CASSIUS, GAIUS, called Parmensis from his birthplace Parma, was one of the murderers of Julius Caesar, and after his death joined the party of Brutus and his namesake Cassius. In 43 B.C. he was in command of the fleet on the coast of Asia, but after the battle of Philippi he joined Sextus Pompeius in Sicily. When Pompeius was defeated at Naulochus by Agrippa and fled to Asia, Cassius went over to Antony, and was present at Actium (31) . He afterwards fled to Athens, where he was put to death by Octavian(Suetonius, Augustus, 4). Cassius is credited with satires, elegies, epigrams and tragedies. Some hexameters with the title Cassii Orpheus are by Antonius Thylesius, an Italian of the I 7th century. Horace seems to have thought well of Cassius as a poet. (Epistles, i. 4.3.). The story in the Horace scholia, that L. Varius Rufus took his tragedy Thyestes from a ms. found amongst the papers of Cassius, is due to a confusion.
See Appian, B.C. v. 2, 139 ; Cicero, ad Fam. xii. 13 ; Vell. Pat. ii. 87; Orosius, vi. 19; see also the diffuse treatise of A. Weichert, De L. Varii et Cassii Parmensis Vita et Carminibus (1836) .