Titus Ampius Balbus

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Titus Ampius Balbus, son of Titus, was a Plebeian politician of Ancient Rome. He was of the Ampia gens, members of the Roman tribe of Horatia, and lived in the 1st century BCE. The writer Cicero called him "the trumpet of the Civil War". [1] [2]

Titus served as tribune of the plebs in 63 BCE, and proposed, in conjunction with his colleague Titus Labienus, that Pompey, who was then absent from Rome, should, on account of his victories in Asia, be allowed to wear a laurel-crown and all the insignia of a triumph in the Roman circus, and also a laurel crown and the toga praetexta in the scenic games. [3]

He failed in his first attempt to obtain the aedileship, although he was supported by Pompey; [4] but he appears to have been praetor in 59 BCE, as we find that he was the proconsul of Asia in 58 BCE. [1] Some cistophori of his exist, minted with his name and bearing an unusual symbol of a sacrificial tripod. [5]

On the breaking out of Caesar's civil war in 49 BCE, Titus sided with the Pompeian party, and took an active part in the levy of troops at Capua with Lucius Cornelius Lentulus Crus, under whom he appears to have been serving as legate. [6] [7] He no doubt left Italy with the rest of his party, for we find him in the next year endeavoring to obtain money by plundering the temple of Diana in Ephesus, which he was prevented from doing only by the arrival of Julius Caesar. [8] With Lentulus he helped raise two legions in the province of Asia, though the Roman-Jewish historian Josephus also mentions Titus as having implemented Lentulus's law exempting the province's Jews from military service. [9] [10] [11] [12]

Balbus was one of those who was banished by Caesar; but he afterwards obtained his pardon through the intercession of his friend Cicero, who wrote him a letter on the occasion, in 46 BCE. [1]

Balbus appears to have written some work on the history of his times, possibly a biography of Julius Caesar; [13] for the Roman historian Suetonius quotes some remarks of Caesar's from a work of Titus Ampius. [14] Some scholars have raised some suspicions about the extent to which Balbus -- a staunch Pompey partisan -- might have twisted Caesar's words or quoted him out of context to show him in a profoundly arrogant, hubristic light, as the quote Balbus attributes to Caesar ("the res publica is nothing") is quite shocking. [15] [16] Balbus was also mentioned in the fourth book of the writer Marcus Terentius Varro, "De Vita Populi Romani." [17]

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 Cicero, Epistulae ad Familiares 1.3, 6.12.3, 13.70
  2. ↑ Scullard, Howard Hayes; Badian, Ernst (December 22, 2015). "Ampius Balbus, Titus". In Grig, Lucy (ed.). Oxford Classical Dictionary . Oxford University Press . Retrieved 2025-10-16.
  3. ↑ Velleius Paterculus, Historiae Romanae 2.40
  4. ↑ Bobbio Scholiast, on Cicero's Pro Plancia p. 257, ed. Orelli
  5. ↑ Cody, Jane M. (1973). "New Evidence for the Republican Aedes Vestae". American Journal of Archaeology . 77 (1). Archaeological Institute of America: 43–50. doi:10.2307/503231 . Retrieved 2025-10-16.
  6. ↑ Cicero, Epistulae ad Atticum 8.11, b.
  7. ↑ Johnson, Allan Chester; Bourne, Frank Card; Coleman-Norton, Paul Robinson, eds. (1961). Ancient Roman Statutes: A Translation, with Introduction, Commentary, Glossary, and Index. University of Texas Press. p. 85-86. ISBN   9780598273604 . Retrieved 2025-10-16.{{cite book}}: ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)
  8. ↑ Julius Caesar, Commentarii de Bello Civili 3.105
  9. ↑ Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews xiv, 230
  10. ↑ González-Salinero, Raúl (2022). "Military Exemption as a Jewish Privilege". Military Service and the Integration of Jews Into the Roman Empire. Brill Publishers. p. 33. ISBN   9789004507258 . Retrieved 2025-10-16.
  11. ↑ Ritter, Bradley (2015). Judeans in the Greek Cities of the Roman Empire: Rights, Citizenship and Civil Discord. Brill Publishers. p. 212. ISBN   9789004292352 . Retrieved 2025-10-16.
  12. ↑ Stern, M. (1974). "The Jewish Diaspora". In Safrai, S.; Stern, M. (eds.). The Jewish People in the First Century: Historical Geography, Political History, Social, Cultural and Religious Life and Institutions. Vol. 1. Brill Publishers. p. 143. ISBN   9789004275003 . Retrieved 2025-10-16.
  13. ↑ Canfora, Luciano (2007). Julius Caesar: The Life and Times of the People's Dictator. University of California Press. p. 140. ISBN   9780520235021 . Retrieved 2025-10-16.
  14. ↑ Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars , "Julius Caesar" 77
  15. ↑ Collins, John H. (1955). "Caesar and the Corruption of Power". Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte . 4 (4). Franz Steiner Verlag: 445–65. Retrieved 2025-10-16.
  16. ↑ Spielberg, Lydia (2017). "LANGUAGE, 'STASIS' AND THE ROLE OF THE HISTORIAN IN THUCYDIDES, SALLUST AND TACITUS". The American Journal of Philology . 138 (2): 331–73. Retrieved 2025-10-16.
  17. ↑ Marcus Terentius Varro, Fragments p. 249, ed. Bip.

PD-icon.svg This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain :  Smith, William (1870). "T. Ampius Balbus". In Smith, William (ed.). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology . Vol. 1. p. 455.

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