Valerius Flaccus was
praetor, a senior administrative and judicial position, sometime before 95 BC, most probably in 96. An
inscription from
Claros (in modern Turkey) indicates that following his praetorship and before 95 he held a
promagisterial, or senior military, 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
Ionia. 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 ("new man")
Gaius Coelius Caldus, who is said to have run against two
nobiles and beaten one of them. It was not unusual for a defeated candidate to run again the following year, as Flaccus did, often with success. Flaccus was successful in being elected as a consul in 93; his colleague was
M. Herennius.
Proponent of citizenship In 96, while
praetor urbanus, the senior magistrate of the city of Rome, 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.
Ernst Badian noted 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."
Hispania Flaccus succeeded
Titus Didius as
proconsul of
Hispania Citerior, a province in north east Hispania, in 92, and assumed his post before the conclusion of his consulship in order to deal with an uprising among the
Celtiberi, the major native group of the central-eastern Iberian Peninsula. The historian
Appian says the revolt was motivated by the exceptional cruelty and treachery of Didius, who had dealt with unrest and crime among the poor by promising them land to live on and then luring them into a trap. When the families had assembled within a Roman fort for the required registration, Didius slaughtered them all. While implying that the revolt against Didius was justified, Appian's account of the subsequent actions of Flaccus is not overtly critical. In an attempt to restore order, Flaccus engaged in armed conflicts that left 20,000 Celtiberi dead. At
Belgida, however, the local senate refused to issue an official declaration of war against Rome, or were perhaps still deliberating. The rebels set fire to the structure and burned their own senators alive. The local reaction to the mass murder of their governing class was no doubt mixed. Flaccus appears to have been successful in halting large-scale violence, perhaps because he capitalized on any outrage or ambivalence within the community at the deaths of their senators and executed those responsible. Flaccus remained in
Hispania longer than any other Roman governor had up to that time, and he seems to have been in charge of
Hispania Ulterior as well as Citerior. His extended command probably resulted from the disruptions of the
Social War and its aftermath, and the civil wars of the 80s. After stabilizing the region, Flaccus appears to have governed prudently and with respect to legal authority.
Contrebian water rights Flaccus remained in Hispania as governor at least until 87, as evidenced by the
Tabula Contrebiensis, a bronze tablet on which are inscribed his
civil laws pertaining to boundaries and
water-rights arbitration. The document is written in
Latin and based on
Roman legal formulae, but the judges are the local senate of Contrebia Balaisca (near present-day
Botorrita). Flaccus understood the legal issue as a distinction between
ager publicus and
ager privatus,
publicly held and private land. He used a
legal fiction to show how the principles of the two communities involved in the dispute could be applied mutually, and provided a Roman legal framework within which the Contrebians could cite precedent from Celtiberian law.
Gaul At some point in the 80s Flaccus was appointed governor of Gallia Transalpina (Transalpina). The other Gallic province was
Gallia Cisalpina (Cisalpina), the ethnically
Celtic north of Italy. The two Gallic provinces were often governed jointly, and no other promagistrate is recorded for Cisalpina, for the period 87–82, so Flaccus may well have governed both provinces jointly. Scholars have been unable to determine the extent to which Flaccus's terms as governor in Hispania and
Gaul were overlapping or sequential, as a continuous line of succession can rarely be traced for any
province. A dual governorship of both provinces has been disparaged as "unprecedented", but no other promagistrate is documented for Hispania in this period, and since the senate only began assigning
Transalpine Gaul as a regular
provincia in the mid-90s, administrative arrangements were still evolving. By 85, Flaccus was "firmly installed" in Transalpina, though Cicero, as Badian notes, refrains from calling him the lawful governor there. He was acclaimed
imperator and retained his province until he celebrated a
triumph over Celtiberia and Gaul in 81. It is possible to argue that by the mid-80s, Flaccus was responsible for both Gallia Transalpina and Cisalpina, as well as Hispania Ulterior and Citerior. The longevity of Flaccus's command has been cited as evidence that the prolongment of
Julius Caesar's term in Gaul in the 50s, and the five-year proconsular commands granted to
Pompeius Magnus and
Marcus Crassus after their joint consulship in 55, were less exceptional than has sometimes been thought.
The case of Quinctius In 83 BC, Flaccus was brought into a property dispute between
Publius Quinctius and Naevius. Quinctius had inherited land in Transalpina from his brother, Gaius Quinctius, along with attached debts. Naevius, who had been the brother's business partner, tried to foreclose on the property, and ejected Quinctius by force. Flaccus ruled that Naevius had seized the property improperly and ordered restitution. Two years later, the case, still dragging on, helped launch the career of
Cicero, who in 81 was a young
advocate in his mid-twenties arguing on behalf of Quinctius: the speech survives as the extant
pro Quinctio. ==Role in civil war==