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The Dolabellae of the Republic
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 August 2013
Extract
The eminent Patrician family of the Cornelii Dolabellae under the early Empire is descended from Cicero's unsatisfactory son-in-law, the consul of 44 (141). It has been adequately traced and plotted in PIR. The young man's ancestors have been less fortunate in their records. Though they produced several consuls and triumphators, we have only two complete filiations: those of the consul of 159 and the triumphator of 98. Moreover, despite Asconius' (insufficiently helpful) warning, homonymity between two men holding office in 81 has produced confusion. Drumann, in his stemma and treatment, without argument forged a pedigree for one of them (134: the cos. 81), and this has passed into modern tradition, being accepted (e.g.) as probable by Degrassi and as certain by Broughton. Sheer bad luck seems to pursue this man. At last fairly safely identified by an inscription found in Thasos, he had the misfortune of having it misreported in the Supplement (1960) to MRR. Yet the fact that has emerged about him not only clarifies his own place in the line of descent, but goes far towards enabling us to reconstruct the stemma of the whole family with fair plausibility. Confirmation or refutation will have to wait for further finds.
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- Copyright © British School at Rome 1965
References
1 Numbers in parentheses refer to Münzer's entries in RE, s.v. ‘Cornelius’. All dates are B.C.
2 PIR ii2 318.
3 Asc. 26 Cl. (cf. 74): he could probably have given us filiations.
4 Drumann-Groebe ii 481 f.; Insc. It. xiii 1, 130; MRR ii 74, 552. (All ‘Cn. f. Cn.n.’).
5 Dunant-Pouilloux, , Rech. sur l'Hist. et les Cultes de Thasos ii (1958), 45f., 48Google Scholar (with n. 6: they call the father Publius ‘inconnu par ailleurs’); MRR Supp. 19.
6 See TLL, s.vv. ‘dolabra’, ‘dolabella’. The praenomen of the consul is given as P. by Cassiodorus, as Cn. by Eutropius. Despite the general prefence for the former, we have no way of deciding. (See Insc. It. xiii 1, 428–9.)
7 For these two men, see Livy xl 42; 8.
8 See Suolahti, Junior Officers (1955), 486f. This man was hardly born before 205.
9 In the Supplement the inscription is ascribed to the cos. 44.
10 Apart from praetorships to be inferred from later consulates, fewer than 30 praetors are attested for the years 150–130; thus about half the praetors for those years are known (though not usually precise dates).
11 See also RE Supp. i 329 and cf. iii 258; but the identification with the tr. mil. of 89 (whoever he in fact is) is unlikely, since at this time an interval of only eight years between military tribunate and praetorship is unacceptable.
12 Asc., l.c. (n. 3).
13 Oros. v 17: ‘Saturnini frater’.
14 On Scaurus' role in 100, see vir. ill. 72, 9 (sometimes taken, erroneously, as implying friendship between him and Marius!); Val. Max. iii 2, 18 (rhetorically elaborated). On Caepio and his development in the nineties, see my Studies in Greek and Roman History (1964), 40f.
15 On him (and others like him), see op. cit. (last note) 206–34.
16 See JRS xlvi, 1956, 95 fGoogle Scholar.
17 Val. Max. viii 1, amb. 2; Gell. xii 7, init., calling him ‘Cn.’ Since Gellius also gives a wrong reference to Valerius Maximus (he refers to Book ix), it is clear that he was writing from memory and deserves no credence against his own source.
18 App. b.c. ii 129.
19 I should like to express my gratitude to the British School at Rome for an enjoyable and profitable stay of a few weeks, of which this note is one small product.