Plutach provides a brief survey of P. Calpurnius Lanarius’Footnote 1 involvement in the struggle between Q. Sertorius, the commander who resisted the Sullan regime in the Iberian Peninsula in the 70s b.c., and C. Annius Luscus, the proconsul dispatched by the Dictator to end the revolt in 82–81 b.c. (Plut. Sert. 7.1–2):
When the news reached him [sc. Sertorius] that Sulla had captured Rome and that the cause of Marius and Carbo was lost, he expected that it would not be long before a general and an army were on their way to fight out the issue with him. He therefore sent Livius Salinator with a force of six thousand infantry to block the passes of the Pyrenees. Soon after this Gaius Annius was sent out by Sulla, and when he saw that Salinator had taken up an impregnable position, he was at a loss to know what to do next and encamped at the foot of the mountains. However, at this point a certain Calpurnius, surnamed Lanarius, assassinated Salinator, whose soldiers then abandoned the heights of the Pyrenees. Annius proceeded to cross the mountains and marched on with his large force, brushing aside the weak resistance he encountered.Footnote 2
Two fragments from Sallust's Histories, ‘Calpurnius with Lanarius as his cognomen’ (Calpurnius cognomento Lanarius, 1.83) and ‘Salinator is killed while on the march’ (Salinator in agmine occiditur, 1.84), shed further light on the historical events.
As far as can be established on a preliminary basis, Sertorius, after settling the last stronghold of the Marians in Hispania, had to face the imminent arrival of Annius in 81 b.c. The rebel commander decided to send his legate Livius Salinator with a legion to block the Pyrenees, but the assassination of Salinator by a certain Calpurnius Lanarius (Καλπουρνίου δέ τινος ἐπίκλησιν Λαναρίου δολοφονήσαντος τὸν Ἰούλιον) disrupted the plans of Sertorius and obliged him to flee Spain towards North Africa.Footnote 3 This much-debated event can be understood in two ways: either Lanarius was in the entourage of Salinator and killed him as an act of treason, or he was an officer of Annius and destroyed the Sertorian officer as a military tactic.Footnote 4 The former option, which will be defended in this paper and has not been hitherto considered, would turn Lanarius into a treacherous exile who killed his commander and hence he would be a proscribed of the Sullan regime.
Sir Ronald Syme, pondering the fragments of Sallust and an isolated excerpt from the Histories (‘a few men occupying a defile’, paucos saltum insidentis, 1.82), argued that Lanarius was a legate of Annius who deceived Salinator through ‘some Thermopylean flank movement’ into a fatal ambush (Salinator in agmine occiditur).Footnote 5 By combining the biography of Sertorius and the Histories, Syme claimed that Plutarch might have misunderstood his Latin source, which would have included a term such as fraus or astus, and used the verb δολοφονέω (‘to slay by treachery’) as a translation.
As a preliminary observation, it must be noted that the Sallustian fragment paucos saltum insidentis, which derives from a reference in Arusianus Messius, cannot be safely linked to the Sertorian War.Footnote 6 Although Arusianus only points out that the sentence was inserted in the first book of the Histories, Maurenbrecher and the subsequent editors of Sallust have associated this excerpt with the campaign of Livius Salinator in the Pyrenees.Footnote 7 However, since Sallust related in the first book of the Histories the revolt of Lepidus, the conflict in the Iberian Peninsula in 82–78 b.c., the pirate war in Cilicia and the military clashes in Macedonia, a manoeuvre involving the occupation of a mountain pass (saltus) could have taken place in any of the aforementioned conflicts, not least given the mountainous nature of the last three regions. To assert that Sallust's paucos saltum insidentis was related to the fight between Livius Salinator and Annius Luscus seems quite arbitrary,Footnote 8 and the fragment should therefore be considered of uncertain location within the text.
