Gaius Caesar - Early Life

Early Life

Gaius was adopted along with his brother Lucius Caesar in 17 BC by their maternal grandfather, the Roman Emperor Augustus, who named the two boys his heirs. In 6 BC the Roman plebs agitated for Gaius to be created consul, despite the fact that he was only 14 and had not yet assumed the toga virilis. As a compromise, it was agreed that he should have the right to sit in the Senate House, and he was made consul designatus with the intention that he should assume the consulship in his twentieth year. Gaius was at this point created "Prince of Youth" ("princeps iuventutis"), an honorific that made him one of the symbolic heads of the equestrian order. Lucius, three years his junior, was granted the same honours after the appropriate interval had elapsed. Temples and statues were erected in their honour (as in the case of the Maison Carrée in Nîmes). In 1 BC he was made army commander in the East and made a peace treaty with Phraates V on an island in the river Euphrates. In 1 AD, he was made Consul with Lucius Aemilius Paullus as his colleague.

In 1 BC, he married his relative, Livilla, daughter of Drusus the Elder and Antonia Minor. This union had no issue.

Lucius died at Massalia in Gaul on the 21 or 22 February AD 2 and his cenotaph is situated there. Gaius died two years later in Lycia at the age of 24, after being wounded during a campaign in Artagira, Armenia.

The death of both Gaius and Lucius, the Emperor's two most favored heirs, compelled Augustus to adopt his stepson, Tiberius, and his sole remaining grandson, Postumus Agrippa as his new respective heirs.