Labienus

• I T. Atius L., a legate of Caesar in Gaul, who afterwards went over to Pompey, Caes. B. G. 1, 10; Hirt. ib. 8, 52; Caes. B. C. 3, 13; Cic. Att. 7, 11, 1. —
• • B Hence, Lăbĭēnĭānus, a, um, adj., of Labienus: milites, Auct. B. Afr. 29, 2.—
• II Q. Atius L., an uncle of the former, an adherent of Saturninus, Cic. Rab. Perd. 5 and 7.—
• III A rhetorician, who, from the boldness and fierceness of his disposition, was called Rabienus, Sen. Contr. 5 praef.

the name of a Roman family, which does not occur in history till the last century of the republic. Most modern writers say that Labienus was a cognomen of the Atia gens, but there is no authority for this in any ancient author. The name was first assigned to this gens by P. Manutius, but apparently on conjecture ; and although Spanheim (De Praest. et Usu Numism. vol. ii. pp. 11, 12) pointed out that there was no authority for this, the error has been continued down to the present day, as, for instance, in Orelli's Onomasticon Tullianum.

1. Q. Labienus, the uncle of T. Labienus [No. 2], joined Saturninus when he seized the capitol in B. C. 100, and perished along with the other conspirators on that occasion. It was under the pretence of avenging his death that his nephew accused Rabirius of the crime of perduellio. (Cic. pro Rabir. 5, 7.)

2. T. Labienus was tribune of the plebs in B. C. 63, the year of Cicero's consulship; and, under pretence of avenging his uncle's death, as is mentioned above, he accused Rabirius of perduellio. The real reason, however, of his undertaking this accusation was to please Julius Caesar, whose motives for bringing the aged Rabirius to trial have been mentioned elsewhere. [Caesar, p. 541.] Rabirius was defended by Cicero, who was then exerting himself to please the senatorial party, and who consequently speaks of the tribune with great contempt, and heaps upon him no measured terms of abuse. Being entirely devoted to Caesar's interests, Labienus introduced and carried a plebiscitum, repealing the enactment of Sulla, which gave the college of pontiffs the power of electing its members by co-optation, and restoring to the people the right of electing them. It was in consequence of this new law that Caesar obtained the dignity of pontifex maximus this year. (D. C. 37.26, 27, 37; Suet. Jul. 12, 13; Cic. pro Rabir. passim.) It was likewise no doubt at Caesar's suggestion, who was anxious to gratify Pompey, that Labienus and his colleague T. Ampins Balbus proposed those honours to Pompey, which have been detailed elsewhere. [Vol. I. p. 455a.] (Comp. Veil. Pat. 2.40.)

All these services did not go unrewarded. When Caesar, after his consulship, went into his province of Transalpine Gaul in B. C. 58, he took Labienus with him as his legatus, and treated him with distinguished favour. We find that Labienus had the title of pro praetore (Caes. Gal. 1.21), which title had doubtless been conferred upon him by Caesar's influence, that he might in the absence of the proconsul take his place, and discharge his duties. Labienus continued with Caesar during a great part of his campaigns in Gaul, and showed himself an able and active officer. He was with Caesar throughout the whole of his first campaign (B. C. 58). According to Appian (Celt. 3, 15) and Plutarch (Plut. Caes. 18), it was Labienus who cut to pieces the Tigurini; but Caesar ascribes the merit of this to himself (B. G. 1.12); and as he never manifests a disposition to appropriate to himself the exploits of his officers, his authority ought to be preferred to that of the former writers. He speaks, moreover, of the services of Labienus in this campaign; and after the conquest of the Helvetii and the Germans we find him leaving Labienus in command of the troops in their winter-quarters, while he himself went into Cisalpine Gaul to discharge his civil duties in this province. (Caes. Gal. 1.10, 22, 54.)

