Lucius Valerius Flaccus (consul 195 BC) - Career

Career

The patrician Flaccus became a friend, political patron, and ally of the young plebeian soldier Marcus Porcius Cato, later called Cato the Elder, during the earlier years of the Second Punic War. Flaccus is possibly the Valerius Flaccus who was a military tribune in 212 BC, serving under the consuls who captured Hanno's camp at Beneventum.

Flaccus was curule aedile in 201 BC. He was probably the L. Valerius Flaccus who was a legate under the praetor L. Furius Purpurio in Gaul in 200. As praetor in 199, he was assigned to the province of Sicily. Flaccus received Italy as his province when he was consul in 195 BC, and continued to wage war as proconsul the following year against the Gauls, with a victory over the Insubres at Mediolanum (Milan). In 191 Flaccus was a legate under M'. Acilius Glabrio in the war against the Aetolians and at the Battle of Thermopylae.

In 190, Flaccus served on the three-man commission (triumviri coloniis deducendis) created to strengthen Placentia and Cremona. His fellow commissioners were M. Atilius Serranus (praetor 174 BC) and L. Valerius Tappo (praetor 192 BC). The following year, the commission founded Bononia (modern Bologna) as a Roman colony (colonia).

In a "hotly contested" election, Flaccus became censor along with Cato in 184. Their censorship was noted for its severity: L. Flaminius, the consul of 192, was kicked out of the senate; Scipio Asiaticus, the consul of 190, lost his equestrian rank; and public contracts were leased stringently. The two men shared common conservative political sympathies and cultural outlook, and were loyal to the military and political views of the older generation represented by Quintus Fabius Maximus. Both he and Cato sought to defend Roman tradition against Hellenism.

Flaccus was a member of the College of Pontiffs from 196, when he succeeded M. Cornelius Cethegus, until his death.

Flaccus became princeps senatus when Scipio Africanus Major died in 183. He himself died three years later.

Preceded by
Lucius Furius Purpureo and Marcus Claudius Marcellus
Consul of the Roman Republic
with Marcus Porcius Cato
195 BC
Succeeded by
Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus and Tiberius Sempronius Longus

Read more about this topic:  Lucius Valerius Flaccus (consul 195 BC)

Famous quotes containing the word career:

    “Never hug and kiss your children! Mother love may make your children’s infancy unhappy and prevent them from pursuing a career or getting married!” That’s total hogwash, of course. But it shows on extreme example of what state-of-the-art “scientific” parenting was supposed to be in early twentieth-century America. After all, that was the heyday of efficiency experts, time-and-motion studies, and the like.
    Lawrence Kutner (20th century)

    Work-family conflicts—the trade-offs of your money or your life, your job or your child—would not be forced upon women with such sanguine disregard if men experienced the same career stalls caused by the-buck-stops-here responsibility for children.
    Letty Cottin Pogrebin (20th century)

    I seemed intent on making it as difficult for myself as possible to pursue my “male” career goal. I not only procrastinated endlessly, submitting my medical school application at the very last minute, but continued to crave a conventional female role even as I moved ahead with my “male” pursuits.
    Margaret S. Mahler (1897–1985)