Gaius Oppius was an intimate friend of

Julius Caesar Gaius Julius Caesar (12 or 13 July 100 BC – 15 March 44 BC) was a Roman general and statesman. A member of the First Triumvirate, Caesar led the Roman armies in the Gallic Wars before defeating his political rival Pompey in Caesar's civil wa ...

. He managed the dictator's private affairs during his absence from Rome, and, together with Lucius Cornelius Balbus, exercised considerable influence in the city. According to

Suetonius Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus (), commonly referred to as Suetonius ( ; – after AD 122), was a Roman historian who wrote during the early Imperial era of the Roman Empire. His most important surviving work is ''De vita Caesarum'', common ...

(''Caesar'', 56), many authorities considered Oppius to have written the histories of the Spanish, African and Alexandrian wars which were published as the works of Caesar himself. It is now generally held that he may possibly have written the account of the Alexandrian war (although the claims of Hirtius are considered stronger), but certainly not those of the Spanish and the African wars, although Niebuhr (the Danish-German Romantic era historian) confidently assigned the ''Bellum Africanum'' to him. The writer of these latter accounts took an actual part in the wars they described, whereas Oppius was in Rome at the time. Oppius also wrote a life of Caesar and the elder Scipio. Martin Schanz, ''Geschichte der römischen Literatur'', i. p. 210 (2nd ed., 1898); Teuffel-Schwabe, ''History of Roman Literature'' (Eng. trans.), 197; see also Cicero, ''Letters'', ed. R. Y. Tyrrell and L. C. Purser, iv. introd. p. 69. After Caesar's death Oppius apparently wrote a pamphlet attempting to prove that

Caesarion Ptolemy XV Caesar (; , ; 47 BC – late August 30 BC), nicknamed Caesarion (, , "Little Caesar"), was the last pharaoh of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt, reigning with his mother Cleopatra VII from 2 September 44 BC until her death by 10 or 12 ...

Cleopatra Cleopatra VII Thea Philopator (; The name Cleopatra is pronounced , or sometimes in both British and American English, see and respectively. Her name was pronounced in the Greek dialect of Egypt (see Koine Greek phonology). She was ...

's son, was not actually fathered by Caesar as she claimed.Duane W. Roller, ''Cleopatra: A Biography'', Oxford University Press US, 2010, pp.70-3

References

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Oppius, Gaius Ancient Roman politicians 1st-century BC Romans