Furthermore, while the fact that Salinator fell during the military operations does not entail that the legate was the victim of an ambush, neither does it exclude the possibility of an assassination. Given that a narrative of the events in Latin has not survived, Syme's supposition, which is based on an unsupported inaccuracy of Plutarch, depends on an argument from silence. Even though Plutarch clearly followed Sallust's Histories—inasmuch as the same sentence, Καλπουρνίου δέ τινος ἐπίκλησιν Λαναρίου/Calpurnius cognomento Lanarius, is recorded in both authors (Plut. Sert. 7.2; Sall. Hist. 1.83)—it seems unlikely that the biographer confused a series of military movements with a treacherous murder. Plutarch's misunderstanding would not be limited to the transferral of an otherwise non-existent noun such as fraus or astus into his mother tongue, but would rather imply that the reading of a military campaign led him to summarize a chain of historical events by simply referring to a mere assassination.Footnote 9
As Konrad has conclusively shown, the fragment Salinator in agmine occiditur does not necessarily refer to a ‘tactical manoeuvre or ruse’ devised by the enemies of the legate of Sertorius.Footnote 10 Even if one were to link it with Sallust's paucos saltum insidentis (Sall. Hist. 1.82), the evidence is not strong enough to assert that Salinator was a victim of an ambush or deception, while a laconic sentence such as in agmine occiditur cannot encompass the series of complex military strategies that Syme envisioned. The fragment ‘killed while on the march’ does not automatically imply an ambush; neither does it exclude other alternatives. Lanarius could have served under Salinator and have assassinated his commander when the army was moving from one point to another.
Adolf Schulten proposed that the passages of Plutarch and Sallust pointed to a betrayal perpetrated from within the Sertorian army, entailing that Lanarius murdered (δολοφονέω) his superior, Salinator, while being a member of his council. Thus, Salinator would have been protecting one of the passes of the Pyrenees on the arrival of Annius but, led on by a deception of Lanarius, marched with his army towards a new location, where he was fatally trapped.Footnote 11 Although the aforementioned objections to the interpretation of Syme may also be applied to Schulten's approach, Schulten rightly stressed that Lanarius probably betrayed the Sertorian legate Livius Salinator.
This conclusion can also be drawn from the detailed scrutiny of Plutarch's use of δολοφονέω within the sentence Καλπουρνίου δέ τινος ἐπίκλησιν Λαναρίου δολοφονήσαντος τὸν Ἰούλιον (Plut. Sert. 7.2). The verb has different meanings and connotations, and although it is invariably a synonym for murder, it often involves perfidy or deceit to some extent.Footnote 12 Plutarch, moreover, employed this term in a more restricted manner to indicate that the homicide in question had been committed treacherously, as can be inferred from the following list of instances where the Greek author resorted to δολοφονέω:
1) Plut. Parallela minora 37: Fabia killed her husband, Fabius Fabricianus, because she had a lover.
2) Plut. Amat. 2: Archias is assassinated by his beloved partner, Telephus.
3) Plut. Tim. 16.3: The attempted murder of Timoleon by two foreigners who had infiltrated the city of Adranum.
4) Plut. Arat. 3.3: Paseas, a tyrant of Sycion, is treacherously slain by Nicocles.
5) Plut. Per. 10.6: Pericles is accused of having killed his friend and partisan, Ephialtes, in an act of treason.
6) Plut. Phil. 15.2: An episode explained in Livy 35.35 as well. The Aetolians sent Alexamenus with soldiers to aid Nabis. Having managed to enter the royal court and earn the trust of the king, they killed the Spartan ruler during a military drill.
7) Plut. Pomp. 20.2: Plutarch uses δολοφονέω in narrating the murder of Sertorius at the supper of Osca by his fellows and friends.
Plutarch employs the verb δολοφονέω up to eight times—including the case of Calpurnius Lanarius—to describe assassinations or attempted assassinations that involved a betrayal of the victim. In all the cases above, the killer, in order to ‘slay by treason’, always tries to approach the victim personally (Tim. 16.3), that is, if he or she is not already within his close circle, either in an intimate sense (Parallela minora 37, Amat. 2) or in a context of political or military resonance (Per. 10.6, Arat. 3.3, Phil. 15.2). Plutarch's use of δολοφονέω in two passages framed in the Sertorian War from the different biographies of Sertorius and Pompey represents the rule rather than the exception: on the basis of Plutarch's usage of the verb, for Lanarius to δολοφονεῖν his commander, he must necessarily belong to the Sertorian army and therefore be in Salinator's entourage.
