Marcus Marius Gratidianus
Encyclopedia
Marcus Marius Gratidianus (died 82 BC) was a praetor
and a partisan of the popularist
faction led by his uncle Gaius Marius
during the Roman Republic
an civil wars of the 80s. Gratidianus is noted primarily for undergoing a particularly violent death during the Sullan proscriptions; in the most sensational accounts, he was tortured and dismembered at the tomb of Catulus
by Catilina, in a manner that evoked human sacrifice
.
As praetor, Gratidianus is also known for his currency reform
during the economic crisis of the 80s.
Gratidianus was the son of Marius's sister and Marcus Gratidius of Arpinum. He was adopted by Marius's brother Marcus. An aunt married the Marcus Tullius Cicero who was the grandfather of the famous Cicero
. Gratidianus may have had a particularly pungent relationship with one of his in-laws: his sister could have been the first wife of Sergius Catilina
, who was accused by Cicero of participating in his torture and murder.
Gratidius, his natural father, was a close friend of Marcus Antonius
the orator and consul
of 99 BC. He was killed ca. 102–100 BC while serving as a prefect under Antonius in Cilicia
. In 92 BC, Antonius deployed his famed oratorical skills in defending his friend's son when Gratidianus was sued by the oyster-breeder
and real-estate
speculator
Sergius Orata
in a civil case involving the sale of a property on the Lucrine Lake. Orata was not without his own high-powered speaker, in the person of Lucius Licinius Crassus
. Cicero says Orata was trying to force Gratidianus to buy back the property when Orata's business plan for farm-raised oysters fell through, perhaps because of unforeseen complications arising from water rights or fishing rights. Sometime before 91 BC, a claim, probably also a civil suit, was filed against Gratidianus by Visellius Aculeo, supported again by Crassus. A Lucius Aelius Lamia spoke on behalf of Gratidianus, but the grounds for the suit are unknown.
In 87 BC, Gratidianus was a tribune of the plebs
and thus among the six of the year's ten tribunes who left the city to take up arms when Cinna
was banished. He was a legate
that same year, probably the commander named Marius who was sent north by Cinna with the objective of seizing Ariminum and cutting off any reinforcements that might be sent to Sulla from Cisalpine Gaul. This Marius succeeded at defeating Servilius Vatia Isauricus and took over his army.
By the end of 87, Gratidianus had returned to Rome with Cinna and Marius. He took on the prosecution of Q. Lutatius Catulus
, a move that was later to prove fateful. Catulus had been the consular colleague of Marius in 102 BC and had shared his triumph
over the Cimbri
, but had later broken with him. Rather than face the inevitable guilty verdict, Catulus committed suicide. The charge was probably perduellio
, submitted to the judgment of the people (iudicium populi), for which the punishment was death by scourging at the stake.
As praetor
in 85, Gratidianus was among those officials
who attempted to address Rome's economic crisis. A number of praetors and tribunes drafted a currency reform measure to reassert the former official exchange rate of silver (the denarius
) and the bronze as, which had been allowed to fluctuate and destabilize. Gratidianus seized the opportunity to attach his name to the edict and claim credit for publishing it first. The currency measure pleased the equites, or business class, more than did the debt reform legislation of L. Valerius Flaccus
, which had permitted the repayment of loans at one-quarter of the amount owed, and it was enormously popular with the plebs
.
An alternative view of the reform, based mainly on a "hopelessly confused" statement by Pliny
, is that Gratidianus introduced a method for detecting counterfeit money
. The two reforms are not incompatible, but historian and numismatist Michael H. Crawford
finds no widespread evidence of silver-plated or counterfeit denarii in surviving coin hoard
s from the period leading up to the edict. Since the measures taken by Gratidianus cannot be shown to address a problem of counterfeit money, the edict is best understood as part of the Cinnan government's efforts to restore and create a perception of stability in the wake of Sulla's first civil war
.
Cicero says the people expressed their gratitude by offering wine and incense before images of Gratidianus at street-corner shrines (compita, singular compitum). Each neighborhood (vicus) had a compitum within which its guardian spirits, or Lares
, were thought to reside. During the Compitalia
, a new year
festival, the cult images were displayed in procession. Festus
and Macrobius thought that the "dolls" were ritual replacements for human sacrifice
s to the spirits of the dead. The sources express no surprise or disapproval toward tending cult for a living man, which may have been a tradition otherwise little evidenced; the theological basis of the homage paid to Gratidianus is unclear. In historical times, the Compitalia included a purification (lustratio
) and the sacrifice of a pig
who was first paraded around the city. Street theater, including farces that satirized current political events, was a feature. Because it encouraged the people to assemble and possibly foment insurrection, there were sporadic efforts among the elite to regulate or suppress the Compitalia.
The political aspect suggests why the display of Gratidianus's image would be viewed as dangerous in the rivalry between the populares
and the party of Sulla
. Cicero uses Gratidianus's subsequent fall as a cautionary tale about relying on popular support. This form of devotion toward a living man has also been pointed to as a precedent for so-called "emperor worship
" in the Imperial era
.
Seneca
, following Cicero's lead, criticizes Gratidianus for compromising his integrity in claiming credit for the legislation, by which he had hoped to garner support for his candidacy as consul
. In the event, his party failed to support his bid, and the honor paid to him by the people probably contributed to the viciousness of the actions taken against him later by the supporters of Sulla.
and Carbo
for the consulship of 82. Although his ambitions were known and his qualifications far exceeded those of his cousin, Gratidianus probably never made a formal announcement of his candidacy as consul and is assumed to have stepped aside for the sake of party unity. The more likely popularist
ticket for 82 would have been Gratidianus and Quintus Sertorius
; the political snub evidently contributed to the latter's secession
in Spain
. The dates for Gratidianus's praetorships are arguable; T.R.S. Broughton
gives 86 and 84, but the timing of the currency reform makes 85 a more secure date, with the second term in 84, 83, or 82.
During the closing violence of the civil war
, Gratidianus was tortured and killed. His fate under Sulla's dictatorship
was never in doubt; his death was non-negotiable. Details vary and proliferate in their brutality over time. Cicero
and Sallust
offer the earliest accounts, but the works in which these survive are fragmentary.
