Acilia (mother of Lucan)
Acilia was a noblewoman of Hispania Baetica in ancient Rome who lived in the 1st century CE, and was implicated in the Pisonian conspiracy to overthrow the Roman emperor Nero.
Acilia was the mother of the poet Lucan, who was one of the original members who incited the conspiracy. According to the historian Tacitus, when, in 65 CE, the 25-year-old Lucan was arrested, he informed on several members of the conspiracy, including Acilia, in the vain hope of securing a pardon.[1] Lucan and his father, Marcus Annaeus Mela, Acilia's husband, were proscribed and forced into suicide. Acilia was spared punishment.[2][3]
Some scholars have speculated whether Lucan ever actually even informed on his mother, and whether Acilia was a part of the conspiracy at all. These have observed that it is curious that Acilia was said to have escaped punishment, when other women associated with the conspiracy were as ruthlessly punished as Lucan himself was. Some have even speculated whether it was a lie spread, possibly by Nero himself, to posthumously slander Lucan and paint a picture of him as treacherous, and willing to sacrifice his own mother in the hope of escaping punishment.[4] Others have interpreted this event to indicate Acilia was never part of the conspiracy and Lucan was naming her -- someone obviously not part of it -- as a conspirator as a way to thumb his nose at Nero as a last act.[5]
References
[edit]- ^ Williams, Henry Smith (1904). The Historians' History of the World. The Historian Association. p. 203.
- ^ Tacitus, Annals 15.56, 71
- ^ Dando-Collins, Stephen (2008). Blood of the Caesars: How the Murder of Germanicus Led to the Fall of Rome. Wiley. p. 205. ISBN 9780470137413. Retrieved 2024-12-08.
- ^ Macfarquhar, Colin; Gleig, George, eds. (1797). "Lucanus". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 10. A. Bell and C. Macfarquhar. p. 314. Retrieved 2024-12-08.
- ^ Dando-Collins, Stephen (2010). The Great Fire of Rome: The Fall of the Emperor Nero and His City. Hachette Book Group. p. 154. ISBN 9780306819339. Retrieved 2024-12-08.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Smith, William (1870). "Atilla". In Smith, William (ed.). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Vol. 1. p. 406.