Aulus Caecina
Who was Aulus Caecina?
Roman writer and critic of Julius Caesar
Biographical data adapted from Wikipedia’s article on Aulus Caecina (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Biography
Aulus Caecina, the son of the elder Aulus Caecina, was a Roman writer and thinker from an Etruscan background, living during the last, unstable years of the Roman Republic. His family was quite notable, originating from Etruria, and his father was defended by the famous orator Cicero in 69 BCE through the well-known legal speech, Pro Caecina. This link to Cicero was important for the younger Caecina. He built a strong personal and intellectual friendship with Cicero that lasted much of his adult life.
Before Fame
Caecina was born into a well-known Etruscan family that had become part of Roman society. His father's legal issues, which involved dealings with Cicero, connected the younger Caecina with the upper circles of Roman intellectual and political life early on. Growing up during the last unstable decades of the Republic, he would have seen the breakdown of traditional republican institutions and the growing rivalry between Rome's most powerful figures. This background influenced his political beliefs and aligned him with the Pompeian side when conflict eventually erupted.
Key Achievements
- Authored a significant treatise on the Etruscan system of divination, working to systematize and rationalize its doctrines
- Produced writings on lightning classification that were preserved by Seneca and remain a primary source on Etruscan meteorological divination
- Composed the Querelae, a work of political recantation that secured his pardon from Julius Caesar
- Influenced Cicero's De Divinatione through his expert knowledge of Etruscan religious and prophetic traditions
- Maintained a documented intellectual correspondence with Cicero, portions of which survive in the Epistulae ad Familiares
Did You Know?
- 01.Cicero interceded personally with Julius Caesar to secure Caecina's pardon from exile after he had published a hostile political attack on the dictator.
- 02.Substantial excerpts from Caecina's writings on lightning survive today only because Seneca quoted them extensively in the second book of his Naturales Quaestiones.
- 03.Caecina attempted to harmonize the ancient Etruscan system of divination with Stoic philosophy, an unusual intellectual project bridging indigenous Italian religious tradition and Greek thought.
- 04.His father had been the subject of a famous legal defense by Cicero in 69 BCE, a speech that still survives under the title Pro Caecina.
- 05.His letters exchanged with Cicero are preserved in the collection Epistulae ad Familiares, providing a direct documentary record of their friendship.