodius by claiming he knew nothing. When asked why, if he knew nothing, he had divorced his wife, Caesar made the famous response that Caesar's wife had to be beyond suspicion. Clodius perjured himself with a fabricated alibi that he was not in Rome on the day of the rites, which Cicero was in a position to refute, though he was uncertain whether he should do so. Eventually national and domestic politics forced his hand. He was most eager to forge a détente between Lucullus and Pompey, who were at loggerheads over the settlement of the eastern provinces, and wished to do Lucullus a favour in this matter, while at home Terentia demanded that he give his testimony and ensure the destruction of her subversive rival's brother and lover. Cicero did so, but Crassus decided the outcome of the trial by bribery of the jurors en masse to secure Clodius' acquittal. - Clodius' transvestitism in the Bona Dea incident was to supply Cicero with invective ammunition for years. Like other popularist politicians of his time, as embodied by Caesar and Antony, Clodius was accused of exerting a sexual magnetism that was attractive to both women and men and enhanced his political charisma: "The sexual power of Clodius, his suspected ability to win the wife of Caesar, might be read as indicating the potency of his political influence." -In the elections of 53 BC, when Milo was a candidate for the consulship and Clodius for the praetorship, violent clashes erupted in the streets of Rome between the gangs of Clodius and Milo, twice delaying the election -On January 18, 52 BC, Clodius was returning to Rome by way of the Appian Way from a visit to some of his holdings in the hinterlands. Clodius was travelling lightly with a band of 30 armed slaves and, uncommonly for him, without his wife. By chance, Milo was travelling the other way with his wife as well as an escort which included gladiators, and the two groups passed each other. The encounter between the two groups passed without incident until the last pair at the back of each train began a scuffle. It is then believed that Clodius turned back and was wounded by a javelin thrown by one of the gladiators in Milo's party. He was brought to a nearby inn for his wounds, while his slaves were killed or driven off

Marcus Licinius Crassus

-Crassus was a Roman general and politician who played a key role in the transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire. Amassing an enormous fortune during his life, Crassus is considered the wealthiest man in Roman history, and among the richest men in all history -After the Marian purges and the sudden death subsequently of Gaius Marius, the surviving consul Lucius Cornelius Cinna (better-known as father-in-law of Julius Caesar) imposed proscriptions on those surviving Roman senators and equestrians who had supported Lucius Cornelius Sulla in his 88 BC march on Rome and overthrow of the traditional Roman political arrangements -Some of Crassus' wealth was acquired conventionally, through traffic in slaves, production from silver mines, and speculative real estate purchases. Crassus tended to specialize in deals involving proscribed citizens and especially and notoriously purchasing during fires or structural collapse of buildings. When buildings were burning, Crassus and his purposely-trained crew would show up, and Crassus would offer to purchase the presumably doomed property and perhaps neighboring endangered properties from their owners for speculatively low sums; if the purchase offer was accepted, Crassus would then use his army of some 500 slaves which he purchased due to their knowledge of architecture and building to put the fire out, sometimes before too much damage had been done: otherwise Crassus would use his crews to rebuild. If his purchase offers were not accepted, then Crassus would not engage in firefighting. Crassus's slaves employed the Roman method of firefighting—destroying the burning building to curtail the spread of the flames. Similar methods were used by Crassus in the common event of the collapse of the large Roman buildings known as insulae, which were notorious for their poor construction and unsafe conditions. Crassus was happy to cheaply construct new insulae using his slave labour force, in place of the old insulae which had collapsed and/or burned; however, he was known for his raising of rents rather than for his erection of improved residential structures. -After rebuilding his fortune, Crassus' next concern was his political career. As an adherent of Sulla, and the wealthiest man in Rome, and a man who hailed from a line of consuls and praetors, Crassus' political future was apparently assured. His problem was that despite his military successes, he was eclipsed by his contemporary Pompey the Great who blackmailed the dictator Sulla into granting him a triumph for victory in Africa over a rag-tag group of dissident Romans; a first in Roman history on a couple of counts. First, Pompey was not even a praetor, on which grounds a triumph had been denied in 206 BC to the great Scipio Africanus, who had just defeated Hannibal's brother Hasdrubal in Spain and brought Rome the entire province (Hispania). Second, Pompey had defeated fellow Romans; however, a quasi-precedent had been set when the consul Lucius Julius Caesar (a relative of Gaius Julius Caesar) had been granted a triumph for a small victory over Italian (non-Roman) peoples in the Social War. Pompey's triumph was the first granted to any Roman for defeating another Roman army. Crassus' rivalry with Pompey and his envy of Pompey's triumph would influence his subsequent career. -Crassus was rising steadily up the cursus honorum, the sequence of offices held by Roman citizens seeking political power, when ordinary Roman politics were interrupted by two events - first, the Third Mithridatic War, and second, the Third Servile War, which was the organized two-year rebellion of Roman slaves under the leadership of Spartacus (from the Summer of 73 BC to the Spring, 71 BC). -The Senate did not initially take the slave rebellion seriously, until they believed Rome itself was under threat. Crassus offered to equip, train, and lead new troops, at his own expense, after several legions had been defeated and their commanders killed in battle or taken prisoner. Eventually, Crassus was sent into battle against Spartacus by the Senate. At first he had trouble both in anticipating Spartacus' moves and in inspiring his army and strengthening their morale. When a segment of his army fled from battle, abandoning their weapons, Crassus revived the ancient practice of decimation - i.e., executing one out of every ten men, with the victims selected by drawing lots. Plutarch reports that "many things horrible and dreadful to see" occurred during the infliction of punishment, which was witnessed by the rest of Crassus' army. Nevertheless, according to Appian, the troops' fighting spirit improved dramatically thereafter, since Crassus had demonstrated that "he was more dangerous to them than the enemy. -During the fighting, Spartacus attempted to kill Crassus personally, slaughtering his way toward the general's position, but he succeeded only in killing two of the centurions guarding Crassus. Spartacus himself is believed to have been killed in the battle, although his body was never recovered. The six thousand captured slaves were crucified along the Via Appia by Crassus' orders. At his command, their bodies were not taken down afterwards but remained rotting along Rome's principal route to the South. This was intended as an object lesson to anyone who might think of rebelling against Rome in the future, particularly of slave insurrections against their owners and masters, the Roman citizens. -Crassus was elected consul for 70 BC, alongside Pompey. In that year, Crassus displayed his wealth by public sacrifices to Hercules and entertained the populace at 10,000 tables and distributing sufficient grain to last each family three months, an act which had the additional ends of performing a previously made religious vow of a tithe to the god Hercules and also to gain support among the members of the popular party -In 65 BC, Crassus was elected censor with another conservative Quintus Lutatius Catulus (Capitolinus), himself son of a consul. During that decade, Crassus was Julius Caesar's patron in all but name, financing Caesar's successful election to become Pontifex Maximus, Caesar had formerly held the #2 post as the priest of Jupiter or flamen dialis, but had been deprived of office by Sulla. Crassus also supported Caesar's efforts to win command of military campaigns. Caesar's mediation between Crassus and Pompey led to the creation of the First Triumvirate in 60/59 BC, the coalition of Crassus, Pompey, and Caesar (by now consul in 59). This coalition would last until Crassus' own death. -In 55 BC, after the Triumvirate met at the Lucca Conference, Crassus was again consul with Pompey, and a law was passed assigning the provinces of the two Hispanias and Syria to Pompey and Crassus respectively for five years -Crassus received Syria as his province, which promised to be an inexhaustible source of wealth. It may have been had he not also sought military glory and crossed the Euphrates in an attempt to conquer Parthia. Crassus attacked Parthia not only because of its great source of riches, but because of a desire to match the military victories of his two major rivals, Pompey the Great and Julius Caesar. The king of Armenia, Artavazdes II, offered Crassus the aid of nearly forty thousand troops (ten thousand cataphracts and thirty thousand infantrymen) on the condition that Crassus invaded through Armenia so that the king could not only maintain the upkeep of his own troops but also provide a safer route for his men and Crassus'. Crassus refused, and chose the more direct route by crossing the Euphrates. His legions were defeated at Carrhae (modern Harran in Turkey) in 53 BC by a numerically inferior Parthian force. Crassus' legions were mainly infantry men and were not prepared for the type of swift, cavalry-and-arrow attack that the Parthian troops were particularly adept at. The Parthians would get within shooting range, rain a barrage of arrows down upon Crassus's troops, turn, fall back, and charge forth with another attack in the same vein. They were even able to shoot as well backwards as they could forwards, increasing the deadliness of their onslaught. Crassus refused his quaestor Gaius Cassius Longinus's plans to reconstitute the Roman battle line, and remained in the testudo formation thinking that the Parthians would eventually run out of arrows. -Subsequently Crassus' men, being near mutiny, demanded he parley with the Parthians, who had offered to meet with him. Crassus, despondent at the death of his son Publius in the battle, finally agreed to meet the Parthian general; however, when Crassus mounted a horse to ride to the Parthian camp for a peace negotiation, his junior officer Octavius suspected a Parthian trap and grabbed Crassus' horse by the bridle, instigating a sudden fight with the Parthians that left the Roman party dead, including Crassus. A story later emerged that, after Crassus' death, the Parthians poured molten gold into his mouth as a symbol of his thirst for wealth. Or, according to a popular but historically unreliable account that it was by this means that he was put to death.

Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus

-Domitius was a close relative of the five Roman Emperors of the Julio-Claudian dynasty -Domitius was the only son of Antonia Major (niece of the emperor Augustus and daughter of Augustus' sister Octavia Minor who was married to triumvir Mark Antony) and Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus (consul 16 BC) -His only siblings were Domitia Lepida the Elder and Domitia Lepida the Younger, mother of the Empress Valeria Messalina (third wife of the Emperor Claudius) -He was a great-nephew of the Emperor Augustus, brother-in-law and second cousin of the Emperor Caligula; maternal cousin of the Emperor Claudius and the biological father to the Emperor Nero -Suetonius describes him as 'despicable and dishonest' -As a young man, Domitius was serving on the staff of his second cousin Gaius Caesar in the East. Gaius was a son of Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa and Julia the Elder, daughter to the previously mentioned Augustus. Domitius fortified their friendship by killing his freedman for refusing to drink as much as he was told. The reported reason was that the freedman did not get as drunk as Domitius did -On the Appian Way, Domitius was reported of having deliberately run over a child who was playing with his doll -At the Roman Forum, Domitius reportedly pulled out an eye of an equestrian because the equestrian openly criticized him -Domitius cheated on bankers for purchases he made -When he was Praetor, Domitius would swindle the prize money of victorious charioteers. Managers would complain, but Domitius decreed that future prizes would be paid on the spot -Domitius was also considered a serious womanizer -The Emperor Tiberius charged him with treason, adultery and incest with his sister and also with adultery with another noblewoman, but the ascension of Caligula saved him -Domitius married his second cousin Agrippina the Younger, Caligula's sister, after her thirteenth birthday in 28. He was 45 years old at the time -Tiberius arranged and ordered the marriage which was celebrated in Rome -Domitius was wealthy but apparently he and Agrippina chose to live between Antium and Rome -Domitius was Consul in 32 and appointed by Tiberius as a commissioner in early 37 -His son Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, later Emperor Nero, was born on 15 December 37 in Antium -According to Suetonius, he was congratulated by his friends for the birth of his son and Domitius said any child born to him and Agrippina would have a detestable nature and become a public danger, a fact that became true during the second part of Nero's reign -When Nero castrated a boy named Sporus and married him as a wife, Suetonius quoted one Roman who lived around this time who remarked that the world would have been better off if Nero's father had married someone more like the castrated boy -He died of edema at Pyrgi in January 40 -In Domitius' will, Nero inherited 1/3 of his estate. But Caligula, who was also mentioned in the will, took Nero's inheritance for himself -When Claudius became Emperor, Nero's inheritance was restored -During his lifetime, Domitius did not enjoy a good reputation -He was accused of being the accomplice of Albucilla in the crimes of adultery and murder, and also of incest with his sister Domitia Lepida, and narrowly escaped execution only because of the death of Tiberius

