Publius Vatinius

Reading notes

• Ad Atticum 2.6 §2 who have never seen Vatinius

  P. Vatinius, tribune of 59 BC and a notorious Caesarian agent, whom Cicero loathed. To live where no one has even laid eyes on him is Cicero's image of blessed retirement from Rome's politics.

• Ad Atticum 2.7 §2 for the priest Vatinius

  P. Vatinius, the Caesarian tribune of 59, was a member of the epulones, the college of priests who arranged the sacred banquets at games. "Epulo" (priest of the feast) is Cicero's contemptuous tag for him here.

• Ad Atticum 2.9 §2 dress Vatinius's tumour in a double-dyed \textit{[Greek: dibaph\=oi]} priestly robe

  P. Vatinius, Caesar's tribune of 59, had a conspicuous swelling (struma) on his neck. Cicero jeers that the dynasts could clothe even that goitre in a priest's "double-dyed" (dibaphos, twice purple-dipped) augural robe --- predicting Vatinius's reach for office and priesthood.

• Ad Atticum 11.5 §4 your asking about Vatinius

  P. Vatinius, a Caesarian then commanding at Brundisium; despite their old enmity he treated the stranded Cicero kindly. "Neither his good offices nor anyone else's" could yet help while Cicero's situation remained unresolved.

• Ad Familiares 5.10a §1 VATINIUS

  Publius Vatinius, tribune in 59 BC and a Caesarian whom Cicero had savaged as a hostile witness (In Vatinium) before defending him in 54 BC. He is now proconsul in Illyricum, campaigning against the Dalmatae, and writes as Cicero's grateful client.

• Ad Familiares 5.10b §1 VATINIUS

  Publius Vatinius, tribune in 59 BC and a Caesarian whom Cicero had once savaged as a hostile witness (In Vatinium, 56 BC); by 45 BC he commanded for Caesar in Illyricum and writes here from his Dalmatian campaign asking Cicero to plead his case for a triumph.

• Ad Quintum Fratrem 2.4 §1 Vatinius, by whom he was openly attacked, we cut to pieces

  P. Vatinius, the tribune of 59 BC who had carried Caesar's commands, appeared as a hostile witness against Sestius; Cicero's cross-examination of him survives as the In Vatinium.

• Ad Quintum Fratrem 2.15 §3 I am to defend Vatinius the same day

  P. Vatinius, the Caesarian tribune of 59 BC whom Cicero had savagely attacked in 56; now, reconciled to the triumvirs, Cicero defends him --- a turn he found galling but politically unavoidable.

• Against Vatinius §1 Cross-examination of P. Vatinius as a witness

  The interrogatio testis: a formal cross-questioning of a hostile witness during the trial of P. Sestius (56 BC). Cicero turns the examination into a sustained invective against Vatinius's whole career rather than testing his evidence.

• Tenth Philippic §11 the army of the commander Publius Vatinius

  P. Vatinius, governor of Illyricum, who handed Dyrrachium and his army over to Brutus. Cicero, his former enemy, here praises his loyalty to the commonwealth.