Gaius Caesar

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See also Gaius Julius Caesar, for others of the same name.

Gaius Julius Caesar (20 BC - AD 4), most commonly known as Gaius Caesar, was the oldest son of Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa and Julia the Elder.. He was born with the name Gaius Vipsanius Agrippa, but when he was adopted by his maternal grandfather Roman Emperor Augustus, his name was changed to Gaius Julius Caesar.

Gaius was adopted along with his brother Lucius Caesar in 17 BC by their maternal grandfather, the Roman Emperor Augustus, who named the two boys his heirs. In 6 BC the Roman plebs agitated for Gaius to be created consul, despite the fact that he was only 14 and had not yet assumed the toga virilis. As a compromise, it was agreed that he should have the right to sit in the Senate House, and he was made consul designatus with the intention that he should assume the consulship in his twentieth year. Gaius was at this point created "Prince of Youth" ("princeps iuventutis"), an honorific that made him one of the symbolic heads of the equestrian order. Lucius, three years his junior, was granted the same honours after the appropriate interval had elapsed. Temples and statues were erected in their honour (as in the case of the Maison Carrée in Nimes). In 1 BC he was made army commander and with the king Ariobarzanes, whom he gave power over the Armenians and offered an island to the Euphrates. In 1 AD, he was made Consul with Lucius Aemilius Paullus as his colleague.

In 1 BC, he married his relative, Livilla, daughter of Drusus the Elder and Antonia Minor. This union had no issue.

Lucius died in AD 2 and Gaius died two years later in Lycia at the age of 24, after being wounded during a campaign in Artagira, Armenia.

The death of both Gaius and Lucius, the Emperor's two most favored heirs, compelled Augustus to adopt his stepson, Tiberius, and his sole remaining grandson, Postumus Agrippa as his new respective heirs.

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