Lucius Valerius Flaccus (suffect Consul 86 BC) - Mutiny and Murder

Mutiny and Murder

At the end of his term, Flaccus was assigned the province of Asia as a countermeasure to Sulla's military operations and diplomatic efforts toward Mithridates VI of Pontus, Rome's chief foreign adversary of the period. Although Sulla operated illegally, and had even been declared a public enemy (hostis), Cinna appears to have recognized that the threat of Mithridates required Roman cooperation.

Because the Cinnan government was operating with a depleted treasury, it could fund only five legions, two of which were sent with Lucius Flaccus to Asia. Flaccus was far outnumbered by Sulla's forces, and lost a number of his troops while they were still in transit: an advance guard had been separated from the fleet, stranded by storms, and their ships burnt by Mithridates' Pontic navy. These men managed to make their way to Thessaly, where they promptly deserted to Sulla. The consular army eventually marched across Epirus, Macedonia and Thrace to Byzantium, with growing tensions within the ranks and the officer corps. Flaccus's strongest legate, sometimes identified as his quaestor, was Gaius Flavius Fimbria, a devoted Marian who seized on the discontent of the troops to position himself as a rival for command. Fimbria's motives otherwise are difficult to discern and are sometimes treated as irrational vehemence, but he may have felt that Flaccus's position toward Sulla was too conciliatory. Flaccus may have played an early role in the attempts of his cousin, the princeps senatus, to come to a peaceful settlement with Sulla, and Sulla at any rate made no hostile advance toward Flaccus.

According to Diodorus, during the march through Thrace in the winter of 86–85, Fimbria led advance troops whose allegiance he tried to win by allowing them to plunder "the territory of allies as if it were enemy country, enslaving anyone they encountered." When the people complained of abuse, Flaccus rebuked Fimbria. The account is structured by a moral pattern Diodorus favors in interpreting events, notes Liv Mariah Yarrow: "the abuse of the allies by Fimbria in a ploy to gain power within the military structure actually leads to the disintegration of that military structure."

At the Hellespont, Flaccus dismissed Fimbria with orders to return to Rome and replaced him with Q. Minucius Thermus, whom he left in charge of Byzantium. But Fimbria continued to stir up the troops, until they defected to him and he took over Thermus's command. Flaccus, who had advanced to Chalcedon in Bithynia, then returned to deal with the situation. The most sensational account of events has Fimbria seizing the fasces and Flaccus running first to Chalcedon and then to Nicomedia. Fimbria pursued him, found him hiding in a well, and had him beheaded. Fimbria then assumes the consular command before Flaccus had even reached his province.

Flaccus had been accompanied to Asia by his son Lucius, who was probably still under age 20 at the time and on his first tour of military duty. After the death of his father, he escaped and went to join his uncle Gaius in Gaul.