Spurius Cassius Vecellinus

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Spurius Cassius Vecellinus was an early consul of the Roman Republic. Recorded in the fasti as consul in 502, 493, and 486 BC, his last consulship, with Proculus Verginius Tricostus Rutilus, is believed to have actually occurred in 480 BC, the year in which the Battle of Salamis took place in Ancient Greece, and thus provides a chronological reference for early Roman history.

Livy (2.17) mentions Cassius participating in a siege of Pometia during his first consulship. In 493 Cassius negotiated the treaty (foedus) of the Romans and Latins, which established both peaceful relations and a military alliance. Cicero mentions that a copy of this treaty still existed in his own time (Balb. 53), and Dionysius of Halicarnassus summarized its terms (6.95).

In 486, a treaty with the Hernici resulted in the surrender of two-thirds of their territory, which Cassius proposed to distribute to the plebs, along with private land which he declared was illegally held. His co-consul Verginius opposed this, and suggested that Cassius aimed at kingship; after his term of office was up, Cassius was tried and executed. (Livy 2.41). The story has anachronisms and similarities to the story of the Gracchi, so it may be at least partly invented.

Diodorus Siculus (11.1.2) stated that their praetorship coincided with the archonship of Calliades in Athens. Calliades was archon there in 480 BC, according to modern historians (Bickerman, 1980: 138). Herodotus (7.37, 166; 206; 8.51) confirms the possibility that the battles of Thermopylae and Salamis were fought shortly after the Olympic Games of that year, and only a few months after these events: "On approach of spring, the sun suddenly quitted his seat in the heavens, and disappeared" when Xerxes I left Sardis in Lydia, a few weeks or months before his crossing over to Greece. This total solar eclipse occurred on February 17, 478 BC, providing a valuable chronological reference.

References

Bickerman, E. J. (1980). Chronology of the ancient world. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

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