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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 September 2012
The puzzle of C. Julius Caesar's date of birth and cursus honorum has never been satisfactorily solved. The facts can be stated quite simply. All but two of the sources referring to his age imply 100 B.C. as the date of his birth, and the date of his quaestorship agrees with this; yet he held the senior magistracies two years earlier than, according to what we know of the normal cursus, that date would allow. Are nearly all the sources wrong (as Mommsen thought) ? Or did Caesar at some time get a special dispensation, which no one has bothered to mention (as the majority opinion would now hold) ? Or is there another explanation of a more general kind, fitting Caesar into a class of exceptions (as Afzelius proposed) ?
1 Sources collected in M.E. Deutsch's article ‘The Year of Caesar's Birth’, TAPA, 1914, 17 f. (with bibliography). Tacitus' date (Dial. 34: 98/7) is certainly wrong; Eutropius (VI, 24) implies 102: but see Deutsch's comments (l.c.). Deutsch argues very convincingly for 100 as the date implied by the other sources. J. Carcopino (Mél. Bidez (1934) 35 f.) argues ingeniously, but less convincingly, for 101: see Renders, L'Antiquité Classique (= AC) 1939, 117 f., for some comments. In particular, Carcopino's handling of the Suetonius and Plutarch passages (pp. 47 f.) is very poor; he is unable (63 f.) to explain, or explain away, Cicero's repeated claim to have been made consul suo anno in 63; and he does not satisfactorily account for the implication that Caesar failed to get the quaestorship until two years after his year. (Cf. n. 52, below.) On an ingenious, but mistaken, attempt to arrive at Caesar's age by dating his marriage to Cinna's daughter (Suet., Jul. I) in 84 (thus especially, De Sanctis, RFIC 1934, 550 f.), see H. M. Last, CR 1944, 15 f.
2 See Deutsch, art. cit.; L. R. Taylor, Cl. Phil. 1941, 125 f.; Afzelius, Class. et Med. 1947, 263 f.; A. E. Astin, The Lex Annalis before Sulla 33 (= Latomus 1958, 51), withholding judgment [see below p. 166 for a review.–Ed.].
3 Phil. V; 52 f.
4 If indeed that was the aim of his laws (for the sources, see Taylor, art. cit. 128, n. 65).
5 As Taylor does (l. c.). Dio XXXVI, 39 does not appear to refer to dispensations from laws (annales or others).
6 cf. Taylor, art. cit. 129, n. 69; W. McDonald, CQ 1929, 200 f. (the best account of C. Cornelius' tribunate).
7 Instances collected and discussed by Taylor, art. cit. 127 f.; Astin, o. c. 16 f. (= Latomus 1957, 599 f.)
8 As Cicero tells us (Leg. Man. 62). The case of Aemilianus (actually cited by Taylor in this connection) cannot be seriously considered as a parallel.
9 Cic. Ac. Pr. I: ‘licebat … legis praemio.’ As priuilegia were illegal, this shows, prima facie at least, that a class was affected.
10 L. Lucullus was quaestor in 87 or even 88 (T. R. S. Broughton, Magistrates of the Roman Republic (1951–2) (= MRR) II, 52, n. 5), so that a praetorship in 78 was no more than his due. References to the ‘acceleration of his career’ obscure this fact. None of the prominent Sullam except Pompey (and we know the careers of a number of them) can be shown to have had his career specially accelerated.
11 Taylor and Astin, ll. cc. (n. 7, above).
12 Taylor quotes two other possible parallels: M. Crassus and M. Cato. Neither of them is sound. M. Crassus needed no exemption in 71: Broughton rightly refuses to date his praetorship in 72 (see his discussion, MRR II, 121, n. 2); it may even be earlier than 73, since Appian's account of his appointment to the Slave War (BC I, 118, init.) strongly suggests a special grant of imperium to a priuatus. As for M. Cato in 56, the dispensation he was offered had nothing to do with the leges annales (see P-W, s. v. ‘Porcius’, col. 183). We may add an argument from silence that is at least worth considering: if Caesar had been granted a dispensation, it is odd that Cicero does not lament the fact in (say) 60 or 59 B. C.
13 Astin (o. c), in a careful survey, has recently arrived at important results for the period before Sulla.
14 Since he seems to have held the magistracies suo anno (sources collected and discussed by Astin, o.c. 31 f.).
15 Partial list in Astin, o.c. 39. M. Junius Silanus is listed by him as q. 84, pr. 76. The latter is probably wrong (Broughton gives 77: MRR II, 88 and 94), the former almost certainly: although Broughton lists him under 84 (ibid. 60), his Index more cautiously says ‘by 84’ (ibid. 577); as all that we know is that Silanus, at an undetermined date, served under Murena in the East, he was probably elected in 88 for 87 (cf. Broughton's discussion of Murena himself: ibid. 62, n. 4).—I have ignored the tribunate of the Plebs, which was certainly not fitted into the regular cursus so as to impose a biennium after it. There are about a dozen examples that establish this point and it is universally accepted.
16 The date is fixed by his predecessor's dilatory return (Cic., Att. II, 2, 3).
17 CIL I2, 2, 662 b (quite undatable).
18 MRR II, 52, n. 4.
19 ibid. 79 (cf. 84).
20 The whole matter is carefully discussed by Münzer, P-W, S. v. ‘Domitius’, coll. 1334 f. Broughton, while referring to the evidence, unfortunately lists the fictitious quaestorship without query.
21 2 Verr. III, 182.
22 Cic., Att. II, 2, 3.
23 Broughton, (MRR II, 193Google Scholar, n. 5) gives as the noteworthy fact, not Nigidius' appearance in a contio, but his threat to compellare defaulting jurors. But anybody could do that (see TLL, s. v. ‘compellare’, III, 2028 B 2).
