¹ Syme, R., Ten Studies in Tacitus (1970) 93: originally Hermes 92 (1964) 408 ffGoogle Scholar.

² For each Servilius, on his first mention, RE numbers referring to Münzer's article s.v. Servilius (RE 2A (1923) 1759 ff.Google Scholar, with stemma 1777–8) will be given. In the case of moneyers, the number in M. H. Crawford, Roman Republican Coinage [ =RRC], will be added, with Crawford's date for the issue. The numbers will be repeated where this seems useful, and reference numbers for persons treated in other RE articles will be added as appropriate.

³ He is the object of a long tribute paid to him (and incidentally, it seems, to himself), by Ennius: see Gellius 12,4 ( = Ennius, Ann. 234 ff. V²) and cf. Fondation Hardt, Entretiens sur l'Antiquité classique 17 (1972) 174 ff., 180 ffGoogle Scholar.

⁴ Cic, . Acad. 2, 56Google Scholar; 84 f.

⁵ See Münzer, s.v. Servilius coll. 1791 f. Cf. Aymard, A., REA 45 (1943) 201 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar, also noting (but without discussion) that the paternity of the cos. 217 is not certain (p. 201 n. 4). Aymard's speculations over the legal puzzle are fortunately not relevant here.

⁶ M. Fulvius Flaccus can be identified with one of the tribunes who tried to stop T. Quinctius Flamininus' election to the consulship of 198. But better candidates are at hand: either M. Fulvius (61) Nobilior (see Münzer, s.v.) or M. Fulvius (44) Centumalus (see MRR II 567)—each with an authentic career, whereas the thought of finding M. Fulvius Flaccus in this tribune is born solely of the wish to authenticate his appearance on the list of land commissioners. Briscoe's Commentary on Livy (ad 32, 7, 8) has nothing to offer, except a reference to Münzer (not even to MRR!) and a comment on ‘the political position of the Fulvii’.

⁷ Compare the use of a tribal designation in other cases, e.g. the Memmii Galeria: see RRC 313 and (with filiation as well) 349, with Crawford's comment recognising this.

⁸ Crawford rejects this possibility (p. 271 n. 1), noting ‘the absence of an allusion to the career of M. Servilius Pulex Geminus (contrast nos. 264 and 327).’ But this is putting the cart before the horse. The fact that A does not do what B at a later time chooses to do does not imply that A could not have done it had he wished to, or that he would have done it had he been able to. More probably, the particular choice made later by B had not occurred to him yet. If C. Servilius M.f., on his denarii, chose to allude to the founder of the house, the cos. 252 and 248, that was a perfectly reasonable choice in itself. The fact that, a few years later, C. Servilius (RRC 264/1) and, a whole generation after that, M. Servilius C.f. (RRC 327/1) chose to allude to the cos. 202 is irrelevant to that first choice.

⁹ Inschr. v. Olympia 329, quoted by Munzer, Rom. Adelsparteien u. Adelsfamilien (1920) 304 n. 1.

¹⁰ Lucilius 801 Marx, with C. Cichorius, Untersuchungen zu Lucilius (1908) 154 ff.

¹¹ Book 28, probably published c. 129 B.C. For the chronology of Books 26–31, see Raschke, W., JRS 69 (1979) 78–89Google Scholar.

¹² Crawford rightly demolished the older view occasionally propounded, that the scene is meant to show a warrior killing a hound. But according to Sen, . Brev. vit. 13, 6Google Scholar, L. Sulla, in his famous praetorship of 97 B.C. (no doubt), was the first to display lions loose: before that, they were only displayed alligati. Since the lion on the coin is quite free, either Seneca is wrong (which is possible) or the scene on the coin does not refer to the circus, as Crawford suggests. It could refer to a member of the family who personally killed a lion in a lion-hunt; the fact that we do not know any such story does not exclude it.

¹³ We do not know about Acilii, but as regards Sulpicii, there were certainly enough Ser. Sulpicii about to make it highly likely that there was a contemporary C. Sulpicius Ser. f.; and he would also be a Galba (a son of RE 58), so that the cognomen might not help.

¹⁴ In the following discussion, see that entry wherever no special references are given.

