Tribune of the Plebs
Tribunus plebis, rendered in English as tribune of the plebs, tribune of the people or plebeian tribune, was the first office of the Roman state, open to the plebeians, throughout the history of the Republic, the most important check on the power of the Roman Senate and magistrates. These tribunes had the power to preside over the Concilium Plebis; the tribunes of the plebs were sacrosanct, meaning that any assault on their person was prohibited by law. In imperial times, the powers of the tribunate were granted to the emperor as a matter of course, the office itself lost its independence and most of its functions. During the day the tribunes used to sit on the tribune benches on the Forum Romanum. Fifteen years after the expulsion of the kings and establishment of the Roman Republic, the plebeians were burdened by the weight of crushing debt. A series of clashes between the people and the ruling patricians in 495 and 494 BC brought the plebeians to the brink of revolt, there was talk of assassinating the consuls.
Instead, on the advice of Lucius Sicinius Vellutus, the plebeians seceded en masse to the Mons Sacer, a hill outside of Rome. The senate dispatched Agrippa Menenius Lanatus, a former consul, well-liked by the plebeians, as an envoy to the plebeians. Menenius was well-received, told the fable of the belly and the limbs, likening the people to the limbs who chose not to support the belly, thus starved themselves; the plebeians agreed to negotiate for their return to the city. No member of the senatorial class would be eligible for this office, the tribunes should be sacrosanct; the senate agreeing to these terms, the people returned to the city. The first tribuni plebis were Lucius Albinius Paterculus and Gaius Licinius, appointed for the year 493 BC. Soon afterward, the tribunes themselves appointed two others as their colleagues; the ancient sources indicate the tribunes may have been two or five in number. If the former, the college of tribunes was expanded to five in 470 BC. Either way, the college was increased to ten in 457 BC, remained at this number throughout Roman history.
They were assisted by plebeian aediles. Only plebeians were eligible for these offices. Although sometimes referred to as plebeian magistrates, the tribunes of the people, like the plebeian aediles, who were created at the same time, were technically not magistrates, as they were elected by the plebeian assembly alone. However, they functioned much like magistrates of the Roman state, they could convene the concilium plebis, entitled to pass legislation affecting the plebeians alone, beginning in 493 BC to elect the plebeian tribunes and aediles. From the institution of the tribunate, any one of the tribunes of the plebs was entitled to preside over this assembly; the tribunes were entitled to propose legislation before the assembly. By the third century BC, the tribunes had the right to call the senate to order, lay proposals before it. Ius intercessionis called intercessio, the power of the tribunes to intercede on behalf of the plebeians and veto the actions of the magistrates, was unique in Roman history.
Because they were not technically magistrates, thus possessed no maior potestas, they relied on their sacrosanctity to obstruct actions unfavourable to the plebeians. Being sacrosanct, no person could interfere with their activities. To do so, or to disregard the veto of a tribune, was punishable by death, the tribunes could order the death of persons who violated their sacrosanctity; this could be used as a protection. This sacrosanctity made the tribunes independent of all magistrates. If a magistrate, the senate, or any other assembly disregarded the orders of a tribune, he could "interpose the sacrosanctity of his person" to prevent such action. Only a dictator was exempted from the veto power; the tribunes could veto acts of the Roman senate. The tribune Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus imposed his veto on all government functions in 133 BC, when the senate attempted to block his agrarian reforms by imposing the veto of another tribune. Tribunes possessed the authority to enforce the right of provocatio ad populum, a precursor of the modern right of habeas corpus.
This entitled a citizen to appeal the actions of a magistrate by shouting appello tribunos! or provoco ad populum!. Once invoked, this right required one of the tribunes to assess the situation, determine the lawfulness of the magistrate's action. Any action taken in defiance of this right was illegal on its face. In effect, this gave the tribunes of the people unprecedented power to protect individuals from the arbitrary exercise of state power, afforded Roman citizens a degree of liberty unequalled in the ancient
Lucius Cornelius Scipio Asiaticus (consul 83 BC)
Lucius Cornelius Scipio Asiaticus was a great-grandson of Lucius Cornelius Scipio Asiaticus, consul in 190 BC, victor of the Battle of Magnesia. Scipio Asiaticus known as Scipio Asiagenes, was co-consul with Gaius Norbanus in 83 BC; this Scipio is first mentioned in 100 BC, when he took up arms with the other members of the senate against Lucius Appuleius Saturninus. In the Social War he was stationed with Lucius Acilius in the town of Aesernia, escaping in the dress of slaves during the approach of Vettius Scato, he belonged to the party of Gaius Marius in Sulla's second civil war. In 83 BC he was appointed consul with Gaius Norbanus. In this year Lucius Cornelius Sulla returned to the Italian Peninsula, advanced against the consuls, he seduced the troops of Scipio to desert their general. He was dismissed by Sulla uninjured, he was, included in the proscription in the following year, 82 BC, whereupon he fled to Massilia, where he passed the remainder of his life. His daughter was married to Publius Sestius.
