History of Julius Cæsar, Vol. 2 of 2

by Emperor of the French Napoleon III

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

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

12. L. ROSCIUS.

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

13. TITUS SEXTIUS.

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

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

14. Q. TULLIUS CICERO.

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

15. CAIUS TREBONIUS.