User:Appietas/Appius Claudius Pulcher (consul 79 BC)

Appius Claudius Pulcher (ca.130 - 76 BC).

Roman politician and general of the Italic ("Social") and Civil Wars, and post-Sullan periods.

One of the three praetors of 89 BC who presided over the en masse enrollment of the majority of the Italic population as Roman citizens under the terms of the Lex Plautia Papiria de civitate danda. Also notable for having his army "stolen" from him in 87 BC by the deposed consul Lucius Cornelius Cinna, his command rights cancelled by the victorious Marians, and for his subsequent expulsion from the Senate by the censors of 86 BC, who included his own nephew Lucius Marcius Philippus.

An adherent of Sulla in the Civil Wars, after whose victory he held a belated consulate in 79, and commanded Macedonia province 77-76 BC, where he died during difficult campaigning in the Rhodope mountains.

Lineage & family
Youngest son of the pro-Gracchan prince Appius Claudius Pulcher (consul 143, censor 136) by his second wife, apparently born in the year of his father's death (130 BC, or the early months of 129).

His own wives are not attested, and have to be worked out by reference to various fragments of information, notably the attested relationships of his numerous children with other eminent men and women of their time. The topic is one of the most complex and controversial of late Republican social history. An early theory, apparently going back to Drumann and Groebe in the 19th century and taken over by Friedrich Münzer, that Caecilia daughter of Q. Metellus Baliaricus (consul 123 BC) was his sole wife and mother of his children, has become the modern orthodoxy and is usually repeated as if factual. Unfortunately that is not the case and the orthodoxy is certainly wrong.

More plausibly (but by no means certainly) he married first a Mucia, daughter of P. Scaevola the pontifex maximus (consul 95 BC), a much older half-sister of Mucia Tertia, and second Servilia Drusi (daughter of Q. Servilius Caepio, an earlier pontifex maximus and consul 106 BC), who was divorced by her first husband Marcus Livius Drusus around 97 BC. Whatever the correct solution may prove to be, his wife or wives gave him eight children who survived to adulthood, five daughters and three sons:

Claudia maior, born ca.101

Claudia minor, born ca.100

Claudia Tertia,(c.98-c.30s) wife of Q. Marcius Rex (consul 68 BC)

Appius, (97-48) consul 54 BC

Caius, (96-40s) praetor 56 BC

Claudia Quarta, (ca.94-40s) wife of Q. Metellus Celer (consul 60 BC)

Publius (93-53), tr.pl.58, aed.cur.56, pr.candidate for 53

Claudia Quinta, (ca.91-post 46) wife of L. Lucullus (consul 74 BC)

Career Summary
Quaestor ca.99

Curule Aedile 91

Praetor 89

Commander of Campania (chiefly the ongoing siege of Nola), pro consule 88-7

Probably fled to Sulla in the east in 86 BC and returned with him in 83.

Consul 79, with P. Servilius Vatia

Allotted the Macedonian command for 78, but fell seriously ill at Tarentum on his way there and was forced to return to Rome and relinquish his command rights.

Primus Interrex, Kalends to Nones of January 77(R)

Commander of Macedonia 77-76

Public career details
His curule aedileship is referred to in passing by Cicero in a speech attacking his youngest son Publius Clodius Pulcher, to the detriment of the latter who held the same office.

His flight to Sulla's army in the east is a natural and easy corollary to his mistreatment by the Mario-Cinnan government. There is also some implied inscriptional evidence in support.

Macedonian command and death, 77-76 BC
After the Lepidus' decisive defeat and flight to Sardinia with his remnant forces, Appius was invested with consular command rights once again and sent to take over the Macedonian command from his legatus Manius Fonteius. In his absence Thracian invasions and pillaging of the province had persisted since Cn. Dolabella's departure, but Fonteius had acquitted himself well defending the northern cities by his planning and by personal example and valour in the battle line.

Appius too was faced with further invasions of great violence and savagery by Thracian nations of the Rhodope Mountains, but he no doubt brought out substantial reinforcements and could probably deploy a consular army at full strength against the enemy (some 25-30,000 troops). The detailed course of the operations are lost in the brief, summarizing extant sources, but Appius first inflicted some serious defeats on the Thracian raiders and then took the offensive, marching northward to attack the enemy in their home territories in and about the Rhodopa in an effort to keep them beyond the provincial frontiers. The Thracians, however, were very tough and agile combatants with unusually large populations and he soon found himself in trouble in the rugged and unfamiliar terrain. Some minor battles were fought without achieving anything. He appears to have stirred up a hornets' nest, and became anxious and depressed. While the tactical difficulties of his situation mounted his serious illness returned and this time proved quickly fatal.

He died somewhere in the Rhodopa in the late spring or summer of 76 BC. His two eldest daughters appear to have predeceased him, while the third Claudia had been married to Marcius Rex around the year of his consulate. The fourth was probably engaged to Metellus Celer in the same period or a little earlier, but Celer frequently served abroad and the marriage had not yet taken place. Indeed Metellus Celer probably served as a junior officer on Appius' command staff against the Thracians and perhaps under Appius' successor Gaius Scribonius Curio as well. Annaeus Florus' mistaken comment that Appius advanced as far as the Sarmatians applies to the later years of Curio's command (76-72 BC), certainly no earlier.

Appius' homonymous son and principal heir (the consul 54 BC) complained in later life that he had been left a pauper encumbered with two sisters and two brothers. Such "poverty" must be taken with a grain of salt and understood in the context of the increasingly vast wealth of the Roman aristocracy. Nevertheless many an adherent of Sulla had amassed great riches by questionable means, none more so than Appius' successor in the Macedonian command Gaius Curio pater and the notoriously unscrupulous Marcus Crassus, and it has been commented that Appius' comparative poverty is to his credit.

Modern works

 * Drumann/Groebe. W. Drumann Geschichte Roms, revised 2nd edition by P. Groebe (Leipzig, 1899-1929)
 * Münzer RA 1920/1999. Fr. Münzer Roman Aristocratic Parties and Families, Thérèse Ridley translation (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999) of the original Römische Adelsparteien und Adelsfamilien (J. B. Metzler, Stuttgart, 1920)
 * Münzer, Fr: s. v. Claudius (296), in RE vol.3, cols.2848-9
 * Badian, E: s. v. Claudius (10) Pulcher,  in The Oxford Classical Dictionary2 (1970), p.247
 * McDermott, William C: "The Sisters of P. Clodius", Phoenix 24 (1970), 39-47