As we have no further mention of Labienus in Gaul for the next three years, it is probable that he quitted the army when Caesar returned to it, after the winter of B. C. 58. His absence was supplied by P. Crassus, the son of the triumvir; but when the latter left Gaul, in B. C. 54, in order to join his father in the fatal expedition against the Parthians, Caesar may perhaps have sent for Labienus, or the prospect of honour and rewards may have again attracted him to the camp of his patron. However this may be, we find Labienus again in Gaul in B. C. 54, in the winter of which year he was stationed with a legion among the Remi, on the confines of the Treviri. Here he defeated the latter people, who had come under the command of Induciomarus, to attack his camp, and their leader fell in the battle. Still later in the winter Labienus gained another great battle over the Treviri, and reduced the people to submission. (Caes. Gal. 5.24, 53-58, 6.7, 8; D. C. 40.11, 31.)

In the great campaign against Vercingetorix in B. C. 52, which was the most arduous but at the same time the most brilliant of all Caesar's campaigns in Gaul, Labienus played a distinguished part. He was sent by Caesar with four legions against the Senones and Parisii, and took up his head-quarters at Agendicum. From this place he marched against Lutetia, which was burnt at his approach; and in his subsequent retreat to Agendicum, which was rendered necessary by the revolt of the Aedui and the rising of the Bellovaci, his conduct is greatly praised by Caesar. He subsequently reached Agendicum in safety after gaining a complete victory over Camulogenus, who commanded the enemy. During the winter of this year he was left in command of the troops, while Caesar repaired, according to his usual custom, to Cisalpine Gaul; and finding that Commius, the Atrebatian, was endeavouring to excite a new revolt in Gaul, he made an ineffectual attempt to remove him by assassination. During the two following years, which preceded the breaking out of the civil war, Labienus continued to hold the chief command in the army, next to Caesar himself. In B. C. 51 Caesar sent him into Gallia Togata, or Cisalpine Gaul, to defend the Roman colonies, lest the barbarians should make any sudden attack upon them; and on his return into Transalpine Gaul, he was again despatched against the Treviri, whom he had conquered three years before, and whom he again subdued without any difficulty. So much confidence did Caesar place in Labienus, that when he returned into Transalpine Gaul in B. C. 50, he left Labienus in command of Cisalpine Gaul, that the latter might in his absence still further win over the Roman citizens in his province to support Caesar in his attempts to gain the consulship for the year following. (Caes. Gal. 7.57_62, 8.23, 24, 25, 45, 52; D. C. 40.38, 43.)

But Caesar's confidence was misplaced. The great success which Labienus had gained under Caesar, and which was rather due to Caesar's genius than to his own abilities, had greatly elated his little mind, and made him fancy himself the equal of his great general, whom he was no longer disposed to obey as heretofore. (Comp. D. C. 41.4.) Such conduct naturally caused Caesar to treat him with coolness; and the Pompeian party eagerly availed themselves of this opportunity to gain him over to their side. They entered into negotiations with him in this year, while he was in Cisalpine Gaul, and their efforts were successful, notwithstanding the large fortune which had been bestowed upon him by Caesar (comp. Cic. Att. 7.7), and the other numerous marks of favour which he had received at his hands. Accordingly, on the breaking out of the civil war in B. C. 49, Labienus took an early opportunity to desert his old friend and captain. The news of his defection was received at Rome with transport; and Cicero speaks of it again and again in terms of the greatest exultation. " I look upon Labienus as a hero," he writes to Atticus; " that great man Labienus," he calls him in another letter, and speaks of " the tremendous blow " (maxima plaga) which Caesar had received from the desertion of his chief officer. But this " hero " was destined to disappoint. grievously his new friends. He brought no accession of strength to their cause; he had not sufficient influence with Caesar's veterans to induce them to forsake the general whom they idolised ; even the town of Cingulum, on which he had spent so much money, was one of the first to open its gates to Caesar (Caes. Civ. 1.15); and in war his talents seem to have been rather those of an officer than of a commander; he was more fitted to execute the orders of another than to devise a plan of action for himself. In a few weeks' time we find Cicero speaking of him in very altered language, and expressing a desire for the arrival of Afranius and Petreius, as little was to be expected from Labienus. (In Labieno parum est dignitatis, Cic. Att. 8.2.3; comp. Cic. Att. 7.11, 12, 13, a, b. 15, 16, ad Fam. 14.14, 16.12.)