Cicero gave his version of events in a speech on his candidacy for the consulship in 64 BC, nearly two decades after the fact. He had been a young man in his twenties at the time of the killing, possibly an eye witness. What is known of this speech and thus Cicero's version depends on notes provided by the 1st-century grammarian Asconius. By chance, the surviving quotations from Cicero name neither the victim nor the executioner; these are supplied by Asconius. One of Cicero's purposes in the speech was to smear his rivals, among them Sergius Catilina
, whose participation in the crime Cicero asserted repeatedly throughout. The orator claimed that Catilina cut off Gratidianus's head, carried it by hand through the city from the Janiculum
to the Temple of Apollo
, and delivered it to Sulla "full of soul and breath."
A fragment from Sallust's Histories omits mention of Catilina in describing the death: Gratidianus "had his life drained out of him piece by piece, in effect: his legs and arms were first broken, and his eyes gouged out." A more telling omission is that the execution of Gratidianus is not among Sallust's allegations against Catilina in his Bellum Catilinae ("Catilina's War"). Sallust's description of the death, however, influenced that of Livy
, Valerius Maximus
, Seneca
, Lucan
, and Florus
, with the torture and mutilation varied and amplified. Although B.A. Marshall argued that the versions of Cicero and Sallust constituted two different traditions, and that only Cicero implicated Catilina, other scholars have found no details in the two Late Republican accounts that are mutually exclusive or that exculpate Catilina.
Later sources add the detail that Gratidianus was tortured at the tomb of the gens
Lutatia
, because his prosecution had prompted the suicide of Q. Lutatius Catulus. Despite the strength and persistence of the tradition that Catilina took the lead role in the execution, the instigator would have been the son of Catulus (consul 78 BC)
, exhibiting pietas
towards his father by seeking revenge as an alternative to justice. The dutiful son may not have wanted to bloody his own hands with the deed: "One would not expect the polished Catulus actually to preside over the torture, and carry the head to Sulla," observes Elizabeth Rawson
, noting that Catulus is later known as a friend and protector of Catilina. The site of the family tomb, otherwise unknown, is mentioned only in connection with this incident and identified vaguely as "across the Tiber
," which accords with Cicero's statement that the head was carried from the Janiculum to the Temple of Apollo.
Sallust himself may indirectly site the killing at the tomb in a speech in which Aemilius Lepidus, the consular colleague of Catulus in 78 who eventually confronted him on the battlefield, addressed the Roman people
in opposition to Sulla: "In just this way have you seen human sacrifices and tombs stained with citizens' blood." Blood shed at a tomb implies that the killing amounted to a sacrifice, in appeasement for an ancestor's Manes
. Human sacrifices in Rome were documented in historical times — "their savagery was closely connected with religion" — and had been banned by law only fifteen years before the death of Gratidianus.
, an epistolary
pamphlet often attributed to Cicero's brother Quintus but sometimes to an Imperial writer as an exercise in prosopopoeia
. The epistle presents itself as having been written in 64 BC by Quintus for his brother during his candidacy for the consulship; if authentically the work of Quintus, it would be contemporary with Cicero's own account of Gratidianus's death and provide a kind of "missing link" in the narrative tradition. The Commentariolum says that Catilina
The tomb is not specified as that of the Lutatii, but the Commentariolum places an emphasis on the Roman people as witness that is present also in Cicero's speech and Asconius's notes, as well as Sallust's "Speech of Lepidus."
, though closely echoing Sallust's wording, names Catilina, adds to the list of mutilations the cutting out of Gratidianus's tongue, and places the killing at the tomb of Catulus, explicitly linking the favor of the people to the extreme measures taken at his death:
Lucan
, Seneca's nephew and like him writing under the Imperial
terror of Nero
, who drove them both to suicide, has the most extensive list of tortures in his epic poem on the civil war of the 40s
. The historicity of Lucan's epic should be treated with care; its aims are more like those of Shakespeare's history plays
or the modern historical novel
, in that factuality is subordinate to character and theme. Lucan places his account in the mouth of an old man who had lived through Sulla's civil war four decades before the time narrated in the poem, and like the earlier sources emphasizes that the Roman people were witnesses to the act. "We saw," the anonymous old man asserts, stepping out of the crowd to speak like the leader of a tragic chorus in cataloguing the dismemberment. The killing is presented unambiguously as a human sacrifice: "What should I report about the blood that appeased the spirits of Catulus's dead ancestors (manes
... Catuli)? We watched when Marius was strung up as a victim for the dreadful underworld rites, though the shades themselves may not have wanted it, a pious deed that should not be spoken of for a tomb that could not be filled." Lucan, however, diverts guilt from any individual by distributing specific mutilations among nameless multiple assailants: "This man slices off the ears, another the nostrils of the hooked nose; that man popped the eyeballs from their sockets — he dug out the eyes last, after they bore witness for the other body parts."
Rawson
pointed out that the piling up of atrocities in accounts of the Roman civil wars
should not be discounted too quickly as literary invention: "Sceptical modern historians sometimes suffer from a happy failure of imagination in refusing to envisage the horrors which we all ought to know occur too often in civil war
." Such gruesome catalogues are characteristic of Roman historians
rather than their Greek models
, she noted, and Sallust was the first to provide lists of concrete and "horrific exempla."
both considered it alien to Roman tradition
. This aversion is asserted also in an aetiological myth about sacrifice in which Numa
, second king of Rome
, negotiates with Jupiter
to replace the requested human victims with vegetables. In the 1st century BC, human sacrifice survived perhaps only as travesty or accusation. Julius Caesar was accused — rather vaguely — of sacrificing two mutinous soldiers in the Campus Martius
. On the anniversary of Caesar's death
in 40 BC, after achieving a victory at the siege of Perugia, the future Augustus
executed 300 senators
and knights who had fought against him under Lucius Antonius
. Lucius was spared. Perceptions of the clemency of Augustus on this occasion vary wildly. Both Suetonius
and Cassius Dio characterize the slaughter as a sacrifice, noting that it occurred on the Ides of March
at the altar to the divus Julius, the victor's newly deified adoptive father. It can be difficult to discern whether such an act was intended to be a genuine sacrifice, or only to evoke a sacral aura of dread in the minds of observers and those to whom it would be reported. Moreover, these two incidents took place within parameters of victory and punishment in a military setting, outside the civil and religious realm of Rome.
