Gaius Sempronius Tuditanus was a politician and historian of theRoman Republic. He wasconsul in 129 BC.
Gaius Sempronius Tuditanus was a member of theplebeiangens Sempronia. His father had the same name and wassenator and in 146 BC member of a commission of ten men who had to reorganize the political conditions inGreece.[1] The Roman orator and politicianCicero confused several times the younger Tuditanus with his father and was informed of his mistake by his friendTitus Pomponius Atticus in May 45 BC.
Probably the younger Tuditanus is first attested in 146 BC as officer ofLucius Mummius Achaicus in his war in Greece.[2] In 145 BC Tuditanus wasQuaestor.[3] Probably because he was an adherent of the Scipiones he could pass thecurule offices within the legally allowed periods without any problems.[4] In 132 BC he wasPraetor.[5]
Tuditanus achieved the peak of his career in 129 BC when he became consul together withManius Aquillius.[6] He had to govern the province of Italy and was ordered by a resolution of the senate to decide on the legitimacy of the accusations of dispossessed Roman allies whose estates had been annexed by theGracchian commission for the allocation of fields. However, Tuditanus did not want to fulfill his task. Instead he went toIllyria, allegedly because of an imminent war. In this way he also prevented the allocation of additional fields.[7]
According to Livy, "Consul Gaius Sempronius at first fought unsuccessfully against theIapydians but the defeat was compensated by a victory won through the qualities ofDecimus Junius Brutus Callaicus (the man who had subdued Lusitania)."[8] However, according to Appian, "Sempronius Tuditanus and Tiberius Pandusa waged war with the Iapydes, who live among the Alps, and seem to have subjugated them."[9] Tuditanus was granted atriumph. He immortalized his victories over the Iapydes with a dedication to the river godTimavus inAquileia which bore a victory inscription inSaturnian verse and of which were found two fragments in 1906.[10] Probably the Roman poetHostius celebrated his deeds in the poemBellum Histricum.
Pliny the Elder, in his geographical work, quoted an inscription on the statue of Tuditanus (whom he called the conqueror of the Istrians because the Iapydes lived inIstria) which listed the Roman towns in Istria, gave the river Arsa as the border with Italy and stated that the area was 400 kilometres wide.[11]
He may have been the father of theSempronia who marriedDecimus Junius Brutus, the son ofDecimus Junius Brutus Callaicus.[12]
Tuditanus was also an author but only a few fragments of his works have been preserved. Cicero emphasized his elegant style.[13] In the internal Roman power struggles Tuditanus belonged to theOptimates and wrote a tendentious treatise on Roman constitutional law (libri magistratuum) in at least thirteen books for the political support of his party.[14] On the other sideMarcus Junius Congus Gracchanus was the author of a similar work,De potestatibus, at least seven books in length, that served the purposes of the party of the Gracchi. Both works were the earliest of their kind in the Roman literature. Thelibri magistratuum dealt with theintercalation, the appointment of the Plebeian Tribunes, thenundinae (market and feast days of the old Roman calendar), etc.
Because some quotations (e.g., about the original inhabitants ofLatium called Aborigines, about the discovery of books, that allegedly belonged to the legendary Roman kingNuma Pompilius, etc.) do not seem to fit into a work about constitutional law, some scholars attribute to Tuditanus another work dealing with the history of Rome from its foundation to the 2nd century BC.[15]
It was probably the Roman universal scholarMarcus Terentius Varro who found out that Tuditanus used the annalistsCato the Elder andLucius Cassius Hemina as sources for his works, as well as the fact that his account corresponded with that given by his contemporaryLucius Calpurnius Piso Frugi, but differed (because of the above-mentioned) from that by Junius Gracchanus. And it was again Varro who delivered the most preserved quotations of Tuditanus by later authors (Dionysius of Halicarnassus,Pliny the Elder, andMacrobius Ambrosius Theodosius). But two quotations byAulus Gellius (Attic Nights 7.4.1 and 13.15.4) go back to the historianQuintus Aelius Tubero (whoseson of the same name was consul in 11 BC) and the augur Messalla respectively.[16]
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| Preceded by | Roman consul 129 BC withManius Aquillius | Succeeded by Gnaeus Octavius Titus Annius Rufus |
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