Vetus, Antistius
1.
Propraetor in Further Spain about B.C. 68, under whom Caesar served as quaestor (
Plut. Caes. 5).
2.
Gaius, son of the preceding, quaestor in B.C. 61,
and tribune of the plebs in 57, when he supported Cicero in opposition to Clodius. In the
Civil War he espoused Caesar's party, and we find him in Syria in 45, fighting against Q.
Caecilius Brassus. In 34 Vetus carried on war against the Salassi, and in 30 was consul
suffectus. He accompanied Augustus to Spain in 25, and on the illness of the emperor
continued the war against the Cantabri and Astures, whom he reduced to submission (
Ad
Q. Fr. ii. 1; Dio Cass. xlvii. 27, liii. 25;
Flor. iv. 12,
21).
3.
Lucius, Roman consul with the emperor Nero, A.D. 55. In 58 he
commanded a Roman army in Germany, and formed the project of connecting the Mosella (Moselle)
and the Arar (Saône) by a canal, and thus forming a communication between the
Mediterranean and the Northern Ocean, as troops could be conveyed down the Rhone and the
Saône into the Moselle through the canal, and down the Moselle into the Rhine, and
so into the Ocean. Vetus put an end to his life in 65, in order to anticipate his sentence of
death, which Nero had resolved upon (
Tac. Ann. xiii.
11,
Tac. Ann. 53;
xiv.
57;
xvi. 10).
