C. Caetronius
legate of the first legion in Germany at the accession of Tiberius in A. D. 14. A mutiny had broken out among the soldiers, but they soon repented, and brought their ringleaders in chains before C. Caetronius, who tried and punished them in a manner which had never been adopted before, and must be considered as an usurpation of the soldiery. The legions (the first and twentieth) met with drawn swords and formed a sort of popular assembly. The accused individual was led to some elevated place, so as to be seen by all, and when the multitude declared him guilty, he was forthwith put to death. This sort of court-martial was looked upon in later times as a welcome precedent. (Tac. Ann. 1.44; Ammian. Marc. 29.5.)
From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.