Arulenus Rusticus
Quintus Junius Arulenus Rusticus (c. 35 – 93 AD) was a
His contemporaries referred to him in varying ways. The
Life
Arulenus Rusticus was Tribune of the plebs in AD 66, in which year Thrasea was condemned to death by the Roman Senate; he would have placed his veto upon the senatus consultum, had not Thrasea prevented him, as he would only have brought certain destruction upon himself without saving the life of the defendant.[3] He was praetor in the civil wars after the death of Nero (69 AD), when as one of the senate's ambassadors to the Flavian armies he was wounded by the soldiers of Petilius Cerialis.[4] Although Arulenus Rusticus attained a suffect consulship during the reign of Domitian, in the following year he was condemned to death because he wrote a panegyric to Thrasea.
When I was once lecturing in Rome, that famous Rusticus, whom Domitian later killed through envy at his repute, was among my hearers, and a soldier came through the audience and delivered to him a letter from the emperor. There was a silence and I, too, made a pause, that he might read his letter; but he refused and did not break the seal until I had finished my lecture and the audience had dispersed. Because of this incident everyone admired the dignity of the man.[5]
Suetonius attributes to him a panegyric on Helvidius Priscus, but the latter work was composed by Herennius Senecio, as we learn both from Tacitus and Pliny the Younger.
See also
- Junia (gens)
References
- Tacitus, Annals, xvi. 26, Histories, iii. 80, Agricola, 2
- Suetonius, Domitian, 10
- Dio Cassius, lxvii. 13
- Pliny, Epistles, i. 5, 14; iii. 11
- Plutarch, de Curiositate 15 (Moralia 822D–E)
- Prosopographia Imperii Romani (2nd ed.) I 730
- R. Syme, 'A Political Group', Roman Papers VII, pp. 568–587
- This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Smith, William, ed. (1870). "Rusticus, Junius (2)". Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Vol. 3. p. 680.