- For the spider genus, see Cethegus (spider).''
Cethegus is the
cognomen of a Roman
patrician family of the
Cornelian gens. Like the younger
Cato its members kept up the old Roman fashion of dispensing with the tunic and leaving the arms bare (
Horace,
Ars Poetica, 50;
Lucan,
Pharsalia, ii. 543). The following individuals are of some importance:
- Marcus Cornelius Cethegus, curule aedile, 213 BC. In 211 BC, as praetor, he had charge of Apulia; later, he was sent to Sicily, where he proved a successful administrator. In 209 BC he was censor, and in 204 BC consul. In 203 BC he was proconsul in Upper Italy, where, in conjunction with the praetor P. Quintilius Varus, he gained a hard-won victory over Mago Barca, Hannibal's brother, in Insubrian territory, and obliged him to leave Italy. He died in 196 BC. He had a great reputation as an orator, and is characterized by Ennius as the quintessence of persuasiveness (suadae medulla). Horace (Ars Poet. 50; Epistles, ii.2.117) calls him an authority on the use of Latin words.
