Lucius Valerius Flaccus (suffect consul 86 BC)
Encyclopedia
Lucius Valerius Flaccus (d. 85 BC) was the suffect consul who completed the term of Gaius Marius
Gaius Marius
Gaius Marius was a Roman general and statesman. He was elected consul an unprecedented seven times during his career. He was also noted for his dramatic reforms of Roman armies, authorizing recruitment of landless citizens, eliminating the manipular military formations, and reorganizing the...

 in 86 BC. He was sent as governor
Roman governor
A Roman governor was an official either elected or appointed to be the chief administrator of Roman law throughout one or more of the many provinces constituting the Roman Empire...

 in that year to the Roman province of Asia, but was murdered in a mutiny
Mutiny
Mutiny is a conspiracy among members of a group of similarly situated individuals to openly oppose, change or overthrow an authority to which they are subject...

 by Fimbria
Gaius Flavius Fimbria
Gaius Flavius Fimbria was a Roman politician and a violent partisan of Gaius Marius. He fought in the First Mithridatic War.-Partisan of Marius:...

 during the turmoil of the Sullan civil wars and the Mithridatic Wars
Mithridatic Wars
There were three Mithridatic Wars between Rome and the Kingdom of Pontus in the 1st century BC. They are named for Mithridates VI who was King of Pontus at the time....

.

Flaccus is also known for the Lex Valeria de aere alieno, his legislation on debt reform during the Roman economic crisis of the 80s BC.

Family

Lucius was the younger brother of the Gaius Valerius Flaccus who was consul in 93 BC
Gaius Valerius Flaccus (consul 93 BCE)
Gaius Valerius Flaccus was a consul of the Roman Republic in 93 BC and a provincial governor in the late-90s and throughout the 80s...

; his son was the Lucius Valerius Flaccus (praetor 63 BC) who was defended by Cicero
Cicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero , was a Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Roman constitutionalist. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the equestrian order, and is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.He introduced the Romans to the chief...

 in the speech Pro Flacco. The older Lucius Valerius Flaccus
Lucius Valerius Flaccus (princeps senatus 86 BC)
Lucius Valerius Flaccus was a consul of the Roman Republic in 100 BC and princeps senatus during the civil wars of the 80s...

 who was consul in 100 BC and princeps senatus
Princeps senatus
The princeps senatus was the first member by precedence of the Roman Senate. Although officially out of the cursus honorum and owning no imperium, this office brought enormous prestige to the senator holding it.-Overview:...

in 86 is a cousin.

Inscriptional
Epigraphy
Epigraphy Epigraphy Epigraphy (from the , literally "on-writing", is the study of inscriptions or epigraphs as writing; that is, the science of identifying the graphemes and of classifying their use as to cultural context and date, elucidating their meaning and assessing what conclusions can be...

 evidence from Magnesia on the Maeander
Magnesia on the Maeander
Magnesia or Magnesia on the Maeander was an ancient Greek city in Anatolia, considerable in size, at an important location commercially and strategically in the triangle of Priene, Ephesus and Tralles. The city was named Magnesia, after the Magnetes from Thessaly who settled the area along with...

 pertaining either to this Lucius Flaccus or to his son, who also was a governor of Asia, says he was married to a daughter of L. Saufeius and had a daughter named Valeria Paulla; his mother, a Baebia, is also commemorated. Flaccus is called ἀνθύπατος (anthupatos), a Greek
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...

 term for proconsul
Proconsul
A proconsul was a governor of a province in the Roman Republic appointed for one year by the senate. In modern usage, the title has been used for a person from one country ruling another country or bluntly interfering in another country's internal affairs.-Ancient Rome:In the Roman Republic, a...

, which would point to the father rather than the son defended by Cicero.

Life and career

Lucius Flaccus was a military tribune
Military tribune
A military tribune was an officer of the Roman army who ranked below the legate and above the centurion...

 sometime before 100 BC. In 99, he was curule aedile
Aedile
Aedile was an office of the Roman Republic. Based in Rome, the aediles were responsible for maintenance of public buildings and regulation of public festivals. They also had powers to enforce public order. There were two pairs of aediles. Two aediles were from the ranks of plebeians and the other...

. Upon completion of his term, he was prosecuted unsuccessfully by Decianus
C. Appuleius Decianus
Gaius Appuleius Decianus was tribune of the plebs in 98 BC, known primarily for his connection to politically motivated prosecutions in the Late Roman Republic.-The case against P...

