Gaius Porcius Cato

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Gaius Porcius Cato (2nd century BC) minor Roman orator who became consul in 114 BC.

Second son of Marcus Porcius Cato Licinianus and Aemilia Tertia, a younger sister of the Aemilian Scipio Africanus (consul 147 and 134). As a young man he became a follower of Tiberius Gracchus,[1] whose sister Sempronia was married to his uncle Scipio Aemilianus. Only a mediocre orator,[2] Cicero's brief reference to his extreme fame and power - clarissimus ac potentissimus - is explained by his exalted pedigree[3] though it cannot be excluded that he was also an able politician in his own right. As a military commander he was only notable for a disastrous campaign in the Balkans during his consulate in 114 BC.

Mint magistrate & coinage c.124 BC

As a mint magistrate (a convenient modern term for the official designation Tresvir Auro Argento Aere Flando Feriundo = man of three for smelting and striking gold, silver, bronze) about 124 BC Gaius Cato presided over the production of a largish issue of silver denarii (RRC 274/1) and much smaller numbers of bronze semis (or half-asses) (RRC 274/2) and quadrantes (quarter-asses) (RRC 274/3), all three types bearing his name legend in the form C·CATo.[4]

Standard description of the fairly simply design of his denarii
Obv. helmed head of Roma r., behind X
Rev. Victoria driving biga r., below C·CATo, in exergue: ROMA


Crawford estimated his denarius issue was struck from 228 obv. and 285 rev. dies,[5] but more recently actual die counts of the Republican silver issues have shown most of Crawford's estimates to be understated. Perhaps more likely he used about 300 dies and, at a die production average of about 14,000, may have struck up to 4 million denarii.


Senior career

praetor c.117 and then Commander of Sicily c.116-15, from which post he was convicted and fined for extortion.[6]

Consul 114 with Manius Acilius Balbus,[7] he was sent to Macedonia province to defend against various barbarian raiding nations but suffered a disastrous defeat at the hands of the Scordisci in which his entire army was destroyed.[8] The invasion pressures at this time were so severe that it took another six years and multiple victories by three subsequent Roman commanders of consular rank (C. Metellus cos.113 ; M. Drusus cos.112 ; M. Minucius Rufus cos.110) before the situation was restored.

Presumably one of the many envoys to king Jugurtha in 112 and subsequent years who accepted bribes, he was certainly one of four men of consular rank convicted in the special court of 109 BC known as the quaestio Mamiliana set up to investigate flagrant misconduct of Roman senators in their diplomacy with the Numidian king.[9] Cato's punishment included exile from Roman lands and he went to live in Tarraco, entering its citizenship and thereby extinguishing his Roman citizenship.[10] His highly unusual choice of Tarraco, the administrative capital of the Hispania Citerior province, as his place of exile underlines the patrocinium established in that province by his grandfather Cato the Elder.

No wife or children are on record, but there is no evidence documenting the correct lineage of the Licinian line of Porcii Catones in the late Republic after Gaius and his elder brother Marcus (cos.118) ; so it is possible that he was father of M. Cato the mint magistrate around 90 BC[11] and grandfather of Gaius Porcius Cato (tribune) (born around 90 BC).


References

  1. Cicero de amicitia 39
  2. Cicero Brutus 108
  3. In Verrem II, 4.22 : duorum hominum clarissimorum nepos, L. Pauli et M. Catonis, et P. Africani sororis filius. The Brutus 108 passage also describes him as Africani sororis filius
  4. Crawford RRC no. 274, pp. 294-5 ; see also Sydenham CRR 417-18, Babelon Porcia 1-2, Grueber BMCRR Italy, 461 etc.
  5. RRC, p. 294
  6. Badian article in Historia 42 (1993)
  7. fasti Antiates (ILLRP 8) : M/.ACILI.B[a]LBVS C.PO[r]CI.CAT[o] ; Chronograph of AD 354 : Bulbo et Cato ; Pliny NH II, 147 ; Julius Obsequens Prod.37
  8. Liv.Per. 63 ; Anneius Florus I, 39.3-4 ; Eutropius IV, 24
  9. Cicero Brutus 127-128
  10. Cicero pro Balbo 28, and Kelly 2006, p. 171
  11. RRC no. 343


Modern works

  • Miltner, Franz RE Porcius 5
  • Astin, A. E. : Scipio Aemilianus (Oxford, 1967)
  • Badian, Ernst : " The Legend of the Legate who lost his luggage ", Historia 42 (1993), pp. 203-210
  • Crawford, Michael H : Roman Republican Coin Hoards (Royal Numismatic Society, London, 1969)
  • Crawford, Michael H : Roman Republican Coinage (Cambridge UP, 1974)
  • Rear-Admiral William Henry Smyth, Descriptive Catalogue of a cabinet of Roman Family Coins belonging to His Grace the Duke of Northumberland (printed for private circulation by Savill & Edwards Printers, London, 1856)
  • Sydenham, E.A. : Coinage of the Roman Republic (1952)
  • Kelly, Gordon P : A History of Exile in the Roman Republic (Cambridge University Press, 2006)
  • Lockyear, Kris : Patterns and Process in Late Roman Republican Coin Hoards, 157 - 2 BC (British Archaeological Reports, International Series 1733, Archaeopress, Oxford, 2007) ISBN 978 1 4073 0164 8



Political offices
Preceded by Consul of the Roman Republic
with Manius Acilius Balbus
114 BC
Succeeded by
Gnaeus Papirius Carbo and Gaius Caecilius Metellus Caprarius