Gaius Sempronius Gracchus

-Gaius Gracchus was a Roman Popularis politician in the 2nd century BC and brother of the reformer Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus. His election to the office of tribune in the years 123 BC and 122 BC and reformative policies while in office prompted a constitutional crisis and his death at the hands of the Roman Senate in 121 BC -Gaius Gracchus was the younger brother of Tiberius Gracchus, by about nine years. He was heavily influenced both by the reformative policy of his older brother, and by his death at the hands of a senatorial mob. Plutarch suggests that it was "the grief he had suffered [that] encouraged him to speak out fearlessly, whenever he lamented the fate of his brother." Certainly aspects of his reforms, and especially his judicial reforms, seem to have been directed at the people responsible for his brother's death. -The political career of Gaius Gracchus prior to 123 BC started with a seat on his brother Tiberius's land-commission upon its formation in 133 BC. He served, in 126 BC, as a quaestor in the Roman province of Sardinia. In Sardinia he advanced quickly in notoriety based on his successful merits. During his quaestorship in Sardinia, Gaius began to hone his legendary oratory skills -Gaius used his famed oratory, considered to be the best in Rome, to attack his opponents at every chance and frequently lamented the fate of his brother Tiberius. He compared how the Senate failed to emulate their ancestors' respect for the tribune, citing the Senate's decision to wage war on the Falerii for insulting the tribune Genucius, or how Gaius Veturius had been condemned to death for failing to make way for the tribune. He chastised the People for standing by while Tiberius and his supporters were beaten and cited the unlawful exiles that followed because the accused were not permitted to stand trial. -Gaius' social reforms were far wider reaching than those of his brother Tiberius. Perhaps motivated by the fate of his brother, some of his earliest reforms dealt with the judiciary system. He set up two initial measures. The first held that if a magistrate had been deposed by the People, he would be unable to hold office a second time and the second held that the People could prosecute any magistrate who had exiled citizens without a trial. This outright attacked the measure the senate had set up, under the consul Popillius, wherein a special tribunal with powers of capital punishment had been established to try Gracchian supporters in 132 BC -Courts with capital punishment, not set up by the people, were now declared illegal by a retrospective measure which saw Popilius driven into exile. Further reforms to the judicial system were passed to check the practice of senatorial juries in the acquitting members of their own class of extortion. Control of the court dedicated to the trials of extortion, the Lex Acilia, was given to the equites and the procedure was rewritten to favor the prosecutors. Gaius passed legislation that required juries for criminal cases to be drawn from the 300 members of the Senate as well as 300 members of the equites. -Economically, Tiberius' land reforms were continued and broadened, providing for larger allotments so free labourers could be employed. Large overseas colonies were planned to provide for thousands of settlers which may have included some Italians as well as Roman citizens. The state was also required by the law, Lex Frumentaria, to buy grain supplies imported from North Africa and Sicily and to store them in bulk to allow the distribution of a monthly ration to all Roman citizens at a low price. The construction of a widespread secondary road system was enacted to facilitate communication and trade across Italy and the contract to collect taxes in Asia was auctioned off in Rome by the censors. -Gaius also made a few reforms to the military through the passing of the Lex Militaris. This law required the government to clothe and equip Roman soldiers without deductions from their pay, shortened the term of military service, and forbade the draft of boys under the age of seventeen. The intent of these reforms was to improve army morale and to win the political support of soldiers, allies, and voters with small incomes -Politically Gaius' most farsighted proposal was the 'franchise bill', a measure which would have seen the distribution of Roman citizenship to all Latin citizens and the extension of Latin citizenship to all Italian allies. This proposal was rejected because the Roman plebeians had no wish to share the benefits of citizenship, including cheap grain and entertainment. The rejection of this measure led, in part, to the disastrous Social War of 90 BC -Gaius amassed a monumental amount of political power. In each of his reforms, he personally oversaw each new institution, selected the 300 equestrian men to serve on the juries and acted as director for each new project with such skill that even his opponents were stunned at his efficiency. Gaius did not campaign for political office the following year, but instead threw his support behind Gaius Fannius for the consulship. Gaius' favor for Fannius won Fannius the consulship and Gaius was elected to be tribune in 122 BC despite having neither been a candidate nor having campaigned for the office, winning it on the sheer will of the People -A new candidate emerged for the consulship, one Lucius Opimius, who had opposed Fannius for the consulship in 122 BC and been stymied by Gaius' machinations. Opimius, a staunch conservative and oligarchical man who wanted to restore power to the Senate, had garnered a significant following and stood poised to challenge Gaius directly. Opimius had made it his sole mission to unseat Gaius -Gaius further distanced himself from his fellow tribunes when he insisted that the seats for a gladiatorial show be removed to allow the poor to watch. When they refused, he removed them secretly at night. Plutarch claims this cost him the office of the tribune for the third time, because although he won the popular vote, the tribunes were so upset that they falsified the ballots. Opimius and his supporters began to overturn Gaius' legislation with the hope of provoking him into violence, but Gaius remained resolute. Rumors suggested that his mother Cornelia hired foreign men disguised as harvesters to protect him -The following morning, Fulvius' men armed themselves with spoils from Fulvius' Gaulish campaign and marched loudly to the Aventine. Gaius refused to gird himself with anything save a small dagger and his toga. As he left his home, his wife Licinia, daughter of Crassus, begged him not to go meet the same men who had murdered and dishonored Tiberius Gracchus, knowing well enough that Gaius was to die that day. Gaius, without saying a word, gently pried himself from her arms and left her there, weeping, until her servants eventually came to pick her up and carried her to her brother Crassus -At Gaius' suggestion, Fulvius sent his youngest son Quintus to the Forum to speak to the Senate as a herald carrying a staff, which was only used when heralds approached enemies in times of war. Tearful, he pled for terms which many there were willing to hear, but Opimius insisted on speaking directly to Fulvius and Gaius, demanding they surrender themselves for trial. These terms were not negotiable. When Quintus returned to Gaius and Fulvius, Gaius was willing to acquiesce but Fulvius was not and sent the boy back -When the boy came back to the Senate and relayed what his father Fulvius stated, Opimius placed him under arrest and under guard and advanced on Fulvius' position with a contingent of archers from Crete. When they fired on Fulvius' men, wounding many, the crowd was thrown into chaos and fled. Fulvius hid in an abandoned bath or workshop with his eldest son and when discovered both were executed. Appian adds that when they initially hid, citizens were hesitant to give them away, but when the whole row was threatened to be burned down they were handed over to the mob. -Gaius, taking no part in the fighting and despairing at the bloodshed, fled to the Temple of Diana on the Aventine where he intended to commit suicide but was stopped by his friends Pomponius and Licinius. Gaius knelt and prayed to the goddess, asking that the People of Rome be forever enslaved by their masters since many had openly and quickly switched sides when an amnesty was declared by the Senate. -Gaius fled the temple and tried to cross the Tiber on a wooden bridge while Pomponius and Licinius would stay back and cover his retreat, killing as many as they could until they were themselves felled. Accompanied by only his slave Philocrates, Gaius fled, urged by onlookers though no man offered assistance despite Gaius' repeated requests for aid. Arriving at a grove sacred to Furrina, Philocrates first assisted Gaius in his suicide before taking his own life, though some rumors held that Philocrates was only killed after he refused to let go of his master's body -Gaius' head was cut off, as Opimius had announced that whoever brought back the head would be paid its weight in gold. When the head measured an astonishing seventeen and two-thirds pounds, it was discovered that Septimuleius, who brought the head, committed fraud by removing the brain and pouring in molten lead and therefore received no reward at all. The bodies of Gaius, Fulvius and the three thousand supporters who also died were thrown into the Tiber, their property confiscated and sold to the public treasury. Appian adds that their homes were looted by their opponents -Their wives were forbidden to mourn the death of their husbands and Licinia, wife of Gaius, was stripped of her dowry. Fulvius' youngest son, who took no part in the fighting and merely acted as herald, was executed, though Appian holds that Opimius allowed him to choose his own manner of death. Most outrageous to the People was when Opimius celebrated his victory by building a temple to Concord in the Forum with the Senate's approval. The People felt that a victory bought with the massacre of so many citizens was exceptionally distasteful. According to Plutarch, one night an inscription was carved that read "This temple of Concord is the work of mad Discord."

Germanicus Julius Caesar

-Germanicus was a member of the Julio-Claudian dynasty and a prominent general of the early Roman Empire. He was born in Rome, Italia, and was named either Nero Claudius Drusus after his father or Tiberius Claudius Nero after his uncle. He was the grandson-in-law and great-nephew of the Emperor Augustus, nephew and adoptive son of the Emperor Tiberius, father of the Emperor Caligula, brother of the Emperor Claudius, and the maternal grandfather of the Emperor Nero. He received the agnomen Germanicus in 9 BC, when it was posthumously awarded to his father in honour of his victories in Germania. -Germanicus married his maternal second cousin Agrippina the Elder, a granddaughter of Augustus, between 5 and 1 BC. The couple had nine children: Nero Caesar, Drusus Caesar, Tiberius Julius Caesar (not to be confused with emperor Tiberius), a child of unknown name (normally referenced as Ignotus), Gaius the Elder, the Emperor Caligula (Gaius the Younger), the Empress Agrippina the Younger, Julia Drusilla, and Julia Livilla. Only six of his children came of age; Tiberius and the Ignotus died as infants, Gaius the Elder in his early childhood. Through Agrippina the Younger, Germanicus was maternal grandfather of the Emperor Nero. -Germanicus became immensely popular among the citizens of Rome, who enthusiastically celebrated his military victories. He was also a favourite with Augustus, his great-uncle, who for some time considered him heir to the Empire. In AD 4, persuaded by Livia, his wife, Augustus decided in favour of Tiberius, his stepson from Livia's first marriage to Tiberius Claudius Nero. However, Augustus compelled Tiberius to adopt Germanicus as a son and to name him as his heir. Upon this adoption, Germanicus's name was changed to Germanicus Julius Caesar. He also became the adoptive brother of Tiberius's natural son Drusus the Younger. -After the death of Augustus in AD 14, the Senate appointed Germanicus commander of the forces in Germania. A short time after, the legions rioted on the news that their recruitments would not be marked back down to 16 years from the then standard 20.[4] Refusing to accept this, the rebel soldiers cried for Germanicus as emperor. Germanicus put down this rebellion himself, preferring to continue only as a general. In a bid to secure the loyalty of his troops and his own popularity with them and with the Roman people, he led them on a spectacular but brutal raid against the Marsi, a German tribe on the upper Ruhr river, in which he massacred much of the tribe and recovered one of the three legions' Eagle standards -In spite of doubts on the part of his uncle, Emperor Tiberius, Germanicus managed to raise another huge army and invaded Germany again the next year, in 16 AD. He forced a crossing of the Weser River near modern Minden, and then met Arminius' army at Idistaviso, further up the Weser, near modern Rinteln, in an engagement often called the Battle of the Weser River. Germanicus' leadership and command qualities were shown in full at the battle as his superior tactics and better trained and equipped legions inflicted huge casualties on the German army with only minor losses. One final battle was fought at the Angivarian Wall west of modern Hanover, repeating the pattern of high German fatalities forcing them to flee. -With his main objectives reached and with winter approaching Germanicus ordered his army back to their winter camps, with the fleet occasioning some damage by a storm in the North Sea. Although only a small number of soldiers died it was still a bad ending for a brilliantly fought campaign. After a few more raids across the Rhine, which resulted in the recovery of two of the three legion's eagles lost in 9 AD, Germanicus was recalled to Rome and informed by Tiberius that he would be given a triumph and reassigned to a different command -In an attempt to separate Germanicus from his troops and weaken his influence, Tiberius sent him to Asia, where in 18 AD he defeated the kingdoms of Cappadocia and Commagene, turning them into Roman provinces. During a sightseeing trip to Egypt (not a regular province, but the personal property of the Emperor) he seems to have unwittingly usurped several imperial prerogatives. The following year he found that the governor of Syria, Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso, had canceled the provincial arrangements that he had made. Germanicus in turn ordered Piso's recall to Rome, although this action was probably beyond his authority -In the midst of this feud Germanicus was stricken with a mysterious illness and died shortly thereafter in Antioch. His death aroused much speculation, with several sources blaming Piso, acting under orders from Emperor Tiberius. This was never proven, and Piso later died while facing trial (ostensibly by suicide, but Tacitus supposes Tiberius may have had him murdered before he could implicate the emperor in Germanicus' death). He feared the people of Rome knew of the conspiracy against Germanicus, but Tiberius' jealousy and fear of his nephew's popularity and increasing power was the true motive as understood by Tacitus -The death of Germanicus in what can only be described as dubious circumstances greatly affected Tiberius' popularity in Rome, leading to the creation of a climate of fear in Rome itself. Also suspected of connivance in his death was Tiberius' chief advisor, Sejanus, who would, in the 20s, create an atmosphere of fear in Roman noble and administrative circles by the use of treason trials and the role of delatores, or informers.