The intentions of those who carried out these acts may be unrecoverable; surviving sources only indicate which elements were worth noting and might be construed as sacral. Orosius, whose primary source for the Republic was the lost portions of Livy's history, provides the peculiar detail that Gratidianus was held in a goat-pen before he was bound and exhibited. Like the sacrificial pig at the Compitalia, he was paraded through the streets, past the very shrines at which his image had received honors, while he was whipped. Various forms of flogging or striking were ritual acts in Roman religion
, such as the sacer Mamurio in which an old man was driven through the city while beaten with sticks in what has been interpreted as a pharmakos
or scapegoat
ritual; beatings, such as the semi-ritualized fustuarium
, were also a disciplinary and punitive measure in the military. Accounts emphasize that Gratidianus was dismembered methodically, another feature of sacrifice. Finally, his severed head, described as still oozing with life, was carried to the Temple of Apollo in the Campus Martius, a site associated with the ritual of the October horse, whose head was displayed and whose tail was also carried through the city and delivered freshly bloodied to the Regia
. "The sacrality
of Gratidianus' execution," it has been noted, "was a symbolic negation of his semi-divine status as popular saviour and hero
."
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...
and a partisan of the popularist
Populares
Populares were aristocratic leaders in the late Roman Republic who relied on the people's assemblies and tribunate to acquire political power. They are regarded in modern scholarship as in opposition to the optimates, who are identified with the conservative interests of a senatorial elite...
faction led by his uncle 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...
during the Roman Republic
Roman Republic
The Roman Republic was the period of the ancient Roman civilization where the government operated as a republic. It began with the overthrow of the Roman monarchy, traditionally dated around 508 BC, and its replacement by a government headed by two consuls, elected annually by the citizens and...
an civil wars of the 80s. Gratidianus is noted primarily for undergoing a particularly violent death during the Sullan proscriptions; in the most sensational accounts, he was tortured and dismembered at the tomb of Catulus
Quintus Lutatius Catulus
Quintus Lutatius Catulus was consul of the Roman Republic in 102 BC, and the leading public figure of the gens Lutatia of the time. His colleague in the consulship was Gaius Marius, but the two feuded and Catulus sided with Sulla in the civil war of 88–87 BC...
by Catilina, in a manner that evoked human sacrifice
Human sacrifice
Human sacrifice is the act of killing one or more human beings as part of a religious ritual . Its typology closely parallels the various practices of ritual slaughter of animals and of religious sacrifice in general. Human sacrifice has been practised in various cultures throughout history...
.
As praetor, Gratidianus is also known for his currency reform
Monetary policy
Monetary policy is the process by which the monetary authority of a country controls the supply of money, often targeting a rate of interest for the purpose of promoting economic growth and stability. The official goals usually include relatively stable prices and low unemployment...
during the economic crisis of the 80s.
Family and career
- See also: Maria (gens)Maria (gens)The gens Maria was a plebeian family at Rome. Its most celebrated member was Gaius Marius, one of the greatest generals of antiquity, and seven times consul.-Origin of the gens:...
.
Gratidianus was the son of Marius's sister and Marcus Gratidius of Arpinum. He was adopted by Marius's brother Marcus. An aunt married the Marcus Tullius Cicero who was the grandfather of the famous 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...
. Gratidianus may have had a particularly pungent relationship with one of his in-laws: his sister could have been the first wife of Sergius Catilina
Catiline
Lucius Sergius Catilina , known in English as Catiline, was a Roman politician of the 1st century BC who is best known for the Catiline conspiracy, an attempt to overthrow the Roman Republic, and in particular the power of the aristocratic Senate.-Family background:Catiline was born in 108 BC to...
, who was accused by Cicero of participating in his torture and murder.
Gratidius, his natural father, was a close friend of Marcus Antonius
Marcus Antonius Orator
Marcus Antonius Orator was a Roman politician of the Antonius family and one of the most distinguished Roman orators of his time. He was also the grandfather of the famous general and triumvir, Mark Antony.-Career:...
the orator and consul
Roman consul
A consul served in the highest elected political office of the Roman Republic.Each year, two consuls were elected together, to serve for a one-year term. Each consul was given veto power over his colleague and the officials would alternate each month...
of 99 BC. He was killed ca. 102–100 BC while serving as a prefect under Antonius in Cilicia
Cilicia
In antiquity, Cilicia was the south coastal region of Asia Minor, south of the central Anatolian plateau. It existed as a political entity from Hittite times into the Byzantine empire...
. In 92 BC, Antonius deployed his famed oratorical skills in defending his friend's son when Gratidianus was sued by the oyster-breeder
Oyster farming
Oyster farming is an aquaculture practice in which oysters are raised for human consumption. Oyster farming most likely developed in tandem with pearl farming, a similar practice in which oysters are farmed for the purpose of developing pearls...
and real-estate
Real estate
In general use, esp. North American, 'real estate' is taken to mean "Property consisting of land and the buildings on it, along with its natural resources such as crops, minerals, or water; immovable property of this nature; an interest vested in this; an item of real property; buildings or...
speculator
Speculation
In finance, speculation is a financial action that does not promise safety of the initial investment along with the return on the principal sum...
Sergius Orata
Sergius Orata
Sergius Orata was a famed merchant and hydraulic engineer of the Roman Republic.Sergius was well-known by his contemporaries because of the breeding and commercialization of oysters, in which he can be considered a pioneer. Orata wanted to take advantage of Romans' taste for shellfish, so he...
in a civil case involving the sale of a property on the Lucrine Lake. Orata was not without his own high-powered speaker, in the person of Lucius Licinius Crassus
Lucius Licinius Crassus
Lucius Licinius Crassus was a Roman consul. He was considered the greatest Roman orator of his day, by his pupil Cicero.He became consul in 95 BC. During his consulship a law was passed requiring all but citizens to leave Rome, an edict which provoked the Social War...