24 MRR II, 184.
25 Cic., Att. I, 19, 9; MRR II, 184.
26 See MRR II, 139.
27 Sources, MRR II, 91. Though this depends on an emendation in Exsuperantius (which would not normally be worth much), the Asconius passage seems to lend it support.
28 Rightly P-W, s. v. ‘Valerius’, coll. 232 f. Broughton is curiously inconsistent: the praetor is called ‘L.’ and identified with the quaestor on pp. 91 and 631 (Index), but is called ‘C.’ and identified with the quaestor on pp. 91 and 631 (Index), but is called ‘C.’ and identified with the legate on pp. 120 and 134; the quaestor L. is identified with the legate C. on p. 77. (Some of these identifications are queried, but without comment.)
29 In most cases we cannot determine whether the curule or the Plebeian office was held; by this period, we need not assume any difference. The two Patricians were certainly curule aediles, Cicero probably Plebeian aedile (cf. L. R. Taylor, AJP 1939, 194 f.). On the biennium after the aedileship in the pre-Sullan period, see Astin, o.c. 9 f.
30 App., BC I, 100: καὶ στρατηγεῖν ἀπεῖπε πρὶν ταμιεῦσαι, καὶ ὑπατεύειν πρὶν στρατηγῆσαι. See Gabba's edition, pp. 342 f., for other sources and discussion (with bibliography).
31 Cic., Fam. X, 25. See Astin, o.c. 14 f. (with bibliography).
32 Astin, l.c.: ‘Cicero's line of thought can be as follows: “This year (i.e. 43) is the first in which you are legally entitled to stand for the praetorship, but it is easier for you to postpone your candidature, in that if you had been aedile (in 44) your year would have been two years later (i.e. Furnius could not have stood till the elections in 42 for 41)…”.’ Other commentators have not even given this much of an indication of how they take the passage.
33 Afzelius, art. cit.
34 art. cit. However, we are not entitled to draw conclusions from this to other stages of the cursus, especially the interval between praetorship and consulship.
35 For Cicero's use of ’quasi legitimus’, cf. 2 Verr. V, 57; Fat. 2.
36 See n. 30 (above).
37 C. Favonius, probably aed. 52, wanted the praetorship of 50 (MRR II, 240, n. 2).
38 Mil. 24.
39 See above, pp. 81 f.
40 Notably by Afzelius (art. cit.).
41 Cic., Vat. II; MRR II, 216.
42 Afzelius, art. cit. On this, see Astin, o.c. (with discussion of earlier views).
43 Astin, o.c. 29.
44 ibid. (with discussion). The passage needs renewed consideration (see Appendix).
45 Phil. v, 46.
46 Astin, o.c. 41 (citing Karlowa).
47 l. c.
48 Cic., Fam. XI, 20, 1.
49 Yet he might not have altogether disliked the prospect of a consulship of M. Tullius Cicero II, C. Iulius Caesar ! (Cf. Syme, Rom. Rev. 182 f.).
50 240 f.
51 This is also Astin's conclusion. It will, course, in some cases explain the shorter between quaestorship and aedileship. It may be asked whether all the irregularities in the case of the aedileship could not be satisfactorily could not be explained by a similar hypothesis about that office. But that not work well in every case. It would involve the further hypothesis that men like the younger M. Scaurus and Q. Metellus Scipio failed to get the aedileship suo anno, but succeeded in the praetorship (not to mention the ambitious M. Caelius Rufus, in whose case there are further problems). It is certainly much easier to hold that Sulla's lex annalis had nothing to say about the aedileship, though it would naturally fall under general rule forbiding continuatio of magistracies.
52 On his early career, see P-W, s. v. ‘Valerius’, no. 179. P. Lentulus Sura (q. 81) could be the Sullani whose career had been delayed; but will not explain the other cases, and the identity interval (see below) is striking.
53 That he was quaestor in 69 may be regarded certain after L. R. Taylor's demonstration (See MRR II, 136, n. 7).
54 See p. 83, n. 16 and text (above).
55 See MRR II, 123, 129 (but cf., more accurately, 629); cf. ibid. 121, n. 1. There is not enough evidence to decide.
56 Cic., Mil. 24.
57 Or perhaps both: it might make no difference in our case. See Renders, AC 1939, 117 f.
58 Excluding P. Clodius and those (quite undatable) in Appendix II.
59 P. Cornelius Lentulus Marcellinus, q. 75 or 74 (if this mysterious person should be either deleted or identified with P. Spinther, our statistics are not affected in any relevant point); P. Sulpicius(Rufus ?), q. 69, whose identification with the censor of 42 is anything but certain (see MRR II, 136, n. 8; cf. Syme, CP 1955, 132 and 135); and Faustus Cornelius Sulla, q. 54, who did not advance to the senior magistracies.
60 M. Valerius Messalla (Niger), whose quaestorship is known only from his elogium (Inscr. It. XIII, 3, no. 77).
61 Mommsen, Staatsr. I, 554 f.
62 Dio LII, 20 (an imaginary speech by Maecenas, which is our only literary source for the details of Augustus' ordinatio) does not mention the special privilege of Patricians at all. It appears from known careers.
63 See Syme, Tacitus II, Appendix 19.
64 cf. Mommsen, o.c. II, 482.
65 Astin, o. c. 34 f. Mr. Astin has kindly pointed out to me that, such as it is, it suggests that the privilege did not exist before Sulla. See, especially, the career of Scipio Aemilianus—I would add, perhaps, that of L. Sulla himself; but that is another story.