¹⁵ The early codices of Livy (30, 25, 2) all give ‘M. Servilium’; three late (fifteenth-century) codices read ‘L. Sergium’; the text of Pol. 15, 1, 3 has Λεύκιον Σερούιον—a nomen that can easily be emended to either of the forms offered by the Livian tradition. Whatever the correct name, there is no good explanation of how the wrong form arose. But in Polybius all three praenomina appear as Lucius, which certainly must arouse suspicion, no less than the certainly corrupt nomen. In the circumstances, the more authentic Livian tradition should be followed.

¹⁶ See Münzer, s.v.: he is attested in 167 and possibly later.

¹⁷ But it must be pointed out that Lucilius' allusion to a banquet at which Geminus and Paullus were the guests of honour cannot have anything to do with this campaign, as was argued by Cichorius, op. cit. (n. 10) 273 ff. The banquet should be connected with the celebration of Paullus' triumph, which M. Pulex Geminus was instrumental in securing (Livy 45, 36–39).

¹⁸ It should be pointed out that any descendants of the cos. 217 would be Patricians, unless they followed their cousins in renouncing their status. But we have no evidence on the status of the men here discussed.

¹⁹ G. J. Szemler, in what must be called the ne plus ultra of the use of Occam's razor, wants to amalgamate all possible M. Servilii. (See The Priests of the Roman Republic (1972) 116 ff.) He identifies both the envoy of 203 and the tribune of 181 with M. Pulex Geminus, in the first case not asking how Geminus, with his duties in Italy, would have got to Scipio's camp; in the second imagining that the ex-consul, in his capacity of augur, had accompanied Paullus' expedition (he seems to think that this was normal) and was created military tribune on the spot, to cope with a particular emergency. He adds identification with the pontifex of 170, though he appears to recognise that cumulation of the two highest priesthoods was very rare indeed; but he does not ask why the full name is not found in Livy on that occasion, though Livy normally gives the full names of men elected. These suggestions perhaps do not need individual refutation, but they deserve citation, as an extreme example of a tendency that appears even in scholars of the calibre of Münzer.

²⁰ The assumption is by no means inevitable and may in fact be wrong, even though it is made by eminent numismatists. It can easily be shown that the achievements of collateral ascendants may find a place on a moneyer's coins,even where his own ancestors were not devoid of deeds to celebrate. (See on RRC 427 below.) But I shall proceed on two working hypotheses: (a) that this is not likely in the case of recent ascendants (not more than two or three generations back), as distinct from ancestors (sometimes semi-mythical, in fact) in the remote past; (b) that it becomes prevalent only in the period of unrestrained ambitio in the last generations of the Republic.

²¹ It is worth adding that Crawford's explanation of ‘Floralis’ as standing for ‘flamen Floralis’ is not supported by his parallel. (I am not denying that the omission of flamen might be documented.) He refers to QVIRIN on RRC 268 (N. Fabius Pictor), expanding it ‘(flamen) Quirin(alis)’. The legend is inscribed on a shield standing next to the figure of Q. Fabius Pictor (see Crawford), seated on a chair of office in full armour. One ought to ask why the fiamen is doing such a peculiar thing, wearing his Patrician shoes and holding his flamen's hat in his hand. The standard explanation (e.g. Grueber, , CRRBM 1, 181Google Scholar), that this refers to the famous occasion when Fabius was not allowed to go overseas to a province (Livy 37, 51), is not worth much. Roman praetors, when domi (as he had to remain), did not sit on their chairs in full armour—indeed, I doubt whether anyone normally performed this difficult feat, even if he had a grievance. I would expand the legend (more obviously) QVIRIN(i), with common omission of the last letter. I.e., it is made clear that the flamen is not pointlessly sitting in his own suit of armour, but attired in the arma Quirini; for these, see Festus 238 L: it was one of the duties of the flamen Portunalis (no one knew why) to anoint these arma with a persillum (whatever that was). It is to be presumed that this was in preparation for their solemn use at the Quirinalia, a festival about which we unfortunately know nothing (see Wissowa, RKR ² 155). It would suggest that it was one of the ritual duties of the flamen Quirinalis on that occasion to attire himself in the arma Quirini, and that this is what Fabius is here shown doing. (Identification of the priest with the god, of course, is common in ritual the world over.)

