Public Service
He held in succession the offices of Quaestor and Aedile, and then, around 162, was named as Praetor. He was nominated to the command of the Legio XXII Primigenia in Mogontiacum (now Mainz). In 170, he became praefectus of Gallia Belgica and served for five years. As a reward for his skill and gallantry in repressing an insurrection among the Chauci, a tribe dwelling on the Elbe, he was raised to the consulship in 175, along with Pertinax.
He further distinguished himself in a campaign against the Chatti, ruled Dalmatia and Germania Inferior, and then was made prefect charged with distributing money to the poor of Italy. It was around this time that he was charged with having conspired against the life of Commodus, but he had the good fortune to be acquitted and to witness the punishment of his accuser. He governed Bithynia and succeeded Pertinax as the proconsul of Africa.
Read more about this topic: Didius Julianus
Famous quotes containing the words public and/or service:
“An ... important antidote to American democracy is American gerontocracy. The positions of eminence and authority in Congress are allotted in accordance with length of service, regardless of quality. Superficial observers have long criticized the United States for making a fetish of youth. This is unfair. Uniquely among modern organs of public and private administration, its national legislature rewards senility.”
—John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908)
“Whatever events in progress shall disgust men with cities, and infuse into them the passion for country life, and country pleasures, will render a service to the whole face of this continent, and will further the most poetic of all the occupations of real life, the bringing out by art the native but hidden graces of the landscape.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)