Roman poet and politician. He became a prominent orator in the Roman courts, was made consul in 68, and then proconsul in Asia (77), after which time he lived in retirement on his rich estates near Naples, and became a patron of literature and the arts. He was the author of the longest surviving Latin poem, Punica, an epic in 17 books on the 2nd Punic War (218–201 BC). Having contracted an incurable disease, he starved himself to death.
