The End of the Gallic Wars (51…

The last incursion results in the death of the Parthian commander Osaces, and splits the Parthian troops.

Marcus Tullius Cicero, appointed in 51 as one of Tarsus’ first proconsuls,sends Cassius a note of congratulations for the victory.

Appius Claudius Pulcher has been Governor of Cilicia for a biennium after his consulate, a disaster for the region, not least because his younger brother Caius had held the Asia province command for the three years 55-52, or possibly the quadriennium 55-51, so that Appius and his brother control most of Anatolia together for at least one year of overlap and perhaps two.

His predecessor P. Lentulus Spinther had been a good and honest administrator, and his successor Cicero will be one of the best in Roman history.

But the intervening Claudian command has been disorderly, harsh and corrupt.

His correspondence with Cicero as the latter approached to succeed him exhibits many signs of the severe disruption, perhaps approaching horror at times, through which the country had passed under Appius' command.

Cicero is certainly shocked by what he finds, and by the bizarre manner in which Appius avoided him and eventually left the province for home without meeting his successor.

Ptolemy XII had chosen his daughter Cleopatra VII as his coregent before his death in 51.

He declares in his will that she and her brother Ptolemy XIII should rule the kingdom together.

To safeguard his interests, he has made the people of Rome executors of his will.

The Senate is busy with its own affairs, so Pompey (as Ptolemy XII's ally) approves the will, and the eighteen-year-old Cleopatra VII becomes joint ruler with her eleven-year old-brother.

Pompey had been elected sole consul in 52 BCE and given a five-year provincial command in Spain; Caesar in the same year had been allowed by a law sponsored by all ten tribunes to stand for the consulship in absentia.

If he is to stand in 49 BCE for the consulship for 48 BCE, he will be out of office, and therefore in danger, during the last ten months of 49 BCE.

As a safeguard for Caesar against this, there seems to be an understanding—possibly a private one made at Luca in 56 BCE between him and Pompey—that the question of a successor to Caesar in his commands shall not be raised in the Senate before March 1, 50 BCE.

This maneuver should ensure that Caesar will retain his commands until the end of 49 BCE; however, the question of replacing Caesar is actually raised in the Senate a number of times from 51 BCE onward.

Greek philosopher Posidonius, a member of the Stoic school who taught at Rhodes and in Rome and had been heard by the young Cicero, is an eclectic thinker who writes extensively on natural science and in defense of divination.

Combining Stoic doctrines with ideas drawn from Plato and Aristotle, Posidonius has modified the Stoic view of the human soul by accepting a Platonic-Aristotelian division within it into "rational" and "irrational."

Posidonius is celebrated as a polymath throughout the Graeco-Roman world because he comes near to mastering all the knowledge of his time, similar to Aristotle and Eratosthenes.

He attempts to create a unified system for understanding the human intellect and the universe that will provide an explanation of and a guide for human behavior.

The major source of materials on the Celts of Gaul, Posidonius is profusely quoted by Timagenes, Julius Caesar, the Sicilian Greek Diodorus Siculus, and the Greek geographer Strabo. (The writings of Posidonius, who reportedly wrote a "completion" of Plato's “Timaeus,” survive only in fragments.)

In his own era, his writings on almost all the principal divisions of philosophy have made Posidonius a renowned international figure throughout the Graeco-Roman world.

He is widely cited by his contemporary and near-contemporary writers, including Cicero, Livy, Plutarch, Strabo (who calls Posidonius "the most learned of all philosophers of my time"), Cleomedes, Seneca the Younger, Diodorus Siculus (who uses Posidonius as a source for his Bibliotheca historia ["Historical Library"]), and others.

Posidonius is acclaimed during his life for his literary ability and as a stylist, although his ornate and rhetorical style of writing will pass out of fashion soon after his death in 51.

From 54 to 51 BCE, Cicero has written the six books of De re publica (”On the Commonwealth”), in which he advances the first full-blown theory of natural law:” “True law is right reason in accord with nature; it is of universal application, unchanging and everlasting...."