Cicero speaks favourably of the oratorical powers of Scipio Asiaticus
Plebs
The plebs were, in ancient Rome, the general body of free Roman citizens who were not patricians, as determined by the census. The precise origins of the group and the term are unclear, though it may be that they began as a limited political movement in opposition to the elite which became more applied. In Latin the word plebs is a singular collective noun, its genitive is plebis; the origin of the separation into orders is unclear, it is disputed when the Romans were divided under the early kings into patricians and plebeians, or whether the clientes of the patricians formed a third group. Certain gentes were patrician, as identified by the nomen, but a gens might have both patrician and plebeian branches that shared a nomen but were distinguished by a cognomen, as was the case with the gens Claudia; the 19th-century historian Barthold Georg Niebuhr held that plebeians began to appear at Rome during the reign of Ancus Marcius and were foreigners settling in Rome as naturalized citizens. In any case, at the outset of the Roman Republic, the patricians had a near monopoly on political and social institutions.
Plebeians were excluded from magistracies and religious colleges, they were not permitted to know the laws by which they were governed. Plebeians served in the army, but became military leaders. Dissatisfaction with the status quo mounted to the point that the plebeians engaged in a sort of general strike, a secessio plebis, during which they would withdraw from Rome, leaving the patricians to themselves. From 494 to 287 BC, five such actions during the so-called "Conflict of the Orders" resulted in the establishment of plebeian offices, the publication of the laws, the establishment of the right of plebeian–patrician intermarriage, the opening of the highest offices of government and some state priesthoods to the plebeians and passage of legislation that made resolutions passed by the assembly of plebeians, the concilium plebis, binding on all citizens. During the Second Samnite War, plebeians who had risen to power through these social reforms began to acquire the aura of nobilitas, "nobility", marking the creation of a ruling elite of nobiles that allied the interests of patricians and noble plebeians.
From the mid-4th century to the early 3rd century BC, several plebeian–patrician "tickets" for the consulship repeated joint terms, suggesting a deliberate political strategy of cooperation. Although nobilitas was not a formal social rank during the Republican era, in general, a plebeian who had attained the consulship was regarded as having brought nobility to his family; such a man was a novus homo, a self-made noble, his sons and descendants were nobiles. Marius and Cicero are notable examples of novi homines in the late Republic, when many of Rome's richest and most powerful men—such as Lucullus and Pompeius—were plebeian nobles; some or many noble plebeians, including Cicero and Lucullus, aligned their political interests with the faction of Optimates, conservatives who sought to preserve senatorial prerogatives. By contrast, the Populares, which sought to champion the plebs in the sense of "common people", were sometimes led by patricians such as Julius Caesar and Clodius Pulcher. In the U.
S. military, plebes are freshmen at the U. S. Military Academy, U. S. Naval Academy, Valley Forge Military Academy and College, the Marine Military Academy, the U. S. Merchant Marine Academy, Georgia Military College, California Maritime Academy; the term is used for new cadets at the Philippine Military Academy. Early public schools in the United Kingdom would enrol pupils as "plebeians" as opposed to sons of gentry and aristocrats. In British, Australian, New Zealand and South African English the back-formation pleb, along with the more derived adjectival form plebby, is used as a derogatory term for someone considered unsophisticated or uncultured. Bread and circuses – Figure of speech referring to a superficial means of appeasement Capite censi – The lowest class of citizens of ancient Rome Plebeian Council – The principal assembly of the ancient Roman Republic Proletariat – The class of wage-earners in an economic society whose only possession of significant material value is their labour-power Roman Republic – Period of ancient Roman civilization Plebgate, a 2012 British political scandal involving the use of the word as a slur Jackson J. Spielvogel.
