For other people similarly named, see Cassius (disambiguation), Cassius Longinus (disambiguation), and Longinus (disambiguation).
Roman senator, assassin of Caesar
| Gaius Cassius Longinus | |
| Bust of a "pseudo-Corbulo" probably depicting Cassius | |
| Born | October 3, 86 BC |
| Died | October 3, 42 BC E. Near Philippi, Macedonia |
| Cause of death | Suicide |
| Resting-place | Thassos, Greece |
| Nationality | Novel |
| Other names | The Last of the Romans |
| profession | General and politician |
| Famous | Assassination of Julius Caesar |
| Office | Tribune of the Plebs (49 BC) Praetor (44 BC) Consul-designate (41 BC) |
| Spouse(s) | Junia Tertia |
| Children | 1 |
| Military career | |
| Loyalty | Roman Republic Pompeii |
| Years | 54–42 BC E. |
| Battles/wars | Battle of Carrhae Caesar's Civil War Liberator's Civil War |
Gaius Cassius Longinus
(October 3, c. 86 BC – October 3, 42 BC), often called simply
Cassius
, was a Roman senator and general, best known as the main instigator of the plot to assassinate Julius Caesar 15 March 44 BC . He was the son-in-law of Brutus, another leader of the conspiracy. He commanded troops with Brutus during the Battle of Philippi against the combined forces of Mark Antony and Octavian, former supporters of Caesar, and committed suicide after being defeated by Mark Antony.
Cassius was elected plebeian tribune in 49 BC. E. He marched against Caesar, and he eventually commanded a fleet against him during Caesar's civil war: after Caesar defeated Pompey at the Battle of Pharsalus, Caesar overtook Cassius and forced him to surrender. After the death of Caesar, Cassius fled to the East, where he gathered an army of twelve legions. The Senate supported him and appointed him governor. He and Brutus later moved west against the allies of the Second Triumvirate.
He followed the teachings of the philosopher Epicurus, although scholars debate whether these beliefs influenced his political life. Cassius is the main character in William Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar.
which depicts the assassination of Caesar and its consequences.
It is also shown in the lower circle of Hell in Dante's Inferno
as punishment for the betrayal and murder of Caesar.
biography
early life
Denarius (42 BC), issued by Cassius Longinus
and Lentulus Spinter, showing the crowned head of Liberty and on the reverse a sacrificial jar and
lithuus
. From the military mint in Smyrna
Gaius Cassius Longinus (Classical Latin: [ˈɡaːjʊs ˈkassɪ.ʊs ˈlɔŋɡɪnʊs]) was descended from the very ancient Roman family gens Cassia, which was known in Rome from the 6th century BC. Little is known about his early life, other than the story that he showed his dislike of despots while still at school by quarreling with the dictator's son Sulla. He studied philosophy in Rhodes under Archelaus of Rhodes and spoke Greek fluently. He was married to Junia Tertia, daughter of Servilia and therefore the half-sister of his accomplice Brutus. They had one son, who was born around 60 BC.
Carrhae and Syria
In 54 BC. Cassius joined Marcus Licinius Crassus in his eastern campaign against the Parthian Empire. In 53 BC. Crassus suffered a decisive defeat at the Battle of Carrhae in Northern Mesopotamia, losing two-thirds of his army. Cassius led the retreat of the remaining troops into Syria and organized an effective defense force for the province. According to Plutarch's account, the defeat at Carrhae could have been avoided if Crassus had acted as Cassius advised. According to Dio, the Roman soldiers, as well as Crassus himself, were prepared to give full command to Cassius after the initial disaster in the battle, which Cassius "very rightly" refused. The Parthians also considered Cassius equal to Crassus in authority and superior to him in skill.
