Gnaeus Afranius Dexter | |
|---|---|
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| suffect consul | |
Gnaeus Afranius Dexter (died June 24, AD 105)[1] was a Roman Senator who was murdered by one of his slaves. He was a suffect consul as the colleague of Gaius Julius Quadratus Bassus at the time of his death.[2] Paul von Rohden suggests he may be the same Dexter Martial mentions as a hunter in two of his epigrams (vii.27.3; xi.69.3).[3]
Due to Roman law, if a slave owner is murdered in his home, his slaves could be executed and his freedmen relegated, based on the presumption that they should have come to his defense. Pliny the Younger participated in the Senatorial trial of Dexter's slaves and freedmen, fighting to have them acquitted.[4]
- ^ Fasti Ostienses, edited Ladislav Vidman (Prague: Acadamia, 1982), frag. Ha l. 3; pp. 46, 99
- ^ Alison E. Cooley, The Cambridge Manual of Latin Epigraphy (Cambridge: University Press, 2012), p. 467
- ^ von Rohden, "Afranius (9)", Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, I.1, Sp. 713
- ^ Pliny, Epistulae VIII.14