https://doi.org/10.31261/WSN.2005.05.02
The author’s object of interest is the C. Scribonius Curio’s actions during the Senate’s session on March 1,50 B.C. at which it was made impossible to deprive C. Julius Caesar of his position of the governor of the Gallic provinces. As a result, the said session, in spite of long and careful preparations, and even though it was called only for the sake of solving this particular problem, ended in fiasco. Curio’s actions led to the failure of all efforts made by Pompey and his allies, from the ranks of the optimates, who stood behind the session, already in the previous year. That tribune of the people contributed also to the inflammation of the conflict between Caesar on the one hand and Pompey and his allies, on the other, and also to the prolongation of the political squabbling, connected with this issue, until the beginning of January, 49. This is why C. Scribonius Curio had a hand in bringing about the outbreak of the civil war between Caesar and Pompey and his allies. In this context, we should see Curio’s, the tribune of the people’s, intervention, during that session of the Senate, as a very important event. It was also a kind of political masterpiece, for Curio, by preventing the act of taking away from Caesar the governorship of the Gallic provinces, enabled him to continue the defence of his position in the state. Curio organised his action in such a way as to avoid giving Caesar’s enemies a pretext for the immediate application of the sanctions previously prepared against him. Instead, he brought about the unmasking of Pompey and his optimates allies’ true intentions. The author’s purpose is then to elucidate all the important and accessible aspects of the actions undertaken by C. Scribonius Curio, the tribune of the people, at the Senate session on March 1,50 BC, and, in particular, to find out whether, to torpedo the plans of Caesar’s enemies, he made use of the right of veto, which then was a privilege of the tribune of the people. The problem is that Curio’s attitude and actions during that particular session have not been as yet successfully and unequivocally explained in the literature on the subject. Many scholars do not attach sufficient importance to this problem, while others, without basing their conclusions on an in-depth analysis of the source material, suggest that on that day Curio prevented Caesar’s loss of the Gallic provinces exactly by means of an intercession, which does not, however, correspond to what happened later in connection with the conflict between Pompey, with his optimates allies, and Caesar. Having analysed the policy of the parties involved in this quarrel, the source material, and the comments of the researchers interested in the subject in question, the author has come to the conclusion that the way Curio’s actions undertaken during that fateful session of the Senate are described in the literature on the subject leaves much to be desired. He has also shown that Curio could not, by any means, have achieved his purpose if he had resorted to an intercession. This was because the use of the right of veto would have immediately resulted in the application of the sanctions prepared against Caesar, whose situation would have become very complicated, which would have led, in the following months, to a course of events completely different from the one we know from the sources.
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Vol. 4 (2005)
Published: 2025-08-13
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