Gaius Cassius Longinus (jurist)

Gaius Cassius Longinus, distinguished here as the jurist from his ancestor of the same name, one of the assassins of Julius Caesar, was a Roman jurist and politician of the first century AD, born around 13 BC. He was a grandnephew of the jurist Servius Sulpicius Rufus and a great grandnephew or great grandson of Caesar's assassin Gaius Cassius Longinus. A pupil of the jurist Sabinus, he became head of the legal school known as the Sabinians or Cassians, and his principal work, a multi volume commentary on civil law known as the libri iuris civilis, survives only in quotations by later authors such as Iavolenus. He served as suffect consul in the second half of the year 30, then as proconsular governor of the province of Asia from 40 to 41 and governor of the imperial province of Syria from 41 to 49. The emperor Nero exiled him to Sardinia in 65, and he returned to Rome, by then blind according to Suetonius, only after Vespasian became emperor. The historian Tacitus records a speech he gave as a senator in the time of Nero during the debate over the mass execution of 400 slaves belonging to the household of the murdered Lucius Pedanius Secundus; in it Cassius conceded the execution was unjust to the slaves themselves but defended it on grounds of the public good and the property interests of the household's heirs, a position modern commentators regard as unjust. He married Junia Lepida, a descendant of the emperor Augustus, and had two children.