Decimus Junius Brutus Callaicus

Participation in war against the Vaccaei

In 137 BC Decimus Junius Brutus also got involved in a campaign against the Vaccaei, who lived to the west of the Celtiberians and not far from Lusitania. The commanders of the Roman province of Hispania Citerior (Nearer Spain, on the east coast of Spain, roughly corresponding to modern Catalonia and Valencia) were fighting in Numantine War (143–133 BC), a rebellion of the Celtiberians who lived to the west of Hispania Citerior. The war was centred on the town of Numantia, which was difficult to besiege, holding out for ten years. In 137 BC the consul Marcus Aemilius Lepidus Porcina was sent to Hispania Citerior to continue the war after the Roman Senate rejected a peace treaty made by the other consul for the year, Gaius Hostilius Mancinus. Aemilius did not want to keep his army idle while he was waiting for instructions from Rome and was probably greedy for glory and booty. He falsely accused the Vaccaei of aiding the Celtiberians as an excuse for war. He ravaged the countryside and besieged Pallantia, their main city. He convinced Brutus, who was the commander of Hispania Ulterior and his brother-in-law, to join him. Messengers from the senate arrived and asked why Aemilius sought a new war. They warned him not to continue the attacks on the Vaccaei. Aemilius sent them back to Rome and wrote that it would be dangerous to abandon the war. The siege lasted a long time, during which the Romans run short of food and many men and all the animals died. Aemilius and Brutus eventually had to withdraw, doing so in a very disorderly manner. The Pallantines harassed their flanks and rear and killed many men. When Rome heard of this, Aemilius was recalled, stripped of his command and consulship, and fined. Brutus does not seem to have been punished.

Family

Callaicus was married to a Clodia (who had previously been married to Publius Licinius Crassus Dives Mucianus and had three children with him) and with her had at least two children, a son named Decimus Junius Brutus and a daughter named Junia who became the mother of Gaius Claudius Marcellus.

Other facts

The ancient Roman historian Livy wrote that in 138 BC, when Decimus Junius Brutus and his consular colleague, Publius Cornelius Nasica, held the levy of the soldiers, "something happened in front of the recruits that served as an example." A man was accused before the plebeian tribunes of deserting the army in Hispania. He was sentenced, "sent under the yoke, chastised with rods, and sold for one sesterce."

In 138 BC Decimus Junius Brutus founded the Roman colony of "Valentia Edetanorum" (today's Valencia) in Hispania Citerior. Valentia, which means valour, was named in honour of the valour of the Roman soldiers. Edetanorum indicated that the city was in the territory of the Edetani, an Iberian people. It was built on the site of an Iberian town. Livy said that Valentia was founded to give land to soldiers who had fought under Viriathus, the Lusitanian leader.

In 136 BC the Roman Senate granted Brutus a triumph and gave him the agnomen Callaicus or Callaecus (winner against the Callaeci/Gallaeci) At an unknown date he built a temple by the Circus Flaminius which is thought to have been dedicated to Hercules Callaicus. This was one of various public buildings Callaicus built with the proceeds of the spoils of his war. All of them had inscriptions by Lucius Accius, the tragic poet. He had a colossal statue of a seated Mars erected in this temple.

Brutus was the patron of Lucius Accius, who wrote a tragedy on the tyranny of Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, the last king of Rome, and his expulsion by Lucius Junius Brutus (the founder of the Roman Republic and an ancestor of Callaecus) titled Brutus in honour of his patron.

In 129 BC, according to Livy, Brutus helped the consul Gaius Sempronius Tuditanus, who "at first fought unsuccessfully against the Iapydians [a tribe in Illyria], but the defeat was compensated by a victory won through the qualities of Decimus Junius Brutus." However, according to Appian, "Sempronius Tuditanus and Tiberius Pandusa waged war with the Iapydes, who live among the Alps, and seem to have subjugated them." This was the last historical record of Callaicus.

Cicero said that Callaicus had the peculiar habit of performing the libations (the pouring of a liquid as an offering to a god or spirit or in memory of the dead) for the dead in December instead of February as was customary. Plutarch explored a number of possible explanations for this peculiarity: (1) since the dead were honoured at the end of the day, it may be reasonable to do so at the end of the year; (2) it might not be fitting to honour the dead at the beginning of the sowing, a time of new life; (3) December was dedicated to Saturn, who was a god of the underworld; or, (4) that "Brutus deemed it proper to bestow upon the dead first-fruits" of the revelries of the festival of the Saturnalia. Plutarch also wondered whether "this statement, that Brutus alone sacrificed to the dead in this month" was wrong. "For it is in December that they make offerings to Larentia and bring libations to her sepulchre." Larentia was a mythical woman who was connected to the Lares, the spirits of ancestors who were guardian deities of the family, neighbourhoods, roadways, seaways, agriculture, livestock, towns, cities, and the state.

According to Mastrocinque, in 122 BC Callaicus took part in the suppression of the movement led by Gaius Sempronius Gracchus.