. The charges are vague and the case is perhaps best viewed in the context of several politically motivated prosecutions in the 90s that transferred the political violence of the preceding decade to the law courts. The trial did little to slow Flaccus's career. He was elected praetor
Praetor
Praetor was a title granted by the government of Ancient Rome to men acting in one of two official capacities: the commander of an army, usually in the field, or the named commander before mustering the army; and an elected magistratus assigned varied duties...

 by 92, and was praetor or propraetor
Promagistrate
A promagistrate is a person who acts in and with the authority and capacity of a magistrate, but without holding a magisterial office. A legal innovation of the Roman Republic, the promagistracy was invented in order to provide Rome with governors of overseas territories instead of having to elect...

 in Asia around 92–91, within a few years of his brother Gaius having held the same post.

Governor of Asia

During Flaccus's governorship of Asia and before the First Mithridatic War
First Mithridatic War
The First Mithridatic War was a war challenging Rome's expanding Empire and rule over the Greek world. In this conflict, the Kingdom of Pontus and many Greek cities rebelling against Rome were led by Mithridates VI of Pontus against the Roman Republic and the Kingdom of Bithynia...

, collections were made for a festival and games in his honor and deposited at Tralles. The money seems not to have been spent as planned, as Cicero claims the town had lent the funds at interest for its own profit. Three decades later, Flaccus's son Lucius was governor of the same province; Cicero defended him against multiple charges of financial impropriety during his administration, in particular by claiming that he was merely "recuperating" these particular funds when the Trallians accused him of embezzlement.

Both Lucius Flaccus and his brother Gaius, who had held a promagisterial
Promagistrate
A promagistrate is a person who acts in and with the authority and capacity of a magistrate, but without holding a magisterial office. A legal innovation of the Roman Republic, the promagistracy was invented in order to provide Rome with governors of overseas territories instead of having to elect...

 command in Asia around 96 BC, were recognized as patrons
Patronage in ancient Rome
Patronage was the distinctive relationship in ancient Roman society between the patronus and his client . The relationship was hierarchical, but obligations were mutual. The patronus was the protector, sponsor, and benefactor of the client...

 of Colophon
Colophon
Colophon was a city in the region of Lydia in antiquity dating from about the turn of the first millennium-BC. It was likely one the oldest of the twelve Ionian League cities, between Lebedos and Ephesus and its ruins are in the eponymously named modern region of Ionia.The city's name comes from...

 in Lydia
Lydia
Lydia was an Iron Age kingdom of western Asia Minor located generally east of ancient Ionia in the modern Turkish provinces of Manisa and inland İzmir. Its population spoke an Anatolian language known as Lydian....

. The two are the first Roman governors known to be addressed as patrons of a free city, a practice that became common in the 60s BC.

Pro-Marian and suffect consul

In 87 BC, during Sulla's first civil war
Sulla's first civil war
Sulla's first civil war was one of a series of civil wars in ancient Rome, between Gaius Marius and Sulla, between 88 and 87 BC.- Prelude - Social War :...

, a Valerius who commanded a cavalry garrison handed over Ostia
Ostia Antica
Ostia Antica is a large archeological site, close to the modern suburb of Ostia , that was the location of the harbour city of ancient Rome, which is approximately 30 km to the northeast. "Ostia" in Latin means "mouth". At the mouth of the River Tiber, Ostia was Rome's seaport, but, due to...

 to Marius ("treacherously," according to Plutarch
Plutarch
Plutarch then named, on his becoming a Roman citizen, Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus , c. 46 – 120 AD, was a Greek historian, biographer, essayist, and Middle Platonist known primarily for his Parallel Lives and Moralia...

); this Valerius may be the future suffect consul. During the 90s and into the mid-80s the Valerii Flacci appear securely aligned with the Marian
Gaius Marius
Gaius Marius was a Roman general and statesman. He was elected consul an unprecedented seven times during his career. He was also noted for his dramatic reforms of Roman armies, authorizing recruitment of landless citizens, eliminating the manipular military formations, and reorganizing the...