In his surviving works, Plutarch never reported military operations or the fall of a commander in battle with the word δολοφονέω. Consequently, the death of Livius Salinator as a result of combat should be discarded—whether Lanarius was a legate of Annius who trapped Salinator by a martial ruse or whether he was a Sertorian who deceived his superior into an ambush. Plutarch's description of Annius waiting at the foot of the Pyrenees and Sallust's fragments (Salinator in agmine occiditur and paucos saltum insidentis) do not represent sufficient evidence for the military campaigns that Syme and Schulten envisaged. Once the prospect of an ambush has been rejected, the sentence ‘Salinator is killed while on the march’ recovers its full significance. In the event that Lanarius was a Sullan, he could not have slain Salinator from outside the Sertorian army, either by crossing the Pyrenees and thereupon infiltrating the Sertorian camp or in the context of a truce or negotiations between the two parties: both scenarios require that the army of Salinator was static rather than in motion at the moment of the homicide. The appearance of the verbs occido and δολοφονέω in Sallust and Plutarch lead to the inevitable conclusion that we should consider Calpurnius Lanarius as a traitor to the Sertorian camp who slew Livius Salinator while the army was on the move.
Lanarius’ betrayal can be confirmed by scrutinizing the sources from which the fragment Calpurnius cognomento Lanarius (Sall. Hist. 1.83) derives. The sentence is an excerpt from St Jerome, who quotes Sallust's words in two of his Letters (Ep. 70.6.2, 102.3.1) and alludes to a Sallustianus Calpurnius in the Apologia aduersus libros Rufini (1.30).Footnote 13 Jerome invokes the name Calpurnius Lanarius in the context of his polemic with Tyrannius Rufinus over the dogmatic validity of Origen's work: Jerome and Rufinus had been close, but towards the end of the fourth century they bitterly clashed over differences in the interpretation of Christian doctrine, exchanging in the course of the controversy all kinds of insults and attacks.Footnote 14
Jerome, who ranked Rufinus as a traitor, called his enemy derogatory epithets such as sea serpent, scorpion, grunting pig, Nero, Sardanapalus, Judas and, finally, Calpurnius Lanarius.Footnote 15 If he considered the latter as an appropriate insult to define the unfaithfulness of his former friend, it might be concluded that Lanarius, the same figure mentioned in the biography of Sertorius and in the Histories, had perpetrated some terrible crime such as the murder of his own commander, Livius Salinator. Plutarch's passage probably mirrored what Sallust reflected in the Histories—namely, the depiction of a perfidious assassination, whose reading led Jerome to regard the name of Lanarius as the epitome of treason and a suitably offensive title to attribute to his foe Tyrannius Rufinus.
Even though an analysis of the literary accounts permits considering Lanarius as a traitor to Salinator, the reasons behind his actions are seemingly obscure: it is not possible to determine whether he slew his superior owing to a personal enmity, to a divergence of opinion regarding the progression of the military operations, or because Lanarius aimed to obtain a pardon from the dictator and switch to the Sullan side by killing his commander.Footnote 16 Nevertheless, while we lack sufficient information to establish why Lanarius killed Salinator, the scrutiny of the ancient sources does allow us to recognize Lanarius as likely to have been proscribed by the Sullan regime.
P. Calpurnius Lanarius has been securely identified with a man of the same name who was involved in a dispute over the property of a house in Rome in the 90s b.c.Footnote 17 Lanarius could also be a relative of P. Calp(urnius), moneyer in 133 b.c. (RRC 247), as these are the only two members of the gens Calpurnia with the praenomen of Publius known so far for the Republican period. Regarding the appellation Lanarius, which means ‘wool-worker’, it could be a nickname rather than a cognomen—Calpurnius cognomento Lanarius, Sall. Hist. 1.83—that made reference to the family profession,Footnote 18 a lineage of mercatores Footnote 19 who would have been equestrians. According to his name and surname, Calpurnius Lanarius was at least an eques, but he could have developed a political career and entered the Senate. As far as can be established on a preliminary basis, P. Calpurnius Lanarius was a Roman knight who enjoyed a high social and economic position in the Vrbs and arrived in the Iberian Peninsula accompanying Sertorius, presumably on the commander's staff, in 82 b.c. Since Lanarius likely belonged to Sertorius’ entourage, his proscribed status should be analogous to that of other exiles who followed the rebel commander during the war in Spain.
