Marcus Porcius Cato (consul 36)
Marcus Porcius Cato was a
Life
The historian
Apparently in the lost books of his Annales Tacitus recounts Cato's execution, for, at the conclusion of a passage about the condemnation of Titus Sabinus, Tacitus admits to wanting to describe the deaths of those who had informed against him. The historian remarks that some were executed after Caligula came to power, while others perished at Tiberius' command. After noting how these informants mattered so little to Tiberius that "he frequently, when he was tired of them and fresh ones offered themselves for the same services, flung off the old", Tacitus promises to describe their fates at the appropriate section.[5] None of these men are mentioned again in the surviving portions of his work, yet Frontinus reports that Cato was cura aquarum in the year 38, so it is safe to conclude that Caligula had Porcius Cato executed between that year and the year of his own death (AD 41).[6]
While the name of his wife is not yet known, Cato was survived by a daughter, Porcia, a cousin of Gellius Rutilius Lupus.[7]
See also
Notes
- ^ Alison E. Cooley, The Cambridge Manual of Latin Epigraphy (Cambridge: University Press, 2012), p. 460
- ^ Syme, The Augustan Aristocracy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), p. 223 n. 30
- ^ Dyson, "The Distribution of Roman Republican Family Names in the Iberian Peninsula", Ancient Society, Vol. 11/12 (1980/1981), pp. 238-263
- ^ Tacitus, Annales, IV.68-70
- ^ Tacitus, Annales, IV.71
- ^ Frontinus, de Aquis, 102
- ^ Steven Rutledge, Imperial Inquisitions: Prosecutors and informants from Tiberius to Domitian (London: Routledge, 2001), p. 260