Talk:Gaius Vettius Sabinianus Julius Hospes

CE
Did a cheeky little ce, tidied a few typos, blammed dupe wikilinks, auto edded, moved a pic a couple of paras down. All suggestive, rv as desired. regards Keith-264 (talk) 12:57, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

Errors in this article
I noticed two errors in the section "Early Career", which mar an otherwise good article. Since I don't have access to the sources at the moment, I can't fix them myself.

1) It's clear that Hospes was an equestrian who was promoted to the Senatorial order, most likely thru adlection. The issue is whether he was adlected inter quaestores -- as an ex-quaestor (which would result with his needing to hold each of the traditional magistracies in order to command legions, govern provinces, hold the fasces), or adlected inter praetores. The first was the more common promotion, but by the 2nd century more equestrians were admitted to the Senate ex-praetor. (I believe in the 3rd century there are cases where men were adlected as ex-consuls!)

2) The bit about being appointed "legatus, commander of a legion, under the proconsular governor of Asia" is nonsensical. There were no legions in the province of Roman Asia, as was the case of all of the public provinces. (For some reason the Emperor wanted to keep control of all of the major military units.) However, proconsular governors were assisted by a legatus or assistant, so I suspect Hospes was a legate to one of the governors of Asia. The confusion comes because legionary commanders under the Empire held their commission as legates or assistants to the Emperor, not as officers of the Senate or the consuls.

Some other fixes could be made to this article, but these two are the most serious needing to be addressed. -- llywrch (talk) 17:40, 31 December 2019 (UTC)