. Cicero says Orata was trying to force Gratidianus to buy back the property when Orata's business plan for farm-raised oysters fell through, perhaps because of unforeseen complications arising from water rights or fishing rights. Sometime before 91 BC, a claim, probably also a civil suit, was filed against Gratidianus by Visellius Aculeo, supported again by Crassus. A Lucius Aelius Lamia spoke on behalf of Gratidianus, but the grounds for the suit are unknown.
In 87 BC, Gratidianus was a tribune of the plebs
Tribune
Tribune was a title shared by elected officials in the Roman Republic. Tribunes had the power to convene the Plebeian Council and to act as its president, which also gave them the right to propose legislation before it. They were sacrosanct, in the sense that any assault on their person was...
and thus among the six of the year's ten tribunes who left the city to take up arms when 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....
was banished. He was a 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...
that same year, probably the commander named Marius who was sent north by Cinna with the objective of seizing Ariminum and cutting off any reinforcements that might be sent to Sulla from Cisalpine Gaul. This Marius succeeded at defeating Servilius Vatia Isauricus and took over his army.
By the end of 87, Gratidianus had returned to Rome with Cinna and Marius. He took on the prosecution of Q. Lutatius Catulus
Quintus Lutatius Catulus
Quintus Lutatius Catulus was consul of the Roman Republic in 102 BC, and the leading public figure of the gens Lutatia of the time. His colleague in the consulship was Gaius Marius, but the two feuded and Catulus sided with Sulla in the civil war of 88–87 BC...
, a move that was later to prove fateful. Catulus had been the consular colleague of Marius in 102 BC and had shared his triumph
Roman triumph
The Roman triumph was a civil ceremony and religious rite of ancient Rome, held to publicly celebrate and sanctify the military achievement of an army commander who had won great military successes, or originally and traditionally, one who had successfully completed a foreign war. In Republican...
over the Cimbri
Cimbrian War
The Cimbrian War was fought between the Roman Republic and the Proto-Germanic tribes of the Cimbri and the Teutons , who migrated from northern Europe into Roman controlled territory, and clashed with Rome and her allies...
, but had later broken with him. Rather than face the inevitable guilty verdict, Catulus committed suicide. The charge was probably perduellio
Perduellio
In the early days of Ancient Rome, perduellio was the term for the capital offense of high treason. It was set down plainly in the Law of the Twelve Tables as thus:...
, submitted to the judgment of the people (iudicium populi), for which the punishment was death by scourging at the stake.
Currency reform and cult following
- See also FourréeFourréeA fourrée is a coin, most often a counterfeit, that is made from a base metal core that has been plated with a precious metal to look like its solid metal counter part. The term is normally applied to ancient silver plated coins such as the Roman denarius and Greek drachma, but the term is also...
.
As 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...
in 85, Gratidianus was among those officials
Roman Magistrates
The Roman Magistrates were elected officials in Ancient Rome. During the period of the Roman Kingdom, the King of Rome was the principal executive magistrate. His power, in practice, was absolute. He was the chief priest, lawgiver, judge, and the sole commander of the army...
who attempted to address Rome's economic crisis. A number of praetors and tribunes drafted a currency reform measure to reassert the former official exchange rate of silver (the denarius
Denarius
In the Roman currency system, the denarius was a small silver coin first minted in 211 BC. It was the most common coin produced for circulation but was slowly debased until its replacement by the antoninianus...
) and the bronze as, which had been allowed to fluctuate and destabilize. Gratidianus seized the opportunity to attach his name to the edict and claim credit for publishing it first. The currency measure pleased the equites, or business class, more than did the debt reform legislation of L. Valerius Flaccus
Lucius Valerius Flaccus (suffect consul 86 BC)
Lucius Valerius Flaccus was the suffect consul who completed the term of Gaius Marius in 86 BC. He was sent as governor in that year to the Roman province of Asia, but was murdered in a mutiny by Fimbria during the turmoil of the Sullan civil wars and the Mithridatic Wars.Flaccus is also known for...
, which had permitted the repayment of loans at one-quarter of the amount owed, and it was enormously popular with the plebs
Plebs
The plebs was the general body of free land-owning Roman citizens in Ancient Rome. They were distinct from the higher order of the patricians. A member of the plebs was known as a plebeian...
.
Pliny the Elder
Gaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was a Roman author, naturalist, and natural philosopher, as well as naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and personal friend of the emperor Vespasian...
, is that Gratidianus introduced a method for detecting counterfeit money
Counterfeit money
Counterfeit money is currency that is produced without the legal sanction of the state or government to resemble some official form of currency closely enough that it may be confused for genuine currency. Producing or using counterfeit money is a form of fraud or forgery. Counterfeiting is probably...
. The two reforms are not incompatible, but historian and numismatist Michael H. Crawford
Michael Crawford (historian)
Michael Hewson Crawford is a British ancient historian and numismatist.-Biography:Michael Crawford was born in Twickenham on 7 December 1939.He was educated at St Paul's School and Oriel College, Oxford , and the British School at Rome....
finds no widespread evidence of silver-plated or counterfeit denarii in surviving coin hoard
Hoard
In archaeology, a hoard is a collection of valuable objects or artifacts, sometimes purposely buried in the ground. This would usually be with the intention of later recovery by the hoarder; hoarders sometimes died before retrieving the hoard, and these surviving hoards may be uncovered by...
s from the period leading up to the edict. Since the measures taken by Gratidianus cannot be shown to address a problem of counterfeit money, the edict is best understood as part of the Cinnan government's efforts to restore and create a perception of stability in the wake of 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 :...
.
Cicero says the people expressed their gratitude by offering wine and incense before images of Gratidianus at street-corner shrines (compita, singular compitum). Each neighborhood (vicus) had a compitum within which its guardian spirits, or Lares
Lares
Lares , archaically Lases, were guardian deities in ancient Roman religion. Their origin is uncertain; they may have been guardians of the hearth, fields, boundaries or fruitfulness, hero-ancestors, or an amalgam of these....
, were thought to reside. During the Compitalia
Compitalia
In ancient Roman religion, the Compitalia was a festival celebrated once a year in honor of the Lares Compitales, household deities of the crossroads, to whom sacrifices were offered at the places where two or more ways meet. The word comes from the Latin compitum, a cross-way.This festival is...
