Quintus Pleminius
Encyclopedia
Quintus Pleminius was a propraetor (legatus pro praetore) in 205 BC. He was given command over Locri
in Bruttium by Scipio Africanus
after its recapture, considered the "outstanding event" in Sicilian
operations that year. His governorship
, if it should be called that, ended in sacrilege and murder.
had made it a de facto part of the province
of Sicily. From Rhegium he brought a force of 3,000 to take possession of Locri, and succeeded in storming one of the citadel
s by the aid of exceptionally tall ladders. This action led to a skirmish with Carthaginian troops
, who occupied the other. Hostilities escalated when Hannibal arrived on the scene, but Locrian insiders enabled Rome to hold out until Scipio could bring troops from Messana, at which time the Carthaginians withdrew. Scipio's intervention technically exceeded the mandate of his command and crossed into the provincia of his consular
colleage Crassus
.
Scipio immediately rounded up the Locrians who had attempted to secede and executed them. Those who had remained loyal and aided Rome received their reward in the form of their fellow citizens' property. Scipio then sent a delegation to Rome placing the matter of Locri's political status in the hands of the Roman senate
, and returned with his troops to Messana. Bruttium had been Hannibal's last stronghold in Italy, and Rome's position there was still tentative; from a diplomatic perspective, it was important to show that Rome was the preferable overlord.
s attempted to restrain. Discipline dissolved utterly, and the Roman forces divided into warring troops. The men attached to Pleminius got the worst of it, and reported to him with a display of wounds and complaints of ill treatment.
Pleminius's reaction to this breakdown of discipline was to have the tribunes arrested, stripped, and flogged. Their men then attacked Pleminius, mutilating his ears and nose. Learning of these disturbances, Scipio returned — and reinstated Pleminius. He ordered the offending tribunes sent to Rome to stand trial. "This judgment," notes H.H. Scullard, "is unexpected," and various explanations have been proffered. Scullard concludes that Scipio was "guilty of folly and of lack of humanity."
As soon as Scipio left for Sicily, Pleminius had the tribunes seized and torture
d them to death, offering a "novel" justification: "No one knew how to name the penalty for a crime except someone who had learnt its savagery by suffering." They were left unburied.
With a rage that seemed unquenchable, Pleminius turned his violence toward Locrians he suspected of informing Scipio. Meanwhile, the Locrian envoys who had traveled to Rome for the senate hearing related in detail how the excesses of the Roman soldiers surpassed those of the Carthaginians. They complained of widespread rapes committed against women and boys dragged from their homes, and the sacrilegious looting of the Temple of Proserpina
, the chief deity of Locri. These reports provided fodder for Fabius Maximus
, nearing the end of his life, in his opposition to Scipio and his "Greek" way of life in Sicily and his plans to invade Africa. The Locrians, however, diverted any blame to Pleminius.
The senate sent a ten-man commission
headed by Marcus Pomponius Matho to investigate, along with two tribunes of the plebs
and an aedile
. Matho was the praetor
and propraetor assigned to Sicily from 204 to 202 BC, and had been authorized to recall Scipio if necessary, but the commission had no judicial powers. Its size was virtually unprecedented, and reflects both the importance of the case and its ultimate target: Scipio, not merely Pleminius. The difficulty and delicacy of Matho's position should not be underestimated; the legal question was whether a high-level magistrate should be held responsible for actions committed by an officer to whom he had delegated imperium on his own authority. Since Matho's own imperium was inferior to that of Scipio, there was a risk that if charged and found guilty, the proconsul would ignore the praetor and simply exit the province to pursue his African venture. Scipio, however, dazzled the commission, while Pleminius was left to take the fall for plundering the Temple of Proserpina
and murdering the tribunes Publius Matienus and Marcus Sergius. The legates were able to report that Pleminius had acted neither on Scipio's orders nor according to his wishes (neque iussu neque voluntate).
reports two. In one, Pleminius fled when he heard about the investigation, and attempted to go into exile at Naples
. He was captured en route by the legate Quintus Caecilius Metellus
, the consul of 206 BC. Alternatively, Livy says, Scipio himself sent his own legate and an elite squadron of cavalry
to arrest Pleminius and turned him over to the commission.
