Gaius Terentius Tullius Geminus was a Roman senator of the early Roman Empire, who flourished under the reign of Claudius. He was suffect consul in the nundinium of September-December 46 as the colleague of Marcus Junius Silanus.[1] It is inconclusive if a poet named Tullius Geminus, whose poems are included in the Palatine Anthology is the same man.[2]
Although Steven Rutledge dates the start of his senatorial career to the reign of Tiberius,[2] the earliest attested event in Geminus' life is his suffect consulship. He is attested as governor of Moesia in the 50s; a copy of a letter he wrote to the inhabitants of Histria upholding their rights to the mouth of the Danube was preserved in a set of inscriptions known as the Horothesia Laberiou Maximou.[3] Geminus appears in the Annales of Tacitus, as prosecuting Aulus Didius Gallus Fabricius Veiento at the direction of the emperor Nero for allegedly writing a collection of lampoons on senators and pontiffs called "Codicils"; Veiento was found guilty, banished from Italy, and copies of the pamphlets burned.[4]
References
edit- ^ Paul Gallivan, "The Fasti for the Reign of Claudius", Classical Quarterly, 28 (1978), pp. 408, 425
- ^ a b Rutledge, Imperial Inquisitions: Prosecutors and informants from Tiberius to Domitian (London: Routledge, 2001), p. 273
- ^ For Greek text and an English translation, see J.H. Oliver, "Texts A and B of the Horothesia Dossier at Istros", Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 6 (1965), pp. 143-156
- ^ Tactius, Annales, XIV.50