In the following year (B. C. 48) Labienus took an active part as one of Pompey's legates in the campaign in Greece. Here he distinguished himself, like many others of Pompey's officers, by his cruelty and overweening confidence; though we ought perhaps to make some deduction from the unfavourable terms in which he is spoken of by Caesar. Appian, however, relates (B. C. 2.62), that it was through the advice of Labienus that Pompey did not follow up the success which he had gained at Dyrrhachium, by forcing Caesar's camp, which he might easily have done, and thus have brought the war to a close. And the act of cruelty committed by Labienus after this battle was of so public a nature, that Caesar would not have ventured to record it unless it had been actually committed. He is related to have obtained from Pompey all Caesar's soldiers who had been taken prisoners in the battle, to have paraded them before the Pompeian army, and, after taunting them as his " fellow-soldiers," and upbraiding them by asking " whether veteran soldiers were accustomed to fly," to have put them to death in the presence of the assembled troops. In the council of war held before the fatal battle of Pharsalia, he expressed the utmost contempt for Caesar's army, and thus contributed his share to increase that false confidence, which was one of the main causes of the disastrous issue of the battle. (Caes. Civ. 3.13, 19, 71, 87.)

After the defeat at Pharsalia Labienus fled to Dyrrhachium, where he found Cicero, and informed him of the news (Cic. de Div. 1.32), but at the same time, to give some courage to his party, pretended that Caesar had received a severe wound in the engagement. (Frontin. Strat. 2.7.13.) From Dyrrhachium Labienusrepaired with Afranius to Corcyra, in order to join Cato; and from thence he proceeded to Cyrene (Plut. Cat. Mi. 56), which refused to receive him, and finally he joined the scattered remnants of the Pompeian party in Africa. Here Scipio and Cato, two of the most celebrated leaders of the Pompeians, collected a considerable army. Labienus had at first the command of an army near Ruspina, where he fought against Caesar, in B. C. 46, at first with some success, but was at length repulsed. Soon after this battle Labienus united his forces with those of Scipio, under whom he served as legate during the rest of the campaign. (D. C. 42.10, 43.2; Appian, App. BC 2.95; Hirt. B. Afr. 15-19, &c.)

When the battle of Thapsus placed the whole of Africa in Caesar's power, Labienus fled into Spain with the surviving relics of his party, in order to continue the war there in conjunction with Cn. Pompey. At the battle of Munda, which was fought in the following year, B. C. 45, Labienus was destined once more to oppose his old commander, and by a strange fatality to give the death-blow to the very party that had welcomed him with so much joy. The battle was undecided, and would probably have remained so, had not Labienus quitted his ranks, to prevent Bogud, king of Mauritania, from capturing the Pompeian camp. The Pompeian troops, thinking that Labienus had taken to flight, lost their courage, wavered, and fled. Labienus himself fell in the battle, and his head was brought to Caesar. The general character of Labienus has been sufficiently shown by the above sketch : he seems to have been a vain, haughty, headstrong man; nothing is recorded of him which exhibits him in a favourable light; and with the exception of his military abilities, which were not, however, of the highest order, he possessed nothing to distinguish him from the general mass of the Roman nobles of his time. (D. C. 43.30, 38; Flor. 4.2 ; Appian, App. BC 2.105; Auctor, B. Hisp. 18, 31.)