The literary sources refer to at least four Sertorians with the term proscriptus or its derivatives: Sertorius himself, M. Perperna, L. Fabius Hispaniensis and M. Marius.Footnote 20 However, modern scholars have reasonably assumed that, apart from the Roman citizens settled in the Citerior who were recruited by Sertorius in 82–81 b.c., and the remnants of the Lepidan army who, after being declared hostes, arrived into the Iberian Peninsula in 77 b.c., a significant proportion of Sertorius’ entourage was placed on the proscription lists.Footnote 21
This is the conclusion that can be drawn when we address the relationship between the associates of the rebel commander who found refuge in Spain in 82 b.c. and the Sullan regime. Right after taking over the city of Rome, in Appian's striking account (B Ciu. 1.95), ‘Sulla himself called the Roman people together in an assembly and made them a speech, vaunting his own exploits and making other menacing statements in order to inspire terror. He finished by saying that he would bring about a change which would be beneficial to the people if they would obey him, but of his enemies he would spare none, but would visit them with the utmost severity. He would take vengeance by strong measures on the praetors, quaestors, military tribunes, and everybody else who had committed any hostile act after the day when the consul Scipio violated the agreement made with him. After saying this he forthwith proscribed about forty senators and 1600 knights.’Footnote 22
Sertorius and his staff—that is, the same consilium that accompanied the rebel dux to Spain in 82 b.c.—were those chiefly responsible for the breach of the truce that Sulla and Scipio had agreed in 83 b.c.: while both commanders were negotiating the peace, Sertorius unilaterally decided to attack the city of Suessa Aurunca in Campania with the aim of prompting the resumption of hostilities.Footnote 23 Since the Sertorians who eventually fled to the Iberian Peninsula had, according to Sulla, sabotaged any chance of agreement between his camp and the Marian one, it is very hard to imagine that the officers who followed Sertorius into exile after serving in Italy escaped the wrath of the new ruler of Rome. Accordingly, those persons known to have pertained to the entourage of the rebel commander in 82 b.c. in the Iberian Peninsula—L. Livius Salinator, L. and Q. Hirtuleius, C. and L. Insteius, C. Tarquitius Priscus and C. Octavius Graecinus—have been rightly considered by modern scholars as proscripti: they were not only leading men of the Cinnan regime but also officers of the last Marian leader who dared to challenge the supremacy of the dictator.Footnote 24 Their inclusion in the proscription lists would thus be in keeping with Sulla's threat of taking vengeance on his enemies.
The case of P. Calpurnius Lanarius should not have been different than the circumstances of those who served under Sertorius in Spain at the beginning of the war. Once it has been confirmed that Lanarius, while accompanying Sertorius in his flight from Italy, belonged to the entourage of the rebel dux and betrayed and killed Livius Salinator, his status as proscriptus emerges as a very likely prospect: as a man who held a wealthy position in Rome, was of at least equestrian and perhaps even of senatorial rank, and belonged to Sertorius’ consilium, he should be included, just like the other refugees who arrived in Hispania in 82 b.c., in the list of senators and knights outlawed by Sulla. Even if it is not possible to ascertain why Lanarius assassinated Salinator, his status and deeds would demonstrate that he was, in all probability, both an exile and a proscribed man.
The restricted meaning of δολοφονέω as ‘to slay by treason’, which Plutarch employed to describe the actions of Calpurnius Lanarius, along with the nefarious picture of the character that St Jerome exploited to defame his adversary Rufinus, suggests that Lanarius was originally a Sertorian, who went on to treacherously kill his superior Salinator. As a proscribed individual, P. Calpurnius Lanarius would be a new name to add to the prosopography of those who were condemned by Sulla; as a murderer, Lanarius is an addition to the considerable catalogue of betrayals that characterizes the civil wars of the Roman Republic.Footnote 25
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