Gaius Cassius Longinus was a Roman consul in 73 BC (together with Marcus Terentius Varro Lucullus). Cassius and his colleague passed the "lex Terentia Cassia" that ordered the state to buy up grain in Sicily and sell it for a low price in Rome [Cic. "Verr." 2.3.163 and 173] . As proconsul of Cisalpine Gaul in the next year, 72 BC, during the Third Servile War, Cassius tried to stop Spartacus and his followers near Mutina (now Modena) as the slave army was trying to break through to unoccupied Gaul, but suffered defeat and barely managed to get away alive. [Plut. "Crassus" 9.7] Two years later, Cassius appeared as witness of the prosecution in the trial against the corrupt former governor of Sicily, Verres. In 66 BCE, Cassius supported the Manilian law [Cic. "Manil." 68.] that gave command of the war against Mithridates to Pompey; he was joined in this by Cicero, then praetor, whose famous speech in support of the same bill survives. [ Cicero, "Pro lege Manilia" or "De imperio Cn. Pompei".]

This Cassius Longinus may have been the father of the more famous Caesar assassin, Gaius Cassius Longinus. [see Kleiner Pauly under Cassius 15.]

elected ancient Sources

*Livy, "Periochae" 96.
*Plutarch, "Crassus" 9.7.
*Florus, "Epitome" 2.8.10.
*Orosius 5.24.4. [Some of these sources are available in English translation from the Internet Ancient History Sourcebook (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/3slaverevolttexts.htm).]

ee also

*Appian, "Civil Wars" 1.117.

Notes

Bibliography

*Broughton, T. Robert S. "Magistrates of the Roman Republic," vol. 2. Cleveland: Case Western University Press, 1968, p. 109 and 117.
*Bradley, Keith. "Slavery and Rebellion in the Roman World." Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989, p. 96. ISBN 0253312590