Lucius Licinius Crassus
[2] It is not known exactly which Licinius Crassus his father was, as there are a number of similarly named Licinii Crassi active in the mid-second century BC.
However, prosopographical investigations by scholars have established that he must have been a grandson of Gaius Licinius Crassus,[3] the consul of 168 who marched his army from Gallia Cisalpina to Macedonia against the will of the Senate.
[6] In 119 BC, when aged only 21, Crassus shot to fame for his prosecution of the proconsul Gaius Papirius Carbo,[7] who committed suicide rather than face the inevitable guilty verdict.
[13][14] At the age of twenty-seven, Crassus defended his relative Licinia, one of the Vestal Virgins who had been accused of breaking their vow of chastity that year.
[22] Alongside Scaevola Pontifex (his future colleague in the consulship), Crassus put on expensive games for the people, which were remembered decades afterwards for their extravagance.
[24] In 106 BC, Crassus gave a speech in which he defended the Lex Servilia, a law proposed by the consul Quintus Servilius Caepio which aimed to end the equestrian monopoly on juries.
It was, however, to prove short-lived, as a few years later a law of Gaius Servilius Glaucia (passed either in 104 or 101 BC) restored the equestrian monopoly on the juries.
[29][30] In the last year of his life, Crassus once again attacked the equestrian juries when he championed the legislation of Marcus Livius Drusus the Younger in 91 BC (see below).
When Quintus Servilius Caepio, the proposer of the jury law in question, was prosecuted in 103 BC by the tribune Gaius Norbanus for his catastrophic loss at the Battle of Arausio, Crassus defended him.
However, Cicero notes that in this instance Crassus' defence of the younger Caepio was rather half-hearted: "for its laudatory purpose, it was long enough; but as a whole oration it was very brief".
Despite defeating a number of Gallic raiders, he failed to gain a triumph due to the veto of his consular colleague, Scaevola Pontifex.
[37] Cicero later judged that Crassus had been in the wrong, remarking that 'Crassus almost ransacked the Alps with a probe, in order to find any pretext for a triumph in an area where there were no enemies'.
[39] The veto is particularly inexplicable given the former friendship between the two men: they had, after all, shared office at every stage of the cursus honorum, as Cicero points out,[40] and there had been no signs of hostility during their consulship.
It was likely in 94 BC that Crassus won the so-called "Causa Curiana" – an infamous inheritance dispute between Manius Curius and the family of one Marcus Coponius.
[44][45][46][47][48] Crassus and Ahenobarbus did manage to agree on passing a famous edict, preserved for us in a later work by Suetonius, that banned the so-called 'schools of Latin rhetoric'.
[53][54] In particular, Crassus gave a memorable speech on the 13 September 91 BC defending Livius Drusus from the attacks of the consul Lucius Marcius Philippus.
[56][57] Drusus was eventually assassinated by an unknown hand, an event commonly viewed by ancient sources as precipitating the outbreak of the Social War (91–88 BC).
He possessed great dignity, and combined with dignity a pleasantry and wit, not smart nor vulgar, but suited to the orator; his Latinity was careful and well chosen, but without affected preciseness; in presentation and argument his lucidity was admirable; in handling questions, whether of the civil law or of natural equity and justice, he was fertile in argument and fertile in analogies ... No one could surpass the resourcefulness of Crassus.
[61] In terms of Crassus' oratorical style, he apparently kept the ideal line between extremes; neither too active nor too still, neither too impassioned nor too calm, witty and yet always dignified: No violent movements of the body, no sudden variation of voice, no walking up and down, no frequent stamping of the foot; his language vehement, sometimes angry and filled with righteous indignation; much wit but always dignified, and, what is most difficult, he was at once ornate and brief.
[62]Cicero also notes that Crassus liked to break up his sentences into many short, sharp clauses, the effect being to create a simple style of speaking ('a natural complexion, free of make up').
A Marcus Brutus dubbed him the 'Palatine Venus' for the apparent effeminacy of the columns,[71] and a serious dispute broke out between Crassus and his colleague as censor, Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus, over the marble.
