Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius Scipio Nasica - Political Career

Political Career

Cicero names "P. Scipio" among the young nobiles on his defense team when Roscius of Ameria was prosecuted in 80 BC. He is placed in the company of M. Messalla and Metellus Celer, both future consuls.

Metellus Scipio has been listed as tribune of the plebs in 59, but his patrician status argues against his holding the office. It is possible that Scipio's 'adoption' into a plebeian gens may have qualified him for a tribunate on a technicality. He was possibly curule aedile in 57 BC, when he presented funeral games in honor of his adopted father's death six years earlier. He was praetor, most likely in 55 BC, during the second joint consulship of Pompeius and Marcus Crassus.

In 53 BC, he was interrex with M. Valerius Messalla. He became consul with Pompeius in 52 BC, the year he arranged the marriage of his newly widowed daughter to him.

Indisputably aristocratic and conservative, Metellus Scipio had been at least symbolically a counterweight to the power of the so-called triumvirate before the death of Crassus in 53. "Opportune deaths," notes Syme, "had enhanced his value, none remaining now of the Metellan consuls."

He is known to have been a member of the College of Pontiffs by 57 BC, and was probably nominated upon the death of his adoptive father in 63 and subsequently elected.