3. Q. Labienus, the son of the preceding, joined the party of Brutus and Cassius after the murder of Caesar (B. C. 44), and was sent by them into Parthia to seek aid from Orodes, the Parthian king. [Arsaces XIV.] Here he remained for a considerable time, and before he could obtain any definite answer from Orodes, the news came of the battle of Philippi (B. C. 42). Seeing that the triumvirs were resolved to spare none of their opponents, Labienus made up his mind to continue in Parthia; but circumstances soon occurred which enabled him to take revenge upon the victorious party. The attention of Octavian was filly engaged by the affairs of Italy and the war against Sex. Pompey; and Antony, to whom the government of the East had devolved, had retired to Egypt, captivated by the charms of Cleopatra, and careless about every thing else. Labienus persuaded Orodes to embrace this favourable opportunity for the invasion of the Roman provinces in Asia; and accordingly the Parthian king entrusted to him and Pacorus a large army for the purpose. They crossed the Euphrates, and invaded Syria, in B. C. 40. At first they were repulsed from the walls of Apameia; but as almost all the fortified places were garrisoned by the old soldiers of Brutus and Cassius, who had joined the army of the triumvirs after the victory of the latter, Labienus and Pacorus met with little resistance. Most of these troops joined their banners ; but their commander, Decidius Saxa, continued firm in his allegiance to Antony. He was, however, easily overcome in battle; and as the fruit of this victory, Labienus and the Parthians obtained possession of the two great towns of Antioch and Apameia, While Pacorus remained with the Parthians in Syria, to complete the subjugation of the country, advancing for that object as far south as Palestine, Labienus, with the Roman troops he had collected, entered Asia Minor in pursuit of Saxa, whom he overtook and slew in Cilicia, and then proceeded along the south of Asia Minor, receiving the submission of almost all the cities in his way. The only resistance he experienced was from Alabanda, Mylasa, and Stratoniceia; the two former of which he took by force [compare Hybreas], while the latter successfully resisted all his efforts. Hereupon he assumed the name of Parthian imperator, a title which we also find upon his coins, as is mentioned below. In adopting this title, Dio Cassius remarks (48.26), Labienus departed from the custom of all Roman commanders, who were wont to take such titles from the names of the people whom they conquered, of which we have examples in Scipio Africanus, Servilius Isauricus, Fabius Allobrogicus, and the like, while Labienus, on the contrary, assumed his from the victorious nation. It was in reference to this that Hybreas, when he was defending Mylasus, sent Labienus the taunting message that he would call himself the Carian imperator.

These successes at length roused Antony from his inactivity. He sent an army into Asia Minor in B. C. 39, commanded by P. Ventidius, the most able of his legates, who suddenly came upon Labienus before the latter had received any intelligence of his approach. Not having any of his Parthian allies with him, he dared not meet Ventidius in the field, and, accordingly, fled with the utmost haste towards Syria, to effect a junction with Pacorus. This, however, was prevented by the rapid pursuit of Ventidius, who came up with him by Mount Taurus, and stopped him from advancing further. Here both parties remained for some days, Ventidius waiting for his heavy-armed troops, and Labienus the arrival of the Parthians. The latter marched to his assistance, but were defeated by Ventidius before they joined Labienus, whom they then deserted, and fled into Cilicia. In these circumstances Labienus, not daring to engage with Ventidius, abandoned his men, and fled in disguise into Cilicia. Here he remained concealed for some time, but was at length apprehended by Demetrius, a freedman of Octavian, and put to death. It would appear, from a statement of Strabo (xiv. p.600), that this Labienus possessed the same arrogance and vehemence of temper which distinguished his father. (D. C. 48.24-26, 39, 40; Liv. Epit. cxxvii.; Flor. 4.9 ; Vell. 2.78; Plut. Ant. 30, 33; Appian, App. BC 5.65, 133; Justin, 42.4.) The coin annexed has on the obverse the head of Labienus, with the legend Q. LABIENVS PARTHICVS IMP., and on the reverse a horse, which refers clearly to the celebrated cavalry of the Parthians. (Eckhel, vol. v. p. 146.)

4. Labienus was one of those included in the proscription of the triumvirs in B. C. 43, but we know not whether he was in any way connected with the other persons of this name. It is related of him that he had taken an active part in apprehending and killing those who had been proscribed by Sulla; and deeming it disgraceful not to meet a similar fate with courage, he seated himself in front of his house, and quietly waited for the assassins. (Appian, App. BC 4.26.) Whether this Labienus is the same as the one whose place of concealment his freedmen could be induced by no tortures to reveal (Macrob. Saturn. 1.11), is doubtful : the account of Appian would imply that they were two different persons, as the former did not seek to conceal himself.

