Gaius Hostilius Mancinus
He was elected as praetor around 140 BC, in which capacity he presided over a senatorial vote on a dispute between Narthakion and Melitaia, two cities in Thessaly allied to Rome.
The affair marked the beginning of Tiberius Gracchus' political career; he led the negotiations with the Numantines as a member of Mancinus' staff and supported the treaty in the senate.
[2][4] Lucius claimed to have been the first Roman soldier to break through the walls of Carthage during the Third Punic War, and based his electoral campaign on his military achievements, earning him and his family the enmity of Scipio Aemilianus, a leading politician in the period who had received a triumph as the proconsul in command of the victorious armies.
The senate therefore chose to revert to the situation at the time of Titus Quinctius Flamininus, who as proconsul had established the Thessalian League in 195, and sided with Narthakion.
[21] Mancinus felt that he had no other choice but to negotiate with the Numantines, and ordered his quaestor (a junior financial magistrate), Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus to deal with them.
[ii][31] These defences were generally consistent with aristocratic thinking about the aetiology of military defeat, which tended to place blame on the soldiers and poor relations with the gods rather than the actions of senatorial commanders.
[33] This coin set a milestone in Roman coinage as it broke from the traditional civic symbols of the Republic and featured instead personal and political imageries.
[34] The reverse shows a scene of oath, with a Roman pictured on the right, a non-Roman on the left; they are both depicting touching their sword on a pig about to be sacrificed by a third character kneeling.
[35] The scene likely depicts aftermath of the disaster of the Caudine Forks in 321, during which a Roman army was trapped by the Samnites and forced to negotiate an unfavourable peace.
[36] At this time, the scene can have only been a reference to Mancinus' treaty, by insisting on fides Romana (Rome's good faith or reliability) and respecting the oaths.
[44] Philus' solution was to consider that the person who made the illegal treaty had to be repudiated and returned to the other party, probably by misrepresenting the Caudine Forks story as precedent.
[51] Mancinus was placed naked and bound in chains before the gates of Numantia, where he remained until nightfall, but the Numantines refused to take him, and he was brought back to Rome.
These censors were indeed sympathetic to Mancinus: Appius Claudius Pulcher was the father-in-law of Tiberius Gracchus; his censorial colleague, Quintus Fulvius Nobilior, had similarly been defeated by the Numantines in 153.
A trial took place, and the jury adopted Rutilius' opinion; the distinguished jurist and praetor that year Publius Mucius Scaevola spoke against Mancinus at this occasion.
[v][56] Rutilius' motivation was possibly to settle a score against Pulcher and Tiberius Gracchus, whose fathers as censors had removed his uncle from his equestrian status in the lectio of 169.
Like his cousin Lucius, who had made a painting of the siege of Carthage to glorify his role during the war, Mancinus used visual arts for his bid, and commissioned a statue that represented him with the appearance he had when surrendered to the Numantines, naked and in chains.
It is the earliest known statue depicting a Roman citizen in the nude; portraits of the time generally showed men in a toga or military uniform.