World History: Journey Across Time. New York: Glencoe/McGraw-Hill. Scott Wertsching. What is a Pleb?. Rome: Glencoe/McGraw-Hill. Ferenczy, Endre. From the Patrician State to the Patricio-Plebeian State. Amsterdam: A. M. Hakkert. Horsfall, Nicholas; the Culture of the Roman Plebs. London: Duckworth. Millar, Fergus; the Crowd In Rome In the Late Republic. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Mitchell, Richard E.. Patricians and plebeians: The origin of the Roman state. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Morstein-Marx, Robert. Mass oratory and political power in the late Roman Republic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mouritsen, Henrik. Plebs and politics in the late Roman Republic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Raaflaub, Kurt A.. Social struggles in Archaic Rome: New perspectives on the conflict of the orders. Oxford: Blackwell. Vanderbroeck, Paul J. J.. Popular leadership and collective behavior in the late Roman Republic. Amsterdam: Gieben. Vishnia, Rachel Feig. State and Popular Leaders In Mid-Republican Rome 241-167 BC.
London: Routledge. Williamson
Quintus Sertorius
Quintus Sertorius was a Roman statesman and rebel. He was a brilliant military commander, shown most in the civil war he waged in Hispania against the optimates of Lucius Cornelius Sulla. Sertorius was born in Nursia in Sabine territory; the Sertorius family were minor aristocrats certainly Equites Romani, the class directly below the senatorial class. Like many other young domi nobiles Sertorius moved to Rome in his mid-to-late teens trying to make it big as an orator and jurist, he made enough of an impression on the young Cicero to merit a special mention in a treatise on oratory: Of all the illiterate and crude orators, well ranters, I knew - and I might as well add'completely coarse and rustic' - the roughest and readiest were Q. Sertorius... After his undistinguished career in Rome as a jurist and an orator, he entered the military, his first recorded campaign was under Quintus Servilius Caepio and ended at the Battle of Arausio in 104 BCC, where he showed unusual courage. Serving under Gaius Marius, Sertorius succeeded in spying on the wandering tribes that had defeated Caepio.
After this success, he certainly fought at the great Battle of Aquae Sextiae in 102 BCE in which the Teutones and the Ambrones were decisively defeated. He also fought at the battle of Vercellae in 101 BCE where the Cimbri were decisively defeated ending the German invasion. A few years after the Cimbric wars Sertorius' patron Gaius Marius fell out of grace for his support of the demagogue Lucius Appuleius Saturninus and he and Sertorius had to get out of Rome for a while. Sertorius served in Hispania as a military tribune under Titus Didius, winning the Grass Crown for crushing an insurrection in and around Castulo. In 91 BCE he was quaestor in Cisalpine Gaul, where he was in charge of recruiting and training legionaries for the Social War. During the war he sustained a wound. Upon his return to Rome he ran for tribune, but Lucius Cornelius Sulla thwarted his efforts, causing Sertorius to oppose Sulla. Sertorius however did manage to become a senator on the strengths of his earlier quaestorship.
In 88 BCE, after being sidelined by his political opponents, Sulla marched his legions on Rome and took the capital he took revenge on his enemies and forced Marius into exile, he left Italy to fight Mithridates. After Sulla left violence erupted between the optimates, led by the consul Gnaeus Octavius, the populares, led by the consul Lucius Cornelius Cinna. Sertorius declared for the populares. Though he had a bad opinion of Marius by he consented to Marius' return upon understanding that Marius came at Cinna's request and not of his own accord. In 87 BCE Cinna marched on Rome, Sertorius commanded one of Cinna's divisions and fought a battle with troops commanded by Pompeius Strabo. After Octavius surrendered Rome to the forces of Marius and Sertorius in 87 BCE, Sertorius abstained from the proscriptions his fellow commanders engaged in. Sertorius went so far as to rebuke Marius, move Cinna to moderation, while annihilating Marius' slave army that had partaken in his atrocities. On Sulla's return from the East in 83 BCE a second civil war broke out.
After having fallen out with the new popular leadership Sertorius was sent to Hispania as propraetor, representing the popular cause in Spain. The governor of the two Hispanias, Gaius Valerius Flaccus did not recognize his authority, but Sertorius had an army at his back and used it to assume control. Sertorius sought to hold Hispania by sending an army, under Julius Salinator, to fortify the pass through the Pyrenees. Having been obliged to withdraw to North Africa, Sertorius carried on a campaign in Mauretania, in which he defeated one of Sulla's generals and captured Tingis; the North Africa success won him the fame and admiration of the people of Hispania that of the Lusitanians in the west, whom Roman generals and proconsuls of Sulla's party had plundered and oppressed. The Lusitanians asked Sertorius to be their warleader and, arriving on their lands with additional forces from Africa, he assumed supreme authority and began to conquer the neighbouring territories of Hispania, he achieved his first major victory at the battle of the Baetis River.
