Gaius Valerius Flaccus ( early 1st century BC) was a Roman general, politician and statesman. He was consul of the Roman Republic in 93 BC and a provincial governor in the late-90s and throughout the 80s. He is notable for his balanced stance during the Sullan civil wars, the longevity of his term as governor, and his efforts to extend citizenship to non-Romans.
He followed a normal course of magisterial roles in his younger years, culminating in his consulship, the highest civil rank in republican Rome. In 92 he was appointed governor of one or both of the Roman provinces in Hispania, inheriting a bloody insurrection. He suppressed it and governed for a lengthy period, with noted punctilio to legal procedures. At some point in the 80s Flaccus was appointed governor of Gallia Transalpina (southern France); it is possible that at the same time he was also governor of Gallia Cisalpina (northern Italy). It is not known whether he retained his governorships in Hispania at the same time.
Flaccus remained neutral in the series of conflicts between the Marius-Cinna faction and that of Sulla, until his brother Lucius Flaccus was killed by a supporter of Marius and Cinna. He then shifted towards supporting Sulla, without overtly declaring for him. Sulla triumphed in 82 and Flaccus celebrated a triumph under his dictatorship.
Life and career
Valerius Flaccus was praetor, a senior administrative and judicial position, sometime before 95 BC, most probably in 96. An inscription from Claros (in modern Turkey) indicates that following his praetorship and before 95 he held a promagisterial, or senior military, command in the Roman province of Asia. Both he and his brother Lucius, who was a governor of Asia in the late 90s and again for 85, are honored as patrons of the city of Colophon in Ionia. The two are the first Roman governors known to be addressed as patrons of a free city, a practice that became common in the 60s BC.
Flaccus may have been a candidate for the consulship of 94, losing to the novus homo ("new man") Gaius Coelius Caldus, ran against two highly distinguished candidates and beat one of them. It was not unusual for a defeated candidate to run again the following year, as Flaccus did, often with success. Flaccus was successful in being elected as a consul in 93; his colleague was M. Herennius.
Proponent of citizenship
In 96, while praetor urbanus, the senior magistrate of the city of Rome, Flaccus sponsored legislation to grant citizenship to Calliphana of Velia, a priestess of Ceres. Julius Caesar, in his account of the Gallic Wars, identifies the Helvian Celt Caburus as another recipient of citizenship from Flaccus, during his time as governor of Gallia Transalpina. Caburus followed custom in assuming his patron's gentilic name Gaius Valerius. This interest in expanding citizenship may be viewed in the context of the family's moderate popularism and their relations with social inferiors. Modern historian Ernst Badian has pointed out that the Valerii Flacci "were given to taking up new men and families: inscriptions (Inschr. V. Magn. 144f.) reveal a policy of low-class connections."
Hispania
Flaccus succeeded Titus Didius as proconsul of Hispania Citerior, a province in north east Hispania, in 92, and assumed his post before the conclusion of his consulship in order to deal with an uprising among the Celtiberi, the major native group of the central-eastern Iberian Peninsula. The historian Appian says the revolt was motivated by the exceptional cruelty and treachery of Didius, who had dealt with unrest and crime among the poor by promising them land to live on and then luring them into a trap. When the families had assembled within a Roman fort for the required registration, Didius slaughtered them all. While implying that the revolt against Didius was justified, Appian's account of the subsequent actions of Flaccus is not overtly critical. In an attempt to restore order, Flaccus engaged in armed conflicts that left 20,000 Celtiberi dead. At Belgida, however, the local senate refused to issue an official declaration of war against Rome, or were perhaps still deliberating. The rebels set fire to the structure and burned their own senators alive. The local reaction to the mass murder of their governing class was no doubt mixed. Flaccus appears to have been successful in halting large-scale violence, perhaps because he capitalized on any outrage or ambivalence within the community at the deaths of their senators and executed those responsible.