FLAMINIUS, Caius, an eminent member of the plebeian gens Flaminia, who in the course of fifteen years of public life (232-217 b.c. ) held successively the offices of tribune, praetor, and censor, and was twice advanced to the consular dignity. During his tribuneship (232 B,c.) he was successful in carrying a measure for distributing virüim among the plebeians, in terms of the Licinian law, the ager Gallicus Picenus, an extensive tract of newly-acquired territory lying along the east coast of the peninsula to the south of Ariminum. This law was carried in face of the determined opposition of the entire senatorial party, who, according to Valerius Maximus (lib. v., c. 4, sec. 5), at one stage threatened to declare him a public enemy and raise an army against him should he persevere in his agitation. In 227 b.c. he was appointed praetor, Sicily being assigned to him as his province; and there he so conducted himself as to win the. lasting gratitude of the people whom he governed. This they took occasion to show thirty years afterwards when his son was curule aedile. In 223 b.c. he was made consul, and, along with his colleague P. Furius Philus, hastened at once to the north to prosecute the Gallic war, which had been occasioned, it is said, by the operation of his own agrarian law, and which had been going on with indecisive results since 225. Rashly crossing the Γo near the site of Piacenza, he sustained a check which compelled him to capitulate. The facile Insubres having granted him a free retreat, he speedily, in conjunction with the Cenomani, renewed the attack at another point, perhaps on the river Oglio. On this occasion he was successful; but it seems very doubtful whether the victory was not gained in spite of rather than by means of the generalship of the ...consul. At all events his conquest of the Insubres failed to make any impression on the aristocratic party who had opposed his election and afterwards sought to obtain his recall; and the honours of a triumph were awarded to him only when the negative decision of the senate had been overborne by the popular voice. According to Plutarch (Marcelliis, 4) he was nevertheless compelled to resign his office before the natural term had expired. In 221 he was chosen magister equitum under the dictatorship of Μ. Minucius Rufus, but was not permitted to take office owing to a bad omen—the squeaking of a shrew-mouse—which had occurred immediately after the election. In the following year (220 b.c. ) he was censor; and this period of office was marked by the execution of two great public works which are permanently associated with his name—a circus and a road. The Circus Flaminius, erected in a locality which had previously been known as the Prata Flaminia, was dèsigned for the accommodation of the plebeians, especially for their public meetings,—they having no right at that period to sit in the Circus Maximus. The Via Flaminia was the first to be carried across the Apennines, thus connecting the Adriatic and Tuscan seas. It was a continuation of the old military road which had been carried as far as to Spoletium (Spoleto) in 240 b.c. From Spoletium it went to Fulginium (Foligno) and Forum Flaminii (San Giovanni in Fori-fiamma); thence it mounted the Apennine slope to the station Ad Ensem (La Schieggia), crossing the central ridge at what is now know n as the pass of Furlo, and descending by the valley of the Metaurus to Fanum Fortunae (Fano), whence it kept the coast as far as to Ariminum. In 218 b.c., as a leader of the democratic opposition, Flaminius was one of the chief promoters of the measure brought in by the tribune Claudius, which prohibited senators and senators’ sons from possessing seagoing vessels, except such as might be necessary for the transport of the produce of their own estates, and generally shut them out from everything which the Romans included under the category of commercial speculation (quaestus), such as undertaking public contracts (redemptiones), and the like. The effective support which he had given to this measure vastly increased the popularity of Flaminius with his own order, and secured his second election as consul in the following year (217 B.C.), shortly after the defeat of Sempronius at the Trebia. Without staying to go through the usual solemnities of installation at the Capitol, or to celebrate the feriae Latinae, Flaminius at once hastened to Ariminum and thence to Arretium, there to be ready for an aggressive campaign against Hannibal as soon as the roads should be open. Meanwhile Hannibal, uneasy in his winter quarters, had accomplished with comparative ease the passage of the Apennines, and forced his way southward across the flooded plains of the lower Arno. The consul, fearing lest the enemy should find Rome unprotected, impetuously set out in pursuit. Free to select his own ground, Hannibal chose to make his stand between Borghetto and Passignano, in the narrow defile formed by the hills of Cortona, which is dosed at its entrance by the Trasimene lake. With the main body of his infantry he barred the further outlet at the hill of Torre, while the light troops and the cavalry were posted on the sides of the pass. It was early morning (on the 23d of June, according to the uncorrected calendar, but in reality on some day in April) when Flaminius reached the spot, and a thick haze covering hill and lake altogether concealed the position and even the existence of the enemy, until the Roman army found itself completely and hopelessly surrounded in the fatal defile. In the three hours’ carnage that followed 15,000 Romans perished, and Flaminius was among the slain.
From the materials which Livy and Polybius—no friendly critics—furnish, it is manifest that Flaminius was a man of ability, energy, and probity, who with the bravery of a true soldier combined many of the best qualities of a popular democratic leader. While eminent, however, as the head of a political party, and successful in carrying some pieces of useful legislation, he has little or no claim to rank among the greater statesmen of the republic. As a general, moreover, he was headstrong and self-sufficient, and he seems to have owed such victories as he achieved to personal boldness favoured by good fortune rather than to any superiority of strategical skill (see Livy, xxi., xxii.; Polybius, ii., iii.).
FLAMINIUS, Caius, son of the preceding, was quaestor under P. Scipio Africanus the elder in Spain in the year 210 b.c., and took part in the capture of New Carthage. Fourteen years later he was curule aedile; and this term of office was marked by the distribution among the citizens at very low prices of large quantities of grain, which in a time of Roman scarcity the Sicilians had sent in grateful remembrance of his father’s praetorship thirty years before. In 193 b.c. he himself attained a praetorship, and was sent to the recently constituted province of Hispania Citerior. There he carried on the war against the insubordinate populations, and after a siege took Litabrum, a city which is described by Livy as having been strong and opulent, and made prisoner Corribilo, a powerful chieftain. In 187 b.c. he became consul along with Μ. Aemilius Lepidus, and was successful in giving peace to Northern Italy by the subjugation of the warlike Ligurian tribes. In the same year the branch of the Via AEmilia (traces of which are still discernible) connecting Bononia (Bologna) with Arretium (Arezzo) was constructed by him.
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