Gaius Valerius Flaccus (consul) - Life and Career

Life and Career

Valerius Flaccus was praetor sometime before 95 BC, most probably in 96. An inscription from Claros indicates that following his praetorship and before 95 he held a promagisterial command in the Roman province of Asia. Both he and his brother Lucius, who was a governor of Asia in the late 90s and again for 85, are honored as patrons of the city of Colophon in Lydia. The two are the first Roman governors known to be addressed as patrons of a free city, a practice that became common in the 60s BC.

Flaccus may have been a candidate for the consulship of 94, losing to the novus homo C. Coelius Caldus, who is said to have run against two highly distinguished nobiles and beaten one of them. It was not unusual for a defeated candidate to run again the following year, often with success. The colleague of Flaccus in the consulship of 93 was M. Herennius.