-Cinnan
Lucius Cornelius Cinna
Lucius Cornelius Cinna was a four-time consul of the Roman Republic, serving four consecutive terms from 87 to 84 BC, and a member of the ancient Roman Cinna family of the Cornelii gens....

 faction; when the elder cousin Lucius Flaccus held the consulship jointly with Marius in 100 BC, he was accused of being "more a servant than a colleague." E. Badian considers the Valerii Flacci "one of the foremost pro-Marian families."

In 86 BC, Lucius Flaccus became suffect consul, replacing Gaius Marius
Gaius Marius
Gaius Marius was a Roman general and statesman. He was elected consul an unprecedented seven times during his career. He was also noted for his dramatic reforms of Roman armies, authorizing recruitment of landless citizens, eliminating the manipular military formations, and reorganizing the...

 when he died unexpectedly in mid-January at the beginning of his seventh term. His colleague in the consulship was Cornelius Cinna
Lucius Cornelius Cinna
Lucius Cornelius Cinna was a four-time consul of the Roman Republic, serving four consecutive terms from 87 to 84 BC, and a member of the ancient Roman Cinna family of the Cornelii gens....

.

Credit crisis of the 80s

Flaccus's most controversial act as consul may have been the Lex Valeria de aere alieno, a radical restructuring of debt
Debt
A debt is an obligation owed by one party to a second party, the creditor; usually this refers to assets granted by the creditor to the debtor, but the term can also be used metaphorically to cover moral obligations and other interactions not based on economic value.A debt is created when a...

. Immediately upon entering office, Flaccus needed to confront Rome's credit crisis, which several factors had exacerbated. The credit system at Rome was based on the amount of money in circulation, stable land prices, and fides
Fides
In Roman religion, Fides was the goddess of trust.Her temple on the Capitol was where the Roman Senate signed and kept state treaties with foreign countries, and where Fides protected them....

, "general faith in the eventual repayment of loans and in the strength of the economy," a concept comparable to the 21st-century belief in the economic power of "consumer confidence
Consumer confidence
Consumer confidence is an economic indicator which measures the degree of optimism that consumers feel about the overall state of the economy and their personal financial situation. How confident people feel about stability of their incomes determines their spending activity and therefore serves as...

." Land was the most common security
Security (finance)
A security is generally a fungible, negotiable financial instrument representing financial value. Securities are broadly categorized into:* debt securities ,* equity securities, e.g., common stocks; and,...

 for loans, but the large amount of land seized in the armed conflict of the Social War (91–88 BC) had become worthless as collateral. With the loss of income from farms and estates, property values dropped, and creditors began to call in their loans. At the same time, general social turmoil resulted in coin hoarding; as the amount of money in circulation shrank, debtors found it increasingly difficult to pay off their loan or renegotiate the terms. The Roman economy was also slammed by the consequences of the First Mithridatic War
First Mithridatic War
The First Mithridatic War was a war challenging Rome's expanding Empire and rule over the Greek world. In this conflict, the Kingdom of Pontus and many Greek cities rebelling against Rome were led by Mithridates VI of Pontus against the Roman Republic and the Kingdom of Bithynia...

, which devastated Italian businesses in the East and depleted tax revenues from the province of Asia.

Flaccus took drastic measures: with the silver sestertius
Sestertius
The sestertius, or sesterce, was an ancient Roman coin. During the Roman Republic it was a small, silver coin issued only on rare occasions...

 valued at four copper asses, debtors were allowed to pay off their loan at a rate of one as on the sestertius. The debts owed by the government were included in the plan, which eased the budget deficit. The historian Sallust
Sallust
Gaius Sallustius Crispus, generally known simply as Sallust , a Roman historian, belonged to a well-known plebeian family, and was born at Amiternum in the country of the Sabines...

, who was born in the year of Flaccus's consulship, says that the conservative senatorial elite
Optimates
The optimates were the traditionalist majority of the late Roman Republic. They wished to limit the power of the popular assemblies and the Tribunes of the Plebs, and to extend the power of the Senate, which was viewed as more dedicated to the interests of the aristocrats who held the reins of power...

 as a whole supported the plan. Writing a hundred years after the fact, during the era of Augustan prosperity, the historian Velleius Paterculus characterized Flaccus's plan as turpissima, "utterly disgraceful."

