Lucius Volumnius Flamma Violens

Infobox Person
name = Lucius Volumnius Flamma Violens

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image_size = 50 px
caption = Roman fasces
birth_date = ca. 340 BC
birth_place =
death_date = ca. 273 BC
death_place =
education =
occupation = soldier and consul of the Roman Republic
spouse = Virginia, daughter of Aulus Verginius
parents =
children =

Lucius Volumnius Flamma Violens ("The Raging Flame") was a Roman politician, the first consul from a plebeian "gens": see "novus homo".

Background

According to Roman tradition, membership of the Roman Senate, the city's magistracies, the offices of consul and various religious positions were restricted to patricians. Volumnius was a beneficiary of the Conflict of the Orders, when during a two hundred year struggle plebeians gradually gained political equality and the right to hold all such offices.Kurt Raaflaub, ed., "Social Struggles in Archaic Rome: New Perspectives on the Conflict of the Orders" (University of California Press, 1986)] The Lex Licinia Sextia of 367 BC had restored the consulship and sought to reserve one of the two consular offices for a plebeian, but in practice this failed to happen until the first election of Volumnius in 307. The Conflict of the Orders was finally resolved in 287 BC, when plebeians gained political equality.

Career

A new man, Volumnius was the first member of his family to become a consul. John Briscoe says of him "The first plebeian consul known to have presided was L. Volumnius Flamma Violens in 296 ["sic"] ." [Book review by John Briscoe in "The Journal of Roman Studies", vol. 62 (1972), pp. 187-188] However, Mario Torelli says "...the famous P ["sic"] Volumnius Flamma Violens, cos. 307 and 296 BC, could be among the (plebeian) descendants of P. Volumnius Amintinus Gallus, cos. 461." [Torelli, Mario , "Studies in the Romanization of Italy", ed. and trans. Helena Fracchia and Maurizio Gualtieri (University of Alberta Press, 1995)]

Volumnius served as consul twice, in 307 BC and 296 BC, both times in partnership with the patrician Appius Claudius Caecus.

The Third Samnite War broke out in 298 BC. By the end of its second campaign, the Samnites, led by Gellius Egnatius, seemed defeated, but the next year Egnatius formed an alliance against Rome with Etruria. This had the effect of withdrawing Roman troops from Samnium, which according to Livy's Ab Urbe condita had been assigned to Volumnius as his sphere of action. [Livy's History, Book X, 17] In 296, a combined Etruscan and Samnite army invaded Campania, but was defeated by the combined armies of Volumnius and Claudius, in a battle near the River Volturnus. [ [http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/txt/ah/Livy/Livy10.html#livy.hist.10.20 Livy's History, Book X, 20] at mcadams.posc.mu.edu (accessed 30 November 2007)]

Wife

Volumnius married Virginia, the daughter of Aulus Verginius, a patrician. She is one of the one hundred and six subjects of Giovanni Boccaccio’s "On Famous Women" ("De mulieribus claris", 1362).Boccaccio, Giovanni, "Concerning Famous Women", translated by Guido A. Guarino (Rutgers University Press, 1963) pp. 137-138 (Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number 63-18945)] In about 295, the patrician "matronae" insulted Virginia by forbidding her access to the ceremony at the shrine of Pudicitia Patricia honouring the female virtue of "pudicitia" (modesty, or sexual virtue), on account of her having married a plebeian. [Livy's History, Book X, 23] As a result, she erected an altar in her own house to "Plebeia Pudicitia". Boccaccio says "Beginning at that time, and for long thereafter, the temple of Plebeia Pudicitia was equal in sanctity to the altar of the patricians, since no one could offer a sacrifice in it unless she were of singular chastity and had had only one husband..."

References