Diodorus
reports only the second version that ameliorates Scipio's conduct, but has Scipio summoning Pleminius to Sicily, throwing him in chains, then handing him over to the two plebeian tribunes sent with the commission, who were duly impressed by this firm response. Pleminius was later shipped off to Rome and imprisoned, but died before his trial concluded. The charge would have been perduellio
, a capital crime, most likely to be brought before the centuriate assembly
.
What was unusual, and perhaps unprecedented at the time, was the arrest of a man who held delegated imperium. If it's correct that Pleminius chose to become a fugitive, by Roman law
he had deserted his post and would be considered an exile. The choice of exile to escape sentencing in a capital crime brought with it a loss of citizenship
. The complexities of the case may account for the proliferating versions, and the potential legal status of Pleminius is of interest in documenting the use of exile in ancient Rome.
The case of sacrilege at Locri was a precedent in the investigation of an incident involving the same temple only a short time later, conducted by the praetor
Quintus Minucius Rufus
in 200 BC: see Minucius Rufus: Praetorship in Locri.
Locri
Locri is a town and comune in the province of Reggio Calabria, Calabria, southern Italy. The name derives from the ancient Greek town Locris.-History:...
in Bruttium by Scipio Africanus
Scipio Africanus
Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus , also known as Scipio Africanus and Scipio the Elder, was a general in the Second Punic War and statesman of the Roman Republic...
after its recapture, considered the "outstanding event" in Sicilian
Sicilia (Roman province)
Sicilia was the first province acquired by the Roman Republic, organized in 241 BC as a proconsular governed territory, in the aftermath of the First Punic War with Carthage. It included Sicily and Malta...
operations that year. His governorship
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...
, if it should be called that, ended in sacrilege and murder.
Military command
Pleminius had been in charge of the garrison at Rhegium, the geographical location of which on the "toe" of the Italian peninsulaItalian Peninsula
The Italian Peninsula or Apennine Peninsula is one of the three large peninsulas of Southern Europe , spanning from the Po Valley in the north to the central Mediterranean Sea in the south. The peninsula's shape gives it the nickname Lo Stivale...
had made it a de facto part of the province
Roman province
In Ancient Rome, a province was the basic, and, until the Tetrarchy , largest territorial and administrative unit of the empire's territorial possessions outside of Italy...
of Sicily. From Rhegium he brought a force of 3,000 to take possession of Locri, and succeeded in storming one of the citadel
Citadel
A citadel is a fortress for protecting a town, sometimes incorporating a castle. The term derives from the same Latin root as the word "city", civis, meaning citizen....
s by the aid of exceptionally tall ladders. This action led to a skirmish with Carthaginian troops
Second Punic War
The Second Punic War, also referred to as The Hannibalic War and The War Against Hannibal, lasted from 218 to 201 BC and involved combatants in the western and eastern Mediterranean. This was the second major war between Carthage and the Roman Republic, with the participation of the Berbers on...
, who occupied the other. Hostilities escalated when Hannibal arrived on the scene, but Locrian insiders enabled Rome to hold out until Scipio could bring troops from Messana, at which time the Carthaginians withdrew. Scipio's intervention technically exceeded the mandate of his command and crossed into the provincia of his consular
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...
colleage Crassus
Publius Licinius Crassus Dives (consul 205 BC)
Publius Licinius Crassus Dives Pontifex Maximus was consul in 205 BC with Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus ; he was also Pontifex Maximus since 213 or 212 BC , and held several other important positions. Licinius Crassus is mentioned several times in Livy's Histories...
.
Scipio immediately rounded up the Locrians who had attempted to secede and executed them. Those who had remained loyal and aided Rome received their reward in the form of their fellow citizens' property. Scipio then sent a delegation to Rome placing the matter of Locri's political status in the hands of the Roman senate
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 returned with his troops to Messana. Bruttium had been Hannibal's last stronghold in Italy, and Rome's position there was still tentative; from a diplomatic perspective, it was important to show that Rome was the preferable overlord.
