Julius Sabinus was an aristocratic Gaul of the Lingones at the time of the Batavian rebellion of AD 69. He attempted to take advantage of the turmoil in Rome after the death of Nero to set up an independent Gaulish state. After his defeat he was hidden for many years by his wife Epponina.
The story of the couple, with emphasis on the loyalty of Epponina (known as "Éponine"), became popular in France during the 18th and 19th centuries.
He was a Roman officer, naturalized, as indicated by his name. He claimed to be the great-grandson of Julius Caesar on the grounds that his great-grandmother had been Caesar's lover during the Gallic war. [1]
In AD 69, benefiting from the period of disorders which shook the Roman Empire and the rebellion started on the Rhine by the Batavians, he started a revolt in Belgian Gaul. However, his badly organised forces were easily defeated by the Sequani who were still faithful to Rome. Following his defeat, he faked his own death by telling his servants that he intended to kill himself. He then burned down the villa in which he was staying. He went into hiding in a nearby cellar, known only to his wife Epponina and a few faithful servants.
Following the failure of the revolt, the territory of Lingons was detached from Belgian Gaul, and was placed under the direct monitoring of the Roman army of the Rhine. It formed thus part of Roman province of Germania Superior.
Epponina then lived a double-life for many years as his widow, while also on one occasion even visiting Rome with Sabinus disguised as a slave. She even gave birth to two sons by her "deceased" husband. According to Plutarch she minimised her pregnancy using an ointment that made her flesh swell, concealing her pregnancy bump. She also gave birth alone and in secret. [2]
Eventually, the deception became too obvious to continue unnoticed. In AD 78 Sabinus and Epponina were arrested and taken to Rome to be questioned by the emperor Vespasian. Her pleas for her husband were ignored. She then berated Vespasian to such an extent that he ordered her execution along with her husband. Plutarch later wrote that "In the whole of his reign no darker deed than this, none more odious in the sight of heaven, was committed." [2]
Her two sons survived. Plutarch mentions that at the time he was writing one lived in Delphi and the other had recently been killed in Egypt (possibly in the Kitos War). [2]
The modernised French version of Epponina's name, Éponine, became familiar in revolutionary France, because of its connotations of wifely virtue, patriotism and anti-imperialism. Voltaire speaks of Plutarch's "magnificent praise for the virtue of Eponine.” [3] Even before the revolution there were several French works about Sabinus and Éponine. Michel-Paul-Gui de Chabanon's tragedy Éponine was performed in 1762. It formed the basis for Sabinus , an opera in five acts composed by François-Joseph Gossec, premiered at Versailles on 4 December 1773. [4] After the revolution Eponine et Sabinus (1796) was performed at the Lycée theatre. [5] De Lisle de Salles' novel Éponine led to his imprisonment during the Reign of Terror, as it was interpreted as an attack on the Committee of Public Safety. [6]
In his novel Les Misérables , the French author Victor Hugo used the name for Éponine, a character who also aspires to die with her own beloved in a revolution. Epponina also appears as "Éponine" in Baudelaire's poem Little old Ladies from Les Fleurs du Mal in a verse dedicated to Hugo:
These dislocated wrecks were women once,
Were Eponine or Laïs! hunchbacked freaks,
Though broken let us love them! they are souls. [7]
There were several paintings of the couple, including works by Nicolas-André Monsiau and Etienne Barthélémy Garnier. These usually depict them hiding in a cave, a reference to a myth that a cave near Langres was the place in which Sabinus had hidden. It is still locally known as "Sabinus' cave" (Grotte de Sabinus). Joseph Mills Hanson, who visited it shortly after World War I, described it as a "cave in the rock having two entrances, the one looking south, the other east. The interior is very irregular in outline but it is perhaps fifty feet deep, twenty feet wide, and seven feet high. Near the east entrance is a rough pillar, left evidently by the cutting away of the surrounding stone." A statue of the Virgin Mary was placed there, along with graffiti left by American soldiers in the war. [8]
Vespasian was Roman emperor from 69 to 79. The fourth and last emperor who reigned in the Year of the Four Emperors, he founded the Flavian dynasty that ruled the Empire for 27 years. His fiscal reforms and consolidation of the empire generated political stability and a vast Roman building program.
AD 69 (LXIX) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Julian calendar. In the Roman Empire, it was known as the Year of the consulship of Galba and Vinius. The denomination AD 69 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years.
The 60s decade ran from January 1, AD 60, to December 31, AD 69.
The Gallic Wars were waged between 58 and 50 BC by the Roman general Julius Caesar against the peoples of Gaul. Gallic, Germanic, and British tribes fought to defend their homelands against an aggressive Roman campaign. The Wars culminated in the decisive Battle of Alesia in 52 BC, in which a complete Roman victory resulted in the expansion of the Roman Republic over the whole of Gaul. Though the Gallic military was as strong as the Romans, the Gallic tribes' internal divisions eased victory for Caesar. Gallic chieftain Vercingetorix's attempt to unite the Gauls under a single banner came too late. Caesar portrayed the invasion as being a preemptive and defensive action, but historians agree that he fought the Wars primarily to boost his political career and to pay off his debts. Still, Gaul was of significant military importance to the Romans. Native tribes in the region, both Gallic and Germanic, had attacked Rome several times. Conquering Gaul allowed Rome to secure the natural border of the river Rhine.
Gaius Julius Civilis was the leader of the Batavian rebellion against the Romans in 69 AD. His nomen shows that he was made a Roman citizen by either Augustus or Caligula.
The Ubii were a Germanic tribe first encountered dwelling on the east bank of the Rhine in the time of Julius Caesar, who formed an alliance with them in 55 BC in order to launch attacks across the river. They were transported in 39 BC by Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa to the west bank, apparently at their own request, as they feared the incursions of their neighbors, the Chatti.