In 51 BC. Cassius was able to ambush and defeat the invading Parthian army under the command of Prince Pacorus and General Osax. At first he refused to fight the Parthians, keeping his army outside the walls of Antioch (the most important city in Syria), where he was besieged. When the Parthians ended the siege and began to ravage the countryside, he followed them with his army, pursuing them as he went. The decisive clash occurred on October 7, when the Parthians turned away from Antigonea. On the way back, they encountered a detachment of Cassius's army, which feigned retreat and lured the Parthians into an ambush. The Parthians were suddenly surrounded by the main forces of Cassius and defeated. Their general Osak died of his wounds, and the rest of the Parthian army retreated across the Euphrates.
Civil War
Cassius returned to Rome in 50 BC, as civil war was about to break out between Julius Caesar and Pompey. Cassius was elected plebeian tribune for 49 BC. and threw in his lot with the optimates, although his brother Lucius Cassius supported Caesar. Cassius left Italy shortly after Caesar crossed the Rubicon. He met Pompey in Greece and was appointed to command part of his fleet.
In 48 BC. Cassius sent his ships to Sicily, where he attacked and burned most of Caesar's fleet. He then began to pursue ships off the Italian coast. News of Pompey's defeat at the Battle of Pharsalus called Cassius to his head on the Hellespont, hopefully uniting with the king of Pontus, Pharnaces II. Cassius was overtaken by Caesar along the way and was forced to surrender unconditionally.
Caesar made Cassius a legate, using him in the War of Alexandria against the very Pharnaci whom Cassius had hoped to join after Pompey's defeat at Pharsalus. However, Cassius refused to join the fight against Cato and Scipio in Africa, choosing instead to retire to Rome.
CONSPIRACY
Main article: Assassination of Julius Caesar
Cassius spent the next two years in power and apparently strengthened his friendship with Cicero. In 44 BC. he became praetor Peregrinus
with the promise of a Syrian province for next year.
The appointment of his younger and brother-in-law, Marcus Brutus, as praetor Urban
deeply offended him.
Although Cassius was the "driving force" of the plot against Caesar, having defeated the main assassins in favor of tyrannicide, Brutus became their leader. On the Ides of March 44 BC. Cassius ran up to his fellow liberators and struck Caesar in the chest. Although they succeeded in killing Caesar, the celebrations were short-lived as Mark Antony seized power and turned the public against them. In letters written in 44 BC, Cicero often complained that Rome was still subject to tyranny because the "Liberators" had failed to kill Antony. According to some reports, Cassius wanted to kill Antony at the same time as Caesar, but Brutus dissuaded him.
After the murder
Cassius's reputation in the East made it easy to assemble an army from other governors in the area, and by 43 BC. he was ready to fight Publius Cornelius Dolabella with 12 legions. By this point, the Senate was divided with Antony and threw in its lot with Cassius, confirming him as governor of the province. Dolabella attacked but was betrayed by his allies, leading him to commit suicide. Cassius was now safe enough to march into Egypt, but on the formation of the Second Triumvirate, Brutus asked for his help. Cassius quickly joined Brutus at Smyrna with most of his army, leaving his nephew to rule Syria.
The conspirators decided to attack the triumvirate's allies in Asia. Cassius attacked and sacked Rhodes, and Brutus did the same with Lycia. The following year they regrouped at Sardis, where their armies proclaimed them emperors. They crossed the Hellespont, passed through Thrace and encamped near Philippi in Macedonia. Gaius Julius Caesar Octavian (later known as Augustus) and Mark Antony soon arrived, and Cassius planned to starve them out using his superior position in the country. However, Antony forced them to take part in two battles, collectively known as the Battle of Philippi. Brutus defeated Octavian and took his camp. Cassius, however, was defeated and captured by Antony and, unaware of Brutus' victory, lost all hope and committed suicide with the same dagger he used against Julius Caesar. The date of Cassius' death is the same as the date of his birth, October 3. Brutus mourned him as "the last of the Romans" and buried him at Thassos.
Epicureanism
“Among this select group of world-changing philosophers,” writes David Sedley, “one would be hard-pressed to find a pair of higher social standing than Brutus and Cassius—brothers-in-law, fellow murderers, and Shakespearean heroes,” adding that “perhaps not even it is widely known that they were
philosophers."