Brave and gifted with eloquence, Sertorius was just the man to impress them favourably, the native warriors, whom he organized, spoke of him as the "new Hannibal". His skill as a general was extraordinary, as he defeated forces many times his own forces' sizes. Many Roman refugees and deserters joined him, with these and his Hispanian volunteers he defeated several of Sulla's generals and drove Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius, sent against him from Rome, out of Hispania Ulterior. Sertorius owed some of his success to his prodigious ability as a statesman, his goal was to build a stable government in Hispania with the consent and co-operation of the people, whom he wished to civilize along the lines of the Roman model. He established a sena
Gaius Marius
Gaius Marius was a Roman general and statesman. He held the office of consul an unprecedented seven times during his career, he was noted for his important reforms of Roman armies, authorizing recruitment of landless citizens, eliminating the manipular military formations, reorganizing the structure of the legions into separate cohorts. Marius defeated the invading Germanic tribes, for which he was called "the third founder of Rome." His life and career were significant in Rome's transformation from Republic to Empire. Marius was born in 157 BC in the town of Arpinum in southern Latium; the town had been conquered by the Romans in the late 4th century BC and was given Roman citizenship without voting rights. Only in 188 BC did the town receive full citizenship. Although Plutarch claims that Marius' father was a labourer, this is certainly false since Marius had connections with the nobility in Rome, he ran for local office in Arpinum, he had marriage relations with the local nobility in Arpinum, which all combine to indicate that he was born into a locally important family of equestrian status.
The problems he faced in his early career in Rome show the difficulties that faced a "new man". There is a legend that Marius, as a teenager, found an eagle's nest with seven chicks in it – eagle clutches hardly have more than 3 eggs. Since eagles were considered sacred animals of Jupiter, the supreme god of the Romans, it was seen as an omen predicting his election to the consulship seven times; as consul, he decreed that the eagle would be the symbol of the Senate and People of Rome. In 134 BC, he was serving with the army at Numantia and his good services brought him to the attention of Scipio Aemilianus. Whether he arrived with Scipio Aemilianus or was 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 gently tapped on Marius' shoulder, saying: "Perhaps this is the man."
It would seem that 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. 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. Next, he ran for the quaestorship after losing an election for local office in Arpinum; the military tribunate shows that he was interested in Roman politics before the quaestorship. He ran for local office as a means of gaining support back home, lost to some other local worthy. Nothing is known of his actions while quaestor. In 120 BC, Marius was returned as plebeian tribune for the following year, he won with the support of Quintus Caecilius Metellus, 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. 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. Soon thereafter, Marius lost; this loss was at least in part due to the enmity of the Metelli. In 116 BC he won election as praetor for the following year and was promptly accused of ambitus, he won acquittal on this charge, spent an uneventful year as praetor in Rome. In 114 BC, Marius' imperium was prorogued and he was sent to govern Hispania Ulterior, where he engaged in some sort of minor military operation: according to Plutarch, he cleared away the robbers whilst robbery was still considered a noble occupation by the local people.
During this period in Roman history governors seem to have served two years in Hispania, so he was replaced in 113 BC. He received no triumph on his return and did not run for the consulship, but he did marry Julia, the aunt of Julius Caesar; the Julii Caesares were a patrician family, but at this period seem to have found it hard to advance above the praetorship. To judge by this marriage, Marius had achieved some substantial political or financial influence by this point; the Marii were the inherited clients of the Caecilii Metelli and a Caecilius Metellus had aided Marius' campaign for the tribunate. Although he seems to have had a break with the Metelli as a result of the laws he passed while tribune, the rupture was not permanent, since in 109 BC Quintus Caecilius Metellus took Marius with him as his legate on his campaign against Jugurtha. Legates were simply envoys sent by the Senate, but men appointed as legates by the Senate were used by generals as subordinate c
Mark Antony
Marcus Antonius known in English as Mark Antony or Anthony, 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 was a supporter of Julius Caesar, served as one of his generals during the conquest of Gaul and the Civil War. Antony was appointed administrator of Italy while Caesar eliminated political opponents in Greece, North Africa, Spain. After Caesar's death in 44 BC, Antony joined forces with Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, another of Caesar's generals, Octavian, Caesar's great-nephew and adopted son, forming a three-man dictatorship known to historians as the Second Triumvirate; the Triumvirs defeated Caesar's murderers, the Liberatores, at the Battle of Philippi in 42 BC, divided the government of the Republic between themselves. Antony was assigned Rome's eastern provinces, including the client kingdom of Egypt ruled by Cleopatra VII Philopator, was given the command in Rome's war against Parthia.
