Marcus Metilius Aquillius Regulus

Marcus Metilius Aquillius Regulus (his recorded full name is Marcus Metilius Aquillius Regulus Nepos Volusius Torquatus Fronto) was a Roman senator of the second century AD. A member of the patrician order, he held the office of consul ordinarius in 157 with another patrician, Marcus Vettulenus Civica Barbarus, as his colleague.[1]

The Metilii were an Italian family, likely from Transpadana.[2] Regulus himself was the son of Publius Metilius Secundus, suffect consul in 123.[3] Olli Salomies, in his study of the naming practices of the first centuries of the Roman Empire, notes that it "seems plausible enough" to infer his mother was a member of the gens Aquillia, and suggests that his praenomen was inherited from that side of the family.[4]

His career began in his teens with the Vigintiviri, as one of the tresviri monetalis;[5] assignment to this board was usually allocated to patricians or favored individuals.[6] This was followed at 25 by a posting as quaestor, then at 30 as praetor. By the age of 32 or 33 Regulus was appointed consul, the usual age for patricians.[7] Regulus is known to have held the priestly offices in the sodales Flaviales, the Salii collini, and in the collegium of augurs.[5]

References

  1. ^ Werner Eck, "Die Fasti consulares der Regierungszeit des Antoninus Pius, eine Bestandsaufnahme seit Géza Alföldys Konsulat und Senatorenstand" in Studia epigraphica in memoriam Géza Alföldy, hg. W. Eck, B. Feher, and P. Kovács (Bonn, 2013), p. 78
  2. ^ Alföldy, Konsulat und Senatorenstand unter den Antoninen (Bonn: Habelt Verlag, 1977), p. 309
  3. ^ Alföldy, Konsulat und Senatorenstand, p. 324
  4. ^ Salomies, Adoptive and Polyonymous Nomenclature in the Roman Empire (Helsinki: Societas Scientiarum Fennica, 1992), p. 109
  5. ^ a b Alföldy, Konsulat und Senatorenstand, p. 328
  6. ^ Anthony Birley, The Fasti of Roman Britain (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), pp. 4f
  7. ^ For the age requirements of each step of a Senator's career under the Empire see John Morris, "Leges Annales under the Principate", Listy filologické / Folia philologica, 87 (1964), pp. 316-337; more recently restated in Richard Talbot, The Senate of Imperial Rome (Princeton: University Press, 1984), pp. 16-27
Political offices
Preceded byas suffecti Roman consul
157
with Marcus Vettulenus Civica Barbarus 		Succeeded byas suffecti