It must unfortunately be added that the date of 173 for this aedile is not certain, and that this might after all lead to some doubt as to his existence. T. P. Wiseman has shown (Clio's Cosmetics (1979) 94, with n. 124; cf. also 116) that the origins of games were not always reliably recorded and that, by the late Republic, family ambition could take advantage of ignorance. Thus the first of the intermittent celebrations of the Floralia is itself differently dated by Pliny and Velleius. It is therefore possible that the first permanent celebration by the aedile Servilius was an alternative, at a different date, to the tradition picked up by Ovid. (Fortunately the original foundation of the intermittent festival does not seem to come into this, since there would be no C. Servilius about anywhere near the right time: the praetorian of the Second Punic War must be much younger.) I think that there is no need to posit a difference of date in this instance (which would be rather late for such a thing): if there was a difference, it is more likely to have been as to whether the consuls of the year or the aediles in actual charge were the founders; and if one of the aediles was ignored by the moneyer, that is easily explained by the need to make his case. But as I have suggested, the consuls' name could have got into the tradition as a mere date, without any positive claim by their families that they took an active part.

It could be argued that, if there was a variant tradition, it may be fictitious (in which case the aedile may not have existed), or it may refer to a later date (in which case the aedile might be the younger son of M. Pulex Geminus). As to the former, the evidence we have on these things does not give us any right to posit the invention of an actual fictitious character, right in the second century B.C., to receive the credit for a fictitious foundation. As to the latter, even if there was a different tradition alleging a different date (and I have argued that there is no need to assume this), the difference is unlikely to have been a major one (it is only a few years in the case of the first foundation), especially in fully historical times. I have therefore kept the aedile of 173 as a separate person, and with his conventional date, in my text, and I do not think that any plausible alternative model would greatly affect the issues here discussed.

²² Crawford, , RRC I p. 448Google Scholar (misprinting the number of the coin referred to, which should be 264).

²³ See E. S. Gruen, Roman Politics and the Criminal Courts (1968) 176 f., following J. van Ooteghem. For unquestioning acceptance of Münzer's odd reconstruction see, e.g., CAH IX 155; MRR I 568.

²⁴ The survival of the father of the cos. 79 as late as 100 is made doubtful by the fact that he does not appear beside his son in Cicero's roll-call of the defenders of the Republic against Saturninus (Rab. perd. 21). Gruen seems in part to have been misled by his belief that ‘tenure of an augurate implies a person of prestige and seniority’ (op. cit. 178). This is a serious misconception. Of course, the majority of the college would normally be such men, by virtue of having lived long enough; so would the majority of luperci. But the augurate was conferred on a nobilis as his birthright, usually in his twenties or thirties; only noui homines—if they ever got it—had to wait. Broughton's list s.a. 179 (MRR I 394) shows that all eight men then in the college had got there before being praetors—in three cases, 14 or 15 years before; and M. Geminus, who was never praetor, became augur nine years before his consulship. (One member, P. Scipio's son, never held any office.) After this, as long as we have information (i.e., Livy's text), things do not change. Q,. Aelius Paetus (pr. 170) became augur in 174; T. Quinctius Flamininus (cos. 150) in 167. The sporadic information that is all we have later in the century confirms this: see, e.g., MRR I 505 f. Cato Censorius presumably had to wait, on the other hand (though we have no details—hence he was probably co-opted after we lose Livy's text); Marius got there after he had been six times consul; and in a striking instance, Cicero, who thought it the crown of his honours, was elected to succeed P. Crassus, the son of M. Crassus, after Carrhae: P. Crassus had been appointed at the age of about thirty.

²⁶ Pointed out by Gruen, op. cit. 178. I have now treated these prosecutions with the detailed attention they deserve in Klio 66 (1984) 301–6Google Scholar.

²⁶ The prosecution was no doubt repetundarum, the usual charge arising out of a provincial command. I cannot see why Gruen thinks Plutarch's κλοπή cannot cover this.

²⁷ See art. cit. (n. 25), where I have shown that the Luculli's prosecution of Servilius Augur is best put in 92/1 and have suggested that the Augur, both by age and through recent anger at the Luculli, is well qualified for identification as the ‘praetor Servilius’ sent, with M. Brutus, to stop Sulla's march on Rome in 88.