Gnaeus Octavius

-Gnaeus Octavius was a Roman senator who was elected consul of the Roman Republic in 87 BC alongside Lucius Cornelius Cinna. He died during the chaos that accompanied the capture of Rome by Cinna and Gaius Marius. Gnaeus Octavius was a member of the Plebeian gens Octavia. His father, also called Gnaeus Octavius, was Consul in 128 BC, while his uncle, Marcus Octavius, was a key figure in opposition to the reforms of Tiberius Gracchus in 133 BC. He was distantly related to Gaius Octavius, father of the future emperor Augustus. -Although at some point he had failed to be elected aedile, in around 90 BC, Octavius was elected Praetor, and in the following year (89 BC) was given a propraetoreal command in one of the eastern provinces. In 88 BC he was back in Rome where he was elected to be consul for the upcoming year (87 BC). While consul designate, he was made to swear an oath alongside his colleague, the popularist senator Lucius Cornelius Cinna, that he would uphold the changes instituted by the current consul, Sulla, and not strip Sulla of his lawful command of the First Mithridatic War. A scrupulously religious man, Octavius kept his oath. -Octavius was not a natural supporter of Sulla; he disliked both Sulla's march on Rome, as well as Sulla's personal vendetta against Gaius Marius which resulted in Marius' exile. However, he was a conservative member of the Senate, and was distrustful of Cinna's popularist programme. These political differences saw the two consuls almost immediately begin quarrelling in 87 BC over policy, with Cinna determined to grant Roman citizenship to all people in Italy, and to enrol the new citizens and freedmen across all of the Roman tribes. He also proposed the recall of Marius and all his supporters. The new enfranchisement was strenuously opposed by Octavius, eloquently and energetically speaking against it in the Senate. -Things came to a head when the Plebeian tribunes who supported Octavius vetoed the law in the Tribal Assembly. Cinna and his supporters began using violence to intimidate the tribunes to withdraw their veto, leading to a full-scale riot in the Roman forum. Octavius quickly gathered an armed group of supporters and attacked Cinna, who was forced to flee the city. During the fight, Octavius' men openly murdering a large number of newly enfranchised citizens, with Octavius using his authority as consul to justify the murders. -Octavius then illegally stripped Cinna of his consulship and his citizenship, and had elected in his stead Lucius Cornelius Merula. Hearing that Cinna had gained the support of the army of Appius Claudius at Nola, Octavius and the Senate began preparing Rome to withstand a siege, whilst sending out appeals to the various promagistrates to come to the assistance of the Senate. Pompeius Strabo was initially unwilling to cooperate with Octavius, but eventually moved his troops to the vicinity of Rome, just outside the Colline Gate. -When Cinna and Marius began their siege of Rome, Octavius attempted to drive a wedge in their ranks by offering all the Italian allies who were supporting Cinna the citizenship if they surrendered by the end of 87. Strabo in the meantime, playing a double game with both Octavius and Cinna, attempted to convince Octavius to enter into negotiations with Cinna. An attack by the Marian forces took the Janiculum, but they were repulsed by Octavius and Strabo, but Octavius suffered serious losses. The losses incurred by Octavius and the sudden death of Strabo soon after saw his army become increasingly demoralized. He lost 6,000 troops in the battle, while Strabo had lost some 11,000, both through the fighting and a plague that was running through his army. Due to the fear of famine in Rome, Octavius joined his men to Strabo's units, positioned outside the gates, after which he fled from Rome. -Meeting up with Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius and Publius Licinius Crassus (who had eventually obeyed Octavius' plea to return to Rome) at the Alban Hills, he was frustrated when they began to negotiate with Cinna, even going so far recognizing Cinna as consul. Fearful at these turn of events, and at news that the Senate was also contemplating coming to terms with Cinna, he fell out with Metellus Pius, who had initially refused his soldier's demands that he take command from Octavius. The army's apparent disloyalty finally convinced Octavius to return to Rome. -Although he tried to continue the resistance against Cinna, Octavius was unable to prevent the Senate from coming to terms with Cinna who entered Rome as consul. Although Cinna gave a vague promise that no harm would come to Octavius, Octavius was persuaded by a group of colleagues to abandon the forum and set himself up on the Janiculum as consul in protest against the recognition of Cinna, accompanied by a small number of nobles and a tiny remnant of his military forces. He refused to escape when Marcius Censorinus and a small cavalry force stormed the Janiculum, capturing him. Octavius was then beheaded by Censorinus who took his head to Cinna, before nailing it to the Rostra. -Octavius was said to have held to strict principles in his politics and was known for his honesty. Plutarch, who discusses him in his lives of Marius and Lucius Cornelius Sulla, describes Gnaeus Octavius' character as "reputable". Unfortunately, he was also slow in action, which contributed to his ultimate failure against Cinna.

Marcus Aemilius Lepidus

-Lepidus was a Roman patrician who was triumvir with Octavian (the future Augustus) and Mark Antony, and the last Pontifex Maximus of the Roman Republic. Lepidus had previously been a close ally of Julius Caesar. -Lepidus has always been portrayed as the weakest member of the triumvirate. He was disparaged by a number of ancient historians as feeble and untrustworthy. He typically appears as an easily marginalised figure in depictions of the events of the era, most notably in Shakespeare's plays. While some scholars have endorsed this view, others argue that the evidence is insufficient to discount the distorting effects of propaganda by Lepidus' opponents, principally Cicero, and later, Augustus. -Lepidus joined the College of Pontiffs as a child. He started his cursus honorum as triumvir monetalis, overseeing the minting of coins, from c.62-58 BC. Lepidus soon became one of Julius Caesar's greatest supporters. He was appointed as a praetor in 49 BC, being placed in charge of Rome while Caesar defeated Pompey in Greece. He secured Caesar's appointment as dictator, a position Caesar used to get himself elected as Consul, resigning the dictatorship after eleven days. Lepidus was rewarded with the position of Proconsul in the Spanish province of Hispania Citerior. -Lepidus was rewarded with the consulship in 46 BC after the defeat of the Pompeians in the East. Caesar also made Lepidus magister equitum ("Master of the Horse"), effectively his deputy. Caesar appears to have had greater confidence in Lepidus than in Mark Antony to keep order in Rome, after Antony's inflammatory actions led to disturbances in 47 BC. Lepidus appears to have been genuinely shocked when Antony provocatively offered Caesar a crown at the Lupercalia festival, an act that helped to precipitate the conspiracy to kill Caesar. -When in February 44 BC Caesar was elected dictator for life by the senate, he made Lepidus Master of the Horse for the second time. The brief alliance in power of Caesar and Lepidus came to a sudden end when Caesar was assassinated on March 15 44 BC (the Ides of March). Caesar had dined at Lepidus' house the night before his murder. One of the ringleaders of the conspiracy, Gaius Cassius Longinus, had argued for the killing of Lepidus and Mark Antony as well, but Marcus Junius Brutus had overruled him, saying the action was an execution and not a political coup -As soon as Lepidus learned of Caesar's murder, he acted decisively to maintain order by moving troops to the Campus Martius. He proposed using his army to punish Caesar's killers, but was dissuaded by Antony and Aulus Hirtius. Lepidus and Antony both spoke in the Senate the following day, accepting an amnesty for the assassins in return for preservation of their offices and Caesar's reforms. Lepidus also obtained the post of Pontifex Maximus. -When Antony attempted to take control of Cisalpine Gaul (northern Italy) by force and displace Decimus Brutus, the Senate led by Cicero called on Lepidus to support Brutus - one of Caesar's killers. Lepidus prevaricated, recommending negotiation with Antony. After Antony's defeat at the Battle of Mutina, the Senate sent word that Lepidus' troops were no longer needed. Antony, however, marched towards Lepidus's province with his remaining forces. Lepidus continued to assure the Senate of his loyalty, but engaged in negotiations with Antony. When the two armies met, large portions of Lepidus's forces joined up with Antony. Lepidus negotiated an agreement with him, while claiming to the Senate that he had no choice. It is unclear whether Lepidus' troops forced him to join with Antony, whether that was always Lepidus's plan, or whether he arranged matters to gauge the situation and make the best deal. -Antony and Lepidus now had to deal with Octavian Caesar, Caesar's great-nephew and adopted son in Caesar's will. Octavian was the only surviving commander of the forces that had defeated Antony at Mutina (modern Modena). The Senate instructed Octavian to hand over control of the troops to Decimus Brutus, but he refused. Antony and Lepidus met with Octavian on an island in a river, possibly near Mutina but more likely near Bologna, their armies lined along opposite banks. They formed the Second Triumvirate, legalized with the name of Triumvirs for Confirming the Republic with Consular Power (Triumviri Rei Publicae Constituendae Consulari Potestate) by the Lex Titia of 43 BC. With the triumvirs in possession of overwhelming numerical superiority, Decimus Brutus' remaining forces melted away, leaving the triumvirs in complete control of the western provinces. -Lepidus also agreed to the proscriptions that led to the death of Cicero and other die-hard opponents of Caesar's faction. Later historians were particularly critical of him for agreeing to the death of his brother Lucius Paullus, a supporter of Cicero. However, Cassius Dio hints that Lepidus helped Paullus to escape -After the pacification of the east and the defeat of the assassins' faction in the Battle of Philippi, during which he remained in Rome, Antony and Octavian took over most of Lepidus' territories, but granted him rights in the provinces of Numidia and Africa. For a while he managed to distance himself from the frequent quarrels between his colleagues Antony and Octavian. When the Perusine War broke out in 41 BC, Octavian tasked Lepidus with the defence of Rome against Lucius Antonius, Mark Antony's brother. Lucius, with superior forces, easily took the city. Lepidus was forced to flee to Octavian's camp. Lucius soon withdrew from Rome and Octavian retook the city. After this Lepidus was given six of Antony's legions to govern Africa. In 37 BC the treaty of Tarentum formally renewed the Triumvirate for another five years. -In 36 BC, during the Sicilian revolt, Lepidus raised a large army of 14 legions to help subdue Sextus Pompey. However, this was to lead to an ill-judged political move that gave Octavian the excuse he needed to remove Lepidus from power. After the defeat of Sextus Pompey, Lepidus had stationed his legions in Sicily and a dispute arose over whether he or Octavian had authority on the island. Lepidus had been the first to land troops in Sicily and had captured several of the main towns. However, he felt that Octavian was treating him as a subordinate rather than an equal. He asserted that Sicily should be absorbed into his sphere of influence. After negotiation, he suggested an alternative. Octavian could have Sicily and Africa, if he agreed to give Lepidus back his old territories in Spain and Gaul, which should legally have been his according to the Lex Titia. Octavian accused Lepidus of attempting to usurp power and fomenting rebellion. Humiliatingly, Lepidus' legions in Sicily defected to Octavian and Lepidus himself was forced to submit to him. -On 22 September 36 BC Lepidus was stripped of all his offices except that of Pontifex Maximus. Augustus sent him into exile in Circeii. After the defeat of Antony in 30 BC, Lepidus' son Lepidus the Younger was involved in a conspiracy to assassinate Octavian, but the plot was discovered by Gaius Maecenas. The younger Lepidus was executed, but the former triumvir himself was left unmolested. His wife Junia was, however, implicated. Lepidus had to plead with his former enemy Lucius Saenius Balbinus to grant her bail. -Spending the rest of his life in obscurity, Lepidus was apparently allowed to return to Rome periodically to participate in some senate business. Augustus is said to have belittled him by always asking for his vote last. He died peacefully in late 13 BC or early 12 BC.

