Lucius Cincius Alimentus
Roman politician, historian and writer
Lucius Cincius Alimentus (fl. about 200 BC) was a celebrated Roman annalist, jurist, and provincial official. He is principally remembered as one of the founders of Roman historiography, although his Annals has been lost and is only known from fragments in other works.
Life
L. Cincius Alimentus was part of the Cincia clan of ancient Rome. He served as praetor in Sicily 210 BC and as propraetor in 209 BC, again in Sicily, commanding two legions. His most important legislation was the Cincian Law (Lex Cincia), which forbade the acceptance of payment for legal services.
Alimentus was captured in one of the early battles of the Second Punic War. He spent years as a prisoner of the Carthaginian general Hannibal, who—according to Alimentus's later account—confided in the Roman the details of his crossing of the Alps. He is last attested as an envoy in 208 BC. Scholar Bruce W. Frier mentions that none of the envoys are heard of again in the written records, and argues that the legation may have been captured while in Bruttium, Alimentus' release thus resulting from the peace treaty after Zama.
Works
L. Cincius Alimentus wrote principally in Greek. According to Frier, Alimentus' Annals was written no later than 202 BC.
Annals
His major work was an Annals (Latin: Annales) or Roman History, following Q. Fabius Pictor in translating the annals of the pontifex maximus and other Roman sources to present a year-by-year prose Greek narrative of Roman history.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Lucius Cincius Alimentus” as roman politician, historian and writer. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as roman politician, historian and writer. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q867394. VIAF identifies the subject as 302131429. The Library of Congress control number is nr95027541. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Lucius Cincius Alimentus” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.