Lucius Cassius Longinus (proconsul)

For other people named Lucius Cassius Longinus, see Lucius Cassius Longinus.

Lucius Cassius Longinus was the brother of the Gaius Cassius Longinus, a leading instigator in the assassination of Julius Caesar.

Around 52 BC, Lucius was one of the tresviri monetales (three-man commission of moneyers), or was possibly moneyer around 63–62. He was a proconsul[1] by Caesar's appointment in 48 BC, during the civil war. He occupied Thessaly, but was forced by Metellus Scipio to retreat, after which he joined Calvisius Sabinus in Aetolia.[2] He was a tribune of the plebs in 44 BC, a year in which the people's tribunes were exceptionally numerous and his brother held the praetorship. Along with his fellow tribunes Tiberius Canutius and Decimus Carfulenus, L. Cassius was excluded from the important meeting of the Roman senate held November 28 to reassign several provinces for the following year.[3] A bill enabling Caesar to add new families to the patriciate[4] was probably sponsored by him rather than his brother as praetor.[5]

References

  1. ↑ CIL 12.2.774—ILS 39.
  2. ↑ Julius Caesar, Bellum Civile 3.5.4, 7, 8, 15; Cassius Dio 41.44, 46, 48; Orosius 6.15.10.
  3. ↑ Cicero, Philippics 3.23. For more on these provincial assignments, see G. Calvisius Sabinus: Praetor and governor.
  4. ↑ Suetonius, Divus Iulius 41.1; Tacitus, Annales 11.25; Cassius Dio 43.47.3.
  5. ↑ Giovanni Niccolini, I fasti dei tribuni della plebe (Milan 1934), p. 347, on the question of which brother was responsible for the legislation. Offices, dates, and citations of ancient sources from T.R.S. Broughton, The Magistrates of the Roman Republic (American Philological Association, 1953), vol. 2, pp. 275, 323–324, 435, 544; vol. 3 (1986), pp. 51–52 (on monetalis date).