Lucius Sergius Paullus (consul 168)

Lucius Sergius Paullus was a Roman senator, who was active during the reign of Marcus Aurelius. He was twice consul: the first time attested 23 September of an unknown year as suffect consul with [? Lucius Nonius Calpurnius] Torquatus Asprenas as his colleague;[1] and as consul ordinarius for 168 as the colleague of Lucius Venuleius Apronianus Octavius Priscus.[2]

Paullus was from the Roman colony of Antioch in Pisidia. It is possible he was the great-grandson of the identically named proconsul of Cyprus in the AD 40s.[3]

Career

Direct information about the first part of his life up to and including his first consulate is missing. Previously it was thought to have been around AD 151.[4] Werner Eck suggests that Seregius Paullus was suffect consul "in the last years of Hadrian's reign";[5] currently there are gaps in the consular record for the years 136 through 139.

Two recently published military diplomas attest that he was governor of Pannonia Superior in the years 139 and 140; Eck dates his tenure in that province from 139 to 142.[6] A third military diploma attests that he was governor of Syria 19 March 144.[7] On the basis of this third military diploma, Eck identifies Sergius Paullus with the "philosophically educated Senator" who, as governor of Syria, heard a case the author Lucian brought a charlatan named Peregrinus Proteus. Lucian does not name the governor. He hoped Peregrinus would be convicted; however the governor declined to pass judgment on him, understanding that "he would well accept death in order to leave glory; and so he released him, not deeming him worthy of any punishment."[8]

During the early 160s, Sergius Paullus is recorded as an attendee of the anatomical lectures Galen gave over a three-year period in Rome. G.W. Bowersock notes that these lectures were "very much to the taste of the people of that time", and includes in Galen's audience such prominent Senators as Marcus Vettulenus Civica Barbarus consul in 157, Titus Flavius Boethus suffect consul in 161, and Gnaeus Claudius Severus consul II in 173.[9]

Before his second consulate, the sortition awarded Paullus the proconsular governorship of Asia, the apex of many senatorial careers; Géza Alföldy dates his tenure there to 166/167.[10] Although the evidence is thin, what has come down to us indicates he was also an influential Senator, for emperor Marcus Aurelius appointed him Urban prefect of Rome around the time of his second consulate, and he held the office of urban prefect to his death.[11]

When Paullus died is an open question. The next attested urban prefect is Gaius Aufidius Victorinus, who entered that office in 179.[11] Alföldy lists the names of five men one or none of whom might have been urban prefect between Paullus and Victorinus, so the probability Paullus' death was only a few years after he entered that office (viz., before 174) is much higher than after.[12]

References
  1. CIL VI, 253
  2. Géza Alföldy, Konsulat und Senatorenstand unter der Antoninen (Bonn: Rudolf Habelt Verlag, 1977), p. 185
  3. Anthony Birley, Marcus Aurelius: A Biography, revised edition (London: Routledge, 1993), p. 155
  4. Alföldy, Konsulat und Senatorenstand, p. 161
  5. Eck, "Sergius Paullus, der Liebhaber der Philosophie in Lucans Peregrinus Proteus", Rheinisches Museum für Philologie, 157 (2014), pp. 222f
  6. Eck, "Sergius Paullus", p. 223
  7. AE 2014, 1657
  8. Lucian, De morte Peregrini, 14
  9. Bowersock, Greek Sophists in the Roman Empire (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), pp. 62f
  10. Alföldy, Konsulat und Senatorenstand, p. 216
  11. Alföldy, Konsulat und Senatorenstand, p. 287
  12. Alföldy, Konsulat und Senatorenstand, p. 288
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