person
Trebatius
also: TREBATIO, Trebatium
Gaius Trebatius Testa, the young jurist and protege whom Cicero commended to Caesar in Gaul in 54 BC (Fam. 7.5); recipient of the affectionate, teasing Cicero-Trebatius correspondence of Ad Familiares book 7 (54-44 BC), and the dedicatee of Cicero's Topica (44 BC). Later an eminent jurisconsult.
Reading notes
- Ad Atticum 13.9 §1 when Trebatius arrived
Gaius Trebatius Testa, the jurist whom Cicero had commended to Caesar in Gaul and the recipient of the affectionate Ad Familiares book 7; by now a close friend in Cicero's circle. Later one of the great jurisconsults of the age.
- Ad Atticum 13.23 §3 Trebatius
Gaius Trebatius Testa, the jurist and friend of Cicero (dedicatee of the Topica), here cited for his legal view on the withholding-clause.
- Ad Familiares 7.10 §1 takes you for a thorough jurist
Iure consultum: Caesar rates Trebatius highly as a iuris consultus, a legal expert. The whole letter plays on Trebatius being learned in law (sapere) yet timid in war and water; Cicero quips that even Britain would have found no one more 'learned.'
- Ad Familiares 7.11 §2 the British jurisconsult
Cicero's running gag: Trebatius, a serious Roman jurist, has been reduced to dispensing law in the wilds of Gaul and Britain, an absurd figure ripe for the comic stage.
- Ad Familiares 7.21 §1 my Testa
Testa is the cognomen of the young jurist C. Trebatius Testa, the recipient; Cicero addresses him familiarly by it throughout the cluster.
- Ad Familiares 7.22 §1 I side with Scaevola and Testa
The joke: Cicero ranks his young friend Trebatius ('Testa') alongside Q. Mucius Scaevola, the greatest of Roman jurists, as if they were co-equal authorities, while pointedly siding against the trio of old masters just cited.