Gaius Julius Bassus was a Roman senator, who was active during the reign of Antoninus Pius. He was suffect consul in the nundinium of November-December 139 as the colleague of Marcus Ceccius Justinus.Werner Eck, "Die Fasti consulares der Regierungszeit des Antoninus Pius, eine Bestandsaufnahme seit Géza Alföldys Konsulat und Senatorenstand" in Studia epigraphica in memoriam Géza Alföldy, hg. W. Eck, B. Feher, and P. Kovács (Bonn, 2013), p. 72 He was the son of Gaius Julius Quadratus Bassus, consul in 105.Géza Alföldy, Konsulat und Senatorenstand unter der Antoninen (Bonn: Rudolf Habelt Verlag, 1977), pp. 318, 323 The Julii Bassi were a prominent family of Pergamum, that had descended from the Attalid dynasty and Galatian tetrarchs.Edward Dabrowa, Legio X Fretensis: A Prosopographical Study of its Officers (I-III c. A.D.) (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1993), p. 34
Julius Bassus may be identical with one Bassus who was active in the second century; Lucan describes him as an effeminate sophist; the Palatine Anthology preserves a poem by one "Bassus of Smyrna", who need not have been born in that city; Galen dedicated his De libris propriis to one Bassus.G.W. Bowersock, Greek Sophists in the Roman Empire (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969) p. 25
Knowledge of the career of Julius Bassus is limited to one appointment, as governor of the imperial province of Dacia Superior; Werner Eck dates his tenure from late 135 (an inscription attests to his governorship on 13 December 135) to 138.Eck, "Jahres- und Provinzialfasten der senatorischen Statthalter von 69/70 bis 138/139", Chiron, 13 (1983), pp. 176-183
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