Mutiny and murder

At the end of his term, Flaccus was assigned the province of Asia as a countermeasure to Sulla's military operations and diplomatic efforts toward Mithridates VI of Pontus
Mithridates VI of Pontus
Mithridates VI or Mithradates VI Mithradates , from Old Persian Mithradatha, "gift of Mithra"; 134 BC – 63 BC, also known as Mithradates the Great and Eupator Dionysius, was king of Pontus and Armenia Minor in northern Anatolia from about 120 BC to 63 BC...

, Rome's chief foreign adversary of the period. Although Sulla operated illegally, and had even been declared a public enemy
Public Enemy
Public Enemy is an American hip hop group consisting of Chuck D, Flavor Flav, Professor Griff and his S1W group, DJ Lord , and Music Director Khari Wynn...

 (hostis), Cinna appears to have recognized that the threat of Mithridates required Roman cooperation.

Because the Cinnan government was operating with a depleted treasury, it could fund only five legions, two of which were sent with Lucius Flaccus to Asia. Flaccus was far outnumbered by Sulla's forces, and lost a number of his troops while they were still in transit: an advance guard had been separated from the fleet, stranded by storms, and their ships burnt by Mithridates' Pontic navy. These men managed to make their way to Thessaly
Thessaly
Thessaly is a traditional geographical region and an administrative region of Greece, comprising most of the ancient region of the same name. Before the Greek Dark Ages, Thessaly was known as Aeolia, and appears thus in Homer's Odyssey....

, where they promptly deserted to Sulla. The consular army eventually marched across Epirus, Macedonia
Macedonia (Roman province)
The Roman province of Macedonia was officially established in 146 BC, after the Roman general Quintus Caecilius Metellus defeated Andriscus of Macedon, the last Ancient King of Macedon in 148 BC, and after the four client republics established by Rome in the region were dissolved...

 and Thrace
Thrace
Thrace is a historical and geographic area in southeast Europe. As a geographical concept, Thrace designates a region bounded by the Balkan Mountains on the north, Rhodope Mountains and the Aegean Sea on the south, and by the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara on the east...

 to Byzantium
Byzantium
Byzantium was an ancient Greek city, founded by Greek colonists from Megara in 667 BC and named after their king Byzas . The name Byzantium is a Latinization of the original name Byzantion...

, with growing tensions within the ranks and the officer corps. Flaccus's strongest legate
Legatus
A legatus was a general in the Roman army, equivalent to a modern general officer. Being of senatorial rank, his immediate superior was the dux, and he outranked all military tribunes...

, sometimes identified as his quaestor
Quaestor
A Quaestor was a type of public official in the "Cursus honorum" system who supervised financial affairs. In the Roman Republic a quaestor was an elected official whereas, with the autocratic government of the Roman Empire, quaestors were simply appointed....

, was Gaius Flavius Fimbria
Gaius Flavius Fimbria
Gaius Flavius Fimbria was a Roman politician and a violent partisan of Gaius Marius. He fought in the First Mithridatic War.-Partisan of Marius:...

, a devoted Marian who seized on the discontent of the troops to position himself as a rival for command. Fimbria's motives otherwise are difficult to discern and are sometimes treated as irrational vehemence, but he may have felt that Flaccus's position toward Sulla was too conciliatory. Flaccus may have played an early role in the attempts of his cousin, the princeps senatus, to come to a peaceful settlement with Sulla, and Sulla at any rate made no hostile advance toward Flaccus.

According to Diodorus, during the march through Thrace in the winter of 86–85, Fimbria led advance troops whose allegiance he tried to win by allowing them to plunder "the territory of allies as if it were enemy country, enslaving anyone they encountered." When the people complained of abuse, Flaccus rebuked Fimbria. The account is structured by a moral pattern Diodorus favors in interpreting events, notes Liv Mariah Yarrow: "the abuse of the allies by Fimbria in a ploy to gain power within the military structure actually leads to the disintegration of that military structure."

At the Hellespont, Flaccus dismissed Fimbria with orders to return to Rome and replaced him with Q. Minucius Thermus, whom he left in charge of Byzantium. But Fimbria continued to stir up the troops, until they defected to him and he took over Thermus's command. Flaccus, who had advanced to Chalcedon
Chalcedon
Chalcedon , sometimes transliterated as Chalkedon) was an ancient maritime town of Bithynia, in Asia Minor, almost directly opposite Byzantium, south of Scutari . It is now a district of the city of Istanbul named Kadıköy...

 in Bithynia
Bithynia
Bithynia was an ancient region, kingdom and Roman province in the northwest of Asia Minor, adjoining the Propontis, the Thracian Bosporus and the Euxine .-Description:...

