Cimber, C. Annius
the son of Lysidicus, had obtained the praetorship from Caesar, and was one of Antony's supporters in B. C. 43, on which account he is vehemently attacked by Cicero. He was charged with having killed his brother, whence Cicero calls him ironically Philadelphus, and perpetrates the pun Nisi forte jure Germanum Cimber occidtit, that is, " unless perchance he has a right to kill his own countryman," as Cimber is the name of a German people, and Germanus signifies in Latin both a German and a brother. (Cic. Phil. 13.12, 11.6; Quint. Inst. 8.3.27; comp. Cic. Att. 15.13; Suet. Aug. 86.) Cimber was an orator, a poet, and an historian, but his merits were of a low order, and he is ridiculed by Virgil in an epigram preserved by Quintilian (l.c.). (Huschke, De C. Annio Cimbro, Rostoch. 1824.)
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.