, a new year
New Year
The New Year is the day that marks the time of the beginning of a new calendar year, and is the day on which the year count of the specific calendar used is incremented. For many cultures, the event is celebrated in some manner....
festival, the cult images were displayed in procession. Festus
Sextus Pompeius Festus
Sextus Pompeius Festus was a Roman grammarian, who probably flourished in the later 2nd century AD, perhaps at Narbo in Gaul.He made an epitome in 20 volumes of the encyclopedic treatise in many volumes De verborum significatu, of Verrius Flaccus, a celebrated grammarian who flourished in the...
and Macrobius thought that the "dolls" were ritual replacements for human sacrifice
Human sacrifice
Human sacrifice is the act of killing one or more human beings as part of a religious ritual . Its typology closely parallels the various practices of ritual slaughter of animals and of religious sacrifice in general. Human sacrifice has been practised in various cultures throughout history...
s to the spirits of the dead. The sources express no surprise or disapproval toward tending cult for a living man, which may have been a tradition otherwise little evidenced; the theological basis of the homage paid to Gratidianus is unclear. In historical times, the Compitalia included a purification (lustratio
Lustratio
Lustratio was an ancient Roman and ancient Greek purification ceremony, involving a procession and in some circumstances the sacrifice of a pig , a ram and a bull ....
) and the sacrifice of a pig
Animal sacrifice
Animal sacrifice is the ritual killing of an animal as part of a religion. It is practised by many religions as a means of appeasing a god or gods or changing the course of nature...
who was first paraded around the city. Street theater, including farces that satirized current political events, was a feature. Because it encouraged the people to assemble and possibly foment insurrection, there were sporadic efforts among the elite to regulate or suppress the Compitalia.
The political aspect suggests why the display of Gratidianus's image would be viewed as dangerous in the rivalry between the populares
Populares
Populares were aristocratic leaders in the late Roman Republic who relied on the people's assemblies and tribunate to acquire political power. They are regarded in modern scholarship as in opposition to the optimates, who are identified with the conservative interests of a senatorial elite...
and the party of Sulla
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...
. Cicero uses Gratidianus's subsequent fall as a cautionary tale about relying on popular support. This form of devotion toward a living man has also been pointed to as a precedent for so-called "emperor worship
Imperial cult (ancient Rome)
The Imperial cult of ancient Rome identified emperors and some members of their families with the divinely sanctioned authority of the Roman State...
" in the Imperial era
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
.
Seneca
Seneca the Younger
Lucius Annaeus Seneca was a Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, dramatist, and in one work humorist, of the Silver Age of Latin literature. He was tutor and later advisor to emperor Nero...
, following Cicero's lead, criticizes Gratidianus for compromising his integrity in claiming credit for the legislation, by which he had hoped to garner support for his candidacy as consul
Roman consul
A consul served in the highest elected political office of the Roman Republic.Each year, two consuls were elected together, to serve for a one-year term. Each consul was given veto power over his colleague and the officials would alternate each month...
. In the event, his party failed to support his bid, and the honor paid to him by the people probably contributed to the viciousness of the actions taken against him later by the supporters of Sulla.
Twice praetor
Gratidianus had an unusual second praetorship, possibly as a "consolation prize" when his faction decided to back the younger MariusGaius Marius the Younger
Gaius Marius Minor, also known in English as Marius the Younger or informally "the younger Marius" , was the adopted son of Gaius Marius, who was seven times consul, and a famous military commander. Appian first describes him as the son of the great Marius, but in a subsequent passage, he is...
and Carbo
Gnaeus Papirius Carbo
Gnaeus Papirius Carbo was a three-time consul of ancient Rome.A member of the Carbones of the plebeian gens Papiria, and nephew of Gaius Papirius Carbo , he was a strong supporter of the Marian party, and took part in the blockade of Rome...
for the consulship of 82. Although his ambitions were known and his qualifications far exceeded those of his cousin, Gratidianus probably never made a formal announcement of his candidacy as consul and is assumed to have stepped aside for the sake of party unity. The more likely popularist
Populares
Populares were aristocratic leaders in the late Roman Republic who relied on the people's assemblies and tribunate to acquire political power. They are regarded in modern scholarship as in opposition to the optimates, who are identified with the conservative interests of a senatorial elite...
ticket for 82 would have been Gratidianus and Quintus Sertorius
Quintus Sertorius
Quintus Sertorius was a Roman statesman and general, born in Nursia, in Sabine territory. His brilliance as a military commander was shown most clearly in his battles against Rome for control of Hispania...
; the political snub evidently contributed to the latter's secession
Secession
Secession is the act of withdrawing from an organization, union, or especially a political entity. Threats of secession also can be a strategy for achieving more limited goals.-Secession theory:...
in Spain
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....
. The dates for Gratidianus's praetorships are arguable; T.R.S. Broughton
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 ....
gives 86 and 84, but the timing of the currency reform makes 85 a more secure date, with the second term in 84, 83, or 82.
Sacrificial death
- See also Sulla: Second March on Rome.
During the closing violence of the civil war
Sulla's second civil war
Sulla's second civil war was one of a series of civil wars of ancient Rome. It was fought between Lucius Cornelius Sulla and Gaius Marius the younger in 82 BC.-Prelude:...
, Gratidianus was tortured and killed. His fate under Sulla's 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...
was never in doubt; his death was non-negotiable. Details vary and proliferate in their brutality over time. 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...
and 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...
offer the earliest accounts, but the works in which these survive are fragmentary.
Catiline
Lucius Sergius Catilina , known in English as Catiline, was a Roman politician of the 1st century BC who is best known for the Catiline conspiracy, an attempt to overthrow the Roman Republic, and in particular the power of the aristocratic Senate.-Family background:Catiline was born in 108 BC to...
, whose participation in the crime Cicero asserted repeatedly throughout. The orator claimed that Catilina cut off Gratidianus's head, carried it by hand through the city from the Janiculum
Janiculum
The Janiculum is a hill in western Rome, Italy. Although the second-tallest hill in the contemporary city of Rome, the Janiculum does not figure among the proverbial Seven Hills of Rome, being west of the Tiber and outside the boundaries of the ancient city.-Sights:The Janiculum is one of the...
to the Temple of Apollo
Temple of Apollo Sosianus
The Temple of Apollo Sosianus is a Roman temple dedicated to Apollo in the Campus Martius, next to the Theatre of Marcellus and the Porticus Octaviae, in Rome, Italy...
