page_title: Gaius Caesar
section_title: Post mortem
hierarchical_section_title: Gaius Caesar / Post mortem
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: photo de la maison carrée de Nîmes en janvier 2011
context_page_description: Gaius Caesar was consul in AD 1 and the grandson of Augustus, the first emperor of the Roman Empire. Although he was born to Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa and Julia, Augustus' only daughter, Gaius and his younger brother, Lucius Caesar, were raised by their grandfather as his adopted sons and joint-heirs to the empire. He would experience an accelerated political career befitting a member of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, with the Roman Senate allowing him to advance his career without first holding a quaestorship or praetorship, offices that ordinary senators were required to hold as part of the cursus honorum.
  In 1 BC, Gaius was given command of the eastern provinces, after which he concluded a peace treaty with King Phraates V of Parthia on an island in the Euphrates. Shortly afterward, he was appointed to the office of consul for the following year, 1 AD. The year after Gaius' consulship, Lucius died at Massilia in the month of August. Approximately eighteen months later, Gaius died of an illness in Lycia. He was married to his second cousin Livilla but they did not have children.
context_section_description: While Gaius was in Armenia, his brother Lucius had been sent by Augustus to complete his military training in Spain. While there, he fell ill and died on 20 August 2 AD in Massalia, Gaul. In the span of 18 months, the planned future of Rome was shaken. The deaths of both Gaius and Lucius, the Emperor's two most favored heirs, led Augustus to adopt his stepson Tiberius and his sole remaining grandson Postumus as his new heirs on 26 June 4 AD.
  Many honors were heaped upon Gaius by citizens and city officials of the Empire, including Colonia Obsequens Iulia Pisana (Pisa), where it was decreed that proper rites must be observed by matrons to lament his passing. Temples, public baths, and shops shut their doors as women wept inconsolably. To commemorate his brief life, a cenotaph was erected on the Limyrus River at Limyra in Lycia. Posthumously, the Senate voted honors for the young Caesars, and arranged for the golden spears and shields the boys had received on achieving the age of military service to be hung in the Senate House. The caskets containing their ashes were stored in the Mausoleum of Augustus alongside those of their father Agrippa and other members of the imperial family.
  Both Tacitus and Cassius Dio suggested foul play may have been involved in the death of Gaius and Lucius and that Gaius's step grandmother Livia may have had a hand in their deaths. Livia's presumed motive may have been to orchestrate the accession of her own son Tiberius as heir to Augustus.
caption: The Maison Carrée (French: "square house") was dedicated in Nemausus to Gaius and Lucius.
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