Marcus Junius Brutus

-Marcus Junius Brutus, often referred to as Brutus, was a politician of the late Roman Republic -He is best known in modern times for taking a leading role in the assassination of Julius Caesar -Marcus Junius Brutus the Younger was the son of Marcus Junius Brutus the Elder and Servilia Caepionis -His father was killed by Pompey the Great in dubious circumstances after he had taken part in the rebellion of Lepidus; his mother was the half-sister of Cato the Younger, and later Julius Caesar's mistress -When civil war broke out in 49 BC between Pompey and Caesar, Brutus followed his old enemy and present leader of the Optimates, Pompey -When the Battle of Pharsalus began, Caesar ordered his officers to take Brutus prisoner if he gave himself up voluntarily, but to leave him alone and do him no harm if he persisted in fighting against capture -After the disaster of the Battle of Pharsalus, Brutus wrote to Caesar with apologies and Caesar immediately forgave him -Caesar then accepted him into his inner circle and made him governor of Gaul when he left for Africa in pursuit of Cato and Metellus Scipio -In 45 BC, Caesar nominated Brutus to serve as urban praetor for the following year -Also, in June 45 BC, Brutus divorced his wife and married his first cousin, Porcia Catonis, Cato's daughter -According to Cicero the marriage caused a semi-scandal as Brutus failed to state a valid reason for his divorce from Claudia other than he wished to marry Porcia -The marriage also caused a rift between Brutus and his mother, who resented the affection Brutus had for Porcia -Around this time, many senators began to fear Caesar's growing power following his appointment as dictator in perpetuity -Brutus was persuaded into joining the conspiracy against Caesar by the other senators -Eventually, Brutus decided to move against Caesar after Caesar's king-like behavior prompted him to take action -His wife was the only woman privy to the plot -The conspirators planned to carry out their plot on the Ides of March (March 15) that same year -On that day, Caesar was delayed going to the Senate because his wife, Calpurnia Pisonis, tried to convince him not to go -The conspirators feared the plot had been found out.[22] Brutus persisted, however, waiting for Caesar at the Senate, and allegedly still chose to remain even when a messenger brought him news that would otherwise have caused him to leave -When Caesar finally did come to the Senate, they attacked him -Publius Servilius Casca Longus was allegedly the first to attack Caesar with a blow to the shoulder, which Caesar blocked -However, upon seeing Brutus was with the conspirators, he covered his face with his toga and resigned himself to his fate -The conspirators attacked in such numbers that they even wounded one another. Brutus is said to have been wounded in the hand and in the legs -After the assassination, the Senate passed an amnesty on the assassins. This amnesty was proposed by Caesar's friend and co-consul Marcus Antonius -Nonetheless, uproar among the population caused Brutus and the conspirators to leave Rome -Brutus settled in Crete from 44 to 42 BC -In 43 BC, after Octavian received his consulship from the Roman Senate, one of his first actions was to have the people who had assassinated Julius Caesar declared murderers and enemies of the state -Marcus Tullius Cicero, angry at Octavian, wrote a letter to Brutus explaining that the forces of Octavian and Marcus Antonius were divided -Antonius had laid siege to the province of Gaul, where he wanted a governorship. In response to this siege, Octavian rallied his troops and fought a series of battles in which Antonius was defeated -Upon hearing that neither Antonius nor Octavian had an army big enough to defend Rome, Brutus rallied his troops, who totalled about 17 legions. When Octavian heard that Brutus was on his way to Rome, he made peace with Antonius. -Their armies, which together totalled about 19 legions, marched to meet Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus. -The two sides met in two engagements known as the Battle of Philippi. The first was fought on October 3, 42 BC, in which Brutus defeated Octavian's forces, although Cassius was defeated by Antonius' forces -The second engagement was fought on October 23, 42 BC and ended in Brutus' defeat -After the defeat, he fled into the nearby hills with only about four legions. Knowing his army had been defeated and that he would be captured, Brutus committed suicide. Among his last words were, according to Plutarch, "By all means must we fly; not with our feet, however, but with our hands."

Cato the Younger

-Marcus Porcius Cato, commonly known as Cato the Younger (Cato Minor) to distinguish him from his great-grandfather (Cato the Elder), was a politician and statesman in the late Roman Republic, and a follower of the Stoic philosophy -A noted orator, he is remembered for his stubbornness and tenacity (especially in his lengthy conflict with Julius Caesar), as well as his immunity to bribes, his moral integrity, and his famous distaste for the ubiquitous corruption of the period -Cato's stubbornness began in his early years. Sarpedon, his teacher, reports a very obedient and questioning child, although slow in being persuaded of things and sometimes very difficult to retrain -A story told by Plutarch tells of Quintus Poppaedius Silo, leader of the Marsi and involved in a highly controversial business in the Roman Forum, who made a visit to his friend Marcus Livius and met the children of the house. In a playful mood, he asked the children's support for his cause. All of them nodded and smiled except Cato, who stared at the guest with most suspicious looks. Silo demanded an answer from him and, seeing no response, took Cato and hung him by the feet out of the window. Even then, Cato would not say anything -Plutarch recounts a few other stories as well. One night, as some children were playing a game in a side room of a house during a social event, they were having a mock trial with judges and accusers as well as a defendant. One of the children, supposedly a good-natured and pleasant child, was convicted by the mock accusers and was being carried out of the room when he cried out desperately for Cato. Cato became very angry at the other children and, saying nothing, grabbed the child away from the "guards" and carried him away from the others -Plutarch also tells a story about Cato's peers' immense respect for him, even at a young age, during the Roman ritual military game, called "Troy", in which all aristocratic teenagers participated as a sort of "coming of age" ceremony, involving a mock battle with wooden weapons performed on horseback. While the child of one of Sulla's surrogates was chosen by the adult organizers to lead one of the "teams", the team refused to follow him because of his character, and when they were finally asked whom they would follow, the boys unanimously chose Cato -Lucius Cornelius Sulla, the Roman dictator, liked to talk with Cato and his brother Caepio, and often requested the child's presence even when the boy openly defied his opinions and policies in public (Sulla's daughter Cornelia Sulla was married to their uncle Mamercus Aemilius Lepidus Livianus). According to Plutarch, at one point during the height of the civil strife, as respected Roman nobles were being led to execution from Sulla's villa, Cato, aged about 14, asked his tutor why no one had yet killed the dictator. Sarpedon's answer was thus: "They fear him, my child, more than they hate him." Cato replied to this, "Give me a sword, that I might free my country from slavery." After this, Sarpedon was careful not to leave the boy unattended around the capital, seeing how firm he was in his republican beliefs -After receiving his inheritance, Cato moved from his uncle's house and began to study Stoic philosophy and politics. He began to live in a very modest way, as his great-grandfather Marcus Porcius Cato the Elder had famously done. Cato subjected himself to violent exercise, and learned to endure cold and rain with a minimum of clothes. He ate only what was necessary and drank the cheapest wine on the market. This was entirely for philosophical reasons; his inheritance would have permitted him to live comfortably. He remained in private life for a long time, rarely seen in public. But when he did appear in the forum, his speeches and rhetorical skills were most admired -Cato was first engaged to Aemilia Lepida, a patrician woman, but she was married instead to Quintus Caecilius Metellus Scipio, to whom she had been betrothed. Incensed, Cato threatened to sue for her hand, but his friends mollified him, and Cato was contented to compose Archilochian iambics against Scipio in consolation. Later, Cato was married to a woman called Atilia. By her, he had a son, Marcus Porcius Cato, and a daughter, Porcia, who would become the second wife of Marcus Junius Brutus. Cato later divorced Atilia for unseemly behavior. -On his return to Rome in 65 BC, Cato was elected to the position of quaestor. Like everything else in his life, Cato took unusual care to study the background necessary for the post, especially the laws relating to taxes. One of his first moves was to prosecute former quaestors for illegal appropriation of funds and dishonesty. Cato also prosecuted Sulla's informers, who had acted as head-hunters during Sulla's dictatorship, despite their political connections among Cato's own party and despite the power of Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, who had been known as the "teenage butcher" for his service under Sulla. The informers of Sulla were accused first of illegal appropriation of treasury money, and then of homicide. At the end of the year, Cato stepped down from his quaestorship amid popular acclaim, and he never ceased to keep an eye on the treasury, always looking for irregularities -In 63 BC, he was elected tribune of the plebs for the following year, and assisted the consul, Marcus Tullius Cicero, in dealing with the Catiline conspiracy. Lucius Sergius Catilina, a noble patrician, led a rebellion against the state, raising an army in Etruria -Cato's political and personal differences with Caesar appear to date from this time. In a meeting of the Senate dedicated to the Catilina affair, Cato harshly reproached Caesar for reading personal messages while the senate was in session to discuss a matter of treason. Cato accused Caesar of involvement in the conspiracy and suggested that he was working on Catilina's behalf, which might explain Caesar's otherwise odd stance that the conspirators should receive no public hearing yet be shown clemency. Caesar offered it up to Cato to read. Cato took the paper from his hands and read it, discovering that it was a love letter from Caesar's mistress Servilia Caepionis, Cato's half-sister -After the Catilinian conspiracy, Cato turned all his political skills to oppose the designs of Caesar and his triumvirate allies (Pompey and Marcus Licinius Crassus), who had among them held the reins of power in a finely balanced near-monopoly -When Caesar became consul, Cato opposed the agrarian laws that established farmlands for Pompey's veterans on public lands in Campania, from which the republic derived a quarter of its income. Caesar responded by having Cato dragged out by lictors while Cato was making a speech against him at the rostra. Many senators protested this extraordinary and unprecedented use of force by leaving the forum, one senator proclaiming he'd rather be in jail with Cato than in the Senate with Caesar. Caesar was forced to relent but countered by taking the vote directly to the people, bypassing the Senate. Bibulus and Cato attempted to oppose Caesar in the public votes but were harassed and publicly assaulted by Caesar's retainers. Eventually, Bibulus confined himself to his home and pronounced unfavorable omens in an attempt to lay the legal groundwork for the later repeal of Caesar's consular acts. -In 49 BC, Cato called for the Senate to formally relieve Caesar of his expired proconsular command and to order Caesar's return to Rome as a civilian and thus without proconsular legal immunity. Pompey had blocked all previous attempts at ordering Caesar back to Rome but had grown concerned with Caesar's growing political influence and popularity with the plebs. With the tacit support of Pompey, Cato successfully passed a resolution ending Caesar's proconsular command. Caesar made numerous attempts to negotiate, at one point even conceding to give up all but one of his provinces and legions. This concession satisfied Pompey, but Cato, along with the consul Lentulus, refused to back down. Faced with the alternatives of returning to Rome for the inevitable trial and retiring into voluntary exile, Caesar crossed into Italy with only one legion, implicitly declaring war on the Senate. -In Utica, Cato did not participate in the battle and, unwilling to live in a world led by Caesar and refusing even implicitly to grant Caesar the power to pardon him, he committed suicide in April 46 BC

