Gaius Cassius Longinus Varus

Gaius Cassius Longinus Varus was a Roman consul in 73 BC (together with Marcus Terentius Varro Lucullus). Cassius and his colleague passed the lex Terentia Cassia that ordered the state to buy up grain in Sicily and sell it for a low price in Rome. As proconsul of Cisalpine Gaul in the next year, 72 BC, during the Third Servile War, Cassius tried to stop Spartacus and his followers near Mutina (now Modena) as the slave army was trying to break through to unoccupied Gaul, but suffered defeat and barely managed to get away alive. Two years later, Cassius appeared as witness of the prosecution in the trial against the corrupt former governor of Sicily, Verres. In 66 BC, Cassius supported the Manilian law that gave command of the war against Mithridates to Pompey; he was joined in this by Cicero, then praetor, whose famous speech in support of the same bill survives.

This Cassius Longinus may have been the father of the more famous Caesar assassin, Gaius Cassius Longinus.

Gaius Cassius Longinus

Gaius Cassius Longinus (Classical Latin: [ˈgaː.i.ʊs ˈkas.si.ʊs ˈlɔŋ.gɪ.nʊs]; October 3, before 85 BC – October 3, 42 BC) was a Roman senator, a leading instigator of the plot to kill Julius Caesar, and the brother in-law of Marcus Junius Brutus.

Biography

Early life

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.

Civil war

Cassius returned to Rome in 50 BC, when civil war was about to break out between Julius Caesar and Pompey. 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.

Gaius Cassius Longinus (consul 96 BC)

Gaius Cassius Longinus was consul in 96 BC with Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus. He is mentioned by Cicero as one of those persons who were elected consuls notwithstanding their having failed to obtain the aedileship.

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Smith, William, ed. (1870). "^{article name needed}". Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. 

Cassius Longinus

Cassius Longinus may refer to:

See also

Cassius Longinus (philosopher)

Cassius Longinus (/ˈkæʃəs lɒnˈdʒaɪnəs/; Greek: Κάσσιος Λογγῖνος; c. 213 – 273 AD) was a Hellenistic rhetorician and philosophical critic. He was perhaps a native of Emesa in Syria. He studied at Alexandria under Ammonius Saccas and Origen the Pagan, and taught for thirty years in Athens, one of his pupils being Porphyry. Longinus did not embrace the Neoplatonism then being developed by Plotinus, but continued as a Platonist of the old type and his reputation as a literary critic was immense. During a visit to the east, he became a teacher, and subsequently chief counsellor to Zenobia, queen of Palmyra. It was by his advice that she endeavoured to regain her independence from Rome. Emperor Aurelian, however, crushed the revolt, and Longinus was executed.

Life

The origin of his gentile name Cassius is unknown; it can only be conjectured that he was the client to some Cassius Longinus, or that his ancestors had received the Roman franchise through the influence of some Cassius Longinus. He was born about 213, and was killed in 273, at the age of sixty. The suggestion that his original name was Dionysius arose only because the 1st century rhetorical treatise On the Sublime was ascribed to a "Dionysius or Longinus" in the medieval period.

Cassius Longinus (suffect consul)

Gaius Cassius Longinus was an Ancient Roman jurist and politician. A grandnephew of Servius Sulpicius Rufus, he was also a descendant, great grandson or nephew, of Gaius Cassius Longinus, one of Caesar's assassins.

Cassius, a pupil of Sabinus, was head of the legal school called the Sabinians or Cassinians. His principal works are the libri (commentarii) iuris civilis in at least ten volumes, which only survive in quotes by later authors such as Iavolenus. He held the offices of praetor, and of consul suffectus in 30, proconsul of Asia minor in 40–41, and legatus of Syria in 41-49. He was exiled by Nero to Sardinia in 65 and returned to Rome under Vespasian.

Tacitus includes a speech of Cassius on the debate that arose when there had been mass protests in Rome when 400 innocent slaves were to be executed because belong to the household of a master who had been murdered by his slave. It is open to question as the extent that the speech we have reflected what Cassius actually said and what extent it represents Tacitus's views though it is at least possible that Tacitus made use of the Senates records and the hard line expressed is in line with what we know about Cassius. In the speech Cassius conceded that the execution would be unjust. He also conceded it violated the rights of private interests but justified it on the grounds of the public good. The private interests that concerned him did not include any right to life for the slaves but the loss to the heirs. Modern commentators side with those who protested at the time in regarding the law as inherently unjust.

Gaius Cassius Longinus (consul 171 BC)

Gaius Cassius Longinus was a Roman consul in the year 171 BCE, together with Publius Licinius Crassus.

Cassius Longinus was not given a command position as he had hoped during the Third Macedonian War, and instead was sent to the northern border of Italy in the province of Illyria to man a defense against attacks from Macedon. Ignoring his orders, he decided to gather his army at Aquileia with thirty days worth of supplies and moved south into Macedonia. The Roman senate learned of his actions and recalled him back to Rome. While Cassius Longinus was on his way back to Rome, he drove his army over the Alps, mercilessly pillaging Scordisci and other Celtic villages, carrying off thousands of people to be used as slaves. The people were so outraged that they took their case directly to the senate. The senate found that their evidence was indeed valid, and delivered to them various gifts as reparations.

After Cassius Longinus's return to Rome, he became a censor in 154 BCE. A stone theater, the first of its kind in Rome that he had constructed, was declared to be a violation of pudicitia by Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica Corculum, and was destroyed upon orders from the senate.