Lucius Opimius

Lucius Opimius was a Roman politician who held the consulship in 121 BC, in which capacity and year he ordered the execution of 3,000 supporters of popular leader Gaius Gracchus without trial, using as pretext the state of emergency declared after Gracchus's recent and turbulent death. He was censured in 116 BC by a tribunal investigating illicit bribes taken from Jugurtha, king of Numidia, by his commission tasked with dividing territory between the king and his brother. He then left Rome to Dyrrhachium in exile where he later died.