Lucius Caecilius Metellus Denter

Lucius Caecilius Metellus Denter was consul in 284 BC, and praetor the year after. In this capacity he fell in the war against the Senones, and was succeeded by Manius Curius Dentatus.^[1][2][3][4]

Fischer, in his Römische Zeittafeln, makes him praetor and die in 285 BC, and in the year following he has him again as consul. Drumann denies the identity of the consul and the praetor, on the ground that it was not customary for a person to hold the praetorship the year after his consulship; but examples of such a mode of proceeding do occur, and Drumann's objection thus falls to the ground.^[5][6][7]

Denter may have been the father of Lucius Caecilius Metellus, consul in 251 and 247 BC. The latter's filiation is given as "L. f. C. n.", the son of Lucius and grandson of Gaius. In this case, Denter's father would have been Gaius Caecilius Metellus. An alternative hypothesis makes him the son or nephew of a Quintus Caecilius, supposedly tribune of the plebs in 316 BC. No corresponding individual appears in The Magistrates of the Roman Republic, or in the Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology.^[8][9]

See also

• Caecilia (gens)

Footnotes

1. ^ Titus Livius, Ab Urbe Condita Epitome, 12.
2. ^ Paulus Orosius, Historiarum Adversum Paganos Libri VII, iii. 22.
3. ^ Polybius, The Histories, ii. 19.
4. ^ Fast. Sicul.
5. ^ E.W. Fischer, Römische Zeittafeln (1846).
6. ^ Wilhelm Drumann, Geschichte Roms, ii. 18.
7. ^ Titus Livius, Ab Urbe Condita, x. 22 (Appius Claudius Caecus was praetor in 295 B.C., having held the consulship in 296).
8. ^ T. Robert S. Broughton, The Magistrates of the Roman Republic (1952).
9. ^ Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, William Smith, Editor.

Further reading

• Manuel Dejante Pinto de Magalhães Arnao Metello and João Carlos Metello de Nápoles, "Metellos de Portugal, Brasil e Roma", Torres Novas, 1998

External links

• JSTOR: Classical Quarterly: New Series, Vol. 22, No. 2 (Nov., 1972), pp. 309-325
• Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, page 993 (v. 1)

Preceded by Gaius Claudius Canina and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus

Consul of the Roman Republic with Gaius Servilius Tucca 284 BC

Succeeded by Gaius Servilius Tucca and Manius Curius Dentatus

This article incorporates text from the public domain Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology by William Smith (1870).

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