Like Brutus, whose Stoic leanings were widespread but who is more accurately described as an Antiochene Platonist, Cassius had a long and serious interest in philosophy. His early philosophical views are vague, although Dr. Shackleton Bailey believed that Cicero's remark indicated a youthful commitment to the Academy. However, sometime between 48 and 45 BC, Cassius is known to have converted to the school of thought founded by Epicurus. Although Epicurus advocated the abandonment of politics, in Rome his philosophy was made to accommodate the careers of many prominent figures in public life, including Caesar's father-in-law, Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus. Arnaldo Momigliano called the conversion of Cassius "a significant date in the history of Roman Epicureanism", making his choice not to enjoy the pleasures of the Garden, but to provide a philosophical justification for the murder of a tyrant.
Cicero associates Cassius' new Epicureanism with a willingness to seek peace after the civil war between Caesar and Pompey. Miriam Griffin dates his conversion as far back as 48 BC, when he fought for Pompey at the Battle of Pharsalus but decided to return home rather than join the last militias of the African Civil War. Momigliano placed it in 46 BC, based on a letter from Cicero to Cassius dated 45 January. Shackleton Bailey points to a date two or three years earlier.
The dating is relevant, but not essential, to the question of whether Cassius justified the murder of Caesar on Epicurean grounds. Griffin argues that his intellectual pursuits, like those of other Romans, can be completely excluded from any practical application in the field of politics. The Romans of the Late Republic, who can be classified as Epicureans, are more often found among Caesar's supporters, and often literally in his camp. Momigliano argued, however, that many of those who opposed Caesar's dictatorship had no personal enmity towards him, and republicanism was closer to the Epicurean way of life than dictatorship. Roman concept of libertas
was integrated into Greek philosophical studies, and although Epicurus's theory of political government allowed for various forms of government based on consent, including but not limited to democracy, a tyrannical state was considered by the Roman Epicureans to be incompatible with the highest pleasure, defined as freedom from pain.
Tyranny also threatened the Epicurean meaning of parrhesia
(παρρησία), “truthful speech,” and the move to deify Caesar offended the Epicurean belief in abstract gods leading an ideal existence
removed
from
earthly
affairs.
Momigliano believed that Cassius was moving from the original Epicurean orthodoxy, which emphasized disinterest in matters other than vice and virtue and detachment, to a "heroic Epicureanism". For Cassius, virtue worked. In a letter to Cicero he wrote:
I hope that people will understand that for everyone, cruelty exists in proportion to hatred, and kindness and mercy exist in proportion to love, and evil people, for the most part, seek and covet what good people get. It is difficult to convince people that “goodness is desirable in itself”; but it is true and laudable that pleasure and peace are achieved by virtue, justice and goodness. Epicurus himself, from whom all your Catias and Amathinias are forgiven as bad interpreters of his words, says: “It is impossible to live pleasantly if you do not live a good and just life.”
Sedley agrees that Cassius's address must be dated to 48, when Cassius ceased to resist Caesar, and considers it unlikely that Epicureanism was a sufficient or primary motivation for his subsequent decision to take violent action against the dictator. Rather, Cassius would have to reconcile his intentions with his philosophical views. Cicero provides evidence that the Epicureans recognized circumstances where direct action was justified in a political crisis. In the above quote, Cassius clearly rejects the idea that morality is a good to be chosen for its own sake; morality as a means to achieve pleasure and ataraxia
is not inherently superior to the removal of political anxieties.
The inconsistencies between traditional Epicureanism and the activist approach to securing freedom could not ultimately be resolved, and during the Empire the philosophy of political opposition tended to be stoic. This fact, Momigliano argues, helps explain why historians of the imperial era considered Cassius more difficult to understand than Brutus and less admirable.
Notes[edit]
- Nodelman, pp. 57-59.
