Marcus Vinicius, Gnaeus Cornelius Lentulus e i Daci

Abstract

If we give a look at the surviving evidence of Roman history from Romulus to the end of Late Antiquity, what of worse one might think of than a deeply corrupted passage of a Latin or Greek historian? As the hilarious joke in Young Frankenstein goes (“Could be worse. Could be raining”), the badly mauled elogium of Marcus Vinicius (so it seems) is the unchallenged champion of Latin epigraphy for the title of “Could be worse”. This source seems to record an otherwise unknown campaign of a homo nouus who was very distinguished and rather renown for his military record in Augustan times, namely Marcus Vinicius, an equestrian from Cales. He was legatus legionis (25 BC, his victory on some Germans beyond the Rhine was deemed worthy of increasing the imperatorial salutations of Caesar Augustus), consul suffectus (19 BC, the apparent reward of his military exploit over the Rhine in Germany) and proconsul Illyrici (14 BC, he won at least two battles against the Pannonians dwelling along the upper Sauus/ Sava and the upper Drauus/Drava) as well as twice legatus Caesaris Augusti pro praetore prouinciae or exercitus (here in Illyrico, afterwards in Germania, where eventually he got his well deserved triumphalia ornamenta de Germanis). The extant text is a sort of historical and geographical treasure hunt beyond the middle Danube. It is common knowledge that somebody, acting under Caesar Augustus’ auspicia, led at least one Dacian campaign beyond the Danube. The conqueror of the Dacians in their own land now is usually identified with Marcus Vinicius. Here we shall show that the princeps sent two armies over the middle course of the Danube: one had to defeat and to drive away two tribes of Germans wandering too freely and too near to the fines Illyrici, the other was meant to strike the Dacians guilty of plundering southern Pannonia in 10 BC. Vinicius, indeed, scored a momentous victory, but he won the Germans; the actual conqueror of the Dacians was another legatus Caesaris Augusti pro praetore, the patrician Gnaeus Cornelius Lentulus Augur, who for this achievement was rewarded fittingly by the princeps with the triumphalia ornamenta de Getis.