Flaminius
Fla-min'i-us, (Caius,) a Roman general, noted for
his valour, became tribune of the people in 232 B.C., and
procured the passage of an agrarian law which was
violently opposed by the Optimates. In 225 or 223 he
was elected consul, and led an army against the Gauls.
Having been chosen consul a second time, he commanded
at the battle of Lake Thrasymene, where, after
a brave and desperate resistance, the Romans were
defeated by Hannibal, and Flaminius was slain, in 217
B.C. During this battle an earthquake destroyed the
greater part of several cities of Italy; but it is said the
armies were entirely unconscious of its shock. The
I
" Via Flaminia," a great highway, was made during his
censorship, and named in his honour.
His son Caius was consul in 185 B.C., and defeated
the Ligurians.
See Niebuhr, "Lectures on Roman History;" Livy, "History
of Rome," books xxi. and xxii.
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Gaius Flaminius Nepos was a politician and consul of the Roman Republic in the 3rd century BC. He was the greatest
popular leader to challenge the authority of the Senate before the Gracchi a century later.
In the aftermath of the First Punic War, Flaminius, a novus homo, was the leader of a reform movement which sought to
reorganize state land in Italy. As tribune of the plebs in 232 BC, he passed a plebiscite which divided the land
south of Ariminum, which had been conquered from the Gauls decades before, and gave it to poor families whose farms
had fallen into ruin during the war. The Senate was opposed to this and he did not consult them, contrary to the
constitution and tradition.
Flaminius was governor of Sicily in 227. Meanwhile, the reorganization of the land contributed to a renewed attack on
Roman territory by the Gauls, whom the Romans finally defeated at the Battle of Telamon in 224. In 223 Flaminius was
elected consul for the first time, and with Publius Furius Philus he forced the Gauls to submit to Rome, creating the
province of Cisalpine Gaul.
In 221 Flaminius was magister equitum to Marcus Minucius Rufus, then in 220 chosen as censor along with Lucius
Aemilius Papus. During his term he arranged for the Via Flaminia to be built from Rome to Ariminum, established
colonies at Cremona and Placentia, reorganized the Centuriate Assembly to give the poorer classes more voting power,
and built the Circus Flaminius on the Campus Martius. In 218, while serving in the Senate, he was the only senator to
support the Lex Claudia, which prohibited senators from participating in overseas trade.
In 217, during the invasion of Italy by Hannibal, he was re-elected consul with Gnaeus Servilius Geminus, in what was
considered a rebuke of the Senate's prosecution of the war. Flaminius raised new legions and marched north to meet
Hannibal, but was ambushed at Lake Trasimene. The army was destroyed and Flaminius was killed in 27 April 217 B.C.
His supporters in the Senate began to lose power to the more aristocratic factions, and the Romans feared Hannibal
would besiege their city. The Senate appointed as dictator Fabius Maximus.
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Gaius, consul for the first time in B.C. 223, when he gained a victory over the Insubrian Gauls; and censor in 220,
when he executed two great works which bore his name-viz., the Circus Flaminius and the Via Flaminia. In his second
consulship (217 B.C.) he was defeated and slain by Hannibal, at the battle of the Lake Trasimenus (Livy, xxi. 57;
63; id. xxii., etc.; Polyb. ii. 32, etc.).
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