, and delivered it to Sulla "full of soul and breath."
A fragment from Sallust's Histories omits mention of Catilina in describing the death: Gratidianus "had his life drained out of him piece by piece, in effect: his legs and arms were first broken, and his eyes gouged out." A more telling omission is that the execution of Gratidianus is not among Sallust's allegations against Catilina in his Bellum Catilinae ("Catilina's War"). Sallust's description of the death, however, influenced that of Livy
Livy
Titus Livius — known as Livy in English — was a Roman historian who wrote a monumental history of Rome and the Roman people. Ab Urbe Condita Libri, "Chapters from the Foundation of the City," covering the period from the earliest legends of Rome well before the traditional foundation in 753 BC...
, Valerius Maximus
Valerius Maximus
Valerius Maximus was a Latin writer and author of a collection of historical anecdotes. He worked during the reign of Tiberius .-Biography:...
, Seneca
Seneca the Younger
Lucius Annaeus Seneca was a Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, dramatist, and in one work humorist, of the Silver Age of Latin literature. He was tutor and later advisor to emperor Nero...
, Lucan
Lucan
Lucan is the common English name of the Roman poet Marcus Annaeus Lucanus.Lucan may also refer to:-People:*Arthur Lucan , English actor*Sir Lucan the Butler, Knight of the Round Table in Arthurian legend...
, and Florus
Florus
Florus, Roman historian, lived in the time of Trajan and Hadrian.He compiled, chiefly from Livy, a brief sketch of the history of Rome from the foundation of the city to the closing of the temple of Janus by Augustus . The work, which is called Epitome de T...
, with the torture and mutilation varied and amplified. Although B.A. Marshall argued that the versions of Cicero and Sallust constituted two different traditions, and that only Cicero implicated Catilina, other scholars have found no details in the two Late Republican accounts that are mutually exclusive or that exculpate Catilina.
Later sources add the detail that Gratidianus was tortured at the tomb of the gens
Gens
In ancient Rome, a gens , plural gentes, referred to a family, consisting of all those individuals who shared the same nomen and claimed descent from a common ancestor. A branch of a gens was called a stirps . The gens was an important social structure at Rome and throughout Italy during the...
Lutatia
Lutatius
Lutatius was the name of an ancient Roman family . They rose into prominence during the First Punic War and produced several consuls during the subsequent generations, but were not one of the gentes maiores. The Lutatii were noble plebeians....
, because his prosecution had prompted the suicide of Q. Lutatius Catulus. Despite the strength and persistence of the tradition that Catilina took the lead role in the execution, the instigator would have been the son of Catulus (consul 78 BC)
Quintus Lutatius Catulus (Capitolinus)
Quintus Lutatius Catulus , sometimes called "Capitolinus", was a politician in the late Roman Republic. His father was the like-named Quintus Lutatius Catulus , also a politician.-Biography:...
, exhibiting pietas
Pietas
Pietas was one of the Roman virtues, along with gravitas and dignitas. It is usually translated as "duty" or "devotion."-Definition:The word pietas is originally from Latin. The first printed record of the word’s use in English is from Anselm Bayly’s The Alliance of Music, Poetry, and Oratory,...
towards his father by seeking revenge as an alternative to justice. The dutiful son may not have wanted to bloody his own hands with the deed: "One would not expect the polished Catulus actually to preside over the torture, and carry the head to Sulla," observes Elizabeth Rawson
Elizabeth Rawson
Elizabeth Donata Rawson was a classical scholar known primarily for her work in the intellectual history of the Roman Republic and her biography of Cicero.-Early life:...
, noting that Catulus is later known as a friend and protector of Catilina. The site of the family tomb, otherwise unknown, is mentioned only in connection with this incident and identified vaguely as "across the Tiber
Tiber
The Tiber is the third-longest river in Italy, rising in the Apennine Mountains in Emilia-Romagna and flowing through Umbria and Lazio to the Tyrrhenian Sea. It drains a basin estimated at...
," which accords with Cicero's statement that the head was carried from the Janiculum to the Temple of Apollo.
Sallust himself may indirectly site the killing at the tomb in a speech in which Aemilius Lepidus, the consular colleague of Catulus in 78 who eventually confronted him on the battlefield, addressed the Roman people
SPQR
SPQR is an initialism from a Latin phrase, Senatus Populusque Romanus , referring to the government of the ancient Roman Republic, and used as an official emblem of the modern day comune of Rome...
in opposition to Sulla: "In just this way have you seen human sacrifices and tombs stained with citizens' blood." Blood shed at a tomb implies that the killing amounted to a sacrifice, in appeasement for an ancestor's Manes
Manes
In ancient Roman religion, the Manes or Di Manes are chthonic deities sometimes thought to represent the souls of deceased loved ones. They were associated with the Lares, Genii, and Di Penates as deities that pertained to domestic, local, and personal cult...
. Human sacrifices in Rome were documented in historical times — "their savagery was closely connected with religion" — and had been banned by law only fifteen years before the death of Gratidianus.
In the Commentariolum
The relative "lateness" of specifying the tomb of Catulus as the site also depends on the dating of one of the other sources on the killing, the Commentariolum petitionisCommentariolum Petitionis
Commentariolum Petitionis , also known as De petitione consulatus , is an essay supposedly written by Quintus Tullius Cicero, ca. 65-64 BC as a guide for his brother Marcus Tullius Cicero in his campaign in 64 to be elected consul of the Roman Republic...
, an epistolary
Epistle
An epistle is a writing directed or sent to a person or group of people, usually an elegant and formal didactic letter. The epistle genre of letter-writing was common in ancient Egypt as part of the scribal-school writing curriculum. The letters in the New Testament from Apostles to Christians...
pamphlet often attributed to Cicero's brother Quintus but sometimes to an Imperial writer as an exercise in prosopopoeia
Prosopopoeia
A prosopopoeia is a rhetorical device in which a speaker or writer communicates to the audience by speaking as another person or object. The term literally derives from the Greek roots "prósopon face, person, and poiéin to make, to do"....