- Quaestor in the Roman Republic
. item 232. ISBN. 978-3-11-066341-9. - Ronald Syme, The Roman Revolution
(Oxford University Press, 1939, reprinted 2002), p. 57 online;
Elizabeth Rawson, "Caesar: Civil War and Dictatorship," in Cambridge Ancient History: The Last Century of the Roman Republic, 146–43
BC." (Cambridge University Press, 1994), vol. 9, p. 465. - Plutarch. "Life of Caesar". University of Chicago
. p. 595. ... at this moment Decimus Brutus, surnamed Albinus, whom Caesar trusted so much that he was included in his will as his second heir, but was an accomplice in the conspiracy of the others Brutus and Cassius, fearing that if Caesar should evade in that The day their enterprise becomes known, the seers will ridicule and reproach Caesar for exposing himself to malicious accusations from the senators... - Suetonius (121). "De Vita Caesarum" [Twelve Cases]. University of Chicago
. item 107. Archived from the original on 2012-05-30. More than sixty joined the conspiracy against [Caesar], led by Gaius Cassius, Marcus and Decimus Brutus. - Dante, Inferno: Canto XXXIV
- Cook, W. R., & Herzman, R. B. (1979). "Inferno XXXIII: Past and Present in the Images of Dante's Betrayal." Italica
, 56(4), 377–383. JSTOR 478665. “For the vision of Satan that is Dante, the pilgrim, the last glimpse of hell, shows the three mouths of Satan gnawing on each of the three great traitors - Brutus, Cassius and Judas.” - Plutarch, Brutus
, 9.1-4 - Appian, Civil Wars
, 4.67. - Plutarch, Brutus
, 14.4 - Morrell, Keith (2017). Pompey, Cato and the Rule of the Roman Empire
. Oxford University Press. p. 184. ISBN 9780198755142. - Gareth S. Sampson, The Defeat of Rome
,
Crassus' Carrs and the Invasion of the East
, p.159 - Caesar, Civil War
, iii.101. - However, Suetonius ( Caesar
, archived 2012-05-30 at Archive.today) says that it was Lucius Cassius who surrendered to Caesar at the Hellespont. - In a letter written in 45 BC, Cassius tells Cicero: “There is nothing that gives me more pleasure than to write to you; because I seem to be talking and joking with you face to face” ( Ad Fam.
, XV.19). - T. R. S. Broughton, Magistrates of the Roman Republic
(American Philological Association, 1952), vol. 2, p. 320, citing Plutarch,
Brutus
7.1–3 and
Caesar
62.2;
and Appian, Bellum Civile
4.57. - For example, Cicero, Ad Fam.
,xii.3.1. - Vella Paterculus, 2.58.5; Plutarch, Brutus
, 18.2-6. - Plutarch, The Fall of the Roman Republic, sec. 69.
- Adkins, Roy A.; Adkins, Leslie (1998). "Republic and Empire". A Guide to Life in Ancient Rome
. Oxford University Press, USA. paragraph 14. ISBN 978-0-19-512332-6. Retrieved August 7, 2009. - Plutarch, Life of Brutus
, 44.2. - David Sedley, "The Ethics of Brutus and Cassius", Journal of Roman Studies
87 (1997) 41–53. - Cicero, Ad familiares
xv.16.3. - Quoted Miriam Griffin, “Philosophy, Politics and Politicians in Rome,” in Philosophia togata: Essays on Philosophy and Roman Society
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989). - For a survey of Roman Epicureans active in politics, see Arnaldo Momigliano, Benjamin Farrington's Survey of Science and Politics in the Ancient World
(London, 1939), in
Journal of Roman Studies
31 (1941), pp. 151–157. - Momigliano, Journal of Roman Studies
31 (1941), p. 151. - Miriam Griffin, "Intellectual Development in the Age of Cicero", in Cambridge Ancient History
(Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 726 online. - Spe pacis et odio civilis sanguinis
("with hope for peace and hatred of the shedding of blood in civil war"), Cicero,
Ad fam
.
XV.15.1; Miriam Griffin, “Philosophy, Politics and Politicians in Rome,” in Philosophia togata
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989). - For the quotation of the Epicurean passage in this letter, see the article on the philosopher Catius.
- D. R. Shackleton Bailey, Cicero Epistulae ad familiares
, vol.
