Gaius Flaminius Nepos was a
politician and
consul of the
Roman Republic in the
3rd century BC. He was the greatest popular leader to challenge the authority of the
Senate before the
Gracchi a century later.
In the aftermath of the
First Punic War, Flaminius, a
novus homo, was the leader of a reform movement which sought to reorganize state land in
Italy. As
tribune of the plebs in
232 BC, he passed a
plebiscite which divided the land south of
Ariminum, which had been conquered from the
Gauls decades before, and gave it to poor families whose farms had fallen into ruin during the war. The Senate was opposed to this and he did not consult them, contrary to the constitution and tradition.
Flaminius was governor of
Sicily in
227. Meanwhile, the reorganization of the land contributed to a renewed attack on Roman territory by the Gauls, whom the Romans finally defeated at the
Battle of Telamon in
224. In
223 Flaminius was elected consul for the first time, and with Publius Furius Philus he forced the Gauls to submit to Rome, creating the province of
Cisalpine Gaul.
In
221 Flaminius was
magister equitum to Marcus Minucius Rufus, then in
220 chosen as
censor along with
Lucius Aemilius Papus. During his term he arranged for the
Via Flaminia to be built from
Rome to Ariminum, established colonies at
Cremona and
Placentia, reorganized the
Centuriate Assembly to give the poorer classes more voting power, and built the
Circus Flaminius on the
Campus Martius. In
218, while serving in the
Senate, he was the only senator to support the
Lex Claudia, which prohibited senators from participating in overseas trade.
In
217, during the
invasion of Italy by
Hannibal, he was re-elected consul with Gnaeus Servilius, in what was considered a rebuke of the Senate's prosecution of the war. Flaminius raised new legions and marched north to meet Hannibal, but was ambushed at
Lake Trasimene. The army was destroyed and Flaminius was killed. His supporters in the Senate began to lose power to the more aristocratic factions, and the Romans feared Hannibal would besiege their city. The Senate appointed as
dictator Fabius Maximus. 
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