. The epistle presents itself as having been written in 64 BC by Quintus for his brother during his candidacy for the consulship; if authentically the work of Quintus, it would be contemporary with Cicero's own account of Gratidianus's death and provide a kind of "missing link" in the narrative tradition. The Commentariolum says that Catilina
The tomb is not specified as that of the Lutatii, but the Commentariolum places an emphasis on the Roman people as witness that is present also in Cicero's speech and Asconius's notes, as well as Sallust's "Speech of Lepidus."
Neronian versions
SenecaSeneca the Younger
Lucius Annaeus Seneca was a Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, dramatist, and in one work humorist, of the Silver Age of Latin literature. He was tutor and later advisor to emperor Nero...
, though closely echoing Sallust's wording, names Catilina, adds to the list of mutilations the cutting out of Gratidianus's tongue, and places the killing at the tomb of Catulus, explicitly linking the favor of the people to the extreme measures taken at his death:
Lucan
Lucan
Lucan is the common English name of the Roman poet Marcus Annaeus Lucanus.Lucan may also refer to:-People:*Arthur Lucan , English actor*Sir Lucan the Butler, Knight of the Round Table in Arthurian legend...
, Seneca's nephew and like him writing under the Imperial
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
terror of Nero
Nero
Nero , was Roman Emperor from 54 to 68, and the last in the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Nero was adopted by his great-uncle Claudius to become his heir and successor, and succeeded to the throne in 54 following Claudius' death....
, who drove them both to suicide, has the most extensive list of tortures in his epic poem on the civil war of the 40s
Caesar's civil war
The Great Roman Civil War , also known as Caesar's Civil War, was one of the last politico-military conflicts in the Roman Republic before the establishment of the Roman Empire...
. The historicity of Lucan's epic should be treated with care; its aims are more like those of Shakespeare's history plays
Shakespearean history
In the First Folio, the plays of William Shakespeare were grouped into three categories: comedies, histories, and tragedies. This categorisation has become established, although some critics have argued for other categories such as romances and problem plays. The histories were those plays based on...
or the modern historical novel
Historical novel
According to Encyclopædia Britannica, a historical novel is-Development:An early example of historical prose fiction is Luó Guànzhōng's 14th century Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which covers one of the most important periods of Chinese history and left a lasting impact on Chinese culture.The...
, in that factuality is subordinate to character and theme. Lucan places his account in the mouth of an old man who had lived through Sulla's civil war four decades before the time narrated in the poem, and like the earlier sources emphasizes that the Roman people were witnesses to the act. "We saw," the anonymous old man asserts, stepping out of the crowd to speak like the leader of a tragic chorus in cataloguing the dismemberment. The killing is presented unambiguously as a human sacrifice: "What should I report about the blood that appeased the spirits of Catulus's dead ancestors (manes
Manes
In ancient Roman religion, the Manes or Di Manes are chthonic deities sometimes thought to represent the souls of deceased loved ones. They were associated with the Lares, Genii, and Di Penates as deities that pertained to domestic, local, and personal cult...
... Catuli)? We watched when Marius was strung up as a victim for the dreadful underworld rites, though the shades themselves may not have wanted it, a pious deed that should not be spoken of for a tomb that could not be filled." Lucan, however, diverts guilt from any individual by distributing specific mutilations among nameless multiple assailants: "This man slices off the ears, another the nostrils of the hooked nose; that man popped the eyeballs from their sockets — he dug out the eyes last, after they bore witness for the other body parts."
Rawson
Elizabeth Rawson
Elizabeth Donata Rawson was a classical scholar known primarily for her work in the intellectual history of the Roman Republic and her biography of Cicero.-Early life:...
pointed out that the piling up of atrocities in accounts of the Roman civil wars
Roman civil wars
There were several Roman civil wars, especially during the late Republic. The most famous of these are the war in the 40s BC between Julius Caesar and the optimate faction of the senatorial elite initially led by Pompey and the subsequent war between Caesar's successors, Octavian and Mark Antony in...
should not be discounted too quickly as literary invention: "Sceptical modern historians sometimes suffer from a happy failure of imagination in refusing to envisage the horrors which we all ought to know occur too often in civil war
Civil war
A civil war is a war between organized groups within the same nation state or republic, or, less commonly, between two countries created from a formerly-united nation state....
." Such gruesome catalogues are characteristic of Roman historians
Roman historiography
Roman Historiography is indebted to the Greeks, who invented the form. The Romans had great models to base their works upon, such as Herodotus and Thucydides. Roman historiographical forms are different from the Greek ones however, and voice very Roman concerns. Unlike the Greeks, Roman...
rather than their Greek models
Greek historiography
The historical period of Ancient Greece is unique in world history as the first period attested directly in proper historiography, while earlier ancient history or proto-history is known by much more circumstantial evidence, such as annals, chronicles, king lists, and pragmatic epigraphy.Herodotus...
, she noted, and Sallust was the first to provide lists of concrete and "horrific exempla."
Political victim
Though documented, human sacrifice was rare in Rome during the historical period. Livy and PlutarchPlutarch
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...
both considered it alien to Roman tradition
Mos maiorum
The mos maiorum is the unwritten code from which the ancient Romans derived their social norms. It is the core concept of Roman traditionalism, distinguished from but in dynamic complement to written law. The mos maiorum The mos maiorum ("ancestral custom") is the unwritten code from which the...
. This aversion is asserted also in an aetiological myth about sacrifice in which Numa
Numa Pompilius
Numa Pompilius was the legendary second king of Rome, succeeding Romulus. What tales are descended to us about him come from Valerius Antias, an author from the early part of the 1st century BC known through limited mentions of later authors , Dionysius of Halicarnassus circa 60BC-...
, second king of Rome
King of Rome
The King of Rome was the chief magistrate of the Roman Kingdom. According to legend, the first king of Rome was Romulus, who founded the city in 753 BC upon the Palatine Hill. Seven legendary kings are said to have ruled Rome until 509 BC, when the last king was overthrown. These kings ruled for...