Gaius Marius

-Marius was a Roman general and statesman. He held the office of consul an unprecedented seven times during his career. He was also noted for his important reforms of Roman armies, authorizing recruitment of landless citizens, eliminating the manipular military formations, and reorganizing the structure of the legions into separate cohorts. Marius defeated the invading Germanic tribes (the Teutones, Ambrones, and the Cimbri), for which he was called "the third founder of Rome." His life and career were significant in Rome's transformation from Republic to Empire. -In 134 BC, he was serving with the army at Numantia and his good services brought him to the attention of Publius Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus Africanus. Whether he arrived with Scipio Aemilianus or was already serving in the demoralized army that Scipio Aemilianus took over at Numantia is not clear. According to Plutarch, during a conversation after dinner, when the conversation turned to generals, someone asked Scipio Aemilianus where the Roman people would find a worthy successor to him. Aemilianus then gently tapped on Marius' shoulder, saying: "Perhaps this is the man." It would seem that even at this early stage in his army career, Marius had ambitions for a political career in Rome. He ran for election as one of the twenty-four special military tribunes of the first four legions who were elected (the rest were appointed by the magistrate who raised the legion). Sallust tells us that he was unknown by sight to the electors but was returned by all the tribes on the basis of his accomplishments. -In 120 BC, Marius was returned as plebeian tribune for the following year. He won with the support of Quintus Caecilius Metellus (later known as Metellus Numidicus), who was an inherited patronus. The Metelli, though neither ancient nor patrician, were one of the most powerful families in Rome at this time. During his tribunate, Marius pursued a populares line. He passed a law that restricted the interference of the wealthy in elections. In the 130s voting by ballot had been introduced in elections for choosing magistrates, passing laws and deciding legal cases, replacing the earlier system of oral voting. The wealthy continued to try to influence the voting by inspecting ballots and Marius passed a law narrowing the passages down which voters passed to cast their votes in order to prevent outsiders from harassing the electors. In the passage of this law, Marius alienated the Metelli, who opposed it. -By 108 BC, Marius conceived the desire to run for the consulship. Despite lack of approval from Metellus (brought on by Marius' status as a novus homo) who instead advised Marius to wait and run with Metellus' son (who was only twenty, which would signify a campaign 20 years in the future) Marius began to campaign for the consulship. Sallust claims that this was catalyzed, in part, by a fortune-teller who "told him that great and wonderful things were presaged to him that he might therefore pursue whatever designs he had formed trusting to the gods for success, and that he might try fortune as often as he pleased for that all his undertakings would prosper." Marius soon earned the respect of the troops by his conduct towards them, eating his meals with them and proving he was not afraid to share in any of their labours. He also won over the Italian traders by claiming that he could capture Jugurtha in a few days with half Metellus' troops. Both groups wrote home in praise of him, suggesting that he could end the war quickly unlike Metellus, who was pursuing a policy of methodically subduing the countryside. Eventually Metellus gave in, realizing that it was counterproductive to have a resentful subordinate -Under these circumstances, later that year, Marius was triumphantly elected consul for 107 BC. He was campaigning against Metellus's apparent lack of swift action against Jugurtha. Because of the repeated military debacles from 113 BC to 109 BC and the accusations that the oligarchy was open to flagrant bribery, it became easier for the virtuous new man who had worked with difficulty up the ladder of offices to be elected as an alternative to the inept or corrupt nobility. The Senate had a trick up its sleeve, however. In accordance with the provisions of the Lex Sempronia on Consular provinces, which dictated that the Senate in a given year was to determine the Consular provinces for the next year at the end of year before the elections, the Senate decided not to make the war against Jugurtha one of the provinces and to prorogue Metellus in Numidia. Marius got around this through a ploy that had been used in 131 BC. In that year there was a dispute as to who should command the war against Aristonicus in Asia, and a tribune had passed a law authorizing an election to select the commander (there was precedent for this procedure from the Second Punic War). A similar law was passed in 108 BC and Marius was voted the command by the People in this special election. Metellus shed bitter tears when he learned of the decision. Upon returning home, he avoided meeting Marius, and was granted a Triumph and the agnomen Numidicus (conqueror of Numidia). -In late 105 BC Marius was elected consul again while still in Africa. Election in absentia was unusual enough, but at some time after 152 BC a law had been passed dictating a ten-year interval between consulships, and there is even some evidence to indicate that by 135 BC a law had been passed that prohibited second consulships altogether. Nonetheless by this time news of a new advancing tribe known as the Cimbri had reached Rome and in the emergency Marius was again chosen consul. The law was either repealed or set aside under the circumstances of emergency, as Marius was then elected to an unprecedented five successive consulships (104 BC-100 BC). He returned to Rome by January 1, 104 BC, when he celebrated his triumph over Jugurtha, who was first led in the procession, then killed in the public prison. -The Cimbri conveniently marched into Hispania and the Teutoni milled around in northern Gaul, leaving Marius to prepare his army. One of his legates was his old quaestor, Sulla, which shows that at this time there was no ill-will between them. In 104 BC, Marius was returned as consul again for 103 BC. Though he could have continued to operate as proconsul, it seems that the position as consul would make his position as commander unassailable and avoid any problems with the consuls if he was only a proconsul. Marius seems to have been able to get exactly what he wanted, and it even seems that his support determined whom the people would elect as his colleagues (his choice was apparently determined, on several occasions, on the basis of their malleability: only Catulus in 102 BC, and Flaccus in 100 BC, would have been serious candidates in their own right without his support, and even Flaccus was described as more servant than partner in the office.) In 103 BC, the Germans still did not emerge from Hispania, and conveniently Marius's colleague (L. Aurelius Orestes, son of C. Gracchus's commander in Sardinia in 126 BC-124 BC) died, so Marius had to return to Rome to oversee the elections, being re-elected for 102 BC -During this year Lucius Appuleius Saturninus was tribune for the second time (having apparently had Marius's support on both this occasion and the previous one), and advocated reforms like those earlier put forth by the Gracchi. He pushed for a bill that gave colonial lands to the veterans of the recent war and offered to lower the price of wheat distributed by the state. The Senate, however, opposed these measures and violence broke out. The Senate then ordered Marius, as consul, to put down the revolt. Marius, although he was generally allied with the radicals, complied with the request and put down the revolt in the interest of public order. He then went to the east and into retirement. -What is important in this incident is that instead of seizing the opportunity to establish himself as supreme ruler and reformer of the state, Marius showed the senate, who had always been suspicious of his motives, that he was one of them instead of the outsider that Quintus Metellus said he was in 108 BC. Marius' overall concern, for his part, was how to maintain the Senate's esteem. -While Marius was away and after he returned, Rome had several years of relative peace. But in 95 BC, Rome passed a decree expelling from the city all residents who were not Roman citizens. In 91 BC Marcus Livius Drusus was elected tribune and proposed a greater division of state lands, the enlargement of the Senate, and a conferral of Roman citizenship upon all freemen of Italy. But Drusus was assassinated, and many of the Italian states then revolted against Rome in the Social War of 91-88 BC. Marius took command (following the deaths of the consul, Publius Rutilius Lupus, and the praetor Quintus Servilius Caepio) and fought along with Sulla against the rebel cities, but retired from the war in its early stages - probably due to poor health (it has been suggested that he suffered a stroke.) -While Sulla was on campaign in Greece, fighting broke out between the conservative supporters of Sulla, led by Octavius, and the popular supporters of Cinna. Marius along with his son then returned from exile in Africa with an army he had raised there and combined with Cinna to oust Octavius. This time it was the army of Marius that entered Rome. -Some of the soldiers went through Rome killing the leading supporters of Sulla, including Octavius. Their heads were exhibited in the Forum. All told some dozen Roman nobles had been murdered. The Senate passed a law exiling Sulla, and Marius was appointed the new commander in the eastern war. Cinna was chosen for his second consulship and Marius to his seventh consulship. After five days, Cinna and the populares general Quintus Sertorius ordered their more disciplined troops to kill the rampaging soldiers. -Marius died on January 13, 86 BC, just seventeen days into his seventh consulship

Gnaeus Pomepius Magnus (Pompey)

