A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology

11. C.Trebonius, played rather a prominent part in the last days of the republic. He commenced public life as a supporter of the aristocratical party, and in his quaestorship (B. C. 60) he attempted to prevent the adoption of P. Clodius into a plebeian family, contrary to the wish of the triumvirs. (Cic. Fam. 15.21.) He changed sides, however, soon afterwards, and in his tribunate of the plebs (B. C. 55) he was the instrument of the triumvirs in proposing that Pompey should have the two Spains, Crassus Syria, and Caesar the Gauls and Illyricum for another period of five years. This proposal received the approbation of the comitia, and is known by the name of the Lex Trebonia. (D. C. 39.33; Cic. Att. 4.8. b. § 2.) For this service he was rewarded by being appointed one of Caesar's legates in Gaul, where he remained till the breaking out of the civil war in B. C. 49. In the course of the same year he was intrusted by Caesar with the command of the land forces engaged in the siege of Massilia. (Caes. Gal. 5.24, 6.40, B. C. 1.36, 2.1; D. C. 41.19; Cic. Att. 8.3.7.) In B. C. 48 Trebonius was city-praetor, and in the discharge of his duties resisted the seditions attempts of his colleague M. Caelius Rufus to obtain by force the repeal of Caesar's law respecting the payment of debts. The history of these events is related elsewhere. [Vol. III. p. 672. b.] (Caes. Civ. 3.20, 21; D. C. 42.22.) Towards the end of B. C. 47, Trebonius, as propraetor, succeeded Q. Cassius Longinus in the government of Further Spain, but was expelled from the province by a mutiny of the soldiers who espoused the Pompeian party. Notwithstanding this want of success, he still continued to enjoy the favour and confidence of Caesar, who raised him to the consulship in the month of October, B. C. 45, and promised him the province of Asia. (D. C. 43.29, 46.) In return for all these honours and favours, Trebonius was one of the prime movers in the conspiracy to assassinate his benefactor, and among the many instances of black ingratitude on the fatal Ides of March, his was

one of the blackest. It had been assigned to Trebonius to keep Antonius engaged in conversation outside the senate-house while the other conspirators perpetrated the foul deed. Trebonius did not remain long at Rome after the murder of Caesar, but went as proconsul to the province of Asia. In the following year (B. C. 43) he sent a supply of money to M. Brutus in Macedonia, and to C. Cassius who was attempting to obtain possession of Syria. In the course of the same year, Dolabella, who had received from Antonius the province of Syria, appeared before Smyrna. where Trebonius was then residing, surprised the town in the night time, and slew Trebonius in his bed. For details see DOLABELLA, p. 1059. b. (D. C. 44.14, 19, 47.21, 26, 29; Plut. Brut. 19; Appian, App. BC 2.113, 117, 3.2, 26; Cic. Phil. 2.11, 14, 11.1, 2, 4, 12.10, 13.10, ad Fam. 10.28, ad Att. 14.10, ad Fam. 12.12, 14, 15.) A few of Cicero's letters are addressed to this Trebonius (ad Fam. 10.28, 12.16, 15.20, 21). The panegyrics which Cicero pronounces upon this ungrateful wretch in his letters and in the Philippics are most disgusting, and the language which the orator uses on one occasion in reference to the murder of the great man to whom he owed his own life, is positively so loathsome that it deprives us of almost all pity for his own fate. Thus he writes to Trebonius (ad Fam. 10.28) : -- " Quam vellem ad illas pulcherrimas epulas me Idibus Martiis invitasses ! reliquiarum nihil haberemus."