5. T. Labienus, a celebrated orator and historian in the reign of Augustus, appears to have been either the son or grandson of the Labienus who deserted Julius Caesar. [No. 3.] He retained all the republican feelings of his family, and, unlike most of his contemporaries, never became reconciled to the imperial government, but took every opportunity to attack Augustus and his friends. In consequence of his bitterness he received the nickname of Rabienus from the imperial party. He was an intimate friend of Cassius Severus, and an enemy of Asinius Pollio, whom he branded in one of his orations as the casnar or parasite of Augustus. He is represented by the elder Seneca as very poor, of an infamous character, and universally hated; but his oratorical talents must have been very great, as Seneca justly remarks, to have obtailed under these circumstances the remarkable reputation which he enjoyed as an orator. In his speeches lie adopted a style of oratory which partook of the leading characteristics both of the ancient and modern schools, so that each party could claim him. The history which Labienus wrote was apparently one of his own times; since the elder Seneca relates, that when he heard him on one occasion reading his history, he passed over a great part, remarking that it could only be read after his death; but if the work had related merely to past times,he probably would not have feared to have read it. Labienus seems never to have been engaged in any plots against Augustus; but his enemies at length revenged themselves upon him, by obtaining a decree of the senate that all his writings should be burnt. This indignity affected Labienus so much, that, resolving not to survive the productions of his genius, he shut himself up in the tombs of his ancestors, and thus perished. His death probably took place in A. D. 12, as Dio Cassius relates (56.27) that several libellous works were burnt in that year. Caligula allowed the writings of Labienus, as well as those of Cremutius Cordus and Cassius Severus, which had shared the same fate, to be again collected and read. (Senec. Controv. v. pp. 328-330, ed. Bipont.; Suet. Cal. 16.)

We find mention of only three orations of Labienus:-1. An oration for Figulus against the heirs of Urbinia: the cause of the latter was pleaded by C. Asinius Pollio. (Quint. Inst. 4.1.11; Tac. de Orat. 38.) 2. An oration against Pollio, which may, however, be the same as the preceding, and which was ascribed by some to Cornelius Gallus. (Quint. Inst. 1.5.8.) 3. An oration against Bathyllus, the freedman of Maecenas, who was defended by Gallio. (Senec. Controv. v. p. 330.)

(De Chambort, Dissert. sur T. Labienus, in the Mém. de l'Acad. des Inscript. vol. x. pp. 98-110; Meyer, Orator. Rom. Fragmenta, pp. 528-531, 2nd ed.; Westermann, Gesch. der Römischen Beredtsamkeit, § 73, n. 3; Weichert, de Cassio Parmensi, pp. 319-324; comp. Bentley, ad Hor. Serm. 1.3. 82, who proposes to read Labieno instead of Labeone in that passage.)

(1) Titus, one of Caesar's lieutenants in the Gallic war. In the beginning of the civil war he left Caesar for Pompey (B. C. iii. 13), escaped from the battle of Pharsalia, and was killed in that at Munda (B. H. 31). Labienus appears to have parted with almost all his former success on abandoning the side of his old commander.

(2) Quintus, a son of the preceding, who inherited all his father's hatred of the party of Caesar. After the defeat of Brutus and Cassius, he refused to submit to the triumvirs, and retired to Parthia, where he was invested with a military command, and proved very serviceable to his new allies in their contests with the Romans. He was made prisoner in Cilicia, and probably put to death. Labienus caused medals to be struck, having on the obverse his head, with this legend, Q. Labienus Parthicus Imper., and on the reverse a horse caparisoned after the Parthian manner.

(3) Titus, an orator and author of the time of Augustus, who distinguished himself by his bitter opposition to the imperial régime. The Senate decreed that his writings should be publicly burned; whereupon he shut himself up in his ancestral tomb and died there, about A.D. 12 (Suet. Cal. 16).