, then returned to deal with the situation. The most sensational account of events has Fimbria seizing the fasces
Fasces
Fasces are a bundle of wooden sticks with an axe blade emerging from the center, which is an image that traditionally symbolizes summary power and jurisdiction, and/or "strength through unity"...

and Flaccus running first to Chalcedon and then to Nicomedia
Nicomedia
Nicomedia was an ancient city in what is now Turkey, founded in 712/11 BC as a Megarian colony and was originally known as Astacus . After being destroyed by Lysimachus, it was rebuilt by Nicomedes I of Bithynia in 264 BC under the name of Nicomedia, and has ever since been one of the most...

. Fimbria pursued him, found him hiding in a well, and had him beheaded. Fimbria then assumes the consular command before Flaccus had even reached his province.

Flaccus had been accompanied to Asia by his son Lucius, who was probably still under age 20 at the time and on his first tour of military duty. After the death of his father, he escaped and went to join his uncle Gaius in Gaul.

Assessment

The 1st-century A.D. historian Memnon
Memnon of Heraclea
Memnon of Heraclea was a Greek historical writer, probably a native of Heraclea Pontica. He described the history of that city in a large work, known only through the Excerpta of Photius , and describing especially the various tyrants who had at times ruled Heraclea.Memnon's history encompassed...

 is highly critical of Flaccus, blaming his own arrogance and cruelty for driving his men to mutiny. Appian
Appian
Appian of Alexandria was a Roman historian of Greek ethnicity who flourished during the reigns of Trajan, Hadrian, and Antoninus Pius.He was born ca. 95 in Alexandria. He tells us that, after having filled the chief offices in the province of Egypt, he went to Rome ca. 120, where he practised as...

 finds both Flaccus and Fimbria reprehensible, while Diodorus vilifies Fimbria, mentioning Flaccus only once and in a positive light. Michael Lovano attempts to filter out the biases of the sources in assessing the character of Flaccus and his predicament in Asia:

Effect on civil war

See also Gaius Valerius Flaccus (consul 93 BCE): Role in civil war and Lucius Valerius Flaccus (princeps senatus 86 BC): Role in civil war.

At the time of the murder, Lucius's brother Gaius was governor of Gallia Transalpina and most likely Cisalpina, and also a recent and possibly still current governor of one or both of the Spanish provinces
Hispania
Another theory holds that the name derives from Ezpanna, the Basque word for "border" or "edge", thus meaning the farthest area or place. Isidore of Sevilla considered Hispania derived from Hispalis....

. He thus would have commanded the largest number of troops in the western empire. Gaius had either remained neutral or supported the Cinnan government until that point. He is thought to have begun turning away from the Marian-Cinnan faction when a Marian was responsible for his brother's death, and to have accepted the new regime once Sulla's troops were in Cisalpine Gaul. His nephew, who had joined him in Gaul after Lucius Flaccus's death in Asia, served as his military tribune in 82 or 81.

Gaius also may have been influenced by their cousin Lucius who was princeps senatus at the time of the murder. The elder Lucius had been the colleague of Marius in the consulship for 100 BC, but after the failure of his peace initiatives toward Sulla, he sponsored the legislation to establish the dictatorship
Roman dictator
In the Roman Republic, the dictator , was an extraordinary magistrate with the absolute authority to perform tasks beyond the authority of the ordinary magistrate . The office of dictator was a legal innovation originally named Magister Populi , i.e...

.

Selected bibliography

  • Brennan, T. Corey. The Praetorship in the Roman Republic. Oxford University Press, 2000.
  • Broughton, T.R.S.
    Thomas Robert Shannon Broughton
    Thomas Robert Shannon Broughton was a Canadian classical scholar and leading Latin prosopographer of the twentieth century. He is especially noted for his definitive three-volume work, Magistrates of the Roman Republic ....

    The Magistrates of the Roman Republic, vol. 2, 99 B.C.–31 B.C. New York: American Philological Association, 1952.
  • The Cambridge Ancient History (Cambridge University Press, 2nd edition 1994), vol. 9.
  • Lovano, Michael. The Age of Cinna: Crucible of Late Republican Rome. Franz Steiner Verlag, 2002.
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