Crassipes

• a surname of the gens Furia, Liv. 38, 42, 4; the most celebrated is Furius Crassipes, Cicero's son-in-law, Cic. Fam. 1, 7, 11 al.

" thick-footed," the name of a patrician family of the Furia gens.

1. M. Furius Crassipes, was one of the three commissioners appointed in B. C. 194 to found a Latin colony among the Brutii, and he with his colleagues accordingly led, two years afterwards, 3700 foot soldiers and 300 horsemen to Vibo, which had been previously called Hipponium. Crassipes was elected praetor, in B. C. 187, and obtained the province of Gaul. Desiring to obtain a pretext for a war, he deprived the Cenomani of their arms, though they had been guilty of no offence ; but when this people appealed to the senate at Rome, Crassipes was commanded to restore them their arms, and to depart from the province. He obtained the praetorship a second time in B. C. 173, and received Sicily as his province. (Liv. 34.53, 35.40, 38.42, 39.3, 41.28. s. 33, 42.1.)

2. Furius Crassipes, married Tullia, the daughter of M. Tullius Cicero, after the death of her first husband, C. Piso Frugi. The marriage contract (sponsalia) was made on the 6th of April, B. C. 56. She was, however, shortly afterwards divorced from Crassipes, but at what time is uncertain; it must have been before B. C. 50, as she was married to Dolabella in that year. Cicero notwithstanding continued to live on friendly terms with Crassipes, and mentions to Atticus a conversation he had had with him, when Pompey was setting out from Brundisium, in B. C. 49. (Cic. ad Qu. Fr. 2.4, 5.1, vi. l, ad Fam. 1.7.11, 9.20, ad Att. 4.5, 12, 7.1, ad Att. 9.11.) There is a letter of Cicero's (ad Fam. 13.9) addressed to Crassipes, when he was quaestor in Bithynia, B. C. 51, recommending to his notice the company that farmed the taxes in that province.

3. P. Furius Crassipes, curule aedile, as we learn from coins (a specimen of which is given below), but at what time is uncertain. The obverse of the coin annexed represents a woman's head crowned with a tower, and by the side a foot, through a kind of jocular allusion to the name of Crassipes; on the reverse is a curule seat.

Cicero's son-in-law, husband to Tullia, from whom he was divorced shortly after their marriage in B.C. 56.