Acilius Rufus is the name of a

Roman Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a letter ...

senator A senate is a deliberative assembly, often the upper house or chamber of a bicameral legislature. The name comes from the ancient Roman Senate (Latin: ''Senatus''), so-called as an assembly of the senior (Latin: ''senex'' meaning "the el ...

, who was

suffect consul A consul held the highest elected political office of the Roman Republic ( to 27 BC), and ancient Romans considered the consulship the second-highest level of the ''cursus honorum'' (an ascending sequence of public offices to which politic ...

in the ''

nundinium Nundinium was a Latin word derived from the word '' nundinum'', which referred to the cycle of days observed by the Romans. During the Roman Empire, ''nundinium'' came to mean the duration of a single consulship among several in a calendar year. S ...

'' of March to April 107; it unclear which consul ''ordinarius'' of the year Rufus replaced, Lucius Licinius Sura or

Quintus Sosius Senecio Quintus Sosius Senecio ( 1st century AD) was a Roman senator who was favored by the emperors Domitian and Trajan. As a result of this relationship, he was twice ordinary consul, an unusual and prestigious honor: first in 99, with Aulus Cornelius P ...

. The expert consensus agrees that Rufus should be identified with the Acilius Rufus whom

Pliny the Younger Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus, born Gaius Caecilius or Gaius Caecilius Cilo (61 – c. 113), better known as Pliny the Younger (), was a lawyer, author, and magistrate of Ancient Rome. Pliny's uncle, Pliny the Elder, helped raise and educate ...

mentions in his letters on the trial of

Varenus Rufus Lucius Vorenus and Titus Pullo were two Roman centurions mentioned in the personal writings of Julius Caesar. Although it is sometimes stated they were members of the 11th Legion ( Legio XI Claudia), in fact Caesar never states the number of th ...

who was prosecuted for malfeasance while governor of Bithynia and Pontus. There is disagreement over identifying Acilius Rufus the consul with one Lucius Acilius Rufus, a senator known from an inscription from Thermae Himeraeae. This inscription attests that this Acilius Rufus held the traditional republican magistracies of

quaestor A ( , , ; "investigator") was a public official in Ancient Rome. There were various types of quaestors, with the title used to describe greatly different offices at different times. In the Roman Republic, quaestors were elected officials who ...

Sicilia (man) it, Siciliana (woman) , population_note = , population_blank1_title = , population_blank1 = , demographics_type1 = Ethnicity , demographics1_footnotes = , demographi ...

, plebeian tribune,

praetor Praetor ( , ), also pretor, was the title granted by the government of Ancient Rome to a man acting in one of two official capacities: (i) the commander of an army, and (ii) as an elected '' magistratus'' (magistrate), assigned to discharge vario ...

, and

prefect Prefect (from the Latin ''praefectus'', substantive adjectival form of ''praeficere'': "put in front", meaning in charge) is a magisterial title of varying definition, but essentially refers to the leader of an administrative area. A prefect's ...

of the ''frumenti dandi ex senatus consultum''. Although there appears to be no reason not to identify this person with the consul, Ronald Syme objects arguing that the first suffect consul of a year was a very prestigious post, and that having been quaestor of Sicilia and prefect of the ''frumenti dandi'', Acilius Rufus lacked sufficient esteem for him to achieve that prestigious rank of suffect consuls. As a result, he notes the existence of one Marcus Acilius Rufus of Saguntum who was an imperial procurator, and proposes that a hypothetical descendant of this procurator was suffect consul for this ''

'' of 107.Syme, "Superior Suffect Consuls", p. 241 Despite his proven discernment for the evidence, Syme appears to depend too heavily on an

argument from silence To make an argument from silence (Latin: ''argumentum ex silentio'') is to express a conclusion that is based on the absence of statements in historical documents, rather than their presence.John Lange, ''The Argument from Silence'', History and T ...

especially as we know so little about many consuls of this timeto not allow for the vagaries of life. In this case, Licinius Sura vanishes from the record after his consulate, so it is possible he died unexpectedly in March 107 and the consular Acilius Rufus, who is attested as replacing a single consul, may have been selected at the last moment to complete the ''nundinium''. In any case, lack of evidence prevents more than guesses.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Acilius Rufus, Lucius 1st-century Romans 2nd-century Romans Suffect consuls of Imperial Rome Rufus, Lucius Acilius