A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology
William Smith, Ed.

Pe'dius

This is the statement of Suetonius (Cuesar, 83), but Glandorp has conjectured (Onom. p. 432), not without reason, that Pedius may have been the son of the dictator's sister, since we find him grown up and discharging important duties in Caesar's lifetime. The name of Pedius first occurs in B. C. 57, when he was serving as legatus to his uncle in Gaul. (Caes. B. G.> 2.1.) In B. C. 55, Pedius became a candidate for the curule aedileship with Cn. Plancius and others, but he lost his election. (Cic. pro Planc. 7, 22: respecting the interpretation of these passages, see Wunder, Prolegomena, p. lxxxiii, &c. to his edition of Cicero's oration pro Plancio.) On the breaking out of the civil war in B. C. 49, Pedius naturally joined Caesar. During Caesar's campaign in Greece against Pompey, B. C. 48, Pedius remained in Italy, having been raised to the praetorship, and in the course of that year he defeated and slew Milo in the neighbourhood of Thurii. At the beginning of B. C. 45, we find Pedius serving as legatus against the Pompeian party in Spain, and on his return to Rome with Caesar in the autumn of the year, he was allowed the honour of a triumph with the title of proconsul. (Fasti Capit.) In Caesar's will Pedius was named one of his heirs along with his two other great-nephews, C. Octavius and L. Pinarius, Octavius obtaining three-fourths of the property, and the remaining fourth being divided between Pinarins and Pedius, who resigned his share of the inheritance to Octavius. After the fall of the consuls, Hirtius and Pansa, at the battle of Mutina in the month of April, B. C. 43, Octavius marched to Rome at the head of an army [AUGUSTUS, p. 425b.), and in the month of August he was elected consul along with Pedius. The latter forthwith, at the instigation of his colleague, proposed a law, known by the name of the Lex Pedia, by which all the murderers of Julius Caesar were punished with aquae et ignis interdictio. Pedius was left in charge of the city, while Octavius marched into the north of Italy, and as the latter had now determined to join Antonius and Lepidus, Pedius proposed in the senate the repeal of the sentence of outlawry which had been pronounced against them. To this the senate was obliged to give an unwilling consent; and soon afterwards towards the close of the year there was formed at Bononia the celebrated triumvirate between Octavius, Antonius and Lepidus. As soon as the news reached Rome that the triumvirs had made out a list of persons to be put to death, the utmost consternation prevailed, morel especially as the names of those who were doomed had not transpired. During the whole of the night on which the news arrived, Pedius was with difficulty able to prevent an open insurrection; and on the following morning, being ignorant of the decision of the triumvirs, he declared that only seventeen persons should be put to death, and pledged the public word for the safety of all others. But the fatigue to which he had been exposed was so great that it occasioned his death on the succeeding night.

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