Quintus Dellius

Who is Quintus Dellius?

Quintus Dellius was a Roman commander and politician in the second half of the 1st century BC.

He was a political opportunist and was called desultor bellorum civilium by Marcus Valerius Messalla Corvinus. He received this name because he deserted from Publius Cornelius Dolabella to Gaius Cassius Longinus in 43 BC, from Cassius to Mark Antony in 42 BC, and finally from Antony to Octavian in 31 BC.

Dellius was more than ten years an intimate friend of Antony, who used him mainly for diplomatic missions. In 41 BC, he traveled by Antony’s order to Alexandria to summon the Egyptian Queen Cleopatra VII to Tarsus in Cilicia. There she was to answer for the money that she allegedly had sent to Gaius Cassius for his war against Antony and Octavian. In 40 BC or 39 BC, Antony sent him to Judaea to help Herod the Great with the expulsion of the usurper Antigonus. In 36 BC or 35 BC, Dellius negotiated with Herod, that the Jewish King should appoint the young brother of his wife Mariamne, Aristobulus, high priest. Dellius also participated in Antony’s campaign against the Parthian Empire in 36 BC. Two years later he was ordered to persuade the Armenian king Artavasdes II to wed his four-year-old daughter to the six-year-old Alexander Helios, the son of Antony and Cleopatra VII. It is doubtful if this diplomatic mission was serious because Antony soon cunningly caught the Armenian king and his family.