Violence and disorder
In Scipio's absence, the soldiers under Pleminius lapsed into looting, which the military tribuneMilitary tribune
A military tribune was an officer of the Roman army who ranked below the legate and above the centurion...
s attempted to restrain. Discipline dissolved utterly, and the Roman forces divided into warring troops. The men attached to Pleminius got the worst of it, and reported to him with a display of wounds and complaints of ill treatment.
Pleminius's reaction to this breakdown of discipline was to have the tribunes arrested, stripped, and flogged. Their men then attacked Pleminius, mutilating his ears and nose. Learning of these disturbances, Scipio returned — and reinstated Pleminius. He ordered the offending tribunes sent to Rome to stand trial. "This judgment," notes H.H. Scullard, "is unexpected," and various explanations have been proffered. Scullard concludes that Scipio was "guilty of folly and of lack of humanity."
Torture
Torture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...
d them to death, offering a "novel" justification: "No one knew how to name the penalty for a crime except someone who had learnt its savagery by suffering." They were left unburied.
With a rage that seemed unquenchable, Pleminius turned his violence toward Locrians he suspected of informing Scipio. Meanwhile, the Locrian envoys who had traveled to Rome for the senate hearing related in detail how the excesses of the Roman soldiers surpassed those of the Carthaginians. They complained of widespread rapes committed against women and boys dragged from their homes, and the sacrilegious looting of the Temple of Proserpina
Proserpina
Proserpina or Proserpine is an ancient Roman goddess whose story is the basis of a myth of Springtime. Her Greek goddess' equivalent is Persephone. The probable origin of her name comes from the Latin, "proserpere" or "to emerge," in respect to the growing of grain...
, the chief deity of Locri. These reports provided fodder for Fabius Maximus
Fabius Maximus
Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus Cunctator was a Roman politician and general, born in Rome around 280 BC and died in Rome in 203 BC. He was Roman Consul five times and was twice Dictator in 221 and again in 217 BC. He reached the office of Roman Censor in 230 BC...
, nearing the end of his life, in his opposition to Scipio and his "Greek" way of life in Sicily and his plans to invade Africa. The Locrians, however, diverted any blame to Pleminius.
The legal case
Decemviri
Decemviri is a Latin term meaning "Ten Men" which designates any such commission in the Roman Republic...
headed by Marcus Pomponius Matho to investigate, along with two tribunes 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 an 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...
. Matho was the 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...
and propraetor assigned to Sicily from 204 to 202 BC, and had been authorized to recall Scipio if necessary, but the commission had no judicial powers. Its size was virtually unprecedented, and reflects both the importance of the case and its ultimate target: Scipio, not merely Pleminius. The difficulty and delicacy of Matho's position should not be underestimated; the legal question was whether a high-level magistrate should be held responsible for actions committed by an officer to whom he had delegated imperium on his own authority. Since Matho's own imperium was inferior to that of Scipio, there was a risk that if charged and found guilty, the proconsul would ignore the praetor and simply exit the province to pursue his African venture. Scipio, however, dazzled the commission, while Pleminius was left to take the fall for plundering the Temple of Proserpina
Proserpina
Proserpina or Proserpine is an ancient Roman goddess whose story is the basis of a myth of Springtime. Her Greek goddess' equivalent is Persephone. The probable origin of her name comes from the Latin, "proserpere" or "to emerge," in respect to the growing of grain...
and murdering the tribunes Publius Matienus and Marcus Sergius. The legates were able to report that Pleminius had acted neither on Scipio's orders nor according to his wishes (neque iussu neque voluntate).
Questions of arrest and exile
Versions of Pleminius's arrest vary. LivyLivy
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...
reports two. In one, Pleminius fled when he heard about the investigation, and attempted to go into exile at Naples
Naples
Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...
