Servius Sulpicius Praetextatus was a Roman aristocrat of the

Roman Republic The Roman Republic ( la, Res publica Romana ) was a form of government of Rome and the era of the classical Roman civilization when it was run through public representation of the Roman people. Beginning with the overthrow of the Roman Kin ...

who served four times as

consular tribune A consular tribune was putatively a type of magistrate in the early Roman Republic. According to Roman tradition, colleges of consular tribunes held office throughout the fifth and fourth centuries BC during the so-called "Conflict of the Or ...

, in 377 BC, 376, 370, and 368. He married the elder daughter of Marcus Fabius Ambustus. An anecdote frequently told said that his wife's sister, the younger daughter of Fabius, who was married to the

plebeian In ancient Rome, the plebeians (also called plebs) were the general body of free Roman citizens who were not patricians, as determined by the census, or in other words " commoners". Both classes were hereditary. Etymology The precise origins of ...

Gaius Licinius Stolo Gaius Licinius Stolo, along with Lucius Sextius, was one of the two tribunes of ancient Rome who opened the consulship to the plebeians. A member of the plebeian ''Licinia gens'', Stolo was tribune from 376 BC to 367 BC, during which he passed t ...

, urged on her husband to procure the consulship for plebeians through the ''

Lex Licinia Sextia The Licino-Sextian rogations were a series of laws proposed by tribunes of the plebs, Gaius Licinius Stolo and Lucius Sextius Lateranus, enacted around 367 BC. Livy calls them ''rogatio'' – though he does refer to them at times as ''lex' ...

'', as she was jealous of the honors of her sister's husband. As early as the turn of the 19th century, the German historian

Barthold Georg Niebuhr Barthold Georg Niebuhr (27 August 1776 – 2 January 1831) was a Danish–German statesman, banker, and historian who became Germany's leading historian of Ancient Rome and a founding father of modern scholarly historiography. By 1810 Niebuhr wa ...

pointed out the historical untrustworthiness and contradictions in this tale.

, ''History of Rome'' vol. iii. pp. 2, 3

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sulpicius Praetextatus, Servius 4th-century BC Romans Praetextatus, Servius Sulpicius Roman consular tribunes