²⁸ On whom see Sumner, The Orators in Cicero's Brutus (1973) 121, proposing (without discussion) to make the demagogue a son of the ambassador. Since, by his own calculation, the difference in age is about 50 years, this must be an oversight. The cognomen, no doubt from Greek Γλαυκίας, despite Schulze's usual attempt to make it Etruscan (which in this case he admits is pure paradox: LE 343), refers to a physical peculiarity. The fact that it is Greek is not particularly significant.

²⁹ Contrast, e.g., the description of Quinctius, L. (Cluent. III ff.Google Scholar) and of various personal enemies of Cicero's.

³⁰ See RE s.v. Equitius 3.

³¹ See Syme (n. 1 above). I cannot agree with Crawford's idea (RRC II 730) that the Victory on the reverse of these denarii is connected with Marius' victories. Victory was never long absent from the Roman coinage and that hackneyed type could by then hardly have any special significance. What is interesting is the Minerva on the obverse—if I am not mistaken, the first time that she appears on the obverse of a denarius. (The idea seems to have caught on at once.) I at present cannot explain her, but I think the innovation should be pointed out. However, it is unlikely to be relevant to purely prosopographical enquiry, since it comes to be freely used by other families.

³² It is again an excruciating instance of the anger of the gods against the prosopographer that we cannot firmly identify P. Rullus' father. If he were securely identifiable as a brother of the moneyer C. Servilius M.f. and son of M. Servilius the pontifex, this would lock an important part of the whole stemma into place, securing (as a moment's reflection will show) the Vatiae as descendants of M. Pulex Geminus, and with them the line of M. Servilius Augur. Unfortunately, we have seen that the aedile of 173 cannot be banished from the stemma, so the alternatives must remain open.

³³ For C. Servilius and P. Servilius in the Verrines, see (respectively) Cic, . 2 Verr. 5, 140 ff.Google Scholar; 3, 167 f. Keith Hopkins and Graham Burton, in Keith Hopkins, Death and Renewal (1983) ch. 2, have now stressed, with detailed demographic investigations, the essential unity of the senatorial-equestrian upper class and the easy mobility within it, which scholars (e.g. Nicolet and myself) had recently noted in general terms, and have formulated the model (undoubtedly correct, it seems) of ‘a circulating elite with only a very small hereditary core’ (p. 112).

³⁴ See Marx ad Lucil. 3, 117 (not suggesting this; but he discusses the meaning of the word, and in view of Lucilius' known propensities, it is quite likely that a member of the Roman upper class was here intended; cf. his ‘Vatax’ for Vatia (n. 10 above), and many other such jokes).

³⁵ See D. R. Shackleton Bailey, Two Studies in Roman Nomenclature (1976) 84 f. (He does not list this man.)

³⁶ Inscr. It. XIII 1, pp. 131, 488–9.

³⁷ This might depend on whether C. Curio served under him as quaestor: see MRR II 227 n. 4 and cf. Sumner, op. cit. (n. 28) 146.

³⁸ Correctly noted MRR II 496 (cf. 618), refusing to amalgamate him with the tribune (see below). Sumner (loc. cit.) overlooks this point and says that it ‘can only be a guess’ to regard him as a senator.

³⁹ Sherk, RDGE 27 line 8. (Some of Sherk's prosopographical commentary is now partly outdated by Joyce Reynolds, Aphrodisias and Rome (1982), Document 8, with a longer and partly overlapping list later in the same year.)

⁴⁰ Thus Syme, loc. cit. (n. 1), Münzer (Servilius 20, 21), Crawford (on RRC 423).

⁴¹ Cicero asked Atticus around the middle of 50 to send him the text of Pilius' speech for the prosecution (Att. 6, 3, 10). This is our only evidence for the fact that the case came to trial. We know nothing further. Cicero's interest in Q. Pilius, of course, is a personal one and is irrelevant to whether he won his case.

