A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology. By various writers. Ed. by William Smith. Illustrated by numerous engravings on wood.

868 COTTA.
was one of the most distinguished orators of his
time; he is placed by the side of P. Sulpicius and
C. Caesar, and Cicero entertained a very high
opinion of him. Cicero, who at an early period of
his life, and when Sulla still had the power in his
hands, pleaded the case of a woman of Arretium
against Cotta, characterises him as a most acute
and subtile orator; his arguments were always
sound, but calm and dry, and his oratory was never
sublime or animated. We still possess a specimen
of it among the fragments of Sallust's Hlistoriae.
He appears to have occupied himself also with the
study of philosophy, for Cicero introduces him as
one of the interlocutors in the " De Oratore," and
in the third book of the " De Natura Deorum,"
as maintaining the cause of the Academics. (Cic.
de Orat. i. 7, ii. 23, iii. 3, 8, Brut. 49, 55, 86,
88, 90, Orat. 30, 38, ad Att. xii. 20, in Verr. i.
50, iii. 7, de Leg. Agr. ii. 22, in Pison. 26; Sallust, Hist. Fragm. ii. p. 206, ed. Gerl.; Appian,
de B. C. i. 37. Compare Meyer, Fragm. Orat.
Rom. p. 338, &c., 2nd ed.)
10. M. AURELIUS COTTA, a brother of No. 9,
was consul in B. c. 74, together with L. Licinius
Lucullus. In this year the war against Mithridates broke out again, and while the conduct of it
was entrusted to Metellus, Cotta obtained Bithynia
for his province, and a fleet to protect the Propontis. When Mithridates marched into Bithynia
with his army, Cotta retreated to Chalcedon, in the
port of which his fleet was stationed. In the
neighbourhood of Chalcedon a battle was fought, in
which Cotta was not only defeated and obliged to
take refuge within the walls of Chalcedon, but lost
his whole fleet of sixty-four sail. Mithridates,
who had to direct his attention towards another
quarter, left Cotta at Chalcedon. During this campaign Cotta dismissed his quaestor, P. Oppius,
whom he suspected of being bribed by the enemy
and plotting against him. On his return to Rome,
therefore, Cotta brought an accusation against Oppius, who was defended by Cicero. Afterwards
Cotta himself was charged by C. Carbo with having
been guilty of extortion in his province of Bithynia,
and was condemned. His son, M. Aurelius Cotta,
took revenge for this hostility of Carbo towards
his father, by accusing Carbo of the same crime,
on the very same day that he (M. Cotta) assumed
the manly gown. (Liv. Epit. 93; Eutrop. vi. 6;
Sall. Fragm. Hist. lib. iv.; Ascon. in Cornel. p. 67;
Plut. Lucull. 5, 6, 8; Cic. in Verr. v. 13, pro
Muren. 15, pro Opp. Fragm. p. 444 ed. Orelli;
Dion. Cass xxxvi. 23; Appian, Mithrid. 71; Val.
Max. v. 4. ~ 4.)
11. L. AURELIUS COTTA, a brother of Nos. 9
and 10, was praetor in B. c. 70, in which year he
carried the celebrated law (lex Aurelia judiciaria),
which entrusted the judicia to courts consisting of
senators, equites, and the tribuni aerarii. The
main object of this law was to deprive the senators
of their exclusive right to act as judices, and to
allow other parts of the Roman state a share in the
judicial functions, for which reason the law is
sometimes vaguely described as having transferred
the judicia from the senate to the equites. P. Cornelius Sulla and P. Autronius Paetus were the
consuls elect for the year B. c. 65, but both were
accused by L. Aurelius Cotta and L. Manlius Torquatus of ambitus: they were convicted and their
accusers were elected consuls in their stead. No
sooner had they entered upon their consulship, than

COTTA.
P. Autronius Paetus formed a plan with Catiline for
murdering the consuls and most of the senators.
This conspiracy however was discovered and frustrated. The year after his consulship, B. c. 64,
Cotta was censor, but he and his colleague abdicated on account of the machinations of the tribunes.
In 63, when Cicero had suppressed the Catilinarian conspiracy, in the debates upon which in the
senate Cotta had taken a part, he proposed a supplicatio for Cicero; and he afterwards shewed the
same friendship for the unfortunate orator, as he
was the first to bring forward in the senate a motion for the recall of Cicero from his exile. During the civil war Cotta belonged to the party of
Caesar, whose mother Aurelia was his kinswoman,
and when Caesar was alone at the head of the
republic, it was rumoured that Cotta, who then
held the office of quindecimvir, would propose in
the senate to confer upon Caesar the title of king,
since it was written in the libri fatales that the
Parthians, against whom Caesar was preparing
war, could be conquered only by a king. After
the murder of Caesar, Cotta rarely attended the
meetings of the senate from a feeling of despair.
He is praised by Cicero as a man of great talent
and of the highest prudence. (Ascon. in Cornel.
pp. 64, 67, 78, &c.; Cic. in Pison. 16, in Verr. ii.
71, in P. Clod. 7, de Leg. Agr. ii. 17, in Catil.
iii. 8, Philip. ii. 6, pro Doam. 26, 32, pro Sext.
34, ad Att. xii. 21, de Leg. iii. 19, ad Fam. xii.
2; Suet. Caes. 79; Liv. Epit. 97; Vell. Pat.
ii. 32; Corn. Nep. Attic. 4; Plut. Cic. 27. Comp.
Orelli, Onom. Tull. ii. p. 90.)
12. AURELIUS COTTA MESSALLINUS, a son
of the orator Messalla, who was adopted into
the Aurelia gens. In the reign of Tiberius, with
whom he was on terms of intimacy, he made himself notorious for the gratuitous harshness and animosity with which he acted on several occasions.
This drew upon him an accusation of the most illustrious senators in A.D. 32, for having spoken
disrespectfully of Tiberius; but the emperor himself sent a written defence to the senate, which of
course procured his acquittal. Tacitus characterises
him as nobilis quidem, sed egens ob luxam et per
flagitia infamis. (Plin. H. N. x. 27; Tacit. Ann. ii.
32, iv. 20, v. 3, vi. 5, &c.)
On coins of the Aurelia gens we find the names
of M. Cotta and L. Cotta, but there are no means
of identifying them with any of the preceding
persons. Of the two coins annexed the obverse of
the former represents the head of Pallas, the reverse Hercules in a biga drawn by two centaurs;
the obverse of the latter represents the head of