2 (Cambridge University Press, 1977), p. 378 online, in a note to one of Cicero's letters to Cassius ( Ad fam
. Xv.17.4), which identifies evidence that he believes Momigliano overlooked. - Miriam Griffin, "Philosophy, Politics and Politicians in Rome", in Philosophia togata
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), citing in particular Plutarch,
Caesar
66.2 on the lack of philosophical justification for the murder of Caesar: Cassius is said to have committed the act despite on his devotion to Epicurus. - Arnaldo Momigliano, Journal of Roman Studies
31 (1941), pp. 151-157.
A summary of Cassius' Epicureanism is also in David Sedley, "The Ethics of Brutus and Cassius," Journal of Roman Studies
87 (1997), p. 41. - ^ a b
Momigliano,
Journal of Roman Studies
31 (1941), p. 157. - Catius and Amafinius were Epicurean philosophers known for their popularization of the approach and criticism of Cicero for their simplified-down prose style.
- Ad familiares
xv.19; The Latin text of this letter by Shackleton Bailey is available online. - Cicero, De republica
1.10. - David Sedley, “The Ethics of Brutus and Cassius,” Journal of Roman Studies
87 (1997), pp. 41 and 46–47.
Cultural images
In Dante's Inferno
(Canto XXXIV), Cassius is one of the three people considered sinful enough to be chewed in one of the three mouths of Satan, in the very center of Hell, throughout eternity, as punishment for the murder of Julius Caesar. The other two are Brutus, his fellow conspirator, and Judas Iscariot, the biblical traitor of Jesus.
Cassius also plays an important role in Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar
(I. II. 190–195) as leader of the plot to assassinate Caesar. Caesar does not trust him and states: “Yonda Cassius has a lean and hungry appearance; he thinks too much: such people are dangerous.” In one of the final scenes of the play, Cassius mentions to one of his subordinates that October 3 is his birthday and dies soon after.
Gospel story
In the New Testament, the episode of the piercing of Christ’s body with a spear is contained only in the Gospel of John:
|
Evangelist Mark, without reporting the piercing of Christ’s body with a spear, reports the presence at the execution of a Roman centurion, who said immediately after the death of Jesus: “ Truly this man was the Son of God.”
"(Mark 15:39).
The name of the Roman soldier is not mentioned by the evangelists and is known only from apocryphal sources.
Recommendations
- This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Cassius". Encyclopedia Britannica
(11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. - Nodelman, Sheldon (1987). "Portrait of Brutus the Tyrannicide." In Jiri Frel; Arthur Houghton and Marion True (eds.). Ancient Portraits at the J. Paul Getty Museum: Volume 1
.
Periodical articles on antiquities. 4
. Malibu, California, USA: J. Paul Getty Museum. pp. 41–86. ISBN 0-89236-071-2.
External links [edit]
| Wikimedia Commons has media related to Gaius Cassius Longinus . |
- Gaius Cassius Longinus in the Encyclopedia Britannica
- "Cassius Longinus" in the Jewish Encyclopedia
- Letters to and from Cassius from Cicero's Letters of Friends
- "The Life of Brutus" - from
Plutarch's Parallel Lives
| Authoritative control |
|
further reading
- Cassius Dio Cocceanus (1987). Roman History: The Reign of Augustus
. Ian Scott-Kilvert, trans. London: Penguin Books. - Cicero, Marcus Tullius (1986). Selected Letters
. DRH Shackleton Bailey, trans. London: Penguin Books. - Gowing, Alain M. (1990). "Speech of Appian and Cassius before Philip ("Bella Civilia" 4.90–100)." Phoenix
.
44
(2): 158–181. DOI: 10.2307/1088329. JSTOR 1088329. - Plutarch (1972). The Fall of the Roman Republic: Six Lives
. Rex Warner, trans. New York: Penguin Books. - Plutarch (1965). Maker of Rome: The Nine Lives of Plutarch
. Ian Scott-Kilvert, trans. London: Penguin Books.
