Gaius Sulpicius Gallus

Gaius Sulpicius Gallus or Galus[1] (/ˈɡəs sʌlˈpɪʃəs ˈɡæləs/) was a general, statesman and orator of the Roman Republic.

Under Lucius Aemilius Paulus, his intimate friend, he commanded the 2nd legion in the campaign against Perseus, king of Macedonia, and gained great reputation for having predicted a lunar eclipse on the night before the Battle of Pydna (168 BC).

On his return from Macedonia he was elected consul (166), and in the same year reduced the Ligurians to submission. In 164 he was sent as ambassador to Greece and Asia, where he held a meeting at Sardis to investigate the charges brought against Eumenes II of Pergamon by the representatives of various cities of Asia Minor.

Gallus was a man of great learning, an excellent Greek scholar, and in his later years devoted himself to the study of astronomy, on which subject he is quoted as an authority by Pliny. The lunar crater Sulpicius Gallus is named after him.

See Livy xliv. 37, Epit. 46; Polybius xxxi. 9, 10; Cicero, Brutus, 20, De officiis, i. 6, De senectute, 14; Pliny, Nat. Hist. ii. 9.

Notes

  1. T. R. S. Broughton, The Magistrates of the Roman Republic (American Philological Association, 1951, 1986), vol. 1, spells the cognomen as Galus rather than Gallus.

References

Preceded by
Quintus Aelius Paetus and Marcus Iunius Pennus
Consul of the Roman Republic
with Marcus Claudius Marcellus
166 BC
Succeeded by
Manlius Torquatus and Gnaeus Octavius
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