Relations among the triumvirs were strained. Civil war between Antony and Octavian was averted in 40 BC, when Antony married Octavian's sister, Octavia. Despite this marriage, Antony carried on a love affair with Cleopatra, who bore him three children, further straining Antony's relations with Octavian. Lepidus was expelled from the association in 36 BC, in 33 BC disagreements between Antony and Octavian caused a split between the remaining Triumvirs, their ongoing hostility erupted into civil war in 31 BC, as the Roman Senate, at Octavian's direction, declared war on Cleopatra and proclaimed Antony a traitor. That year, Antony was defeated by Octavian's forces at the Battle of Actium. Antony and Cleopatra fled to Egypt. With Antony dead, Octavian became the undisputed master of the Roman world. In 27 BC, Octavian was granted the title of Augustus, marking the final stage in the transformation of the Roman Republic into an empire, with himself as the first Roman emperor. A member of the plebeian Antonia gens, Antony was born in Rome on 14 January 83 BC.
His father and namesake was Marcus Antonius Creticus, son of the noted orator by the same name, murdered during the Marian Terror of the winter of 87–86 BC. His mother was a distant cousin of Julius Caesar. Antony was an infant at the time of Lucius Cornelius Sulla's march on Rome in 82 BC. According to the Roman orator Marcus Tullius Cicero, Antony's father was incompetent and corrupt, was only given power because he was incapable of using or abusing it effectively. In 74 BC he was given military command to defeat the pirates of the Mediterranean, but he died in Crete in 71 BC without making any significant progress; the elder Antony's death left Antony and his brothers and Gaius, in the care of their mother, who married Publius Cornelius Lentulus Sura, an eminent member of the old Patrician nobility. Lentulus, despite exploiting his political success for financial gain, was in debt due to the extravagance of his lifestyle, he was a major figure in the Second Catilinarian Conspiracy and was summarily executed on the orders of the Consul Cicero in 63 BC for his involvement.
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 and becoming involved in scandalous love affairs. Antony's contemporary and enemy, claimed 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 have been involved in the Lupercal cult as he was referred to as a priest of this order 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. In 57 BC, Antony joined the military staff of Aulus Gabinius, the Proconsul of Syria, as chief of the cavalry; this appointment marks the beginning of his military career. As Consul the previous year, Gabinius had consented to the exile of Cicero by Antony's mentor, Publius Clodius Pulcher.
Hyrcanus II, the Roman-supported Hasmonean High Priest of Judea, fled Jerusalem to Gabinius to seek protection against his rival and son-in-law Alexander. Years earlier in 63 BC, the Roman general Pompey had captured him and his father, King Aristobulus II, during his war against the remnant of the Seleucid Empire. Pompey had deposed Aristobulus and installed Hyrcanus as Rome's client ruler over Judea. Antony achieved his first military distinctions after securing important victories at Alexandrium and Machaerus. With the rebellion defeated by 56 BC, Gabinius restored Hyrcanus to his position as High Priest in Judea; the following year, in 55 BC, Gabinius intervened in the political affairs of Ptolemaic Egypt. Pharaoh Ptolemy XII Auletes had been deposed in a rebellion led by his daughter Berenice IV in 58 BC, forcing him to seek asylum in Rome. During Pompey's conquests years earlier, Ptolemy had received the support of Pompey, who named him an ally of Rome. Gabinius' invasion sought to restore Ptolemy to his throne.
