Gaius Valerius Flaccus (consul)

Gaius Valerius Flaccus (fl. early 1st century BC) was a consul of the Roman Republic in 93 BC and a provincial governor in the late-90s and throughout the 80s. He is notable for his balanced stance during the Sullan civil wars, the longevity of his term as governor, and his efforts to extend citizenship to non-Romans.

Valerius Flaccus was praetor sometime before 95 BC, most probably in 96. An inscription from Claros indicates that following his praetorship and before 95 he held a promagisterial command in the Roman province of Asia. Both he and his brother Lucius, who was a governor of Asia in the late 90s and again for 85, are honored as patrons of the city of Colophon in Lydia. The two are the first Roman governors known to be addressed as patrons of a free city, a practice that became common in the 60s BC.

Flaccus may have been a candidate for the consulship of 94, losing to the novus homo C. Coelius Caldus, who is said to have run against two highly distinguished nobiles and beaten one of them. It was not unusual for a defeated candidate to run again the following year, often with success. The colleague of Flaccus in the consulship of 93 was M. Herennius.

In 96, while praetor urbanus, Valerius Flaccus sponsored legislation to grant citizenship to Calliphana of Velia, a priestess of Ceres.Julius Caesar, in his account of the Gallic Wars, identifies the Helvian Celt Caburus as another recipient of citizenship from Flaccus, during his time as governor of Gallia Transalpina. Caburus followed custom in assuming his patron's gentilic name Gaius Valerius. This interest in expanding citizenship may be viewed in the context of the family's moderate popularism and their relations with social inferiors; E. Badian has pointed out that the Valerii Flacci "were given to taking up new men and families: inscriptions (Inschr. V. Magn. 144f.) reveal a policy of low-class connections."

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