, negotiates with Jupiter
Jupiter (mythology)
In ancient Roman religion and myth, Jupiter or Jove is the king of the gods, and the god of the sky and thunder. He is the equivalent of Zeus in the Greek pantheon....
to replace the requested human victims with vegetables. In the 1st century BC, human sacrifice survived perhaps only as travesty or accusation. Julius Caesar was accused — rather vaguely — of sacrificing two mutinous soldiers in the Campus Martius
Campus Martius
The Campus Martius , was a publicly owned area of ancient Rome about in extent. In the Middle Ages, it was the most populous area of Rome...
. On the anniversary of Caesar's death
Assassination of Julius Caesar
The assassination of Julius Caesar was the result of a conspiracy by approximately forty Roman senators who called themselves Liberators. Led by Gaius Cassius Longinus and Marcus Junius Brutus, they stabbed Julius Caesar to death in the Theatre of Pompey on the Ides of March 44 BC...
in 40 BC, after achieving a victory at the siege of Perugia, the future Augustus
Augustus
Augustus ;23 September 63 BC – 19 August AD 14) is considered the first emperor of the Roman Empire, which he ruled alone from 27 BC until his death in 14 AD.The dates of his rule are contemporary dates; Augustus lived under two calendars, the Roman Republican until 45 BC, and the Julian...
executed 300 senators
Roman Senate
The Senate of the Roman Republic was a political institution in the ancient Roman Republic, however, it was not an elected body, but one whose members were appointed by the consuls, and later by the censors. After a magistrate served his term in office, it usually was followed with automatic...
and knights who had fought against him under Lucius Antonius
Lucius Antonius (brother of Mark Antony)
Lucius Antonius was the younger brother and supporter of Mark Antony, a Roman politician.Lucius was son of Marcus Antonius Creticus, son of the rhetorician Marcus Antonius Orator executed by Gaius Marius' supporters in 86 BC, and Julia Antonia, a cousin of Julius Caesar...
. Lucius was spared. Perceptions of the clemency of Augustus on this occasion vary wildly. Both Suetonius
Suetonius
Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, commonly known as Suetonius , was a Roman historian belonging to the equestrian order in the early Imperial era....
and Cassius Dio characterize the slaughter as a sacrifice, noting that it occurred on the Ides of March
Ides of March
The Ides of March is the name of the 15th day of March in the Roman calendar, probably referring to the day of the full moon. The word Ides comes from the Latin word "Idus" and means "half division" especially in relation to a month. It is a word that was used widely in the Roman calendar...
at the altar to the divus Julius, the victor's newly deified adoptive father. It can be difficult to discern whether such an act was intended to be a genuine sacrifice, or only to evoke a sacral aura of dread in the minds of observers and those to whom it would be reported. Moreover, these two incidents took place within parameters of victory and punishment in a military setting, outside the civil and religious realm of Rome.
The intentions of those who carried out these acts may be unrecoverable; surviving sources only indicate which elements were worth noting and might be construed as sacral. Orosius, whose primary source for the Republic was the lost portions of Livy's history, provides the peculiar detail that Gratidianus was held in a goat-pen before he was bound and exhibited. Like the sacrificial pig at the Compitalia, he was paraded through the streets, past the very shrines at which his image had received honors, while he was whipped. Various forms of flogging or striking were ritual acts in Roman religion
Religion in ancient Rome
Religion in ancient Rome encompassed the religious beliefs and cult practices regarded by the Romans as indigenous and central to their identity as a people, as well as the various and many cults imported from other peoples brought under Roman rule. Romans thus offered cult to innumerable deities...
, such as the sacer Mamurio in which an old man was driven through the city while beaten with sticks in what has been interpreted as a pharmakos
Pharmakos
A Pharmakós in Ancient Greek religion was a kind of human scapegoat who was chosen and expelled from the community at times of disaster or at times of calendrical crisis, when purification was needed...
or scapegoat
Scapegoat
Scapegoating is the practice of singling out any party for unmerited negative treatment or blame. Scapegoating may be conducted by individuals against individuals , individuals against groups , groups against individuals , and groups against groups Scapegoating is the practice of singling out any...
ritual; beatings, such as the semi-ritualized fustuarium
Fustuarium
In the military of ancient Rome, fustuarium or fustuarium supplicium was a severe form of military discipline in which a soldier was cudgeled to death...
, were also a disciplinary and punitive measure in the military. Accounts emphasize that Gratidianus was dismembered methodically, another feature of sacrifice. Finally, his severed head, described as still oozing with life, was carried to the Temple of Apollo in the Campus Martius, a site associated with the ritual of the October horse, whose head was displayed and whose tail was also carried through the city and delivered freshly bloodied to the Regia
Regia
The Regia was a structure in Ancient Rome, located in the Roman Forum. It was originally the residence of the kings of Rome or at least their main headquarters, and later the office of the Pontifex Maximus, the high priest of Roman religion. It occupied a triangular patch of terrain between the...
. "The sacrality
Sacred
Holiness, or sanctity, is in general the state of being holy or sacred...
of Gratidianus' execution," it has been noted, "was a symbolic negation of his semi-divine status as popular saviour and hero
Hero
A hero , in Greek mythology and folklore, was originally a demigod, their cult being one of the most distinctive features of ancient Greek religion...
."
Selected bibliography
- The Cambridge Ancient History (Cambridge University Press, 2nd edition 1994), vol. 9.
- Damon, Cynthia. "Com. Pet. 10." Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 95 (1993) 281–288, limited preview online.
- Dyck, A.R. A CommentaryCommentary (philology)In philology, a commentary is a line-by-line or even word-by-word explication usually attached to an edition of a text in the same or an accompanying volume. It may draw on methodologies of close reading and literary criticism, but its primary purpose is to elucidate the language of the text and...
on Cicero, De officiisDe OfficiisDe Officiis is an essay by Marcus Tullius Cicero divided into three books, in which Cicero expounds his conception of the best way to live, behave, and observe moral obligations.- Origin :...
. University of Michigan Press, 1996. Limited preview online. - Marshall, Bruce. "Catilina and the Execution of M. Marius Gratidianus." Classical Quarterly 35 (1985) 124-133.
- Rawson, ElizabethElizabeth RawsonElizabeth Donata Rawson was a classical scholar known primarily for her work in the intellectual history of the Roman Republic and her biography of Cicero.-Early life:...
. "Sallust on the Eighties?" Classical Quarterly 37 (1987) 163–180.