Tiberius Julius Celsus Polemaeanus
Tiberius Julius Celsus Polemaeanus (
Biography
Tiberius Julius Celsus Polemaeanus was born around 45 CE to a family of
The cursus honorum of Celsus has been recorded in a Latin inscription recovered at Ephesus.[10] According to it, his earliest recorded office was military tribune in Legio III Cyrenaica, which was part of the garrison of Roman Egypt. The next recorded event in his life was his adlection into the Senate inter aedilicios by the Roman Emperor Vespasian and his son Titus, which was a reward Vespasian is known to have made to individuals who supported him during the Year of the Four Emperors. Exactly how Celsus supported Vespasian is not known: the Roman governor of Egypt at the time, Tiberius Julius Alexander, was the first governor to declare publicly for Vespasian (1 July 69);[11] a vexillation of Legio III Cyrenaica participated in the First Jewish–Roman War (66–73 CE), and Celsus may have come to Vespasian's notice that way. Regardless of the reason, promotion to the Senate was a significant social and political achievement for Celsus.
Following this, Celsus achieved the republican magistracy of
The next steps in his career are less problematic. Celsus was then commissioned
After discharging his duties as consul, Celsus was admitted to the and Celsus quietly returned home to Ephesus.
With the reign of Trajan, Celsus returned to public life, and served a term as proconsular governor of Asia in 105–106 CE.[18] He died some time before 117 CE, the year Gaius Julius Severus of Ancyra erected a monument mentioning Celsus Polemaeanus.[19]
Family
From the numerous inscriptions in Ephesus that relate to him, Corbier was able to determine many details of Celsus Polemaeanus' family.[20] Celsus had married a Quintilla, possibly related to the provincial family known to have flourished at Alexandria Troas at this time. Together they had at least three children:
- Julia Quintilla Isauria. Corbier suggests she acquired the nickname "Isauria" because she was born while Celsus was legate of Cappadocia and the related territories. She married Tiberius Claudius Julianus; their grandson Tiberius Claudius Julianus was suffect consul in 154.
- Tiberius Julius Aquila Polemaeanus, suffect consul in 110.
- A daughter, who married a member of the gens Scribonia; their son Scribonianus is attested as procurator Augusti.
Library of Celsus
The
References
- ISBN 978-3-11-015244-9.
Λέοντας Τιβερίου Ιουλίου Κέλσου Πολεμαιανοϋ δούλος
- ISBN 978-3-515-08684-4.
By contrast, Greek senators were more than free to lavish their wealth on their own cities or other ones…Celsus Polemaeanus of Sardis endows a library at Ephesus in which he is honored both as a Greek and a Roman; the library itself may have had a similar dual character, recalling the twin libraries of Trajan at Rome.
- ISBN 978-0-19-815231-6.
Sardis had already seen two Greek senators ... Ti. Julius Celsus Polemaeanus, cos. Suff. N 92 (Halfmann 1979: no 160), who endowed the remarkable Library of Celsus at Ephesus, and his son Ti. Julius Aquila Polemaeanus, cos. suff. in 110, who built most of it.
- Classical Quarterly, 31 (1981), pp. 191, 218
- ^ ISBN 978-0-472-08420-3.
…statues (lost except for their bases) were probably of Celsus, consul in A.D. 92, and his son Aquila, consul in A.D. 110. A cuirass statue stood in the central niche of the upper storey. Its identification oscillates between Tiberius Julius Celsus Polemaeanus, who is buried in a sarcophagus under the library, and Tiberius Julius Aquila Polemaeanus, who completed the building for his father
- ISBN 978-0-415-13591-7.
Apart from the public buildings for which such benefactors paid – the library at Ephesos, for example, recently reconstructed, built by Tiberius Iulius Aquila Polmaeanus in 110-20 in honour of his father Tiberius Iulius Celsus Polemaeanus, one of the earliest men of purely Greek origin to become a Roman consul
- ^ , possibly in 105/6. Celsus' son, Aquila, was also to be made suffectus in 110, although he is certainly remembered more as the builder of the famous library his father envisioned for Ephesus.
- ^ Greek of Ephesus or Sardiswho became the first eastern consul.
- OCLC 560733.
The Julio-Claudian emperors admitted relatively few Greeks to citizenship, but these showed satisfaction with their new position and privileges. Tiberius is known to have enfranchised only Tib. Julius Polemaeanus, ancestor of a prominent governor later in the century, and the hellenized Tib. Julius Alexander. 1 16 His popular governor of Achaia, P. Memmius Regulus (IG II2 4174)
- ^ AE 1904, 99 = ILS 8971
- ^ Gwyn Morgan, 69 A.D.: The Year of Four Emperors (Oxford: University Press, 2006), pp. 184f
- ^ a b c Corbier, L'aerarium saturni et l'aerarium militare; Administration et prosopographie sénatoriale, Publications de l'École française de Rome, 24 (Rome: École Française de Rome, 1974), p. 376
- ^ Rémy, Les carrières sénatoriales dans les provinces romaines d'Anatolie au Haut-Empire (31 av. J.-C. - 284 ap. J.-C.) (Istanbul: Institut Français d'Études Anatoliennes-Georges Dumézil, 1989), p. 63 n. 41
- ^ Werner Eck, "Jahres- und Provinzialfasten der senatorischen Statthalter von 69/70 bis 138/139", Chiron 13 (1983), p. 309
- ^ Eck, "Jahres- und Provinzialfasten", pp. 316-318
- ^ Corbier, L'aerarium saturni, p. 377
- ^ For a discussion of this period, see Brian W. Jones, The Emperor Domitian (London: Routledge, 1993), pp. 180-192
- ^ Eck, "Jahres- und Provinzialfasten", p. 341
- ^ Corbier, L'aerarium saturni, p. 378
- ^ Corbier, L'aerarium saturni, pp. 377f
- ISBN 978-0-19-957780-4.
… and son of Julius Celsus Polemaeanus, proconsul of Asia, who founds the Celsian library from his own wealth …
- OCLC 5099783.
After all, the library was simultaneously the sepulchral monument of Celsus and the crypt contained his sarcophagus. The very idea of honouring his memory by erecting a public library above his grave need not have been the original conception of Tiberius Iulius Aquila the founder of the library.
- ^ "accessed November 27, 2012" (PDF).