. He was captured en route by the legate Quintus Caecilius Metellus
Quintus Caecilius Metellus (died 175 BC)
Quintus Caecilius Metellus was a son of Lucius Caecilius Metellus. He was Pontiff in 216 BC, Aedile of the Plebeians in 209 BC and 208 BC, Consul in 205 BC, Dictator in 203 BC and Ambassador at the Court of Philip V of Macedon in 185 BC.He served as a Legate in the army of Gaius Claudius Nero and...
, the consul of 206 BC. Alternatively, Livy says, Scipio himself sent his own legate and an elite squadron of cavalry
Turma
A turma was a cavalry squadron in the Roman army of the Republic and Empire. In the Byzantine Empire, it became applied to the larger, regiment-sized military-cum-administrative divisions of a thema....
to arrest Pleminius and turned him over to the commission.
Diodorus
Diodorus Siculus
Diodorus Siculus was a Greek historian who flourished between 60 and 30 BC. According to Diodorus' own work, he was born at Agyrium in Sicily . With one exception, antiquity affords no further information about Diodorus' life and doings beyond what is to be found in his own work, Bibliotheca...
reports only the second version that ameliorates Scipio's conduct, but has Scipio summoning Pleminius to Sicily, throwing him in chains, then handing him over to the two plebeian tribunes sent with the commission, who were duly impressed by this firm response. Pleminius was later shipped off to Rome and imprisoned, but died before his trial concluded. The charge would have been 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:...
, a capital crime, most likely to be brought before the centuriate assembly
Century Assembly
The Century Assembly of the Roman Republic was the democratic assembly of Roman soldiers. During the years of the Roman Republic, citizens were organized on the basis of Centuries for military purposes. The Centuries gathered into the Century Assembly for legislative, electoral, and judicial...
.
What was unusual, and perhaps unprecedented at the time, was the arrest of a man who held delegated imperium. If it's correct that Pleminius chose to become a fugitive, by Roman law
Roman law
Roman law is the legal system of ancient Rome, and the legal developments which occurred before the 7th century AD — when the Roman–Byzantine state adopted Greek as the language of government. The development of Roman law comprises more than a thousand years of jurisprudence — from the Twelve...
he had deserted his post and would be considered an exile. The choice of exile to escape sentencing in a capital crime brought with it a loss of citizenship
Roman citizenship
Citizenship in ancient Rome was a privileged political and legal status afforded to certain free-born individuals with respect to laws, property, and governance....
. The complexities of the case may account for the proliferating versions, and the potential legal status of Pleminius is of interest in documenting the use of exile in ancient Rome.
The case of sacrilege at Locri was a precedent in the investigation of an incident involving the same temple only a short time later, conducted by the 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...
Quintus Minucius Rufus
Quintus Minucius Rufus (consul 197 BC)
Quintus Minucius Rufus was a consul of the Roman Republic in 197 BC.-Early career:In 211 BC, Minucius was an officer serving under Q. Fulvius Flaccus when Roman forces took back Capua after their defeat the previous year by Hannibal...
in 200 BC: see Minucius Rufus: Praetorship in Locri.
Selected bibliography
- Bagnall, Nigel. The Punic Wars: Rome, Carthage, and the Struggle for the Mediterranean. St. Martin's Press, 1990.
- Brennan, T. Corey. The Praetorship in the Roman Republic. Oxford University Press, 2000.
- Broughton, T.R.S. The Magistrates of the Roman Republic. American Philological Association, 1951, 1986 reprint, vol. 1, p. 304.
- Kelly, Gordon P. A History of Exile in the Roman Republic. Cambridge University Press, 2006.
- Scullard, H.H. Scipio Africanus in the Second Punic War. Cambridge University Press, 1930.
- Vishnia, Rachel Feig. State, Society, and Popular Leaders in Mid-Republican Rome, 241–167 B.C. Routledge, 1996.
Further reading
- Andrew LintottAndrew LintottAndrew William Lintott is a classical scholar who specializes in the political and administrative history of ancient Rome, Roman law, and epigraphy. He is an emeritus fellow of Worcester College, University of Oxford....
, "Provocatio: From the Struggle of the Orders to the Principate," Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt I (1972) 226–267.