-Pompey was a military and political leader of the late Roman Republic. He came from a wealthy Italian provincial background, and his father had been the first to establish the family among the Roman nobility. Pompey's immense success as a general while still very young enabled him to advance directly to his first consulship without meeting the normal requirements for office. Military success in Sulla's Second Civil War led him to adopt the nickname Magnus, "the Great". He was consul three times and celebrated three triumphs. -In 82 BC, Pompey secured Sicily, guaranteeing Rome's grain supply. He executed Gnaeus Papirius Carbo and his supporters out of hand, which may have led to his dubbing as the adulescens carnifex (adolescent butcher). In 81 BC, he moved on to the Roman province of Africa, where he defeated Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus and the Numidian king Hiarbas, after a hard-fought battle. -After this string of victories, Pompey was proclaimed Imperator by his troops on the field in Africa; once back in Rome, he was given an enthusiastic popular reception and hailed by Sulla as Magnus (the Great) - probably in recognition of Pompey's undoubted victories and popularity. However, it seems that Sulla was reluctant to honor him. The young general was still officially a mere privatus (private citizen) who had held no offices in the cursus honorum. The title may have been meant to cut Pompey down to size; he himself used it only later in his career. -When Pompey demanded a triumph for his African victories, Sulla refused; it would be an unprecedented, even illegal, honour for a young privatus - he must disband his legions. Pompey refused, and presented himself expectantly at the gates of Rome. Sulla gave in. However, Sulla had his own triumph first, then allowed Metellus Pius his triumph, relegating Pompey to an extra-legal third place in a quick succession of triumphs -Meanwhile, Crassus was facing Spartacus to end Rome's Third Servile War. Crassus defeated Spartacus, but in his march towards Rome, Pompey encountered the remnants of Spartacus' army; he captured five thousand of them and claimed the credit for finishing the revolt, which infuriated Crassus. -Back in Rome, Pompey was wildly popular. On December 31, 71 BC, he was given a triumph for his victories in Hispania - like his first, it was granted extralegally. To his admirers, he was the most brilliant general of the age, evidently favoured by the gods and a possible champion of the people's rights. He had successfully faced down Sulla and his Senate; he or his influence might restore the traditional plebeian rights and privileges lost under Sulla's dictatorship. -Pompey spent the rest of that year and the beginning of the next visiting the cities of Cilicia and Pamphylia, and providing for the government of newly conquered territories. In his absence from Rome (66 BC), he was nominated to succeed Lucius Licinius Lucullus as commander in the Third Mithridatic War against Mithridates VI of Pontus in the East. Pompey's command was proposed by the tribune Gaius Manilius, supported by Caesar and justified by Cicero in pro Lege Manilia. His brother-in-law Quintus Metellus Celer served underneath him at this time and followed him in his exploits in the East. Like the Gabinian law, it was opposed by the aristocracy, but was carried nonetheless. -At Pompey's approach, Mithridates strategically withdrew his forces. However, Pompey managed to besiege his camp, but could not prevent his enemy from breaking the encirclement and retreating further east. But, afterward, near Armenia, Pompey managed to surprise the Pontic army by a daring nocturnal attack and all but destroyed it, leaving the king had no choice but to flee in disarray. Tigranes the Great refused him refuge, so he made his way to his own dominions in the Cimmerian Bosporus. Pompey secured a treaty with Tigranes, and in 65 BC set out in pursuit of Mithridates, but met resistance from the Caucasian Iberians and Albanians. The Romans won a succession of decisive victories over these people on the Abas and the Cyrus rivers and at Seusamora, destroying their forces. Pompey then advanced to Phasis in Colchis and liaised with his legate Servilius, admiral of his Euxine fleet, before decisively defeating Mithridates -Pompey promised his retiring veterans public lands to farm, then dismissed his armies. It was a reassuringly traditional gesture, but the Senate remained suspicious. They debated and delayed his eastern political settlements and the promised gifts of public land. From now on, Pompey seems to have toed a cautious line between his enthusiastic popular supporters and the conservatives who seemed so reluctant to acknowledge his solid achievements. It would lead him into unexpected political alliances. -Although Pompey and Crassus distrusted each other, Crassus' tax farming clients were being rebuffed at the same time Pompey's veterans were being ignored, and by 61 BC, their grievances had pushed them both into an alliance with Caesar, six years younger than Pompey, returning from service in Hispania and ready to seek the consulship for 59 BC. Their political alliance, known subsequently as the First Triumvirate, operated to the benefit of each. Pompey and Crassus would make Caesar Consul, and Caesar would use his consular power to promote their claims. -By 56 BC, the bonds between the three men were fraying. Caesar called first Crassus, then Pompey, to a secret meeting, the Lucca Conference, in the northern Italian town of Lucca to rethink their joint strategy. They agreed that Pompey and Crassus would again stand for the consulship in 55 BC. Once elected, they would extend Caesar's command in Gaul by five years. At the end of their joint consular year, Crassus would have the influential and lucrative governorship of Syria, and use this as a base to conquer Parthia. Pompey would keep Hispania in absentia. -Pompey managed to arrive in time to save Dyrrhachium, and he then attempted to wait Caesar out during the siege of Dyrrhachium, scoring a victory. Yet, by failing to pursue at the critical moment of Caesar's defeat, Pompey threw away the chance to destroy Caesar's much smaller army. As Caesar himself said, "Today the enemy would have won, if they had a commander who was a winner" -According to Suetonius, it was at this point that Caesar said that "that man (Pompey) does not know how to win a war." With Caesar on their backs, the conservatives led by Pompey fled to Greece. Caesar and Pompey had their final showdown at the Battle of Pharsalus in 48 BC. The fighting was bitter for both sides, and although Pompey was expected to win, due to advantage in numbers, the brilliant tactics and the superior fighting abilities of Caesar's veterans led to a victory for Caesar. Pompey met his wife Cornelia and his son Sextus Pompeius on the island of Mytilene. He then wondered where to go next. The decision of running to one of the eastern kingdoms was overruled in favour of Egypt. -After his arrival in Egypt, Pompey's fate was decided by the counselors of the young king Ptolemy XIII. While Pompey waited offshore, they argued the cost of offering him refuge with Caesar already en route to Egypt; the king's eunuch Pothinus won out. In the final dramatic passages of his biography, Plutarch had Cornelia watch anxiously from the trireme as Pompey left in a small boat with a few sullen, silent comrades, and headed for what appeared to be a welcoming party on the Egyptian shore at Pelusium. As Pompey rose to disembark, he was stabbed to death by his betrayers, Achillas, Septimius and Salvius -Plutarch has him meet his fate with great dignity, one day after his 59th birthday. His body remained on the shoreline, to be cremated by his loyal freeman Philip on the rotten planks of a fishing boat. His head and seal were presented to Caesar, who, according to Plutarch, mourned this insult to the greatness of his former ally and son-in-law, and punished his assassins and their Egyptian co-conspirators, putting both Achillas and Pothinus to death. Pompey's ashes were eventually returned to Cornelia, who carried them to his country house near Alba.

Quintus Mucius Scaev0la

-Scaevola was a politician of the Roman Republic and an important early authority on Roman law. He is credited with founding the study of law as a systematic discipline. He was nephew and son of two men elected Pontifices Maximi, and would himself be elected chief priest of Rome. He was also the first Roman Pontifex Maximus to be murdered publicly, in Rome in the very Temple of the Vestal Virgins, signifying a breakdown of historical norms and religious taboos in the Republic. -Scaevola was elected tribune in 106 BC, aedile in 104 BC and consul in 95 BC. As consul, together with his relative Lucius Licinius Crassus he had a law (the Lex Licinia Mucia) passed in the Senate that denied Roman citizenship to certain groups within the Roman sphere of influence ("Italians" and "Latins"). The passage of this law was one of the major contributing factors to the Social War. Scaevola was next made governor of Asia, a position in which he became renowned for his harsh treatment of corrupt tax collectors and for publishing an edict that later became a standard model for provincial administration. He proved so popular that the people he governed instituted a festival day (the dies Mucia) in his honor. Returning to Rome, he was elected pontifex maximus. He took the opportunity to more strictly regulate the priestly colleges and to ensure that traditional rituals were properly observed. -Scaevola was the author of a treatise on civil law (Jus civile primus constituit generatim in libros decem et octo redigendo) that spanned 18 volumes, compiling and systematising legislation and precedents. He also wrote a short legal handbook (ο̉ροι, or simply Liber Singularis) containing a glossary of terms and an outline of basic principles. Four short sections of this latter work were incorporated by Justinian I into his Pandectae, but nothing of the rest of his works is extant today. Speeches by Scaevola extant in ancient times were praised by Cicero. -Scaevola was killed in the civil unrest surrounding the power struggle between Sulla and Gaius Marius the Younger in 82 BC. Refusing to side with the Marians despite his daughter's marriage to Young Marius, he was pursued by them and killed in the temple of the Vestals and his body thrown into the Tiber. A previous attempt had been made on his life in 86 BC.

Servius Tullius

-Servius Tullius was the legendary sixth king of Rome, and the second of its Etruscan dynasty. He reigned 578-535 BC. Roman and Greek sources describe his servile origins and later marriage to a daughter of Lucius Tarquinius Priscus, Rome's first Etruscan king, who was assassinated in 579 BC. Servius was variously said to have been the first Roman king to accede without election by the Senate, having gained the throne by popular support, at the contrivance of his mother-in-law; and the first to be elected by the Senate without reference to the people. -In Livy's account, Tarquinius Priscus had been elected king on the death of the previous king, Ancus Marcius, whose two sons were too young to inherit or offer themselves for election. When Servius' popularity and marriage to Tarquinius made him a likely successor to the kingship, these sons attempted to seize the throne for themselves. They hired two assassins, who attacked and severely wounded Tarquinius. Tanaquil immediately ordered the palace to be shut, and publicly announced from a palace window that Tarquinius had appointed Servius as regent; meanwhile, Tarquinius died of his wounds. When his death became public knowledge, the senate elected Servius as king, and the sons of Ancus fled to exile in Suessa Pometia. Livy describes this as the first occasion that the people of Rome were not involved in the election of the king. In Plutarch, Servius reluctantly consented to the kingship at the death-bed insistence of Tanaquil. -Servius Tullius had two daughters, Tullia the younger and Tullia the elder. He arranged their marriage to the two sons of his predecessor, Lucius Tarquinius Priscus. The younger Tullia married Arruns Tarquinius. The elder Tullia married Lucius Tarquinius. But Tullia the younger and Lucius Tarquinius shared a fierce and ambitious temperament, and were drawn together in conspiracy. They procured the murders of their respective siblings, married, and conspired to remove Servius Tullius. Tullia encouraged Lucius Tarquinius to secretly persuade or bribe senators, and Tarquinius went to the senate-house with a group of armed men. Then he summoned the senators and gave a speech criticising Servius: for being a slave born of a slave; for failing to be elected by the Senate and the people during an interregnum, as had been the tradition for the election of kings of Rome; for being gifted the throne by a woman; for favouring the lower classes of Rome over the wealthy and for taking the land of the upper classes for distribution to the poor; and for instituting the census so that the wealth of the upper classes might be exposed to popular envy. -When Servius Tullius arrived at the senate-house to defend his position, Tarquinius threw him down the steps and Servius was murdered in the street by Tarquin's men. Soon after, Tullia drove her chariot over her father's body. For Livy, Tarquinius' impious refusal to permit his father-in-law's burial earned him the sobriquet "Superbus" (arrogant or proud), and Servius' death is a "tragic crime" (tragicum scelus), a dark episode in Rome's history and just cause for the abolition of the monarchy. Servius thus becomes the last of Rome's benevolent kings; the place of this outrage - which Livy seems to suggest as a crossroads - is known thereafter as Vicus Sceleratus (street of shame, infamy or crime). His murder is parricide, the worst of all crimes. This morally justifies Tarquin's eventual expulsion and the abolition of Rome's aberrant, "un-Roman" monarchy. -Most of the reforms credited to Servius extended voting rights to certain groups — in particular to Rome's citizen-commoners (known in the Republican era as plebs), minor landholders hitherto disqualified from voting by ancestry, status or ethnicity. The same reforms simultaneously defined the fiscal and military obligations of all Roman citizens. As a whole, the so-called Servian reforms probably represent a long-drawn, complex and piecemeal process of populist policy and reform, extending from Servius' predecessors, Ancus Marcius and Tarquinius Priscus, to his successor Tarquinius Superbus, and into the Middle and Late Republic. Rome's military and territorial expansion and consequent changes in its population would have made franchise regulation and reform an ongoing necessity, and their wholesale attribution to Servius "cannot be taken at face value". -Servius is credited with the construction of Diana's temple on the Aventine Hill, to mark the foundation of the so-called Latin League; His servile birth-mythos, his populist leanings and his reorganisation of the vici appear to justify the Roman belief that he founded or reformed the Compitalia festivals (held to celebrate the Lares that watched over each local community), or allowed for the first time their attendance and service by non-citizens and slaves. His personal reputation and achievements may have led to his historical association with temples and shrines to Fortuna; some sources suggest that the two were connected during Servius' lifetime, via some form of "sacred marriage". Plutarch explicitly identifies the Porta Fenestella ("window gate") of the Royal palace, now lost, as the window from which Tanaquil announced Servius' regency to the people; later, the goddess Fortuna was said to have later passed through the same window, to become Servius' consort. -Servius political reforms and those of his successor Tarquinius Superbus undermined the bases of aristocratic power and transferred them in part to commoners. Rome's ordinary citizens became a distinct force within Roman politics, entitled to participate in government and bear arms on its behalf, despite the opposition and resentment of Rome's patricians and senate. Tarquinius was ousted by a conspiracy of patricians, not plebeians. Once in existence, the comitia centuriata could not be unmade, or its powers reduced: as Republican Rome's highest court of appeal, it had the capacity to overturn court decisions, and the Republican senate was constitutionally obliged to seek its approval. In time, the comitia centuriata legitimized the rise to power of a plebeian nobility, and plebeian consuls.

Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix

-Sulla was a Roman general and statesman. He had the distinction of holding the office of consul twice, as well as reviving the dictatorship. Sulla was awarded a grass crown, the most prestigious and rarest Roman military honor, during the Social War. His life was habitually included in the ancient biographical collections of leading generals and politicians, originating in the biographical compendium of famous Romans, published by Marcus Terentius Varro. In Plutarch's Parallel Lives Sulla is paired with the Spartan general and strategist Lysander -The Social War (91-88 BC) resulted from Rome's intransigence regarding the civil liberties of the Socii, Rome's Italian allies. The Socii were old enemies of Rome that submitted (such as the Samnites) whereas the Latins were confederates of longer standing with Rome; therefore the Latins were given more respect and better treatment. Subjects of the Roman Republic, these Italian provincials might be called to arms in its defence or might be subjected to extraordinary taxes, but they had no say in the expenditure of these taxes or in the uses of the armies that might be raised in their territories. The Social War was, in part, caused by the continued rebuttal of those who sought to extend Roman citizenship to the Socii and to address various injustices inherent in the Roman system. The Gracchi, Tiberius and Gaius, were successively killed by optimate supporters who sought to maintain the status quo. The assassination of Marcus Livius Drusus the Younger, whose reforms were intended not only to strengthen the position of the Senate but also to grant Roman Citizenship to the allies, greatly angered the Socii. In consequence, most allied against Rome, leading to the outbreak of the Social War. -At the beginning of the Social War, the Roman aristocracy and Senate were beginning to fear Gaius Marius's ambition, which had already given him 6 consulships (including 5 in a row, from 104 BC to 100 BC). They were determined that he should not have overall command of the war in Italy. In this last rebellion of the Italian allies, Sulla outshone both Marius and the consul Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo (the father of Pompey). In 89 BC Sulla captured Aeclanum, the chief town of the Hirpini, by setting the wooden breastwork on fire. As a result of his success in bringing the Social War to a successful conclusion, he was elected consul for the first time in 88 BC, with Quintus Pompeius Rufus (soon his daughter's father-in-law) as his colleague. -Sulla served exceptionally as a general during the Social War. At Nola he was awarded a Corona Obsidionalis (Obsidional or Blockade Crown), also known as a Corona Graminea (Grass Crown). This was the highest Roman military honour, awarded for personal bravery to a commander who saves a Roman legion or army in the field. Unlike all other Roman military honours, it was awarded by acclamation of the soldiers of the rescued army, and consequently very few were ever awarded. The crown, by tradition, was woven from grasses and other plants taken from the actual battlefield. -As consul, Sulla prepared to depart once more for the East, to fight the first Mithridatic War, by the appointment of the Senate. But he would leave trouble behind him. Marius was now an old man, but he still wanted to lead the Roman armies against King Mithridates VI of Pontus. Before leaving for the East, Sulla and his colleague Quintus Pompeius Rufus blocked legislation of the tribune Publius Sulpicius Rufus to ensure the rapid organisation of the Italian Allies within the Roman citizenship. When Sulpicius found an ally in Marius who would support the bill, he had his supporters riot. Sulla returned to Rome from the siege at Nola to meet with Pompeius Rufus; however, Sulpicius' followers attacked the meeting, forcing Sulla to take refuge in Marius' house, who then forced him to support Sulpicius' pro-Italian legislation. Sulla's own son-in-law was killed in those riots. After Sulla left Rome again for Nola, Sulpicius (after receiving a promise from Marius to wipe out his enormous debts) called an assembly to reverse the Senate's decision on Sulla's command, transferring it to Marius. Sulpicius also used the assemblies to eject Senators from the Roman Senate until there were not enough senators to form a quorum. Violence in the Forum ensued, some nobles tried to lynch Sulpicius (as had been done to the brothers Gracchi, and to Saturninus) but failed in the face of his bodyguard of gladiators. -Sulla received news of this at the camp of his victorious Social War veterans, waiting in the south of Italy to cross to Greece. He announced the measures that had been taken against him, and his soldiers stoned the envoys of the assemblies who came to announce that the command of the Mithridatic War had been transferred to Marius. Sulla then took six of his most loyal legions and marched on Rome. This was an unprecedented event. No general before him had ever crossed the city limits, the pomoerium, with his army. Most of his commanders (with the exception of his kinsman through marriage Lucullus) refused to accompany him. Sulla justified his actions on the grounds that the Senate had been neutered and the mos maiorum ("the way of the elders"/"the traditional way", which amounted to a Roman constitution though none of it was codified as such) had been offended by the Senate's negation of the rights of the year's consuls to fight the year's wars. Armed gladiators were unable to resist organized Roman soldiers; and although Marius offered freedom to any slave that would fight with him against Sulla (an offer which Plutarch says only three slaves accepted) he and his followers were forced to flee the city. -Sulla consolidated his position, declared Marius and his allies hostes (enemies of the state), and addressed the Senate in harsh tones, portraying himself as a victim, presumably to justify his violent entrance into the city. After restructuring the city's politics and strengthening the Senate's power, Sulla returned to his camp and proceeded with the original plan of fighting Mithridates in Pontus. -Sulpicius was betrayed and killed by one of his slaves, whom Sulla subsequently freed and then executed (being freed for the information leading to Sulpicius' death, but sentenced to death for betraying his master). Marius, however, fled to safety in Africa. With Sulla out of Rome, Marius plotted his return. During his period of exile Marius became determined that he would hold a seventh consulship, as foretold by the Sibyl decades earlier. By the end of 87 BC Marius returned to Rome with the support of Lucius Cornelius Cinna and, in Sulla's absence, took control of the city. Marius declared Sulla's reforms and laws invalid and officially exiled Sulla. Marius and Cinna were elected consuls for the year 86 BC. Marius died a fortnight after, and Cinna was left in sole control of Rome. -In 83 BC Sulla prepared his 5 legions and left the 2 originally under Fimbria to maintain peace in Asia Minor. In the spring of that year, Sulla crossed the Adriatic with a large fleet from Patrae, west of Corinth, to Brundisium and Tarentum in the heel of Italy. Landing uncontested, he had ample opportunity to prepare for the coming war. -In Rome the newly elected consuls, L. Cornelius Scipio Asiaticus (Asiagenus) and C. Norbanus levied and prepared armies of their own to stop Sulla and protect the Republican government. Norbanus marched first with the intention of blocking a Sullan advance at Canusium. Seriously defeated, Norbanus was forced to retreat to Capua where there was no respite. Sulla followed his defeated adversary and won another victory in a very short time. Meanwhile Asiagenus was also on the march south with an army of his own. Asiagenus or his army, however, seemed to have little motivation to fight. At the town of Teanum Sidicinum, Sulla and Asiagenus met face to face to negotiate and Asiagenus surrendered without a fight. The army sent to stop Sulla wavered in the face of battle against experienced veterans, and certainly along with the prodding of Sulla's operatives, gave up the cause, going over to Sulla's side as a result. Left without an army, Asiagenus had little choice but to cooperate and later writings of Cicero suggest that the two men actually discussed many matters regarding Roman government and the Constitution. -Sulla let Asiagenus leave the camp, firmly believing him to be a supporter. He was possibly expected to deliver terms to the Senate, but immediately rescinded any thought of supporting Sulla upon being set free. Sulla later made it publicly known that not only would Asiagenus suffer for opposing him, but that any man who continued to oppose him after this betrayal would suffer bitter consequences. With Sulla's three quick victories, though, the situation began to rapidly turn in his favour. Many of those in a position of power, who had not yet taken a clear side, now chose to support Sulla. The first of these was Q. Caecilius Metellus Pius who governed Africa. The old enemy of Marius, and assuredly of Cinna as well, led an open revolt against the Marian forces in Africa. Additional help came from Picenum and Spain. Two of the three future triumvirs joined Sulla's cause in his bid to take control. Marcus Licinius Crassus marched with an army from Spain, and would later play a pivotal role at the Colline Gates. The young son of Pompeius Strabo (the butcher of Asculum during the Social War), Pompey, raised an army of his own from among his father's veterans and threw his lot in with Sulla. At the age of 23, and never having held a senatorial office, Pompey forced himself into the political scene with an army at his back. -Regardless, the war would continue on with Asiagenus raising another army in defence. This time he moved after Pompey, but once again, his army abandoned him and went over to the enemy. As a result, desperation followed in Rome as the year 83 came to a close. The Senate re-elected Cinna's old co-Consul, Papirius Carbo, to his third term, and Gaius Marius the Younger, the 26-year-old son of the dead consul, to his first. Hoping to inspire Marian supporters throughout the Roman world, recruiting began in earnest among the Italian tribes who had always been loyal to Marius. In addition, possible Sullan supporters were murdered. The urban praetor L. Junius Brutus Damasippus led a slaughter of those senators who seemed to lean towards the invading forces, yet one more incident of murder in a growing spiral of violence as a political tool in the late Republic. -As the campaign year of 82 BC opened, Carbo took his forces to the north to oppose Pompey while Marius moved against Sulla in the south. Attempts to defeat Pompey failed and Metellus with his African forces along with Pompey secured northern Italy for Sulla. In the South, young Marius gathered a large host of Samnites who assuredly would lose influence with the anti-popular Sulla in charge of Rome. Marius met Sulla at Sacriportus and the two forces engaged in a long and desperate battle. In the end, many of Marius' men switched sides over to Sulla and he had no choice but to retreat to Praeneste. Sulla followed the son of his arch-rival and laid siege to the town, leaving a subordinate in command. Sulla himself moved north to push Carbo, who had withdrawn to Etruria to stand between Rome and the forces of Pompey and Metellus. -Indecisive battles were fought between Carbo and Sulla's forces but Carbo knew that his cause was lost. News arrived of a defeat by Norbanus in Gaul, and that he also switched sides to Sulla. Carbo, caught between three enemy armies and with no hope of relief, fled to Africa. It was not yet the end of the resistance however, those remaining Marian forces gathered together and attempted several times to relieve young Marius at Praeneste. A Samnite force under Pontius Telesinus joined in the relief effort but the combined armies were still unable to break Sulla. Rather than continue trying to rescue Marius, Telesinus moved north to threaten Rome. -On November 1 of 82 BC, the two forces met at the battle of the Colline Gate, just outside of Rome. The battle was a huge and desperate final struggle with both sides certainly believing their own victory would save Rome. Sulla was pushed hard on his left flank with the situation so dangerous that he and his men were pushed right up against the city walls. Crassus' forces, fighting on Sulla's right however, managed to turn the opposition's flank and drive them back. The Samnites and the Marian forces were folded up and broke. In the end, over 50,000 combatants lost their lives and Sulla stood alone as the master of Rome. -At the end of 82 BC or the beginning of 81 BC, the Senate appointed Sulla dictator legibus faciendis et reipublicae constituendae causa ("dictator for the making of laws and for the settling of the constitution"). The decision was subsequently ratified by the "Assembly of the People", with no limit set on his time in office. Sulla had total control of the city and republic of Rome, except for Hispania (which Marius's general Quintus Sertorius had established as an independent state). This unusual appointment (used hitherto only in times of extreme danger to the city, such as the Second Punic War, and then only for 6-month periods) represented an exception to Rome's policy of not giving total power to a single individual. Sulla can be seen as setting the precedent for Julius Caesar's dictatorship, and the eventual end of the Republic under Augustus. -In total control of the city and its affairs, Sulla instituted a program of executing those whom he perceived to be enemies of the state. Plutarch describes in Life of Sulla (XXXI) "Sulla now began to make blood flow, and he filled the city with deaths without number or limit" further alleging that many of the murdered victims had nothing to do with Sulla, though Sulla killed them to "please his adherents". -The proscriptions are widely perceived as a response to similar killings which Marius and Cinna had implemented while they were in control of the Republic during Sulla's absence. Proscribing or outlawing every one of those whom he perceived to have acted against the best interests of the Republic while he was in the east, Sulla ordered some 1,500 nobles (i.e., senators and equites) executed, although it is estimated that as many as 9,000 people were killed. The purge went on for several months. Helping or sheltering a person who was proscribed was also punishable by death. The State confiscated the wealth of the outlawed and then auctioned it off, making Sulla and his supporters vastly rich. The sons and grandsons of the proscribed were banned from future political office, a restriction not removed for over 30 years. -Sulla then increased the number of magistrates who were elected in any given year, and required that all newly elected quaestors be given automatic membership in the Senate. These two reforms were enacted primarily to allow Sulla to increase the size of the Senate from 300 to 600 senators. This also removed the need for the censor to draw up a list of senators, since there were always more than enough former magistrates to fill the senate. To further solidify the prestige and authority of the Senate, Sulla transferred the control of the courts from the equites, who had held control since the Gracchi reforms, to the senators. This, along with the increase in the number of courts, further added to the power that was already held by the senators. He also codified, and thus established definitively, the cursus honorum,[16] which required an individual to reach a certain age and level of experience before running for any particular office. Sulla also wanted to reduce the risk that a future general might attempt to seize power, as he himself had done. To reduce this risk, he reaffirmed the requirement that any individual wait for ten years before being reelected to any office. Sulla then established a system where all consuls and praetors served in Rome during their year in office, and then commanded a provincial army as a governor for the year after they left office. -After his second consulship, he withdrew to his country villa near Puteoli to be with family. Plutarch states in his "Life of Sulla" that he retired with his wife, and his long-time male lover, Metrobius. Plutarch mentions that "although Metrobius was past the age of youthful bloom, Sulla remained to the end of his life in love with him, and made no secret of the fact". From this distance, Sulla remained out of the day-to-day political activities in Rome, intervening only a few times when his policies were involved -Sulla's goal now was to write his memoirs, which he finished in 78 BC, just before his death. They are now largely lost, although fragments from them exist as quotations in later writers. Ancient accounts of Sulla's death indicate that he died from liver failure or a ruptured gastric ulcer (symptomised by a sudden haemorrhage from his mouth followed by a fever from which he never recovered) possibly caused by chronic alcohol abuse. His funeral in Rome (at Roman Forum, in the presence of the whole city) was on a scale unmatched until that of Augustus in AD 14. His epitaph reads "No friend ever served me, and no enemy ever wronged me, whom I have not repaid in full".

Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus

-Tiberius Gracchus was a Roman Popularis politician of the 2nd century BC, together with Gaius Gracchus, one of the Gracchi brothers. As a plebeian tribune, he caused political turmoil in the Republic with his reforms of agrarian legislation that sought to transfer wealth from the wealthy, patricians and otherwise, to the poor -It was Tiberius, as quaestor, who saved the army from destruction by signing a peace treaty with the Numantines, an action generally reserved for a Legate. In the negotiations, Tiberius recalled the exploits of his father Tiberius, who had also waged war in Spain but had struck a peace agreement with the Numantines. The Numantines so respected Tiberius that when they learned he had lost his ledgers when they had despoiled the Roman camp, they invited him back to their city, offering him a banquet and allowing Tiberius to take back not only his ledgers but anything else he wanted from the spoils. Tiberius, however, refused to take anything else save some incense used for sacrificial rituals -In 133 BC Tiberius was elected tribune of the people. Soon he started to legislate on the matter of the homeless legionaries. Speaking before a crowd at the Rostra, Tiberius said, "The wild beasts that roam over Italy have their dens, each has a place of repose and refuge. But the men who fight and die for Italy enjoy nothing but the air and light; without house or home they wander about with their wives and children." -Seeking to improve the lot of the poor, Tiberius Gracchus proposed a law known as Lex Sempronia Agraria. The law would reorganize control of the ager publicus, or public land; meaning land conquered in previous wars that was controlled by the state. Previous agrarian law specified that no citizen would be allowed to possess more than 500 jugera (that is, approximately 125 hectares) of the ager publicus and any land that they occupied above this limit would be confiscated by the state. However this law was largely ignored and rich landowners continued to acquire land through fictitious tenants initially before transferring the land directly to themselves. They then began to work it with slave labour, giving rise to latifundia, alienating and impoverishing free Roman citizens. -He proposed his law in 134 BC, and to mollify these landowners, they would be allowed to own their land rent free, and would be entitled to 250 jugera per son, above the legal limit. They would also be paid for the land they had to forfeit -Furthermore, Tiberius Gracchus called for the redistribution of the re-confiscated public land to the poor and homeless in Rome, giving them plots of 30 iugera upon which to support themselves and their families, not to mention that the redistributed wealth would make them eligible for taxation and military service. Thus the law sought to solve the twin problems of increasing the number of men eligible for military service (thereby boosting Rome's military strength) and also providing for homeless war veterans -Having passed his law, Tiberius was lauded as a founding hero not just of a single city or race, but as the founding hero of all the Italians, who had come to endure immense poverty and deprivation, denied of their rightful land because of their military services and having lost work because of the influx of slaves, who were loyal to no man while citizens were loyal to the state. In Appian's account, Tiberius Gracchus is seen as a popular hero, and there is not any account given regarding Tiberius' justification for deposing Octavius. -Tiberius Gracchus' overruling of the tribunician veto was considered illegal, and his opponents were determined to prosecute him at the end of his one year term, since he was regarded as having violated the constitution and having used force against a tribune. In one standoff between Tiberius and Titus Annius, a renowned orator, Annius argued that if a colleague of Tiberius stood to defend him and Tiberius disapproved, he would simply in a passion physically remove the man. Tiberius realized that his actions against Octavius had won him ill repute among the Senate and even among the People - Tiberius was beaten to death with clubs and staves made from benches which lay strewn about. His fellow tribune, Publius Satyreius, dealt the first blow to his head. More than 300 supporters, including Tiberius, were slain by stones and staves, but none by sword, and their bodies thrown into the Tiber. Such an act denied them a proper funeral. This, according to Plutarch, was the first outbreak of civil strife in Rome

Titus Labienus

-Titus Labienus was a professional Roman soldier in the late Roman Republic. He served as Tribune of the Plebs in 63 BC, and is remembered as one of Julius Caesar's lieutenants, mentioned frequently in the accounts of his military campaigns. He was the father of Quintus Labienus. -In 63 BC, Titus Labienus was a Tribune of the Plebs with close ties to Pompey. Gaius Julius Caesar was also working closely with Pompey and therefore he and Labienus occasionally cooperated. These interactions were the seed that eventually developed into a friendship between Labienus and Caesar. -At Caesar's instigation, Labienus accused Gaius Rabirius of high treason (perduellio) for the murder of the tribune Lucius Appuleius Saturninus and of his uncle Titus Labienus in 100 BC. The purpose of this trial was to discredit the so-called "final decree of the Senate" (senatus consultum ultimum), an emergency measure of the senate commonly used against the Populares and the Roman assemblies. Labienus used the antiquated procedure of the duumviri, used in the early republic, against Rabirius. The procedure bypassed normal criminal law and Rabirius would be tried without defense. Since tribunes were sacrosanct, it was seen as an act against the gods to kill one. Thus punishment of the culprit was seen as more of a cleansing to appease the gods. The killing was seen as a pollution so profound that a normal criminal trial was unnecessary and immediate cleansing was necessary to avoid the wrath of the gods. The duumviri were assigned to accuse under the pretense of obvious guilt and cleanse the culprit through scourging. -Labienus acted as Caesar's second in command during his campaign in Gaul and was the only legate mentioned by name in Caesar's writings about his first campaign. He was a skilled cavalry commander and could be considered a military genius, rivaling Caesar himself in tactical command. However Caesar, as imperator, took credit for many of the accomplishments of his subordinates, especially Labienus. -Labienus is also credited with the defeat of the Treviri under Indutiomarus. Labienus spent days with his army fortified in their camp, while Indutiomarus harassed him daily in an attempt at intimidation and demoralization. Labienus waited for the right moment, when Indutiomarus and his forces were returning to their camp disorganized, to send out his cavalry through two gates. He gave them the orders to first kill Indutiomarus, then his trailing forces on their return. Labienus's men were successful, and with the death of their leader, the Treviri army scattered. The Treviri forces later regrouped under relatives of Indutiomarus and moved upon Labienus, setting up camp across the river from his legions, waiting for reinforcements from the Germans. Labienus feigned a withdrawal, enticing the Treviri to cross the river, after which he turned around and had his men attack. Being in such a disadvantageous position, the Treviri forces were shattered. After hearing this, the German reinforcements turned around. -Pompey made Labienus commander of the cavalry. He attempted to convince Pompey to face Caesar in Italy and not retreat to Hispania (Iberian Peninsula, comprising modern Spain and Portugal) to regroup, in his claims that Caesar's army was thin and weakened after his campaign in Gaul. But his ill fortune under Pompey was as marked as his success had been under Caesar. From the defeat at the Battle of Pharsalus, he fled to Corcyra, and after hearing of the death of Pompey, proceeded to Africa. He created confidence in the followers of Pompey by lying to them; he told them that Caesar had received a mortal wound at the Battle of Pharsalus. He was able by mere force of numbers to inflict a slight check upon Caesar at the Battle of Ruspina in 46 BC. By condensing his force into dense formations, he tricked Caesar into thinking he had only foot soldiers, was able to rout Caesar's cavalry and surround Caesar's army. He was unable to defeat Caesar's army, and was forced to leave the field. After the defeat at the Battle of Thapsus he joined Gnaeus Pompey the Younger in Hispania. -Death came to Labienus in the Battle of Munda, an evenly matched conflict between the armies of Caesar and the sons of Pompey. King Bogud, an ally of Caesar, and his army also approached the Pompeians from the rear. Labienus was commanding the Pompeians' cavalry unit at the time and saw this and took the cavalry from the front lines to meet him. The Pompeian legions misinterpreted this as a retreat, became disheartened and began to break. Pompey suffered massive casualties during the rout. This defeat ended the Roman Civil War. Labienus was killed during the rout. He was buried but according to Appian, his head was brought to Caesar.