Quintus Volusius Saturninus

Quintus Volusius Saturninus (25^[1]-68/69^[2]) was a Roman Senator who lived in the Roman Empire in the 1st century.

Family Background

The family of Saturninus had a distinguished reputation and a great fortune.^[3] He was born and raised in Rome. Saturninus was the second son born to the noted Roman statesman Lucius Volusius Saturninus, who received a state funeral under Roman emperor Nero and Cornelia Lentula,^[4] while he had an elder brother called Lucius Volusius Saturninus who served as a Pontifex Maximus and another unnamed brother.^[5]

Political career

From surviving inscriptional evidence from 40 til 60,^[6] his family ran the columbarium on the Appian Way.^[7] Tacitus describes him as a man of aristocratic status.

Saturninus in 56 served as a consul.^[8] In 61-63, he carried out duties as a censor in Gaul, together with Titus Sextius Africanus and Marcus Trebellius Maximus. Saturninus and Africanus were rivals, however they both hated Maximus who took the advantage of their rivalry to get the better of them.^[9] Based on inscriptional evidence, the Horrea Volusiana was either built by his paternal grandfather Lucius Volusius Saturninus, suffect consul of 12 BC or Saturninus himself.^[10]

Family & Issue

Saturninus married a Roman noblewoman called Nonia Torquata,^[11] also known as Torquata.^[12] Torquata was a daughter of Lucius Nonius Calpurnius Torquatus Asprenas,^[13] a Roman Senator who perhaps served as a suffect consul in circa 71. Torquata and Saturninus were distantly related as her paternal ancestor Lucius Nonius Asprenas consul of 36 BC, his daughter Nonia Polla married the suffect consul of 12 BC, Lucius Volusius Saturninus,^[14] who were the paternal grandparents of Saturninus.

Torquata bore Saturninus the following children:

• Son, Lucius Volusius Saturninus^[15]
• Son, Quintus Volusius Saturninus^[16]
• Daughter, Volusia Torquata^[17] who married consul of 94, Titus Sextius Magius Lateranus^[18]
• Daughter, Volusia Cornelia^[19]

References

1. Genealogy of Volusius Saturninus by D.C. O’Driscoll
2. Genealogy of Volusius Saturninus by D.C. O’Driscoll
3. Tacitus, Annals: Part Two: Claudius & Nero, Chapter 11 – The Fall of Agrippina
4. Genealogy of Volusius Saturninus by D.C. O’Driscoll
5. Genealogy of Volusius Saturninus by D.C. O’Driscoll
6. Family Life Among the Staff of the Volusii by Susan Treggiari from the University of Ottawa, page 1
7. Treggiari, Family Life among the Staff of the Volusii - Transactions of the American Philological Association
8. Tacitus, Annals: Part Two: Claudius & Nero, Chapter 11 – The Fall of Agrippina
9. Tacitus, Annales xiii. 19, xiv. 46
10. Rickman, Roman Granaries and Store Buildings, p.169
11. Genealogy of Volusius Saturninus by D.C. O’Driscoll
12. Family Life Among the Staff of the Volusii by Susan Treggiari from the University of Ottawa, page 1
13. Genealogy of Volusius Saturninus by D.C. O’Driscoll
14. Syme, The Augustan Aristocracy, p.56
15. Genealogy of Volusius Saturninus by D.C. O’Driscoll
16. Genealogy of Volusius Saturninus by D.C. O’Driscoll
17. Genealogy of Volusius Saturninus by D.C. O’Driscoll
18. Genealogy of Volusius Saturninus by D.C. O’Driscoll
19. Genealogy of Volusius Saturninus by D.C. O’Driscoll

Sources

• Tacitus - The Annals of Imperial Rome
• G. Rickman, Roman Granaries and Store Buildings, CUP Archive, 1971
• S. Treggiari, Family Life among the Staff of the Volusii from Transactions of the American Philological Association vol. 105, 1974-1975
• R. Syme, The Augustan Aristocracy, Clarendon Press, 1986
• Family Life Among the Staff of the Volusii by Susan Treggiari from the University of Ottawa
• Genealogy of Volusius Saturninus by D.C. O’Driscoll