See Plutarch, Brutus, passim, Crassus, 27, 29, Caesar, 62, 69; Dio Cassius xl. 28, xlii. 13, xliv. 14, xlvii. 20; Vell. Pat. ii. 46, 56, 58, 69, 70, 87; Cicero, Philippics, xi. 13, 14, ad Att. v. 21, xiv. 21, ad Fam. xi. 3, 15, 16; Appian, Bell. Civ. ii. 111, 113, iii. 2, 8, iv. 60-62, 87, 90, 111-113, 132; Caesar, Bell. Civ. iii. 101.
4. Quintus Cassius Longinus, the brother or cousin of the murderer of Caesar, quaestor of Pompey in Further Spain in 54 b.c. In 49, as tribune of the people, he strongly supported the cause of Caesar, by whom he was made governor of Further Spain. He treated the provincials with great cruelty, and his appointment (48) to take the field against Juba, king of Numidia, gave him an excuse for fresh oppression. The result was an unsuccessful insurrection at Corduba. Cassius punished the leaders with merciless severity, and made the lot of the provincials harder than ever. At last some of his troops revolted under the quaestor M. Marcellus, who was proclaimed governor of the province. Cassius was surrounded by Marcellus in Ulia. Bogud, king of Mauretania, and M. Lepidus, proconsul of Hither Spain, to whom Cassius had applied for assistance, negotiated an arrangement with Marcellus whereby Cassius was to be allowed to go free with the legions that remained loyal to him. Cassius sent his troops into winter quarters, hastened on board ship at Malaca with his ill-gotten gains, but was wrecked in a storm at the mouth of the Iberus (Ebro). His tyrannical government of Spain had greatly injured the cause of Caesar.
See Dio Cassius xli. 15, 24, xlii. 15, 16, xliii. 29; Livy, Epit. III; Appian, B.C. ii. 33, 43; Bellum Alexandrinum, 48-64.
5. Gaius Cassius Longinus (1st century a.d.), Roman jurist, consul in 30, proconsul of Asia 40-41, and governor of Syria under Claudius 45-50. On his return to Rome his wealth and high character secured him considerable influence. He was banished by Nero (65) to Sardinia, because among the images of his ancestors he had preserved that of the murderer of Caesar. He was recalled by Vespasian, and died at an advanced age. As he was consul in 30, he must have been born at the latest in the year 3 b.c. Cassius was a pupil of Masurius Sabinus, with whom he founded a legal school, the followers of which were called Cassiani. His chief work was the Libri Juris Civilis in ten books, which was used by the compilers of the Digest of Justinian.
See Tacitus, Annals, xvi. 7-9; Suetonius, Nero, 37; Dio Cassius lix. 29; Teuffel-Schwabe, Hist. of Roman Literature, § 298, 3.
CASSIUS, AVIDIUS (d. a.d. 175), Roman general, a Syrian by birth, lived during the reign of Marcus Aurelius. He especially distinguished himself during the Parthian War (a.d. 162-165), at the conclusion of which he was apparently appointed military governor of Asia, though the actual extent of his jurisdiction is doubtful. In 172 he was sent to Egypt, where he put down a dangerous rising of the Bucolici, the robber herdsmen of the delta of the Nile, after which he returned to Syria. In 175 the emperor Aurelius fell ill, and his wife Faustina, to secure her position in case of his death, offered her hand and the throne to the successful general. A rumour of Aurelius’s death having reached Syria, Cassius, without waiting for confirmation, proclaimed himself emperor; when the report proved false, it was too late for him to draw back, and he accordingly prepared for war. The senate declared him a public enemy, although Aurelius even then expressed the hope that he might have the opportunity of pardoning him. Deploring the necessity for taking up arms against his trusted officer, Aurelius set out for the east. While in Illyria, he received the news that Cassius had been slain by his own officers. The murderers offered his head to Aurelius, who refused to admit them, and ordered its immediate burial.
See Dio Cassius lxxi. 2-4, 17, 22-28, 30, 31; Fronto, Letters, i. 6; Lives of Marcus Aurelius, Verus and Commodus in the Scriptores Historiae Augustae, and the special biography of Avidius Cassius in the same by Vulcacius Gallicanus. The various letters and documents in the last-named are generally considered spurious, and the portions of the narrative founded on them consequently untrustworthy. See also article in Pauly-Wissowa’s Realencyclopädie, ii. pt. 2 (1896).
CASSIUS, GAIUS, Latin poet, general and politician, called Parmensis from his birthplace Parma, was one of the murderers of Julius Caesar, and after his death joined the party of Brutus and his namesake Cassius the conspirator. In 43 b.c. he was in command of the fleet on the coast of Asia, but after the battle of Philippi joined Sextus Pompeius in Sicily. When Pompeius, having been defeated in a naval engagement at Naulochus by the fleet of Octavian under Agrippa, fled to Asia, Cassius went over to Antony, and took part in the battle of Actium (31). He afterwards fled to Athens, where he was soon put to death by Octavian, whom he had offended by writing an abusive letter (Suetonius, Augustus, 4). Cassius is credited with satires, elegies, epigrams and tragedies. Some hexameters with the title Cassii Orpheus are by Antonius Thylesius, an Italian of the 17th century. Horace appears to have thought well of Cassius as a poet, for he asks Tibullus whether he intends to compete with the opuscula (probably the elegies) of Cassius (Epistles, i. 4. 3). The story in the Horace scholia, that L. Varius Rufus published his famous tragedy Thyestes from an MS. which he found amongst the papers of Cassius after his death, is due to a confusion of Cassius’s murderer, Q. Attius Varus, with the tragedian (Appian, B.C. v. 2, 139; Cicero, ad Fam. xii. 13; Veil. Pat. ii. 87; Orosius, vi. 19; see also the diffuse treatise of A. Weichert, De L. Varii et Cassii Parmensis Vita et Carminibus, 1836). Cassius Parmensis must not be confused with Cassius Etruscus (Horace, Satires, i. 10. 60), an improviser, who is said to have used enough paper to furnish his funeral pyre.