This was done against the orders of the Senate but with the approval of Pompey Rome's leading politician, only after the deposed king provided a 10,000 talent bribe. The Greek historian Plutarch records it was Antony who convinced Gabinius to act. After defeating the frontier forces of the Egyptian kingdom, Gabinius's army proceeded to attack the palace guards but they surrendered before a battle commenced
Lucius Licinius Crassus
Lucius Licinius Crassus, sometimes referred to as Crassus Orator, was a Roman consul and statesman. He was considered the greatest orator of his day, most notably by his pupil Cicero. Crassus is famous as one of the main characters in Cicero's work De Oratore, a dramatic dialogue on the art of oratory set just before Crassus' death in 91 BC. Lucius Licinius Crassus was born in 140 BC, it is not known which Licinius Crassus his father was, as there are a number of similarly-named Licinii Crassi active in the mid-second century BC. However, prosopographical investigation by scholars has established that he must have been a grandson of Gaius Licinius Crassus, the consul of 168 who marched his army from Gallia Cisalpina to Macedonia against the will of the Senate. Lucius was, the child of one of this Gaius Crassus' sons. Lucius was taught at a young age by jurist Lucius Coelius Antipater, he studied law under two eminent statesmen, both of whom were from branches of the Mucii Scaevolae gens: Publius Mucius Scaevola.
The latter was still alive in the year of Crassus' death, appears alongside Crassus as a character in Cicero's De Oratore. When aged only 21, Crassus shot to fame in 119 BC for his prosecution of the proconsul Gaius Papirius Carbo, who committed suicide rather than face the inevitable guilty verdict. From this point on, Crassus was recognised as one of the foremost orators in Rome. However, Crassus came to regret this celebrated prosecution because it brought him many political enemies. One such enemy was Carbo's son, Gaius Papirius Carbo the Younger, who followed Crassus to his province in 94 BC with the aim of gathering evidence for a revenge prosecution. Crassus was remembered by Romans for his wise response to the younger Carbo. Little else is known of Crassus' political activities in the 110s BC, he is known to have supported the efforts of Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus to create a citizen colony at Narbo Martius in 117 BC. At the age of twenty-seven, Crassus defended his relative Licinia, one of the Vestal Virgins, scandalously accused of infidelity that year.
Crassus was successful during Licinia's first prosecution in front of the pontifices, she was acquitted. However, she was prosecuted again by the special inquisitor Lucius Cassius Longinus Ravilla in early 113; this time, Crassus was not successful, Licinia was buried alive. Crassus served as Quaestor sometime around the year 109 BC, he was appointed to the province of Asia Minor. On his return journey, he departed after a dispute with the locals. Having missed the ceremony of the Eleusinian Mysteries by only two days, Crassus requested that the Athenians repeat the affair so that he too might be initiated; when the Athenians refused, he angrily left the city. It seems Crassus related this anecdote to the young Cicero, who recorded it many years in the De Oratore. Crassus served as Tribune of the Plebs in 107 BC at the age of 33, his tribunate was as an example of a notably'quiet' one: Cicero had not realised Crassus served as tribune until he read about it by chance in a passage of Lucilius. Crassus served as Aedile in 100 BC.
Alongside Scaevola Pontifex, Crassus put on expensive games for the people, which were remembered decades afterwards for their extravagance. As was common with many young politicians at the start of the cursus honorum, Crassus had employed popularis overtones in his prosecution of Carbo, but over time, he became an staunch defender of conservative values. In 106 BC, Crassus gave a famous speech; this law was proposed by the consul Quintus Servilius Caepio, aimed to end the equestrian monopoly on juries. Since the legislative reforms of Gaius Gracchus, jurors for a number of important courts had been drawn only from the ranks of the equites. Crassus and the other conservative senators wanted mixed juries drawn from both senators and equestrians, he therefore attacked the equestrian courts in a famous speech, considered by Cicero to be Crassus' finest moment: Save us from wretchedness, save us from the fangs of men whose cruelty can only be satisfied by our blood. In the translation by Rackham and Sutton, published in 1942: Deliver us out of our woes, deliver us out of the jaws of those whose ferocity cannot get its fill of our blood.
Crassus' oratory won the day, the Lex Servilia was passed. It was, however, to prove short lived, as a few years a law of Gaius Servilius Glaucia restored the equestrian monopoly on the juries. Regardless of the long-term outcome of the Lex Servilia, Crassus' speech was celebrated, it became a literal model of Roman eloquence, was being studied in a textbook by the young Cicero a few years later. In the last year of his life, Crassus once again attacked the equestrian juries when he championed the legislation of Marcus Livius Drusus the Younger in 91 BC, it is worth noting that when Quintus Servilius Caepio, the proposer of the jury law in question, was prosecuted in 103 BC by the tribune Gaius Norbanus fo
Roman Republic