Legio V Alaudae, sometimes also known as Gallica, was a legion of the Roman army founded in 52 BC by the general Gaius Julius Caesar. It was levied in Transalpine Gaul to fight the armies of Vercingetorix, and was the first Roman legion to comprise non-citizens. Historians disagree whether the legion was destroyed during the Batavian rebellion in AD 70, or during the First Battle of Tapae.
The Revolt of the Batavi took place in the Roman province of Germania Inferior between AD 69 and 70. It was an uprising against the Roman Empire started by the Batavi, a small but militarily powerful Germanic tribe that inhabited Batavia, on the delta of the river Rhine. They were soon joined by the Celtic tribes from Gallia Belgica and some Germanic tribes.
The Year of the Four Emperors, AD 69, was the first civil war of the Roman Empire, during which four emperors ruled in succession: Galba, Otho, Vitellius, and Vespasian. It is considered an important interval, marking the transition from the Julio-Claudians, the first imperial dynasty, to the Flavian dynasty. The period witnessed several rebellions and claimants, with shifting allegiances and widespread turmoil in Rome and the provinces.
From its origin as a city-state on the peninsula of Italy in the 8th century BC, to its rise as an empire covering much of Southern Europe, Western Europe, Near East and North Africa to its fall in the 5th century AD, the political history of Ancient Rome was closely entwined with its military history. The core of the campaign history of the Roman military is an aggregate of different accounts of the Roman military's land battles, from its initial defense against and subsequent conquest of the city's hilltop neighbors on the Italian peninsula, to the ultimate struggle of the Western Roman Empire for its existence against invading Huns, Vandals and Germanic tribes. These accounts were written by various authors throughout and after the history of the Empire. Following the First Punic War, naval battles were less significant than land battles to the military history of Rome due to its encompassment of lands of the periphery and its unchallenged dominance of the Mediterranean Sea.
Veleda was seeress of the Bructeri, a Germanic people who achieved some prominence during the Batavian rebellion of AD 69–70, headed by the Romanized Batavian chieftain Gaius Julius Civilis, when she correctly predicted the initial successes of the rebels against Roman legions.
The gens Flavia was a plebeian family at ancient Rome. Its members are first mentioned during the last three centuries of the Republic. The first of the Flavii to achieve prominence was Marcus Flavius, tribune of the plebs in 327 and 323 BC; however, no Flavius attained the consulship until Gaius Flavius Fimbria in 104 BC. The gens became illustrious during the first century AD, when the family of the Flavii Sabini claimed the imperial dignity.
The Vangiones appear first in history as an ancient Germanic tribe of unknown provenance. They threw in their lot with Ariovistus in his bid of 58 BC to invade Gaul through the Doubs river valley and lost to Julius Caesar in a battle probably near Belfort. After some Celts evacuated the region in fear of the Suebi, the Vangiones, who had made a Roman peace, were allowed to settle among the Mediomatrici in northern Alsace.. They gradually assumed control of the Celtic city of Burbetomagus, later Worms.
Legio XI Claudia was a legion of the Imperial Roman army. The legion was levied by Julius Caesar for his campaign against the Nervii. XI Claudia dates back to the two legions recruited by Julius Caesar to invade Gallia in 58 BC, and it existed at least until the early 5th century, guarding lower Danube in Durostorum.
Titus Flavius T. f. T. n. Sabinus was a Roman politician and soldier. A native of Reate, he was the elder son of Titus Flavius Sabinus and Vespasia Polla, and brother of the Emperor Vespasian.
Cornelius Fuscus was a Roman general who fought campaigns under the Emperors of the Flavian dynasty. He first distinguished himself as one of Vespasian's most ardent supporters during the civil war of 69 AD, known as the Year of the Four Emperors. Vespasian's son Domitian employed Fuscus as prefect of the Praetorian Guard, a post he held from 81 until his death.
Ambiorix's revolt was an episode during the Gallic Wars between 54 and 53 BC in which the Eburones tribe, under its leader, Ambiorix, rebelled against the Roman Republic.
Julius Classicus was a Gaulish nobleman and military commander of the 1st century AD, belonging to the tribe of the Treviri. He served as a commander of the Roman auxiliaries. Along with Julius Tutor, another Treviran Roman auxiliary commander, and Julius Sabinus, who claimed descent from Gaius Julius Caesar, he joined the rebellion of Gaius Julius Civilis during the disorder of the Year of the Four Emperors.
Gaius Calvisius Sabinus was a consul of the Roman Republic in 39 BC under the Second Triumvirate. He and his consular colleague Lucius Marcius Censorinus had been the only two senators who tried to defend Julius Caesar when his assassins struck on 15 March 44 BC, and their consulship under the triumvirate is taken as a recognition of their loyalty. An inscription, described by Ronald Syme as "one of the most remarkable inscriptions ever set up in honour of a Roman senator," praises Calvisius for pietas, his sense of duty or devotion. As a military officer, Calvisius is notable for his long service and competence, though he was not without serious defeats.
Sabinus is an opera by the composer François-Joseph Gossec. It originally took the form of a tragédie lyrique in five acts. The French-language libretto, by Michel Paul Guy de Chabanon, concerns the revolt of the Gaulish nobleman Julius Sabinus and his wife Epponina (Éponine) against Roman rule. The opera had its first performance at Versailles on 4 December 1773 in the presence of King Louis XV, before transferring to the Paris Opéra on 22 February 1774. Sabinus was not a success, even in a revised four-act version, and was soon withdrawn. Assessments of the music has been mixed, but some modern critics share Gossec's view that Sabinus prefigures the revolution in operatic practice Christoph Willibald von Gluck would soon introduce to Paris.
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