The work is written in the format of a Socratic dialogue in which Scipio Africanus Minor (who had died a few decades before Cicero was born, several centuries after Socrates' death) takes the role of a wise old man — an obligatory part for the genre.

Cicero's treatise is politically controversial: by choosing the format of a philosophical dialogue he avoids naming his political adversaries directly.

Cicero employs various speakers to raise differing opinions in an attempt to make it more difficult for these adversaries to take him to task on what he has written.

It is uncertain whether Cicero had had any direct involvement in politics for the few years following Luca.

He had only reluctantly accepted the promagistracy in Cilicia for 51 BCE.

Absent from Italy as proconsul of Cilicia from May 51 to November 50 BCE, and accompanied by his brother Quintus as a legate, he is mostly spared from warfare due to internal conflict among the Parthians, yet for storming a fortress occupied by some brigands on Mt.

Amanus, he acquires the title of imperator.

The third book of the Maccabees, a historically suspect but edifying account of the persecution of Egyptian Jews by Ptolemy IV in the late third century BCE, is written about 50.

Found in most Orthodox Bibles as a part of the Anagignoskomena, Protestants and Catholics consider it non-canonical, except the Moravian Brethren, who included it in the Apocrypha of the Czech Kralicka Bible.

It is also included in the Armenian Bible.

The book actually has nothing to do with the Maccabees or their revolt against the Seleucid Empire, as described in 1 Maccabees and 2 Maccabees.

Instead it tells the story of persecution of the Jews under Ptolemy IV Philopator (222-205 BCE), some decades before the Maccabee uprising.

The name of the book apparently comes from the similarities between this book and the stories of the martyrdom of Eleazar and the Maccabeean youths in 2 Maccabees; the High Priest Shimon is also mentioned.

Marcus Terentius Varro, a prolific Roman author and scholar (of his reputed output of more than six hundred volumes, only about fifty works are known) publishes his encyclopedic Disciplinarium libri IX around 50.

Other of Varro’s works include his treatise De Re Rustica (On Agriculture); his important study of grammar, De Lingua Latina (The Latin Language; the basic source for Latin grammarians, of which approximately one-fourth remains); his Menippean Satires (of which many fragments survive); and Antiquitates Rerum Humanarum et Divinarum (History of Human and Divine Concerns), (a classic reference text on Roman religion).

Contemporary historians are silent on the early reign of Pharnaces II, but eventually, on viewing the increasing power struggles between the Romans, and with an eye to recreating the kingdom of his father, he had attacked and subjugated the free Greek city of Phanagoria, violating one of his agreements with Pompey.

Burebista, whose Geto-Dacian union now stretches from the Black Sea to the Adriatic and from the Balkan Mountains to Bohemia, offers his support to Pompey in his struggle against Caesar.

Ptolemy XIII, seeking to retain his father's allies in 49 BCE, supplies Pompey with ships and troops.

A court clique, headed by Theodotus, the eunuch Pothinus, and the general Achillas, subsequently gains influence over the King, fanning the growing rivalry between him and his strong-willed sister, who is seven years his senior.

Cicero, as he was in defense of the senate and Republican tradition, had in 50 BCE chosen to favor Pompey when the struggle between Pompey and Julius Caesar grew more intense, but at the same time he had prudently avoided openly alienating Caesar.

Cicero flees Rome in 49 BCE when Caesar invades Italy.

Caesar, seeking the legitimacy an endorsement by a senior senator would provide, has courted Cicero's favor, but even so Cicero slips out of Italy and travels to Dyrrachium (Epidamnos), Illyria, where Pompey's staff is situated.

Cassius Longinus, returning in 50 to Rome from Syria after a two-year stint as proquaestor, had been elected tribune of the Plebs for 49 BCE, and has thrown in his lot with the Optimates, although his brother Lucius Cassius supports Caesar.

Cassius had left Italy shortly after Caesar crossed the Rubicon.

Meeting Pompey in Greece, Cassius has been appointed to command part of his fleet.