⁴² This depends on the precise ranking of the men on the drafting committee of Reynolds (cit. n. 39), Document 8. M. Servilius precedes C. Hedius Thorus who, in that document, precedes L. [Ateius] Capito, who should by then have reached the praetorian status that was the highest he ever attained. (See my discussion in ZPE 55 (1984) 109 ff.Google Scholar) But there are some elements of uncertainty.

⁴³ Brut. 269. See A. E. Douglas, M. Tulli Ciceronis Brutus (1966) 197; also Sumner, op. cit. (n. 28) 146, not citing Douglas. In fact, Servilius is (slightingly) mentioned at the end of a list in which Cicero explicitly discusses men who died during the war (see 262 ff.).

⁴⁴ It should perhaps be mentioned (since it has arisen at various points) that the minimum ages of monetales in the post-Sullan period (minimum, because it must be done on the inaccurate hypothesis that each man attained offices suo anno) can be calculated with reasonable assurance, since a total of over 20 men can be traced and dated in office. Since (as Crawford has shown) the post of monetalis was never part of the cursus, we find that it can in fact be held at any time before the aedileship—occasionally quite close to it, perhaps by men who thought it would improve their chances of election. But in an overwhelming number of the cases the office is held before the quaestorship, normally very shortly before (no doubt through the same calculation of advantage). Analysis of 21 men who were monetales between 79 and 50 and can be dated in offices gives an approximate mean minimum of just over 29 years. This rises significantly after 61 when, for 10 men (i.e., nearly half our sample), the mean minimum is 31·4 years. Though there is a technical factor affecting this, it might be concluded that during this last decade of the res publica competition for the moneyership increased.

⁴⁵ For the inscription see CIL I² 841. (The stone does not survive.) For the praetor, see RE Suppl. 5, s.v. Servilius 17A.

⁴⁶ He is made a son of Isauricus in RE, without argument. But Dio, who gives no cognomen, tells the story after that of a tribune Thoranius, who let his freedman father sit beside him in the theatre. Of course, the praetor may not be connected with either Isauricus or Globulus. The praenomen was the one regularly available for a third-born (perhaps even second-born) son, in any line of our Servilii.

⁴⁷ The attempt to identify him with the praetor of 25 B.C. (RE) hardly needs refutation. The alternative suggestion there, that he was a son of the praetor, may well in fact be true, but there is no positive argument in support, so that it is merely another example of prosopographical ‘economy’.

⁴⁸ Syme, op. cit. (n. 1).

⁴⁹ As far as I know, the filiation (without which all speculation would be pointless) is preserved only in the table of contents preceding Dio, Book 55. It is characteristic of what we have found to be the state of our evidence on one of the most important Plebeian houses of the Republic that this almost miraculous windfall of a fact still does not permit the attachment of the consul to a particular line of Servilii, though it fortunately limits the field. Syme's identification of the father, in fact, is only one of three choices.

⁵⁰ Ages for these men are not normally known, but we have intervals between generations. I give the comparable examples (ordinarii only) around this time. (There is no observable difference between old Patricians and old Plebeians.)

L. Cornelius Sulla, 5 B.C., grandson of P. Sulla, cos. des. 65 (60 years for two generations)

M. Valerius Messalla Messallinus, 3 B.C., son of Corvinus, cos. 31 (28 years)

M. Plautius Silvanus, 2 B.C., grandson of A. Plautius, pr. 51 (46 years for two generations, taking the consular equivalent)

Cossus Cornelius Lentulus, 1 B.C., son of Cn. Lentulus, cos. 18 (17 years)

L. Calpurnius Piso Augur, 1 B.C., son of Cn. Piso, cos. 23 (22 years), grandson of Cn. Piso, q. 65 (52 years for two generations, taking the consular equivalent)

L. Aemilius Paullus, A.D. 1, son of Paullus Lepidus, cos. 34 B.C. (34 years)

L. Aelius Lamia, A.D. 3, as Servilius' colleague, son of a governor of Spain 24 B.C., presumably praetorian (not precisely calculable)

L. Valerius Messalla Volesus, A.D. 5, son of Potitus Messalla, cos. 29 B.C. (33 years).

It will be seen that the equivalent interval of 36 years assumed by Syme is perfectly legitimate, but on the long side. However, it can easily be worked out that the two alternatives suggested above are no less acceptable. (They would yield two-generation equivalents of about 46 years.)