Lucius Lucinius Varro Murena

Lucius Licinius Varro Murena (died 22 BC) was a Roman politician who was accused of conspiring against the emperor Augustus, and executed without a trial.

Hailing from Lanuvium, Murena was the natural born son of Lucius Licinius Murena, who was Consul in 62 BC. He was adopted by Aulus Terentius Varro, whose name he took. His sister by adoption, Terentia, married Gaius Maecenas, the prominent adviser and friend of Augustus and patron of the arts, while his adopted brother Aulus Terentius Varro Murena, was consul designate for the year 23 BC.

He held the position of legate in Syria from 24 BC to 23 BC, when he was replaced by Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa.

In 22 BC, Murena was back in Rome, where he was called on to defend Marcus Primus, the former proconsul (governor) of Macedonia, against charges of waging a war on the Odrysian kingdom of Thrace, whose king was a Roman ally, without prior approval of the Senate. Murena told the court that his client had received specific instructions from the emperor Augustus, ordering him to attack the client state. Later, Primus testified that the orders came from the recently deceased Marcellus, Augustus’s heir apparent. Under the Constitutional settlement of 27 BC such orders, had they been given, would have been considered a breach of the Senate’s prerogative, as Macedonia was under the Senate’s jurisdiction, not the Princeps’s. Such an action would have ripped away the veneer of Republican restoration as promoted by Augustus, and exposed his fraud of merely being the first citizen, a first among equals. Even worse, the involvement of Marcellus provided some measure of proof that Augustus’s policy was to have the youth take his place as Princeps, instituting a form of monarchy – accusations that had already played out during the crisis of 23 BC.

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