A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology

a Roman advocate in the reigns of Claudius and Nero, who appears to have used his profession as a mere means for enriching himself. For this reason he and some of his profession opposed a law by which advocates were to be forbidden to accept anyfees from their clients. In A. D. 56 he obtained Cilicia as his province, and there he acted with the same avarice and impudence as he had done before at Rome. In the year following, the Cilicians accused him of extortion, and he was condemned, in consequence of which he lost his senatorial rank. But this he afterwards received back, through the mediation of Tigellinus, his father-in-law; and shortly after, A. D. 62, he accused the praetor Antistius Sosianus of high treason. In A. D. 66, Annaeus Mela, the brother of the philosopher Seneca, and father of the poet Annaeus Lucan, left a large legacy to Tigellinus and Cossutianus Capito, the latter of whom came forward in the same year as the accuser of Thrasea Paetus, for Thrasea had formerly supported the cause of the Cilicians against him, and had been instrumental in bringing about his condemnation. Capito was rewarded by Nero for this base act with an immense sum of money. (Tac. Ann. 11.6, &c., 13.33, 14.48, 16.17, 21, 22, 26, 28, 33; Juv. Sat. 8.93, &c.)

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